Hughlings Himwich

Summer Rain

If it would only rain my words would pour forth like girls and boys too young to know shame O they are bold as I would be the rain falls I am young again dance touch while the music plays so falls the rain O she is here there are tears of joy tears songs of praise for the beauty of the day earth yields up its flowers to her hand turns to gentle thunder her body lifts and holds her laughter makes the night shudder unbinds her hair and falls to me now here now there like summer rain

Analogy

 

If truth is to factual as synonym is to cinnamon,

then the here and the now will nowhere be found.

(Bryce Gordon wrote the protasis and has not yet
expressed an opinion on the apodosis.)

 

Death is not a mystery. To deny its finality is to turn away from the simplest truth of all. What remains possible is to safeguard the living memory of those we love. If one follows out the logic, death always wins. It's not complicated. To treat death as raising complex questions is self-evidently a dodge. The reality of death does, however, call us to a devotion to this life and those whom, for a time, we yet carry forward with us. When I write a poem that suggests a loved one lives in the sound of wind or fall of rain, it is because the conscious act of the poem itself makes it so. And so it is, until the poem ends. It is a sacred and futile art. 

 

Translation and Catullus 85

Catullus 85

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
         nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

(literal: I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask?
         I don't know, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.)

My translation

Hates she I love. Don't ask!
My tongue's ripped out.

This will hardly seem a translation. What I have tried to do is to preserve the emotion.

1.  In the Latin, odi et becomes through elision odet, creating a semantic confusion, the -t identifying a 3rd person subject. Thus, the "she" in my translation. The words themselves become jumbled, suggesting turbulent emotions.  'hates she I love' - is arranged as a chiasmus (A B B A - think of the Greek letter χ), and may be represented as a cross. For the relevance see the 3rd comment.

2. Again, by ellison quare id (why it) becomes quarid, suggesting that the question itself is an additional source of pain.

3. In the second line of my translation, I was attempting to convey in a single image both the anguish and the poet's inability to speak about it. The verb excrucior (I am tortured) suggests a crucifixion (crux: cross), a punishment reserved for slaves in Catullus's time. 

All well and good, I say to myself, but is it a translation of Catullus's poem or is the original so changed in translation as to become something else? If something else, what would we call it? It's not really an original poem. Perhaps, a creative translation. It may or not be creative, but in my judgment, it is in fact a translation, one that tries to convey the emotion of the original as opposed to the dictionary meaning of the words themselves. Think: how does anyone but God join a soul to a body? With less fanfare, a translator is trying to transfer the soul or emotion of a poem in one language into the body of another. 

 

It is enough that the leaves

are green all summer long.

Fall will come and the wind
Will carry them away.

The same wind holds me.
It is more than enough.

The Greatest Calling

After forgetting your name
I remembered everything else
that matters.
What’s in a name
is not you. You are as beyond
naming as the light. Don’t name
the constellations. The stars
are waiting for you to join them
in their radiant anonymity.
It is your birthright as surely
as wave upon wave makes
no sound upon the shore
that does not rhyme
with your breathing.
Listen! The birds
are nesting in your heart.
They will guide you home.
We go together and alone.

 

Wandering

As I get older, working alone
Into the early morning
I sometimes wander
Into the light and forget
The day, month, and year.
You must tell me,
Is this Thursday?

For Becky

 

The Gathering

The window talks to me,
I open and listen:
.
In the moonlight shadows
gather, beckoning
me to follow.
                      This time
the moon smiles upon me
and holds me in its light.

Baby Talk

If you are the rain,

You will never get wet

Or need to huddle under a canopy of leaves

Dripping with tears or hide

from lightning or be afraid

Of thunder or look out for a blue patch of sky

Or tell someone you are not

A metaphor at home in darkness

As in light.  

                   And then

You are gone

Until you find yourself

Falling once again.

You speak not in metaphors

But in streams and flowers

And no one knows

What you are saying.

 

Rosary

Now and in the hour of our final breath
The birds arrive as they always have on Ithaca
That we might have good sailing upon the sea.

We launch under cover of a new moon
And sail into morning, forgetting
The stars that will guide us home.

 

Goat Song

I wrote this poem as a much younger man. It is more relevant now that I am considerably older. I have included
D.H. Lawrence's 'forbidden painting' that served as inspiration. 

Goat Song

The old goat sighed, lifting first one hoof then another over the remains of the seasons. He had tried
to invoke a world, embody his words.

