Song of Experience

A broken heart is always new.

It heals, each time, complete.

Without sorrow, or pity, or guile.

       Without scar.

                      

                Without memory.

  It opens up and beats for you-- as it did the first time,

                      

            Innocent in love.

                      Like a lamb to slaughter.

                             

                                           Christopher Mahon

Finality

 For Faith

 

All but Death, can be Adjusted --

Dynasties repaired --

Systems -- settled in their Sockets --

Citadels -- dissolved --

Wastes of Lives -- resown with Colors

By Succeeding Springs--

Death -- unto itself -- Exception --

Is exempt from Change --

 

Emily Dickinson, poem 749

Unrequited

     


      It is enough for me
      That I hurt you
      And never to forgive 
      The fault
      That let me love you
      With no thought of return
         Christopher Mahon


For E
       

On the Inauguration of Donald Trump

             The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
  William Butler Yeats

Acquainted with the night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.


I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.


I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,


But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky


Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Robert Frost

Always for Faith

The Pasture

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long.- You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long.- You come too.
 Robert Frost

For Faith

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed.
So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart.
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse-
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connally and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly;
A terrible beauty is born.
  William Butler Yeats

I have to thank Chris Matthews of MSNBC for reminding me of this, the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising, which began Ireland's last climb to freedom. Matthews also quoted pieces of this poem, which is a favorite of mine. The history of Ireland is a history of oppression and repression and constant battle for liberty. Americans feel kinship with the Irish because of that.

Note: Although Easter Monday should always be celebrated for the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Easter, itself falls on different dates each year. Today, April, 24th. is the actual hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising.

Spring: Two Takes

        Spring

Fresh clean air
In its icycold purity
Is supplanted each day
By polluted wind
Growing hot and fetid
More and more                                                  

Daylight melts the ices
And life seethes in again
  Christopher Mahon
                                                                          Putting in the Seed

                                                          You come to fetch me from my work tonight
                                                          When supper's on the table, and we'll see
                                                          If I can leave off burying the white
                                                          Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
                                                          (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
                                                          Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea),
                                                          And go along with you ere you lose sight
                                                          Of what you came for and become like me,
                                                          Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
                                                          How love burns through the Putting in the Seed
                                                          On through the watching for that early birth
                                                          When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
                                                          The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
                                                          Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
                                                              Robert Frost

The Rose Tree

'O words are lightly spoken,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
'Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea.'

'It needs to be but watered,'
James Connolly replied,
'To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride.'

'But where can we draw water,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
'When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
can make a right Rose Tree.'
  William Butler Yeats

This poem is dedicated to Ireland, and every nation that has conquered tyranny, or will.

For Donald Fucking Trump

              Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works ye Mighty and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Three Years

      The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

  The tide rises, the tide falls,
  The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
  Along the sea-sands damp and brown
  The traveller hastens toward the town
       And the tide rises, the tide falls.

  Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
  But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
  The little waves, with their soft white hands,
  Efface the footprints in the sands
        And the tide rises, the tide falls.

  The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
  Stamp and neigh as the hostler calls;
  The day returns, but nevermore
  Returns the traveller to the shore,
        And the tide rises, the tide falls.
   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For Faith
     

The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day....

               from War is Kind

  Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
  Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
  And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
  Do not weep.
  War is kind.

      Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment
      Little souls who thirst for fight,
      These men were born to drill and die
      The unexplained glory flies above them
      Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-
      A field where a thousand corpses lie.

  Do not weep babe, for war is kind.
  Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
  Raged at his breast, gulped, and died,
  Do not weep.
  War is kind.

      Swift, blazing flag of the regiment
      Eagle with crest of red and gold,
      These men were born to drill and die
      Point for them the virtue of the slaughter
      Make plain to them the excellence of killing
      And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

  Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
  On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
  Do not weep.
  War is kind.
        Stephen Crane

                             They

  The Bishop tells us: "When the boys come back
  They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
  In a just cause: they lead the last attack
  On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has brought
  New right to breed an honourable race,
  They have challenged Death and dared him face to face."

  "We're none of us the same!" the boys reply.
  "For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
  Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
  And Bert's gone syphiltic: you'll not find
  A chap who's served that hasn't found some change."
  And the Bishop said: "The ways of God are strange!"
      Sigfried Sassoon

Just as the Winged Energy of Delight

Just as the winged energy of delight
carried you over many chasms early on,
now raise the daringly imagined arch
holding up the astounding bridges.

Miracle doesn't lie only in the amazing
living through and defeat of danger;
miracles become miracles in the clear
achievement that is earned.

To work with things is not hubris
when building the association beyond words;
denser and denser the pattern becomes-
being carried along is not enough.

Take your well-disciplined strengths
and stretch them between two
opposing poles. Because inside human beings
is where God learns.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke Robert Bly, editor and translator

For E.

Goodbye Mr. Spock

Leonard Nimoy died today at 83.
Although he was a writer, director, photographer, and poet- he will always be known as Spock.
He will be missed.

To all my fellow Trekkies: Dif-tor heh smusma.

Sometimes I Forget Completely

Sometimes I forget Completely
what companionship is.
Unconscious and insane, I spill sad
energy everywhere. My story
gets told in various ways: a romance,
a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy.


Divide up my forgetfulness to any number,
it will go around.
These dark suggestions that I follow,
are they part of some plan?
Friends, be careful. Don't come near me
out of curiosity, or sympathy.


Rumi
The Essential Rumi Translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne


To E. wherever you are. An explanation, and apology, of sorts.

The Solitary Person

Among so many people cozy in their homes,
I am like a man who explores far-off oceans.
Days with full stomachs stand on their tables;
I see a distant land full of images.


I sense another world close to me,
perhaps no more lived in than the moon;
they, however, never let a feeling alone,
and all the words they use are so worn.


The living things I brought back with me
hardly peep out, compared with all they own.
In their native country they were wild;
here they hold their breath from shame.


Rainer Maria Rilke
from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke Robert Bly translator, editor


I don't know if there is a better description of the artist's place in society. Solitary.

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.


And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.


I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.


William Butler Yeats

The Song of Wandering Aengus

 

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread:
And when white moths were on the wing;
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and tides are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.



William Butler Yeats

...I will find out where she has gone...