Never Apologize, Never Explain

On the contrary, always apologize and explain,
in the terror-white veracity, down to the essence bone,
tenaciously follow the long road. Be
capable and Voltairean, discreet of form and substance, tell it
like it is, don't gloss over
in silent splendor.

Give the unattractive facts. But they won't be
that insipid (arrears of heavenly bodies).
And if you have to polish up
the contemptible gaff, give it all you've got-seriously,
don't swindle and pretend the sky
didn't fall in.

But dole out the mathematics, saviors of the gut.
Inching without propaganda the longhand
of dream. Even insult the host who
just wanted to play the game. Apologize in sample color,
if you loved something, say it. If kept
under your hat,

let the fallacies represent you.
From whatever Acropolis of stress, bat with
that genuine non-expurgation, the angel of bottomless pits.
Versatility and science; right the wrongs you know,
and do it with wholeheartedness. In fundamentals
so brash, or like a glass of water.

By Jane Mayhall
From Sleeping Late on Judgment Day: Poems

Today was one of those days.

World Poetry Day

Words

They are like a crystal,
words.
Some a dagger,
some a blaze.
Others,
merely dew.

Secret they come, full of memory.
Insecurely they sail:
cockleboats or kisses,
the waters trembling.

Abandoned, innocent,
weightless.
They are woven of light.
They are the night.
And even pallid
they recall green paradise.

Who hears them? Who
gathers them, thus,
cruel, shapeless,
in their pure shells?

Eugénio de Andrade

A stroll in the park

the park

... enjoying this amazing Spring weather. Actually, more like summer weather with a high of 28ºC (82.4ºF, according to the converter). I stopped by my favourite bookshop to get something to read while sitting under one of the beautiful linden trees in the city centre & couldn't resist Sylvia Plath's poetry. Ok, not the merriest of poets for a day like today, but for some strange reason I'm always drawn to people with a dark side, which is quite a contrast with my own "joie de vivre".

the bookshop

I couldn't concentrate on the poetry, too many sounds, sights & scents to distract me. And ended up drifting into my own thoughts, some of the very same ones that keep me awake at night. How I wish I could be a poet to use words to unburden my soul.

Another beautiful day awaits me tomorrow, and so does another stroll in the park.

Wednesday Words

The Keeper of Sheep II

My gaze is clear like a sunflower.
It is my custom to walk the roads
Looking right and left
And sometimes looking behind me,
And what I see at each moment
Is what I never saw before,
And I’m very good at noticing things.
I’m capable of feeling the same wonder
A newborn child would feel
If he noticed that he’d really and truly been born.
I feel at each moment that I’ve just been born
Into a completely new world…

I believe in the world as in a daisy,
Because I see it. But I don’t think about it,
Because to think is to not understand.
The world wasn’t made for us to think about it
(To think is to have eyes that aren’t well)
But to look at it and to be in agreement.

I have no philosophy, I have senses…
If I speak of Nature it’s not because I know what it is
But because I love it, and for that very reason,
Because those who love never know what they love
Or why they love, or what love is.

To love is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not to think…

Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa)
Translation: Richard Zenith

Wednesday Words

A Tear and a Smile
by Khalil Gibran

I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
For the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes
To flow from my every part turn into laughter.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding
Of life's secrets and hidden things.
A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and
To be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;
A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I live weary and despairing.

I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the
Depths of my spirit,for I have seen those who are
Satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and Longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.

With evening's coming the flower folds her petals
And sleeps, embracingher longing.
At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet
The sun's kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.
A tear and a smile.

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
Together and area cloud.

And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to Return to the sea, its home.

The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.

And so does the spirit become separated from
The greater spirit to move in the world of matter
And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
And return whence it came.

To the ocean of Love and Beauty----to God.

The storm

"Mary, what is there in a storm that moves me so? Why am I so much better and stronger and more certain of life when a storm is passing? I do not know, and yet I love a storm more, far more, than anything in nature."