And yes, spring summer fall winter took form, wheeled in cycles and everywhere the plants and little
animals rejoiced, colors and music floated through the leaves, browns, and greens became a medley of
sound in the half-light, became wind and in the midst of all stood a man and a woman, opening
themselves like flowers to each other, and his words made mountains and streams, the whurling bark
of trees traced vowels and consonants, roots plunged deep into pure sound.

Then a scream shattered the scene.

And what remained?

An old goat and his song.

The leaves of autumn light the ground.

 

 

 

Being There

for Charles and Pauline

 

When she said I won’t be coming back

She knew you would

And would bring such living memories

That she would forever be at rest

With you there, always

Returning with the morning light

Or when it rains

Or whenever you set off from the shore

 

Or gathering the warmth of a fire

You will find through her

The wild peace, the ecstatic

Harmony of color, the sacred

Loon that calls us to life

That in its leaving never departs.

 

The Source

Who will come and who will go

To and from this place alone?

I’ll hide this poem where once I was:

The poet gone, the source unknown.

 

Always Looking

 

Because I am always looking

To the sky as if it were a mirror

I do my best flying at night

 

Because I am always looking

Into your eyes as if they were mine

I know both loneliness and love

 

Because I am always looking

To catch up with myself

I am always late, always waiting

 

Because I am always looking

I cannot see what is not there

Though it cost me my life

 

Because I am always looking

I am blinded by the light

 

Hail Mortal

ALL COBWEB
SEES IS

     AN ASS
IS AN ASS

IS A MAN
AT BOTTOM

PLAYS ALL
THE PARTS

A FOOL
LIKE

A LIFE WORTH
DYING

 

  — it took but moments
to write / not quite
a lifetime

 

What does real even mean?

What does real even mean?

Trying to understand it
We search out pain

Or maybe it’s different in Chicago
Where Janes and Johns play craps on the L

Or in the fields beyond
Where farm girls and boys give their bodies first to the sun
And then to each other and finally to the earth they love.

We make it up as we go along. What's true remains.
Let's call it rain.  

 

No Nonsense Poems

A Bedtime Story

Last night
Papa

Fell asleep
Reading

I didn't
Wake him

 

So, So Sorry

If I could find
The words

I would not
Need

To apologize
For this

Also

 

Sparrow

Not a sparrow
But this sparrow

That has already
Flown away.

 

Sorry to have missed you

You weren’t there
Or I was late

Or this was not
The place

I waited
It’s not a problem

It's just that
As I told you

I am really scared
— Perhaps another time

 

We must breathe to live

We must breathe to live

Until we weave ourselves

Into wind and breathe no more,

A grace we did not know we

Were living for — or think of

Rain and weep no more.  

 

"Now I Understand" - Linda Gregg

Three words
A lifetime
Who can speak them?
I cannot
this morning's night. 
Can you?

 

Stoned

 

Medusa was butch

but wore sunshine

as if it were hair.

Where did the snakes come from?

From men who stared.


(In the earliest descriptions and images of Medusa, there were no snakes. She was just stone-cold beautiful!) 

 

Hold True

In Memoriam

 

for Nathaniel Bowie

 

When we return there will be an empty space

That we will fill with true memories

Of one devoted to what we devote ourselves:

The life of the school, service to others,

Kindness, a look that says I will

See what I can do

                               And then do it.

"That's the face of a man who has seen it all."

 

                                                                                                                                           Photograph by Ber Himwich

“That’s the face of a man who has seen it all.”

Not so. There’s more to come
And it’s not all suffering loss
The mind shedding all

That is not nailed down
Eyes vacant still
Focused on what no one else can see
A sky so blue the light so full

That you can speak only
In single syllables silently
To the coming darkness
As though it were a friend

Passing onto another life
Where there is no sky
But the sky we have become
When at last we have seen it all.

 

Night Song

Quiet falls like leaves

Like night, the wheels

That turn the stars stop

There is no you, only

The sound of birds

Nesting in these words

So quiet they must be true

 

Autumn's Child

 

I see you now, child, wrapped in vines and visions,

happy to find a place to hide, laughing hoping someone will find you.

Don't call out. No one will come.

Let the wind be your voice, just as you hear mine now.

It's autumn and the leaves rustle alive for one last song before winter. 

Someone will hear the wind laughing in the trees.

They will see you in all your glory.

