Hughlings Himwich

Yeats: Knowledge of Reality and the Coming of Wisdom with Time

The knowledge of reality is always in some measure a secret knowledge.  It is a kind of death. 

                                                                                    -- Yeats, Autobiographies, p. 482

                    Though leaves are many, the root is one;
                    Through all the lying days of my youth
                    I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
                    Now I may wither into the truth.

Don't you dare call me wise

If we were to speak
only of what we
really know,
it might turn out
there's not much
to talk about.
The universe is
always there
for all of us
to lose our way.
After all, it's a lot
of time and space.
I lost mine
when I continued on
after saying, "If". 
If only I had been
wise enough to end
it there, but no,
I love to think.

Though it's too late
for me, you may yet
not hang yourself,
as I have done.
Try this. Say,
"Knock, knock
who's there?"
three hundred times
as if it were a prayer,
and if it rains,
you're free to go.

After that tricky bit,
you'd think
I wouldn't dare
write another line,
but, as you see, I did
and will. So,

if you call me wise,
(I'll say this as kindly
as truth allows):
Don't you see the fool
you're talking to is you
and you and you and you?
One and one are two
or four, the count
goes on and on
like the beating of a drum.

 

What makes you your own

 

Our idiosyncrasies are
What those who love us
Love to hate. You stutter
When you tell her
You love her true
And she knows
You really do
But prays aloud
To whatever god
May be passing by
(O let be
The hermetic one!)
For you to say it straight,
And so you learn to sing
The words to Amazing Grace
And she’s still not satisfied
And yet, though it’s no joke,
She laughs and sex that night
Makes the whole world shake.
Beast or god, each of us
Has our own.

 

lufu

 

Let's replace love with lufu*

When we are in love,
lufu dances
and rules the day.

*lufu is the Old English word
from which 'love' comes.

Fool's gold
is poetic treasure.

 

Sunday Morning with Charles

 

 

Flowers from Charles:
This is what it means
to capture the moment.

There was talk of
fascia and proprioception
and some whale
that mirrors the hump
back in my gait
and of a child
to whom you kindly said,
"God made the clouds."
But she unknowingly replied,
"I made the clouds."
and then, she with

a steady gaze, "God
and I made the clouds
for you."

And then we talked
of the 'demon' Dennett
who ran a clinic
for those addicted
to the immortal soul
and spoke for those
who would wish,
soul or not,
that he go straight to....

and, best of all, we talked
of "No Thing Not Here"
and could not decide
who said it first
but also knew
that it's how
we live our days
with what is
and what is not
here or there
that makes it
truly ours.

(Photograph by Ber
who loves Charles and me
for who we are

but thinks us "incorrigible"

-his word, not mine)
and tires of our gab.)

Though all this
may read as poetry,
every word of it is true.

 

I've attached the docs

to prove it to be so,

not for 'true believers',

who know Charles too well,

but to put to sleep

those who are wont

to doubt. It's like

what's said of Mozart,

there are too many words. 

 

Download Epistle 1

 

Download Epistle 2

 

Death by Lightning

Who grows old but never truly dies?
One who seeks and finds the secret
in the children's eyes and rides the clouds
that sweep across the sky like inspired thought
or a poet's words that outrun the night
and does not fear the fury of the wind
or the lightning that will strike him dead.

(It may be this poem tips toward irony,
but that's for each reader to decide.)

 

I fall dead asleep / Poet to Poet

 

I fall dead asleep.
In the morning a bird's song,
The coffee brewing

Poet to Poet

"To have coffee
or think what's the use,"
(your words, now mine)
and face another day,
it makes no little difference,
like that of light and dark,
if you hear birds singing
despite your heavy heart.

Beautiful Strangers

Weirder and weirder
we become
as we discover
no one is like
anyone

So that if we were
to look in a mirror
we would see
a benevolent stranger
Who welcomes us
to who we are.

There’s no telling
what would happen next:

Perhaps we would start off
on a hopeful journey
Carrying a lamp
to find others
Who are also strangers
to themselves,

Or, we might lay back
in the grass,
as I do now, and dream
of a world where
we love those better
whom in truth we have
loved before but now
we are more alive
to who they
may yet become,

A world - Think of it! - crowded
with beautiful strangers,
at play in the flowering
sunshine of possibility,
each of whom is
beautiful and each
is beautiful to all.

 

Sense of Self

 

Our sense of self is like blind sight.
We dream the moon and sleep the night.

Our sense of self is like a bird
That sings to us in our own words.

