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.

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.

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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.

PoetryMatters 92

Ducks have found our 'pond'

Day One

Day Two

Day Three (photograph by Ber Himwich)

Day Four

GONE

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.

PoetryMatters 91: Arthur Sze

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.

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit (explained)

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

This Latin phrase from Lonesome Dove is neither nonsense nor bad Latin. It means "A grape becomes mottled by being a grape," with the sense: it is the nature of a grape to become "mottled" as it ripens. In the context of the novel, this means, "Character is destiny" -- the truth of which is illustrated time and again in the novel. The repetition of the 'v' strengthens the point. It is lovely Latin.

vivendo here is a gerund of vivo, in the ablative (instrumental). uvam is a cognate or internal accusative (a play on vitam vivendo), a not uncommon feature of ancient Latin. Most often in Classical Latin the gerund and its object are rendered into the same case and gender, but the usage here is also well attested. The grammatical formation of the gerund and its object are too involved to discuss here, but for a Latinist it would present no problem. I have seen elsewhere the claim that vivendo is a "false gerund." That's absurd on the face of it (the gerund form of vivo is actually quite common, e.g. modus vivendi), unless the author of the post meant that vivendo was simply thrown in without any regard for its grammar or meaning. In either case, the claim is unfounded. The effort to derive this superb Latin sentence as a corruption of a line from Juvenal is likewise misguided and is likely responsible for the "false gerund" claim. At best, Juvenal's line is a red herring. Clearly, an accomplished Latinist, perhaps an acquaintance of the author if not McMurtry himself, is responsible for Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

Just as a grape or a man can become nothing other than what each is, pigs remain true to themselves. "We don't rent pigs. . . Goats and donkeys are neither bought nor sold," only cattle and horses whose character man has fundamentally changed.

Tags: HH Latin

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

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For Zach Blanchard

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For Zach Blanchard

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Leonora's Photography 144-147

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Décrocher la lune

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Cambodian moon bridge
The high arch and its reflection form a circle, symbolizing the moon.

© Leonora; all rights reserved

L'escalier dérobé

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Peace trail

♫♪

youtu.be/UhkzwdOpKC4

(Neil Young -Peace Trail-)

Leonora's Photography

PoetryMatters 90

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.

Ber Himwich Photography: 366 - 369

Don't Give It Another Thought

Fool: But you did think of it, did you not?
Player: Think of what?

Fool: How they would applaud?
Player: No. Not at all.

Fool: Then you are a better man than I!
Player: I would not say so.

Fool: Nor would I.
Player: Would not what?

Fool: Say I am the better man.
Player: Of course, you said I was.

Fool: Yes, but I didn’t think it.

PoetryMatters 89: "The Enkindled Spring" by D.H. Lawrence

Knowing and Not Knowing

PoetryMatters 88: Getting the News from Poems 2

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.

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Ber and Dad One

Revised Edition, 8/5/21: Download Ber Dad One

PoetryMatters 87: Getting the News from Poetry

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.

Thursday Seminar 4.14: Peter Nash's THE LEAST OF IT

Omission of Key Words in Old Age

What will leave out next?

Perhaps "I".

Pretend death does exist.

Perhaps "not".

PoetryMatters 86: "I pretend death doesn't exist." -- Iryna Shuvalova

PoetryMatters 85: Ihor Kalynets

What movesmoves

What movesmoves us

Like distant thunder

Before the lightning strikes

And we run for cover

Leonora's Photography 138-143

Nénuphar solitaire

(Luciano Berio: 6 Encores - Nº 3 :youtu.be/rm7K-8eai1Y)

La complexité du monde
(own work)

« Toutes choses étant causées et causantes, aidées et aidantes, médiates et immédiates, et toutes s’entretenant par un lien naturel et insensible qui lie les plus éloignées et les plus diverses, je tiens pour impossible de connaître les parties sans connaître le tout, non plus de connaître le tout sans connaître particulièrement les parties».

Blaise Pascal, philosophe français (1623-1662) in "Les pensées"

Passent les jours et passent les semaines, les jours s'en vont je demeure

High-rise living

Kaléidoscope

..(..) "somehow, we must all learn to live together as brothers.. or we're all going to perish together as fools "(..)

Speech by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Grosse Pointe High School - March 14, 1968

La sortie - The way out

(Sam Myers - I Got The Blues: youtu.be/N-KluFB9A8M)

Leonora's Photography

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.

PoetryMatters 83: Can there be poetry after . . .

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.

Thursday Seminar 3/17: "Song of the Andoumboulou" by Nathaniel Mackey

The High Ridge

The mist on the mountains lifts

ghostly greens glimmer

and a new day darkens the valley

far below—your fingers tracing

a line across the high ridge

that runs just above my eyes:

I hold my breath—a sudden

swoop of wind and wing

PoetryMatters 82: "Decomposition" by Ukrainian Poet Lyuba Yakimchuk

Latin Assignments for March 1 & 7, 2022

I am posting this here

so my former students may see

not much has changed

though 50 years go whizzing by.

Download Latin Assignments for March 1 & 7 2022

PoetryMatters 81

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?