 

The Song of Songs

 

He thought of her as if she were with him, but the truth was that she was gone and she was not coming back. The last time they spoke on the phone, she had told him. And that was that. Still, he thought he could hear her voice, singing the song she had written for him, her father, though as it turned out, she had been, on that early autumn day, more in need of the song than he. It had been a song of farewell, though it seemed now, as he listened to the light falling around him, a lullaby like the one his own father had sung for him when he was a child and if that mockingbird don’t sing, his daughter’s words now restless and unsettled like that of a mooncast muse or like living with and without regret. He thought if he could just remember the words of her song or snatch their meaning out of the call of birds that had never abandoned him or feel their rhythm in the outflow of his heart or see the flash of her eyes in the flickering of the candle on his desk, she, the singer of the song, would be there for him now. Without knowing where the words were coming from, he began to sing. He sang of all he loved and all that he would be leaving behind when his own time came. Mostly, though, he sang of the sea, the song becoming the gentle rock and slap of the boat, following now only the river’s stream taking him out. He too was not coming back.

 

Somnium

 

Somnium: Out there in the stars a drum is heard and they draw near the soft body and nearer the other one within, softer now, slows, now sleeps. The moon hangs in the sky. We find our way there. First, a hand and only then the eyes. What do they see? The moon hangs in the trees, wind weaving the light. There’s a burst of autumn colors, then the tears come. We dig in the dirt and find seashells, bones, roots. Still, the drumming, leading us on. You close your eyes to listen, then wake to find yourself alone, pawing at all that’s not there, the drumming now too distant to know if it is anything more than a lonely heart.

 

Child's Play

When Selina saw the children at play, she wished that she could tell them and make them understand: Don't grow up. You'll never play like this again. Your feet have roots, your arms branches that reach out for the light. The birds talk to you as friends should, and you give them shelter. They, in turn, give you wings that will take you far away from this time and place. When you return and other children gather around you and ask why you look so sad, you will tell them a story, not yours of course, nor theirs, but of some other children whom time forgot, children whose wings became leaves and whose feet were rooted in the ground and free.  

My Pick-Up Line

 

Be brave! No more sneaking around, no more affectation!
What great soul said that? Yours, of course! One soul
seeks another, that's how it knows where to go.
You and I the same, same with wings and wind. 
if you keep hiding, you may prove
you aren’t there at all, no hands no feet, 
not those beautiful eyes that catch the sky
(yes, your eyes are beautiful. It's never a lie.)
no joy or grief, just an echo that dims. 
Listen! the ringing in your ear is the tolling of your soul:
it's time, it's time, it's time, it's damn well time already!
Enough of all this hiding only to lose, a soul
only knows itself as the moon,
the one becomes two. 
The less we fear and sooner than now
the more we can dance and dance our own tune.  
Let the kite go and be where it goes.
That's poetry! It's like falling in love . . .

                Hey there, beautiful, where ya goin?
                —I'm going with you. 

 

It's Raining Tonight

It's raining tonight.

there's thunder & lightning too

making sure we stop and listen

there's no place to go

no reason to be elsewhere

no summons for tomorrow

it's all happening now
here within & without
there's no need for prayer
I hear the beating
of every heart in my own
If this is a dream
I don't want to wake up

The Sound that Wind Makes

(for Maya)

I want words to breathe like I do, weep when I do, and bruise easily.

I want words to dream and remember those dreams that first set me on this path.

I want words to grow old with me and become like the lines in my face and tell me
      old stories that keep my stumbling spirit from falling and new ones that tell of
      love forever young and freely given.
I want words of no regret even for the sorry waste of all I have left undone, unsaid.

I want words to hold up a mirror and see there all who at some time have gone hand
      in hand with me through this life.

O what a wondrously crowded reflection that would be, all of them in the morning
     of their lives, young and old alike.  

O that words would fall like these tears and mark the page in silver and gold, the true
colors of night, that these words would live on in their hearts and find some rest there,
though I myself be nothing but the sound the restless wind makes on a cold night,
the wind that sweeps down the mountainside and past all the houses in which loved ones
have died and gathers up all those lost souls and scatters what is but dust and ash
through the deep space of time. 

The dead don't talk

I know why

the dead don't talk

to the living:

it hurts

to remember

and we stopped

listening

Charles & All

 

Hugh,

Yesterday was very busy.  I drove alone to Manistee to get a prescription for Pauline and a variety of things needed at the hardware store (mousetraps, a garden kneeling pad, lids for 5-gallon buckets, specific sizes of screws, ballpoint pens, paper plates, and groceries).  It took a long time and was tiring.  

I thought about your De Anima reflections but didn’t get farther than concluding that the Latin is preferable to the Greek (Peri Psyches) in that casual English usage would stimulate overtones of Life in Latin rather than of Mind in Greek.  Happily, neither would immediately connote “soul” in common parlance.