We all agree what's here or there,
But your sense of self is everywhere.

It's in the songs of pure delight.
The birds will sing as you sleep the night.

 

Fabula 27: SONDER & WONDER

Literature of the Mind Cards

Classical Literacy Cards

Fabula Archive: (2024-2025)

 

LINK

Loomings

And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all. --Melville, Moby Dick

My eyes were as Ahab’s
When the harpoon he hurled
Drew him to the whale
And then the rope
Bound him fast.
Though I had lost no leg,
- My only loss was Time and You -
I held the threads
That bound Ahab to a ghost.
My life was tied to Life itself,
Be it but a broken heart,
A phantom that drew me on
And on whose bruising bulk
I hurled myself, never thinking,
As you up there are sure to do,
Dying is what the living do and do.*

 

*The "do and do" recalls the 'weird' 'sister's line in Macbeth,
"I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do." Melville himself frames his story within
the logic of Macbeth's sorry fate. Like Macbeth, Ahab receives three
prophecies that no reasonable person would believe could come true,
except, of course, they do. It is of interest that the meaning of the
etymological root of ''weird' is 'fate'. 'Weird'' is the operating
principle of our individual and collective fate. 

 

The Rain It Raineth Everyday

 

I thought
you would like

to know
I am here

waiting
in the rain

I guess
you forgot

Heigh Ho,
the rain falls

on all
lost souls

blue skies
or no

 

The Weight of Age

 

for Alissa

'Tis true what you say:

Birds of a darker hue

Come now at break of day

Where once the robin & the jay

Would call with better news. 

 

But worry not. The darker song

Is still song and triumphs all.

 

Winning and Losing

 

Winning and Losing

Do tell.
You’re making fun of me.
Does it matter?
But I was talking about serious things.
Yes, of course, you were.
Surely, you agree the war is serious.
O yes, all too serious.
You're doing it again.
Does it matter, war being war?
But there will be winners and losers.
You’re right, of course.
Doesn’t it matter who wins?
O yes. Should we talk bullets and guns?
Yes, and many other such things like tanks and bombs.
Do tell.
You're mocking me.
But you said it matters who wins.
Indeed, it does.
But in war, everyone loses.
Not everyone.
Tell me who wins.
The winners win.
And farmers farm, I suppose.
Seriously?
You don't understand.
What?
I much prefer farming.

(I know there are those who would want to object. In this case, that's not possible, as I've put a full stop to the conversation. I don't see the harm in that. At least, there are no actual bullets or guns. This piece is about men who would rather go to war than think.)

 

Fragmenta

"The Tree Outside the Window Taps Gently . . . " -Virginia Woolf

(The following are three passages from VW's "The Mark on the Wall" that I have set in poetic lines to highlight the poetry of Virginia Woolf's prose.)

 

The Tree Outside the Window Taps Gently . . . 

The tree outside the window taps gently on the pane . . . .
I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously,
Never to be interrupted,
Never to have to rise from my chair,
To slip easily from one thing to another,
Without any sense of hostility, or obstacle.
I want to sink deeper and deeper,
Away from the surface with its hard separate facts.
To steady myself, let me catch hold
Of the first idea that passes . . .

I like to think of the tree itself:
First the close dry sensation of being wood;
Then the grinding of the storm;
Then the slow, delicious ooze of sap.
I like to think of it, too, on winter’s nights
Standing in the empty field with its leaves close-furled,
Nothing tender exposed to the iron bullets of the moon,
A naked mast upon the earth that goes tumbling, tumbling all night long.
The song of birds must sound very loud and strange in June . . . .

But after life.
The slow pulling down of thick green stalks
So that the cup of the flower,
As it turns over,
Deluges one with purple and red light.
Why, after all, should one not be born here,
Helpless, speechless, unable to focus one’s eyesight,
Groping at the roots of the grass,
At the toes of Giants?

 

Staccato

Shshshshshshshshshshshshsh

Listen to the wind

And the rain

Fall

In your ear

Down to

Your feet

And you slide, shuffle, and stomp

 

Leonora's Photography and Artwork, 191-196

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Street art
(Wall art by Hong Kong based artist, Alex Croft. )

 

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

The birds they sang at the break of day

Street Mural

(..)

The birds they sang at the break of day

"Start again", I seem to hear them say

Don't dwell on what has passed away

Or what is yet to be

Ah, the wars, they will be fought again

The holy dove, she will be caught again

Bought and sold and bought again

The dove is never free

 

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in (..)