(from Kahlil Gibran's letter to Mary Haskell, August 14, 1912)

Wednesday Words

"Poet, novelist and playwright Fred D'Aguiar was born in London, but grew up in Guyana before returning to England aged 12. His first collection, Mama Dot (1985) won numerous awards and established him as one of the most distinctive voices in English poetry. His most recent collection is An English Sampler: New and Selected Poems (Chatto 2001). He is finalising a new collection, Elegies, written in the wake of the campus shootings at Virginia Tech, where he teaches creative writing and literature.

The legacy of unfinished poems and how to approach them through the invention of a persona."

Check out this month's poetry workshop in the Guardian with Fred d'Aguiar.

Wednesday Words

When in the uterine empyrean they told me

By Patrick Donnelly

When in the uterine empyrean they told me

of love, they named it a sickness, fever, impediment

to enlightenment. Some swore it could make you wail

over hills of hell in a long black veil, defenestrate

yourself in a Second Empire gown, or stand

wringing-wet at the intersection with a cup and a sign

reading COMFORT ME WITH APPLES.

There were a few, humiliated and exalted, who rose

like comets in yellowy tiers, to sing in Provençal

of the Name, the Name, the same longing Name.

But others warned that whom He loves, He corrects,

of "friendship with benefits," balcony scenes, mad scenes

in all-white restaurants, of the turned back in bed.

But when they said I could remain behind

if I chose, like an unlit lamp,

sounding my brass and tinkling my cymbal,

I didn't think, I seized

the bloody flag of my attachments

and tore down the tunnel of what I couldn't know

was my millionth birth.

Is there such a thing as memory from before birth? I wonder. This poem reminds me of The Famished Road and the spirit-children. Listen to Patrick Donnelly read this poem.

Friday Flower

Lettuce Thief

by Gwyn Thomas

"A great giant stealing lettuce."

(From a small boy's scribbling book.)

One would think

That this would not be,

For a mighty giant, a worth-while occupation,

Yet there was he

On the page facing

The inspired note

A brush of a person

Fondling in his hands

(As far as one could see)

Some green scribbling

That no doubt denoted, after the impressionists

The lettuce he was stealing.

What psychological complexities

Led to his vegetarian propensities

So that he had no craving for meat

Like all full-blooded giants?

Was there in his pedigree some secret

That would explain his strange proclivity,

Some genetic meddling

That would explain to me why he

Was so particularly apathetic to meat?

Vain questions, useless guesses;

There's nothing here beyond the white page,
No interference at all with extensions
To what has been portrayed
And set painstakingly
And finally down:
"A great giant stealing lettuce."

Is there anything more beautiful than a head of lettuce? Absolutely not! Forget the roses or carnations, give me veggies any time. My vegetable patch is my pride & joy!

Wednesday Words

The Spider Knows

The spider knows

his centre

Like a sure

compass he paces

out the bounds of his decided

universe, remembering

which side of him is

centre

Narrowing in he fastens

often

back to the centre where he

rests or plots, he doesn't know

about mistakes

our spider sleeping

tight round his centre

though the thunder

blow

Marvyne Jenoff, 1975

Friday Flower

Violets

John Moultrie (1799-1874)

Under the green hedges, after the snow,

There do the dear little violets grow;

Hiding their modest and beautiful heads

Under the hawthorn in soft mossy beds.

Sweet as the roses and blue as the sky,

Down there do the dear little violets lie;

Hiding their heads where they scarce may be seen,

By the leaves you may know where the violet hath been.

Wednesday Words

After pain, a formal feeling comes

After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --

This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --

Emily Dickinson

Otter Love

And now for the x-rated version of the aforeshared:

River Otters at Play

Harry Thurston

Love

as it ought to be made

leisurely, buoyant, liquid.

The river otters roll

over, the male a helpless sailor

holding hard to the capsizing

keel of the female.

Over

and under

they sink,

bubbling desire, emerge

au pair

sucking night air,

circling together,

clasped

one to the other -

otter to otter

love as play,

in this they are always

faithful and true.

Love made as such things

ought to be done, with grace,

for fun.