As usual, the problem is the fundamental poverty of language itself. You probably will have to gin up some poetry if we are to proceed further!

I have been sleeping well, and this morning I woke fairly early and was able to have more than an hour of reflective thought before getting out of bed. That luxury is counterbalanced by constraints on my writing time this morning. So, although my thoughts will have some semblance of order, my writing will not probe as deeply as it might.  I had probably better start with my comments because the pressure of time is increasing.

After we began reflecting on Julian Jayne’s take on Consciousness (when was that?), we came upon some agreement on the utility of the phrase: “subjective reflective self-consciousness”. (Did we hack that phrase together or did we incorporate it from someone else?) Without going further in that direction at the moment, I would also like to add the concept of “personhood”.  

I believe I sent you an article (tell me if I didn’t) on Aphantasia––the inability to form mental images of remembered persons, places, things, and experiences.  This rare phenomenon draws our attention to the fact that most people are able to form and be conscious of these images.  There are also some who cannot mentally “hear” remembered tunes. At one time I was curious about the fact that it is quite possible to vocalize pitches indicated on printed musical notation with surprising accuracy. As I reflected on this, I noticed that my vocal cords physically changed their tension as I thought of various pitches. [Just think of the bugle call “reveille”. You will be surprised at how dramatic and clear this sensation is]

FULL STOP!! A Great Blue Heron, the first we have seen this year, just flew up from the water under the “Yellow Iris Cedar” about 30 feet from me!  WOW!  What a spot!  What a life!

At any rate, “personhood”, although it can veer off and dive deeply into various realms, can be hijacked into being a stand-in for that element of De Anima that is limited to the idea of an essential human element that you allude to.

My, my.  I had no idea that I could reduce the deep waters of thought that I had this morning into something that would have any coherence at all––much less that it would relate  to the subject you are addressing.

I do hope that I can dip into the prospectus you sent, but I must warn you that I am also following the trail of the common elements of “the good Life & the good Death”––as well as living an otherwise ordinary life. 

Something will have to give;

It always does.       

                                Charles

 

                                                                    Charles & All

                                                                              (June 9, 2021)

                                                                This morning's herald: 

                                                                Rising from the water

                                                                Beneath the cedar

                                                                And yellow iris,

                                                                A Great Blue Heron

                                                                Welcomes us home. 

 

 

 

When you wake,

for Charles

It will be only then

That the sun will rise.  

The light sleeps with you.

May you rest well.

The Poet's Voice

 

Poetry is what is missing
When you wake in the morning
And don’t listen for the silence
That will always be with you.

But for that unheard song,
There would be no call
Of bird, no sigh,
No laughter, no word

Beyond the word
To call you home.

When your love speaks,
Listen for that silent singalong,
For the truth that cries out
For life and to live

Beyond life itself. 
Do you know that voice?
There are children playing
In the rain. There’s one

Who stops and listens, his heart
Beating wildly with your own. 

 

Remembering

    

Photo by Ber Himwich

Remembering

How like the river this scattering

Of ash. It takes our tears to heart, 

And every sorrow flows through love.

 

The river reminds us of tomorrow.

The river runs through every sorrow. 

 

But For Song

for Eve

If the world were round
And night had its way,
Then words would mean
just what we say.

But the world plays false,
Sometimes flat, sometimes hoarse
And sometimes singing
Like a tuning fork.

And sometimes night
Shines with loving eyes
And says what we mean
with joyful sighs.

 

For Sasha

Love is born

like a child

who brings to all

all the noise

of simple joy.

• For my grandson born 11/8/2013

Of Another Life

          (June 27, 2021)

The silences of flowers

Teach us to listen

To our own

            *

These morning birds

Sing of the night

And the fall of rain.

            *

The shadows of trees

Fall like tears like light

upon the grass. 

            *

The wind takes

Our breath away

And is always at rest.

 

What is not there

Though I am known to God
As Hughlings, my friends call me
Hugh and leave it at that --
Grace takes care of the rest.

Though I do not believe
In anything or have any Jesus,
Yet I retain a kind of genius
For harmless lies.

It is as if during the day
I can still see the stars
Blazing out of the night
And truly see what is

not there. Some say
it is a harmless madness --
My friends though look deep
Into what were once my eyes

And all they see is night.

The Weird Sisters

What it's like to be like you?
A cat's meow or thunder's tune?
Try out both and be amazed
How different is on different days, . 
Feeling bad? Let's make it rain
and give ourselves another name:
John is Sally but who's to blame?
Something wicked this way came. 