Leonard Cohen - Anthem-

 

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Le dessert

 

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle

 

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Escape the madness

Van Morrison - Days Like This-

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Le lotus s'éveille

Emerging from the mud untainted

Radiohead - Lotus Flower -

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Leonora's Photography on Flickr

 

Beauty and the Beast

It can happen that you fall

Into your lover’s eyes

And disappear.

It’s like a night

When the moon’s light

Becomes your own,

Casting shadows

That lead you deeper

Into a darker forest of

Sighs and terrors

Where you, who in the light

Of day are as strange

To others as a centaur,

Are now as beautiful

As you’ll ever be.

 

POEM WITH A FACE

 

Without your face

There would be no poem

Or any word that calls out

To anyone but a faceless god

Who may or may not be there –

It is your face, not hers or his,

But yours that hides and reveals

An elusive YES. It is

Your face that gives rise to

“How do I love thee?”

The night itself becomes

All eyes or call them stars

Dawn arrives with a golden tongue

All the world comes into being

Waiting to hear and be heard

Your face a burning flower

 

University of the Imagination

 

And there I was

Out of myself

Perfect whole happy

Think of the sea

Not unlike the one

On which we will take our final journey

And know the beginning of the world

That is this moment now

The other side that is as close

As the hand that now takes yours

And never again lets you go

All and ever in the joy of being

Think of the comfort of a woven shawl

That holds you like a mother’s large embrace

Or a tree that clings to a cliff

Not for itself but for the rock

Keeping safe the spirit and life of the world

 

Think of duty and the beauty it bestows

Like the food the biscuits, cream, and coffee

That satisfies and delights and soothes

Until we set sail again, too far

Not to feel the fear for life

That will end alone, ever

And again drowning at sea

The body abandoned on a nearby shore

Ready at last to be gathered up

In the grief of the living

 

Angel

 

The sadness in her eyes was so sad

That only the joy in mine could be more joyful.

So we met, lingering unsteadily, until her crying stopped

And my laughter had turned to silence.

So it was that we at last understood each other, seen and seeing,

    as visible to each other as we were invisible.

The sky turned so blue that only the blue of an angel’s eyes could be more

    blue,

But now a hawk caught my eye, and she, catching the wind in her wings,

    flew away.

 

L'Être et le néant (Sartre)

How odd the thought
that Plato was not a Platonist
and that I who write so much about love
do so because love ever escapes me --
Dare I say it, I am like Socrates
who claimed he was wise
because he knew he wasn’t –
so too am I a lover
because love defies me.
How sad I hear you saying --
yet I am always in love!
It is the absence of love
that makes love rise up in me
in wave after wave.
The sound you hear is a heart
breaking upon the shore
and like the sea, I endure,
beating my heart out again
and again in song.
Love is what it is not
and is not what it is.
True love fulfills itself
as a useless passion.
Just so I am ever lonely
and ever in love.

 

The End of Desire

 

On the shore the children

throw stones to test 

their strength.

No one wins. 

A mountain hovers

over the river, a ribbon

of light. There is only 

the silent splash of stone.

 

Song's End

The  sadness of the song

Was so enchanting that you

Slipped from my embrace

And the music stopped. 

So Orpheus must have felt

When three times Eurydice escaped

His grasp and his song became

But brute air.

 

Nescio

Poetics

It has been the search for understanding that has made my life one of despair and fulfillment. My experience is that I forget the answers I have found or discard them as yesterday's news. Sometimes, after a long journey, I discover I have arrived at the same answer I did years ago. Looking back at my philosophical journeys, I find one common feature: the powerful experience of thinking and feeling my way toward some answer. For me, the ever-recurring answer to the most critical question (What makes life meaningful?) is this moving depth of consciousness that I experience in the search for understanding. I have found that as my consciousness deepens, it turns poetic. Poetry is the moving image of the depth in man. 

Socratic Wisdom

Socrates says that he is wise because he at least knows that he is not wise. Likewise, when I see that I don't know and utter those three short words, I arrive at the answer I have sought. But it can't be just a pose or a simple-minded response. It must be an authentic expression of my search for understanding. If it is genuine, my experience is despair and fulfillment. I experience a depth of consciousness that is, strangely enough, both the answer and not the one I had been searching for. It is not something I know; it's a different kind of knowledge. It is as though I remember what I am from the depth of my being.

Where the argument leads, I will follow.

In The Crito, Socrates engages in a dialogue that has life-and-death consequences for him and states that he is prepared to act in accordance with the conclusions of the argument. Socrates goes to his death as the logic of the argument directs. This is the ideal conversation, one in which words mean something. And so it must be here for me now. ." What is at sake? Meaninglessness.

