I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,-the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins, early 1900s
Cousin Nancy
Miss Nancy Ellicott
Strode across the hills and broke them,
Rode across the hills and broke them –
The barren New England hills –
Riding to hounds
Over the cow-pasture.
Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modern dances;
And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,
But they knew that it was modern.
Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
The army of unalterable law.
by T.S. Eliot. In his earlier years IIRC. I love that stanza in the middle.
Monet never knew
he was painting his "Lilies" for
a lady from the Chicago Art Institute
who went to France and filmed
today's lilies
by the "Bridge at Giverny"
a leaf afloat among them
the film of which now flickers
at the entrance to his framed visions
with a Debussy piano soundtrack
flooding with a new fluorescence (fleur-essence?)
the rooms and rooms
of waterlilies
Monet caught a Cloud in a Pond
in 1903
and got a first glimpse
of its lilies and for twenty years returned
again and again to paint them
which now gives us the impression
that he floated thru life on them
and their reflections
which he also didn’t know
we would also have occasion
to reflect upon
Anymore than he could know
that John Cage would be playing a
"Cello with Melody-driven Electronics"
tonight at the University of Chicago
And making those Lilies shudder and shed
black light
–Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1950s
The thing I like most about this poem is the underlying conflict between expressionism/impressionism, but how that’s totally unnecessary to aesthetically enjoying the poem. Irony?
(aside: Poetry sucks in html. This is the best fix I could find. My apologies.)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877
The waves that tower over us
Betray tomorrow
Instantes
Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida
en la próxima trataría de cometer más errores.
No intentaría ser tan perfecto… me relajaría más.
Sería más tonto de lo que he sido;
de hecho tomaría muy pocas cosas con seriedad.
Sería menos higiénico.
Correría más riesgos, haría más viajes, contemplaría más atardeceres,
subiría más montañas, nadaría más ríos.
Iría a más lugares a donde nunca he ido;
comería más helados y menos habas;
tendría más problemas reales y menos imaginarios.
Yo fui de esas personas que vivió sensata y prolíficamente cada momento de su vida.
Claro que tuve momentos de alegría, pero si pudiera volver atrás
trataría de tener solamente buenos momentos.
Por si no saben, de eso está hecha la vida, sólo de momentos; no te pierdas el ahora.
Yo era uno de esos que nunca iban a ninguna parte sin un termómetro,
una bolsa de agua caliente, un paraguas y un paracaídas.
Si pudiera volver a vivir, comenzaría a andar descalzo a
principios de primavera y seguiría así hasta concluir el otoño.
Daría más vueltas en calesita, contemplaría más amaneceres
y jugaría con más niños, si tuviera otra vez la vida por delante.
Pero ya ven, tengo 85 años y sé que me estoy muriendo…
–Jorge Luis Borges
UPDATE:
Whoops, and it looks like there is some skepticism as to authenticity of this poem.
This text did seem a lit too whimsical for Borges when I was reading it (Since when does he talk as goofily as needing to take a thermos and parachute outside with him). But, the talk of dawn and sunsets, and especially that bit about being 85 and dying at the end, well, it had me fooled.
Johannes at MonoChrom has an amazing project going on right now. He’s taken four old black-and-white drawings of chainsaw and wood, and invited netizens to use them as inspiration/illustration for graphical novel shorts.
His replies have been amazing, especially in their spread of subject matter.
Ranging from introspective
to psychotic
to (probably my favorite, by Doctorow), futuristic.
a cup of hot oolong on the table in front of me. yellowish candlelight nearby and bluish rainlight outside. bossa nova strumming nearby and patternless noise of water drops outside. and my mind a thousand miles away, buried in the poetry of this Borges book, La Moneda De Hierro.
but, then, blogging about it does draw me out of the moment, doesn’t it? there’s some unspoken boundary between observer and participant, the one who experiences and the one who reminisces, that we cross when we decide to write about things.
oh well, i’ll forget about it. and get back to finding, or losing, this moment in time.