Round again and up your snout
Be pretty now! Don't let them out!
They do not know and yet they do.
Step through the veil and say it true:
Life is death, and death a friend. 
What begins today will never end. 

 

Jumping the Gap

     

   for my students

 

There are so many echoes in my life, but there’s one voice louder than the rest.

         It tells me to move on, be on the move.

There will never be a time just to look back and wonder.

Even this morning there are the birds, ever still in flight, and the wind

         Chirping in a nest of leaves. They say, Fly away and be still.

A phantom hand reaches out . . . now so near . . .  It’s Her hand –

         It pulls me forward. Flower and flame await, love and consummation.

This is what I believe: it’s never over.

May the next words I write bind me . . . cricket and rock,

         rain and tears, sparrow and sorrow . . . all one . . .  

         too foolish to see the trees in winter.

A hand claps: there are children at play, lovers blushing, there is a road leading into the

          mountains, the birthplace of sky and sea.

I jump the gap and see it all as flower and fire, worlds appearing and disappearing like children,   

          a daughter not to be but in love’s mirror.  

Here all is possible and real – a needle threads its way, becomes a tuning fork.

I move on and hear every heart beating as one its own raucous rhythm,

          unaware of the harmony that is creation.

I move on. A tiger leaps through the gap and mauls its prey, a girl beats her heart out on a

          drum, unheard; a babe lies abandoned in an eagle’s nest, its cry my

          own. My breathing stops.

I move on. A blue sky thunders, stars are born and burn out, a raven’s

         wing covers all.  A whirlwind out of the darkness sweeps us all along.

Who knows but I will meet you on the way to terra incognita.   

But here I am, writing these words, my legs ache, my right foot throbbing. I am hungry, alone,

          my days more like nights, my nights more like spring, a dying ember.

But what about tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow when I do not wake to wind or jay.

Then, my friends, hear my song . . . it will be the whirlwind of creation,

          sung at last as it should be sung.

Listen, listen, never stop listening. It’s your song too.

 

For James Wright

 

 

        “ . . . They love each other.

         There is no loneliness like theirs.” 

 

There is, of course, the love of life

To go on living after one has lived

In that place that is no place

But like the wind finds itself at home

Touching all things like skin that shivers

And brings forth all we have loved and lost.

 

Spartoi

 

If we were to sow our teeth,

There would come stories

To make us shudder

Like the one about a desperately

Happy old man who gave up

His love of life to become

A gravedigger and lied

To those asking whose grave

He dug, falsely saying

He was looking for treasure

But so far had found only gold.

 

Spartoi: the ‘sown men’ of Greek mythology, born from dragon’s teeth. Cadmus in founding Thebes had for good reason slaying a dragon, sacred to Ares, and was advised by Athena to sow its teeth. The genealogical line of the Spartoi ends in a great many tragic stories, those of Oedipus and his spawn among them. In death, Cadmus and Harmonia, his wife, became snakes. It does not seem to have been a punishment. It is worth noting that Cadmus is said to have brought the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. The result we all know well. One might ask why are snakes sacred to the gods. To understand that would be a treasure. It may be necessary like Cadmus to become one.

Quirky Little Love Poems

 

Ode to the Stars

O she is pretty
But she’ll never catch me
Looking
More’s the pity

O she’s so pretty.

So simple is love
If only she weren’t so damn 

 

 

Da Blues

 

You left me standing there
Alone

Like a tree.

 

Do you know what it's like

Just standing there

Looking up 

At all that blue?

 

 

 

Not Another Quirky Love Poem

Please, not another love poem

That’s not about love at all. 

You know, like Platonic love

Or hate mail. 

 

For Zach Blanchard

 

Water is to flowers as music is to life. – Zach Blanchard

 

For Zach and Family and Friends: 

Time is but a heartbeat between then and now.

It is our song. We sing as one.

                                               --hh

 

For Zach Blanchard

Wild Iris

 

for Zoe

There’s that garden

that none

need pardon.

There wild Iris grows

beneath the trees

it loves.

They catch the light

and make its song

their own.

 

How a man becomes the sea

 

The moment she touched the old man’s hand

He lost his sight, yet standing lost upon the sand

He heard the light upon the waves like keys.

She sang and let him go and like the wind he sighed.

None knows what song she sang or how he blindly

Played with light or how a man became the sea.

For Halie

“Do you see how young a feeling is?”

 

(for Halie if she will)

 

What is this body?

What words will tell the story?

What I feel

Comes upon me so softly

And burns so darkly

I float like a shadow

on the ocean floor.

 

I pray for rain,

Strike fire

From stone.