Sings.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry

Happy Birthday, T.S. Eliot

The ordinary reader, when warned against the obscurity of a poem, is apt to be thrown into a state of consternation very unfavourable to poetic receptivity. Instead of beginning, as he should, in a state of sensitivity, he obfuscates his senses by the desire to be clever and to look very hard for something, he doesn't know what-or else by the desire not to be taken ill. There is such a thing as stage fright, but what such readers have is pit or gallery fright. The more seasoned reader, he who has reached, in these matters, a state of greater purity, does not bother about understanding; not, at least, at first. I know that some of the poetry to which I am most devoted is poetry which I did not understand at first reading; some is poetry which I am not sure I understand yet.

T.S. Eliot, born on this day in 1888, from The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

Blanche being unordinary ...

Record.

Volkov, The Old Divide, n/d

SONG of the STONE WALL

Come walk with me, and I will tell

What I have read in this scroll of stone;

I will spell out this writing on hill and meadow.

This is New England's entablature of rock,

Leagues upon leagues of sealed history awaiting an interpreter.

It is a chronicle wrought by praying workmen,

The forefathers of our nation.

The walls have many things to tell me,

And the days are long. I come and listen;

My hand is upon the stones, and the tale I fain would hear

Is of the men who built the walls,

And of the God who made the stones and the workers.

With searching feet I walk beside the wall;

I plunge and stumble over the fallen stones;

I follow the windings of the wall

Over the heaving hill, down by the meadow-brook,

Beyond the scented fields, by the marsh where rushes grow.

On I trudge through pine woods fragrant and cool,

And emerge amid clustered pools and by rolling acres of rye.

The wall is built of field stones great and small,

Tumbled about by frost and storm,

Shaped and polished by ice and rain and sun;

Some flattened, grooved, and chiseled

By the inscrutable sculpture of the weather;

Some with clefts and rough edges harsh to the touch.

Gracious Time has glorified the wall

And covered the historian stones with a mantle of green;

The sunbeams flit and waver in the rifts,

Vanish and reappear, linger and sleep,

Conquer with radiance the obdurate angles,

Filter between the naked rents and wind-bleached jags.

I understand the triumph and the truth

Wrought into these walls of rugged stone.

They are a miracle of patient hands,

They are a victory of suffering, a paean of pain.

All pangs of death, all cries of birth,

Are in the mute, moss-covered stones;

They are eloquent to my hands.

O beautiful, blind stones, inarticulate and dumb!

In the deep gloom of their hearts there is a gleam

Of the primeval sun which looked upon them

When they were begotten.

So in the heart of man shines forever

A beam from the everlasting sun of God.

Unresponsive, rude are the stones;

Yet in them divine things lie concealed.

I hear their imprisoned chant:

"We are fragments of the universe,

Chips of the rock whereon God laid the foundation of the world;

Out of immemorial chaos He wrought us.

Out of the sun, out of the tempest, out of the travail of the earth, we grew.

We are wonderfully mingled of life and death;

We serve as crypts for innumerable, unnoticed, tiny forms.

We are manifestations of the Might

That rears the granite hills unto the clouds

And sows the tropic seas with coral isles.

We are shot through and through with hidden color;

A thousand hues are blended in our gray substance.

Sapphire, turquoise, ruby, opal,

Emerald, diamond, amethyst, are our sisters from the beginning;

And our brothers are iron, lead, zinc,

Copper, and silver, and gold.

We are the dust of continents past and to come,

We are a deathless frieze carved with man's destiny;

In us is the record sibylline of far events.

Helen Keller, from "Song of the Stone Wall"

Autumn.

Wyeth, James Browning, Night Visitors, 2003

‘Tis Autumn.

THE SCARECROW

All winter through I bow my head

beneath the driving rain;

the North Wind powders me with snow

and blows me black again;

at midnight 'neath a maze of stars

I flame with glittering rime,

and stand above the stubble, stiff

as mail at morning-prime.

But when that child called Spring, and all

his host of children come,

scattering their buds and dew upon

these acres of my home,

some rapture in my rags awakes;

I lift void eyes and scan

the sky for crows, those ravening foes,

of my strange master, Man.

I watch him striding lank behind

his clashing team, and know

soon will the wheat swish body high

where once lay a sterile snow;

soon I shall gaze across a sea

of sun-begotten grain,

which my unflinching watch hath sealed

for harvest once again.

Walter de la Mare

Different.

Thank you, Veerle.

Catch.

Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies!
Life's a short summer, man a flower;
He dies — alas! how soon he dies!

Samuel Johnson

Waken.

