Contrary to the expectation I expressed yesterday when posting an obscure article about the chord changes in Duke Jordan’s Jordu, I got the following alert from WordPress:
Usually I get a bit nervous when there’s a spike in my stats. I tend to imagine I’ve posted something controversial and the people checking it out are all lawyers. As it turns out the destination of most of the traffic was not the piece I had just posted but an old post about a poem, Meaning by Czeslaw Milosz. Here is the poem:
When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset. The true meaning, ready to be decoded. What never added up will add Up, What was incomprehensible will be comprehended. – And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day Make no sense following each other? And on this earth there is nothing except this earth? – Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.
I have no idea why there was a sudden surge in interest yesterday – most of it from the USA – in this particular poem. I’d guess that it may have featured in a TV broadcast, as that sort of thing has in the past caused sudden increases in traffic to posts about music.
If anyone can solve the mystery of Meaning I’d be very grateful to hear through the comments box.
Update: Mystery solved. The poem was read by the Reverend James Lawson at the funeral of civil rights campaigner John Lewis. Many thanks to the commenter below for this information.
The Junes were free and full, driving through tiny
Roads, the mudguards brushing the cowparsley,
Through fields of mustard and under boldly embattled
Mays and chestnuts
Or between beeches verdurous and voluptuous Or where broom and gorse beflagged the chalkland– All the flare and gusto of the unenduring Joys of a season
Now returned but I note as more appropriate To the maturer mood impending thunder With an indigo sky and the garden hushed except for The treetops moving.
Then the curtains in my room blow suddenly inward, The shrubbery rustles, birds fly heavily homeward, The white flowers fade to nothing on the trees and rain comes Down like a dropscene.
Now there comes catharsis, the cleansing downpour Breaking the blossoms of our overdated fancies Our old sentimentality and whimsicality Loves of the morning.
Blackness at half-past eight, the night’s precursor, Clouds like falling masonry and lightning’s lavish Annunciation, the sword of the mad archangel Flashed from the scabbard.
If only you would come and dare the crystal Rampart of the rain and the bottomless moat of thunder, If only now you would come I should be happy Now if now only.
The chameleon changes his colour; He can look like a tree or a wall; He is timid and shy and he hates to be seen, So he simply sits down on the grass and grows green, And pretends he is nothing at all.
I wish I could change my complexion To purple or orange or red: I wish I could look like the arm of a chair So nobody ever would know I was there When they wanted to put me to bed.
I wish I could be a chameleon And look like a lily or rose; I’d lie on the apples and peaches and pears, But not on Aunt Margaret’s yellowy chairs— I should have to be careful of those.
The chameleon’s life is confusing; He is used to adventure and pain; But if he ever sat on Aunt Maggie’s cretonne And found what a curious color he’d gone, I don’t think he’d do it again.
It is a remarkable fact that when the poet Eavan Boland passed away a couple of days ago, the sad news of her passing led the main TV bulletin here in Ireland. I struggle to think of another country where the death of a poet would be deemed so important.
Anyway, today is National Poetry Day in Ireland so I decided to post a poem by Eavan Boland as a tribute on this day. This is Quarantine a moving contemplation of the tragedy of the Great Hunger.
In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking — they were both walking — north.
She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He walked like that west and west and north. Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.
In the morning they were both found dead. Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history. But her feet were held against his breastbone. The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.
Let no love poem ever come to this threshold. There is no place here for the inexact praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body. There is only time for this merciless inventory:
Their death together in the winter of 1847. Also what they suffered. How they lived. And what there is between a man and woman. And in which darkness it can best be proved.
Today (27th April 2020) is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late great Scottish poet Edwin Morgan so I thought I’d take the opportunity to post one of my favourite poems of his. This is called One Cigarette:
No smoke without you, my fire. After you left, your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal of so much love. One cigarette in the non-smoker’s tray. As the last spire trembles up, a sudden draught blows it winding into my face. Is it smell, is it taste? You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips. Out with the light. Let the smoke lie back in the dark. Till I hear the very ash sigh down among the flowers of brass I’ll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss.
My sixth and final poem for World Poetry Day returns, in a way, to the theme of the first. It is a sonnet by William Wordsworth.
Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: In truth the prison, into which we doom Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me, In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground; Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
The views presented here are personal and not necessarily those of my employer (or anyone else for that matter).
Feel free to comment on any of the posts on this blog but comments may be moderated; anonymous comments and any considered by me to be vexatious and/or abusive and/or defamatory will not be accepted. I do not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the opinions or statements of any information or other content in the comments on this site and do not in any way guarantee their accuracy or reliability.