How do die

Socrates dies as I would, thinking and searching to the end. And death itself: simple and complete -- with a final "I don't know" that rings over the sea of my being like a bell ringing through the darkness.

How will you know the answer you have found is the answer you are searching for?

I don't know. I don't know. And that is precisely the point. If the "I don't know" is an authentic experience, it will fulfill the search at the moment of its utterance. The answer I am searching for is the search itself.

The erotic impulse

My experience is that the philosophical quest is inextricably tied up with the erotic. If it were not for the erotic, I would never begin the journey. I would never know you or myself.

The turning of the soul

The final turning of the soul occurs when the soul understands that its own activity is the good.

Nescio ergo sum

The I-don't-know is the beginning and the end and knows itself to be the answer it seeks. It experiences itself as a lack and thereby fulfills itself. It is complete in its incompleteness, final even when it knows itself to be yet in process, and fulfills itself at the moment it despairs.

 

Ber Himwich Photography and Artwork 418-422

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mannequin / Bacchante by Mary Cassatt (1872) [Edit]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rebirth

The sun
worn down
skips red
to white,
sky to 
bone 

Notes of
desire jump
the gap
twixt g
& d

Pure sound,
the mountains
we climb,
the air
we breathe

Rainy Mountain

I would go    
to where the silence is
It's there in the thunder  
the rain falling    
It’s there in the cloud-clapped mountains    
waiting
the heart opens
it's all one can do    
to breathe

 

To be a dragon

O to be a dragon,
to have every word I say
catch fire and end
in smoke and ash.

Those who would slay me
do not know who they are
or what they do.
I would hold them

At the tip of my tongue
and burn away all
that is not true,

Nothing left but fire.

White Water

along the river
the boys stopped
to rest

there they found
an old pump
and a metal cup,
the water cold

ahead the rocks
were calling,
but no one thought

it was the end.

 

Death on an Ice Bridge: http://www.niagarafrontier.com/icebridgedeath.html

My friend Charles sent me the link above and this reflection:

Hugh, I was fifteen years old when I read the attached 1914 newspaper report of the most chilling deaths in Niagara Falls history. Some might have been saved if the ropes lowered by the rescuers had ended with a non-slip body loop. The easiest, quickest non-slip knot for this loop is the bowline. I was the top knot tier in Boy Scout Troop #32 and knew this knot well, but I was determined to learn more. I practiced grasping a lowered rope, wrapping it around my waist, and securing it with the bowline. I did this over and over, faster and faster. Finally, I decided to grasp a lowered rope with my raised left hand while wrapping the lower end around my waist and tying the rope with my right hand. As you might imagine, this is very difficult. I have never heard of anyone else attempting a one-hand bowline, and there probably would never be a time when it would be needed … But, you never know. … There once was!

 

Song of the Undying Sea

 

When I am no longer here,
you’ll hear my voice
from a homeless shell
found like an abandoned
shoe upon the shore
where once we played
and learned to sing.
You’ll hear my voice
as you hear now
these wayward waves
that will lift you up
and leave you broken here
to sing with me
the dying song
of the undying sea.

 

My friend Charles sent me this reflection on the poem:

A story—brought up from the fond depths of memory by your poem:

Once, decades ago, Pauline and I were walking on a sandy beach in Mexico. In my edited re-call, there was nothing I could hear or see but the sea, sand, and Pauline. Then I spied an unusual conch shell. In local shell shops, you can buy lovely, lacquered (and almost perfect) conch shells. Almost perfect, but quite devastatingly defiled by the sea-farmers who grab the shell, punch a hole in a special spot, stab a knife through that hole, and slice away the link between occupant, home, and life. The hunter then pulls out the flesh and sells it to a roadside cafe for tourists’ pleasure. What could have become a trumpet now will only leak air.

But this shell! I had never seen one like it. There was no death-hole and no sharp points. It had been rolled around by the waves over the abrasive sand for who-knows how long. But it was no ordinary conch shell. As I lifted it out of the sand, I saw something I could never have dreamed of finding. The tip end was missing and I could peer through that hole straight into the spiral staircase of this former housing project. The aperture was the shape and size of a trombone’s mouthpiece. Rinsing off the sand, I put to my lips what clearly was a musical instrument and blew a stunning note first heard since Triton himself played it last. The sound began as a bark and became an extended urgency in D.

