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

 

Moonstruck

Tonight we are here

under the same stars

And turn our eyes

to the same moon.

How is it

I’ve lost you?

 

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 but at home

In darkness and

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 everyone knows

What you're saying.

 

Before the end

 

Before the end coming at me

like a train off the tracks

a wistful fare well

and heart felt thanks. 

(Worry not. Not gone

from here or home.

Just looking soully

at what yet may come.)

 

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 is the sky?

It is the upper atmosphere illuminated by sunlight.

How is it then that I see nothing but sky

When I listen to every word you say

As if life itself depended on it

Each syllable catching fire

Endowing time and space

With the luminescence

Of a lover’s song?

At night the sky devours

Us, giving rise

To the stars

That mark our journey

Here and beyond

Where we will hear at last

The song of songs.

 

 

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.  

 

When we turn moonside

and open our eyes

We see the night as it is,

Turning upon an axis

Of light inside the dust —

The shattered* heart of us.

exploded / broken

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

"Now I Understand" - Linda Gregg

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

 

 

That bird now here

And now is gone

Calls the sky a friend.

He sings for morning’s glory

That it should never end.

Some hear it late or not at all

Nor wake to hear its song.

May it not take all night long

For us to greet the dawn. 

 

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.

 

Blackjack!

                for Halie

Now I sit me down to stay

until I’ve said what I meant to say

when the leaves were green

and the birds perched on my shoulder

(how now the withered leaves look like me

and there’s but a torrent of crows 

that always get the singing wrong).

Enough of that! Say what

you meant to say, your one last wish,

(a benevolent stranger bestowed three on me:

the first I used for a good night’s sleep,

the second that I would see another day)

to see her soon, is about to be

but poor poetic dust that covers all. 

The crows remind me that’s not 

all I want to say (their song may not be 

pretty, but they are wise). 

I cough and tell them to stop 

their cawing or go away.  They say they will

if the twenty-first line of this not a song

says it all. I miss you. And still they caw.

 

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.  

Sea Birds

        for Josh 51

It’s just not true

That birthdays come just once a year

Or that your true birth-day is once and done.

 

As a father

You know better.

 

Your birthday runs 

Like a river to the sea. There

The ever present ever rising

Tides of love teach us

All to sing.

 

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.)

 

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. 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

Cures for Loneliness

Listen to the wind and forget who’s who.

You hear children laughing and smile.

Cats really do have secret names.

Light a match and let it burn.

If the hammer breaks, what use the nail?

Each is one, but so is two.

Singing in the shower works every time.

Write a poem and disappear.

 

Yoshino Cherry Blossoms

       –C.A.E.  03/12/2023

             I step into blazing light.

The blossoms compete with the sun for brightness.

They lose– But score decisively on whiteness 

with a pink tip.

Two days ago, the wind blew away our daffodil blossoms–– 

They thought they might live forever

   but were whipped from beauty 

           in to untimely d . . th.

She planted this tree.

I have a need to weep 

      but my throat aches

         and there are no tears.

I would like to sob but am unable.

    I fail to find the missing tears,

         My throat burns on their behalf.

There are no breezes.

Single blossoms drift

      straight down

           to the path ––

Not aware that they

are alive no more.

If the wind fails in its appointed duties

The blossoms will hug each other and,

by that embrace,

    form a soft, white shroud  …

Perhaps they know the cherries

   are right behind ...

Perhaps they are willing 

    to sacrifice beauty

       to welcome sweet savor.

                 * * * 

I go to the village senior-center for lunch.

I would like to eat without conversation,

    but cannot.

I chat at the table 

    but do not speak 

        and do not hear.

I return after lunch more than an hour later.

There has been no wind at all.

The petals have not moved.

They believe that they are safe.

They aren't –– a big mistake . . .

I walk into the house and close the door.

I sit down and look at a photograph of a happy day.

   She is smiling

       So am I.

It is the least I can do for her ––

        it is the best I can do 

                   for me.

 

Yoshino Cherry Blossoms

            for Charles

How sweet the sorrow

that sleeps through the night 

     and dreams!

Oh, the blossoming!

 

On Rhyming

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.   

 

Of what cannot be unsung

For Ciara

Between us now

                            a hat, a bird

By some ancient magic

                                      fly off with time

And never never land

                                   cry out

for what is not

                        here

between the lines

When shall we two meet again

in thunder, lightning, or in rain,

Or caught like oceans in our chains?

Lost in all, yet she sang

Of what cannot be

                              unsung:  

Two will ever be as one.

 

Ciara: 

 "a legitimate poem ... must be one, the parts of which mutually support and explain each other; all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of metrical arrangement" (Coleridge 2:13)

the illegitimacy 

of time and poems

and star straddled nights

is what makes the moments

of between the lines,

the negative space,

the unspoken words

that pass between 

all that exists,

legitimately 

                 and illegitimately.

a hat blows in the wind

and a bird catches it mid-flight

on her way to an unknown space

where negative space,

unspoken words,

passes between her.

 

Windflower

 

Come with me, two

three jumps but

don’t look back.