I have seen them before,

not locked like this,

but moving free,

in synchrony,

dive and surface together,

anxious to spy the other's face -

okay, they say, and dive again

weaving their submarine passions.

Or on the slippery bank,

Slide

over the other's oily back,

musking each other

as they enter the water,

each quick, slick movement

a kind of foreplay,

sensing the other's wet wishes.

now they are in no hurry:

as the light fails

they court the dark waters,

stirring them,

and, deep down,

limbic me.

Wednesday Words

The Keeper of Sheep XXXIX

The mystery of things – where is it?
Why doesn't it come out
To show us at least that it's mystery?
What do the river and the tree know about it?
And what do I, who am no more than they, know about it?


Whenever I look at things and think about what people think of them,
I laugh like a brook cleanly plashing against a rock.
For the only hidden meaning of things
Is that they have no hidden meaning.
It's the strangest thing of all,
Stranger than all poets' dreams
And all philosophers' thoughts,
That things are really what they seem to be
And there's nothing to understand.


Yes, this is what my senses learned on their own:
Things have no meaning: they exist.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

Alberto Caeiro
Translation: 1998, Richard Zenith
From: Fernando Pessoa & Co. – Selected Poems


Apologies for "Wednesday Words" being a day late. I honestly lost track of time.

Wednesday Words

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

by WB Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Friday Flower

Blue Hydrangeas

Like the last green in the palette's colors

These leaves are without luster, rough and dry

Under umbeled flowers that were duller

But for a blue reflected from the sky

They mirror it, exhausted as with tears,

Vaguely, as if not wishing it to stay;

As old blue letter-paper which the years

Have touched with yellow, violet, and gray;

Washed-out like a child's apron, no more used-

Nothing else can happen to it now:

One feels how short the little life has been.

But suddenly the blue seems to renew

Itself in one last cluster-and see how

The pathetic blue rejoices in the green.

Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by C.F. MacIntyre

"Hydrangeas, we are expected to know, blossom in different colors, according to the chemical makeup of their soil. An acid soil, somewhat rare, produces blue or violet blooms, while a base soil gives rise to the more common pink varieties. Like many such flowers, they bloom in the late summer and fall, and although they go dormant and appear dead in the winter, they are perennials and develop fresh leaves in the spring. In addition, the blooms can either be sterile or fertile: the ones in Rilke's poem, described as forming an umbel, are most likely sterile; fertile blossoms are much smaller, less petal-like, and form a cluster rather than an umbel. Most importantly for Rilke is the process of colorization and aging in the hydrangea: the color, whether pink or blue, does not set in immediately: new blossoms are green, and the color gradually progresses from the outside edge. After a week or two, the color then fades to a washed-out gray, exactly as Rilke describes, and the green leaves of a new bloom are evident underneath the old. What we see in the poem, then, is this precise moment: the blue colorization has faded, and the flower appears to be dying; only on closer inspection can we peer between the dead leaves to see the new growth underneath."

Rilke's "Blaue Hortensie" -- Cycling into the Eternal

Wednesday Words

Did I miss anything?

Question frequently asked by

students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here

we sat with our hands folded on our desks

in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth

40 per cent of the grade for this term

and assigned some reading due today

on which I'm about to hand out a quiz

worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course

has value or meaning

Take as many days off as you like:

any activities we undertake as a class

I assure you will not matter either to you or me

and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time

a shaft of light descended and an angel

or other heavenly being appeared

and revealed to us what each woman or man must do

to attain divine wisdom in this life and

the hereafter

This is the last time the class will meet

before we disperse to bring this good news to all people

on earth

Nothing. When you are not present

how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom

is a microcosm of human existence

assembled for you to query and examine and ponder

This is not the only place such an opportunity has been

gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

by Tom Wayman

Absent Place - an April Day

Absent Place - an April Day -

Daffodils a-blow

Homesick curiosity

To the Souls that snow -

Drift may block within it

Deeper than without -

Daffodil delight but

Him it duplicate -

Emily Dickinson

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,


And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.


I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson


Dedicated to my special friend S. May hope not flee you yet.

Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.


In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.


So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

D. H. Lawrence