I keep it here on the deck table where it is close to the water (unsalted) and perhaps may itself have memories of ancient ocean shores. When I release its voice by the lake, echoes return it from all shores––including those of memory––and, because my throat is aching, resonating from that undimmed recovery of sea, sand, and … love.
* * * * *

I look forward to the next time that we chat on FaceTime when you can see and hear Triton’s horn for yourself (and Ber)

Full disclosure: a lifted edge still remained where the head had broken off. I played it as it was (apparently, Triton was not bothered by the inconvenience ), and I ignored the slight pain until we returned home, where I had a proper sander.

 

Reaching Bottom

A note from my friend Charles: You are diving to the bottom of things where things are just what they are––which, I would say, is a journey embarked on intentionally by the reflective human heart. On my first reading (or descent), it felt almost “too true”; on the second, a slight bite; by the third, a lingering astringency. To touch Death lightly is to embrace Life with both arms.

 

Happiness Is Conditional

If the walls do not bark at you

Count yourself happy

If the rain invites you out for a walk

Count yourself happy

If a tree casts its shadow around you

Count yourself happy

If a child takes your hand and guides you

Count yourself happy

If you sleep alone and sleep well

Count yourself happy

If the moon follows you into sleep

You will be as happy as you'll ever be. 

 

Hovering

No one has noticed
that I hover two inches above
the ground, except once
a child tugged on my sleeve
as if to pull me back to earth

but how it happens the birds
call to me I do not know.
They too find me strange
and wonder why I cannot
fly with them and catch
the morning light.

                              I tell them
the night still holds me back.

 

γνῶθι σεαυτόν*

de quo consultus, an esset / tempora maturae visurus longa senectae, / fatidicus vates 'si se non noverit' inquit* . . . Everywhere there are mirrors if we but knew how to look . . . in the trees and in the wind that they catch but cannot hold, in the mountains and in the clouds that rest upon them before the wind comes, and in all the varieties of water: rivers, pools, oceans and, yes, in your tears that are more like rain than you will ever know, and most especially in every dream, fantasy, delusion, and lie . . . in every act of the imagination and in every sight, smell, and touch . . . your skin, this kiss . . . in such images we find ourselves . . . not something, but not nothing either . . . we see as if in a mirror the essential movement of mind through which there is anything at all, through which there is meaning . . . and, like the wind in the trees, that meaning is elusive . . . we are like Narcissus who at first did not recognize the image in the clear pool as his own; we too experience the world and its meaning as if they were there to be discovered and precisely not as something for which we are the author . . . all that there is is the reflection of our own minds at large . . . should we come to know ourselves as Narcissus did, we would know that we are responsible for everything, that without us there would be no joy and no death, no love and no suffering . . . according to the ancient story, Narcissus remains eternally enchanted by his own reflection in the River Styx . . . If we too come to know ourselves, would we not also remain frozen in time as if we had encountered some Medusa . . . to know ourselves guilty of every act of cruelty would surely turn us to stone . . . or would we like Narcissus in Melville’s account plunge into the pool and drown . . . Melville tells us that the image Narcissus beholds in the water is "the ungraspable phantom of life"* and that that is "the key to it all" . . . CONSIDER YOURSELVES WARNED . . . as was Narcissus that he would live a long life if only he did not come to know himself . . . this way lies madness . . . just as there is madness in the very capitalization of that warning . . . shall we like Ishmael remain on the bank of that pool, frozen by cowardice and fade into a living death . . . or like Ahab seek to embrace the image of ourselves and drown . . . BE WARNED. . . just so this early morning’s gentle light heralds the coming storm

. . . .

*῾Know thyself”
*"When asked whether he would see the long years of ripe old age, the prophetic seer said, 'If he does has not known himself.'" Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Bk. 3, 348-350. These lines refer to the prophecy given by the seer Tiresias regarding the fate of Narcissus.
*Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 1

Mea Culpa

Adieu
.    for Julia whose last name should be Shriek, a Friend

A tale of haunting
thoughts that give
the house its living
space, the very edge
of what is not

Ghosts gleam and gab
in every slant of light
and strut about
to claim the crowded
house. You, a guest,
they bid adieu,
rid of you at last

Out here beyond
the riot of the self
a distant bell

Is that all?
It is enough.
If more,
there's none to tell

 

Wildflowers

     for my students

Last night I dreamed

of the Limited and the Unlimited and You. 

It was as though all the answers

to all the questions we have asked

were like wildflowers

burning in an open field.

Out there, beneath a full moon

trailing a dying sun,

I knew the dream was true

and now at elbow and foot

all the stars are named for you. 