Lately angels

have been falling.

The garden is rank

With anemone.

 

 

As Beautiful As Ever

   As Beautiful As Ever

                 for my students

If you watch the ripples spread out

from what was once the smooth, blue surface of a pond

before you threw a rock, searching for an answer

for what troubles you, scattering the light, 

and if you wait,

for however long it takes

for the smooth, blue surface to return,

you will feel the ripples yet spreading within you

from the very center of creation

and you will have your answer. 

Everything has changed

and you, dear ones, are born again

just as you are, as beautiful as ever.

 

On the necessity of poetry

Note to my friend:

This is the first poem that I have ever referenced you directly.
I wish it were better. It is at best a ramble.
Just don’t hiss, haggle, and, for goodness sakes, don’t yodel.
(I know that’s as hopeless as winter and spring.)

On the Necessity of Poetry

Are birds necessary?
Are flowers?
Is this poem necessary?
Are you?

Nothing beautiful is necessary.
We can live without Sundays in the Park
Where she and I would hide
So no one would know
How necessary we once were
To each other

Those were beautiful moments
Entangled in shadows green as grass

And now? The park gone,
Sundays spent in solitude
It all seems unreal
And unnecessary
And beautiful.

Charles says 'what is necessary'
Is too subtle a question for poetry
But then out the window sees what
Should not be there
A solitary owl
From another time
That has lost its way
And come home.

Addendum: My friend
can hoot and yodel
with the best of them.

 

Omission of Key Words in Old Age

What will leave out next?

Perhaps "I".

Pretend death does exist.

Perhaps "not". 

 

What movesmoves

What movesmoves us

Like distant thunder

Before the lightning strikes

And we run for cover

 

Nothing Shines Like Back

 

Nothing Shines Like Black

 

play you play you
Circe’s bouncing boy
ol' man bring back
your leaping joy!

play you ol' man
wolfish grin to hide
moly moly
molly in her sty. 

playyou playyou
Circe’s whip and crack
O O O NO
nothing shines like black. 

Note: Circe is a dark lady for many reasons. Most readers will know her from The Odyssey. It is told there that Odysseus spent a year with her on the island of Aeaea on his way home to his beloved and faithful Penelope. Circe is the one who turned Odysseus' men into pigs, a consequence our hero avoided by using against her the magic of the herb 'moly', all white but for its black root. The herb had been an unlooked for resource provided by Hermes, that traveler between the worlds of light and dark, known thereby as Psychopompos. The herb worked! Later it would be Circe who sends Odysseus far west to where the Titan Helios does not shine (i.e. Homer's version of the Underworld, at least in The Odyssey). Helios does, however, sometimes threaten to bring his light to this dark region of the earth. And so, Odysseus is off to the far shore of Oceanus. Such is the fate of the moly-bearer. It is in the Far West that Odysseus learns from the prophet Tiresias, the only shade among the dead who yet keeps his nous (i.e. mind), how to navigate the dangerous journey home to Ithaca.

 

The 'Molly' here makes a guest appearance here from JJ's  Ulysses; she appears in that work as a thinly disguised Penelope. In Dante's version, however, Odysseus chooses upon his departure from Aeaea to sacrifice home and hearth for still more adventures at sea. Apparently, he does not want to give up his Oar, as Tiresias tells him he must. Ultimately, in Dante's version, he goes down with his ship, landing in The Inferno in the company of other great liars.

 

And so it goes. Sometimes it best to know when to say no more. Let others suppose, provided they do not know. (Let's see, the Latin for that would be: Alii cogitent dum nesciant. Keep it handy. A little gift from your Hermes on your travels to the Far West.

Words for War

You say you want the sadness

the aching for what you’ve lost

and are sure to lose again

only the next time your loss

will lie in the shattered

streets with others.

You want this? Yes!

Better that reality, that truth

than to live that other lie:

that life is precious, yours

as much as mine.

 

 

 

It sometimes makes me near ashamed

The wonder of an eye to find

In tears to find the rain.

 

A Teacher's Valentine Valedictory

Examples of transferred epithets (hypallage – sounds like hīpólogy)

The One and the Many

A hundred hands, a hundred eyes
Tore it all to bits. She said I lied.
“Just once,” I said, too many times

More or Less

Only the birds heard her taloned cries.
The man had told her feathered lies.

The Lesson

Don’t lie unless you have the art
To say it true and strike her heart.

Valedictory

Off with his head, the pirate cried.
Her sword was true. The creature died.  

 

O Lovely Night! O Lovely Day!

(I keep returning to the same idea,
but then I think it is how day
follows day and so praise the night.
But does saying it over
and over make it real?
If it’s the heart that speaks?)

O Lovely Night! O Lovely Day!

for Michaela, again

It’s the running way
That gives the night its claw.

Turning on the lights
Just gives it a place to hide.

You’ll have to set yourself
On fire to burn it out.

Lovers seek the darkness
As if it were the light.

Others shake
And pray.

What can we do
But wrap the night

In song, the heart
Beating one two

One two
One two

Until the other comes:
O lovely night,

O lovely day?