Recall

I love to read poems that I read as a kid and try and recall how I interpreted them and compare that analysis to what I think now. Emily Bronte was a favourite for obvious reasons… I felt I had to make the author of Wuthering Heights one of my literary heroines. I feel guilty for not feeling quite so passionately about her works now.

A Flower Given to My Daughter

Frail the white rise and frail are
Her hands that gave
Whose soul is sere and paler
Than time’s wan wave.

Rosefrail and fair – yet frailest
A wonder wild
In gentle eyes thou veilest,
My blueveined child.

- James Joyce

Fever 103°

Pure? What does it mean?

The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse bred baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern—

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you! And my light!
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise—
The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean!
Not you, nor him

Nor him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)—
To Paradise.

- Sylvia Plath

Shou Sui

Su Shi

Too True

A Christmas Tale

At this time of year it is patently clear
That the males are the ones who are blest.
Thoughts like “goodwill to men” we hear time and again
And we find them quite hard to digest.

As we women all know, men think they run the show,
And sometimes we allow them this pause.
But it gets on our nerves, like too many hors d’oeuvres
When we want to get at the main course.

Many times out of mind the same problem we find,
Leaving plans to the menfolk is risky.
Christmas spirit they think is some kind of a drink,
Such as vodka, Baccardi, or whiskey.

Since we carry the load, men keep out of our road,
We are ready and willing and able.
For it’s perfectly clear, that the stuffed turkeys here
Are not always confined to the table.

The traditional way is now rather passe,
Lets give credit, where credit is due.
Then you’ll see, man or boy, in return you’ll enjoy
The fruits of OUR goodwill to you.

- Jacqueline Ramm

This Most Perfect Hill

On this most perfect hill
with these most perfect dogs
are these most perfect people
and this most perfect fog

In this most perfect fog
that is the middle of the sea
inside the perfect middle of
the things inside that swing

In this most perfect rhyme
that takes up what it sees
with perfect shelter from the
rain as perfect as can be,

In this most perfect day
at the apex of the sun
runs this most perfect
frog song that is roiling
from the mud

In these most perfect habits
of the waving of the trees,
through this imperfect language
rides a perfect brilliancy.

- Lisa Jarnot

Safe In Their Alabaster Chambers

Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of resurrection.
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbled the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence,-
Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.

- Emily Dickinson

Magnitudes

Earth’s Wrath at our assaults is slow to come

But relentless when it does. It has to do

With catastrophic change, and with the limit

At which one order more of Magnitude

Will bring us to a qualitative change

And disasters drastically different

From those we daily have to know about.

As with the speed of light, where speed itself

Becomes a limit and an absolute;

As with the splitting of the atom

And a little later of the nucleus;

As with the millions rising into billions—

The piker’s kind in terms of money, yes,

But a million in terms of time and space

As the universe grew vast while the earth

Our habitat diminished to the size

Of a billiard ball, both relative

To the cosmos and to the numbers of ourselves,

The doubling numbers, the earth could accommodate.

We stand now in the place and limit of time

Where hardest knowledge is turning into dream,

And nightmares still contained in sleeping dark

Seem on the point of bringing into day

The sweating panic that starts the sleeper up.

One or another nightmare may come true,

And what to do then? What in the world to do?

- Howard Nemerov

POC

I’m starting a new label for this blog that will archive and list all the little “Pieces of Comfort” that I amass for work. Aside from the framed photos of the kids, and the flowers on my desk, here’s what I’m bringing in to pin up as my piece of solace for week #2. I’ve selected my 2 favourite verses from The Lotos Eaters. I can’t think of a better poem to describe my struggle in adapting to my new working life. The words will be a balm. I can imagine S&S rolling their eyes at this… eh, some people like sexy pin-ups.. I like poetry. Whatever gets the endorphins going!

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
here my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

- Mark Strand