 

Θάλασσα*

What poets know is what is not.
It sets us free to dance like rain
And call to the sea as to a friend
τῷ σοφῷ ξένον οὐδέν.

The sea's true name is οὐ τόπος,
In whose waves we sometimes drown.
We dance, I say, to enchant the sea
and sing: κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων.

*Θάλασσα (Thalassa): sea
τῷ σοφῷ ξένον οὐδέν (tō sophō xenon ouden): to the wise nothing is strange (Antisthenes)
οὐ τόπος (ou topos): not a place (origin of 'utopia')
κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων: (koina ta tōn philōn): common are the things of friends. (Aristotle, Bk. 4, Nicomachean Ethics)

 

Dark like a kiss

Dark like a kiss or plum,

  adored-- her eyes fall

  Into light and close.

 

Holding On For Dear Life

How could I help but love you

with your eyes curling

into flower, but

would it be you I loved

or the woman with me now

whose eyes are full

of downfall night,

holding on to me

for dear life?

 

A Madrigal: Bembo and Cervantes

Don Quijote (II, 68):

Amor, cuando yo pienso
En el mal que me das terrible y fuerte, 
Voy corriendoa la muerte,
Pensando asi acabar mi mal inmenso.
Mas en Ilegandoa l paso,
Que es puerto en este mar de mi tormento,
Tanta alegria siento,
Que la vida se esfuerza, y no le paso.
Asi el vivir me mata,
Que la muerte me torna a dar la vida.
iOh condici6n no oidal
La que conmigo muerte y vida trata!

https://youtu.be/5q8G1PSCKyg

O Love, when my thoughts turn
to the suffering, dread and fierce, you bring,
I swiftly run toward death,
hoping to end forever the pain I feel;
but when I reach that place,
the port in this rough ocean of my torment,
I feel such joy and gladness
that life grows strong and does not let me pass.
And so my living kills me,
and death insists and gives me back my life.
Mine is a novel state:
I go on living, and constantly die.

(Cervantes, Miguel de; Edith Grossman (2009-01-29). Don Quixote (p. 905). Harper Perennial.)

Bembo: Gli Asolani, o Los Asolanos (1515)

Quand'io penso al martire,
Amor, che tu mi dai gravoso e forte,
Corro per gir a morte,
Cost sperando i miei danni finire.
Ma poi ch'io giungo al passo Ch'?
porto in questo mar d'ogni tormento,
Tanto piacer mi sento,
Che l'almas i rinforza,o nd'ion ol passo.
Cost il viver m'ancide:
Cosi la morte mi ritorna in vita.
O miseria infinita,
Che l'uno apporta e l'altra non recide.

Mignarda - Quand'io penso al martire by Jacques Arcadelt (c.1507 –1568)

When I think of the suffering 
That love has so grievously forced upon me 
I hasten toward death 
Therefore hoping to end mine own damnation. 

But then to add to the suffering 
I stand at the port of this same sea of affliction. 
Senseless in the face of such delight. 
Why the ship of my soul braces a waterless wave. 

Thus, living kills me; 
Thus dying, life returns. 
O endless misery 
One gives, and the other takes away. 

Here is my own take on this theme in Latin and then in English.

Amor

Amor, mori velim 
abesseque ab asperis vitae
sed mors me a litore tuo repellit
donatque mi tantum gaudium 
ut in corde mare tuum meo inveniam. 

Love, I would wish to die
and be far from the harshness of life
but death drives me from your shore
and grants me such great joy
that I find your sea in my heart. 

 

What's left to say

He was watching the parade
The clowns, the words, the trumpeteers
And in his dream he was awake
Or he was awake and dreaming.
He closed his eyes.
No matter, he heard the drums.
He opened his eyes a second time
And saw himself marching
Now to a different tune
A martial cha-cha-cha
And wet his pants.
There is little more to tell.
The daily Tribune records
That during the St. Jude Day Celebration
Saturday passed and a forgotten man
Had died, shouting blessings
Upon one and all. 

Memory

He mistook her
in her great age and beauty
For a tree
And sat with her
And spoke to her
Silently as trees do.

He asked her for a song.
The wind crept up
And played with her hair.
The birds came and sang for him. 

He asked for truth.
She closed her eyes
And he dreamed
Of another life.  

He asked for love.
She sighed
And remembered when she was a girl
And had asked him
To hold her.

He remembered too.

Only then did it begin to rain.
The wind turned cold
And she was gone.