How we are moved by the bird’s call ...

Some single screech uniquely created.

Yet the children scream, as they play

Outdoors, beyond the need for screaming.

Screaming at random. Into this world-space,

Of cosmic space (into which the whole

Bird-call enters as people enter our dreams)

They drive their screams like wedges.

Oh, where are we? Ever more freely,

Like the loose dragon-kites we chase

At half-height, brimming with laughter,

Torn by the wind. God of song, so order

The screaming throng that, in rushing, they waken

A flowing current bearing the head and the lyre.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Ring.

Quiet friend of the many distances, feel

How your breath still enlarges space.

Let yourself ring out, a dark cradled bell

In the timbering. That, which erodes you

Gains a strength from your sustenance.

Go out and in, through transformation.

What do you know of the greatest loss?

Is drinking bitter? Then, become wine.

Be, in this night made of excess,

The magic art at the crossroads of senses,

The feel of their strange encounter.

And, if the earthbound forget you,

Say to the silent Earth: I flow.

To the rushing water: I am.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Solace.

NUN'S FRET NOT at THEIR CONVENT'S NARROW ROOM

In truth the prison, unto 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.

William Wordsworth

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World

What a life is ours! Doesn’t anybody in the world anymore want to get up in the 

middle of the night and

sing?

Happy Birthday, Tommaso Campanella

Cozza, Portrait of Campanella, 1650

The world's the book where the eternal sense

Wrote his own thoughts; the living temple where, 

Painting his very self, with figures fair

He filled the whole immense circumference.

Tommaso Campanella, born on this day in 1568

Tinge.

Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender: September, 1579

The SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: SEPTEMBER

Harvest awakes the morning still

And toils rude groups the valleys fill

Deserted is each cottage hearth

To all life save the crickets mirth

Each burring wheel their sabbath meets

Nor walks a gossip in the streets

The bench beneath its eldern bough

Lined oer with grass is empty now

Where blackbirds caged from out the sun

Could whistle while their mistress spun.

All haunt the thronged fields still to share

The harvests lingering bounty there

As yet no meddling boys resort

About the streets in idle sport

The butterflye enjoys his hour

And flirts unchaced from flower to flower

And humming bees that morning calls

From out the low huts mortar walls

Which passing boy no more controuls

Flye undisturbed about their holes

And sparrows in glad chirpings meet

Unpelted in the quiet street

None but imprison'd childern now

Are seen where dames with angry brow

Threaten each younker to his seat

That thro' the school door eyes the street

Or from his horn book turns away

To mourn for liberty and play

Loud are the mornings early sounds

That farm and cottage yard surrounds

The creaking noise of opening gate

And clanking pumps where boys await

With idle motion to supply

The thirst of cattle crowding bye

The low of cows and bark of dogs

And cackling hens and wineing hogs

Swell high-while at the noise awoke

Old goody seeks her milking cloak

And hastens out to milk the cow

And fill the troughs to feed the sow

Or seeking old hens laid astray

Or from young chickens drives away

The circling kite that round them flyes

Waiting the chance to seize the prize

Hogs trye thro gates the street to gain

And steal into the fields of grain

From nights dull prison comes the duck

Waddling eager thro the muck

Squeezing thro the orchard pales

Where mornings bounty rarely fails

Eager gobbling as they pass

Dew worms thro the padded grass

Where blushing apples round and red

Load down the boughs and pat the head

Of longing maid that hither goes

To hang on lines the drying cloaths

Who views them oft with tempted eye

And steals one as she passes bye

Where the holly oak so tall

Far oer tops the garden wall

That latest blooms for bees provide

Hived on stone benches close beside

The bees their teazing music hum

And threaten war to all that come

Save the old dame whose jealous care

Places a trapping bottle there

Filled with mock sweets in whose disguise

The honey loving hornet dies

Upon the dovecoats mossy slates

The piegons coo around their mates

Where morns sunbeams early fall

By the barn or stable wall

Basking hens in playfull rout

Flap the smoaking dust about

In the barn hole sits the cat

Watching within the thirsty rat

Who oft at morn its dwelling leaves

To drink the moisture from the eves

The redbreast with his nimble eye

Dare scarcely stop to catch the flye

That tangled in the spiders snare

Mourns in vain for freedom there

The dog beside the threshold lyes

Mocking sleep with half shut eyes

With head crouched down upon his feet

Till strangers pass his sunny seat

Then quick he pricks his ears to hark

And bustles up to growl and bark

While boys in fear stop short their song

And sneak on hurrys fears along

And beggar creeping like a snail

To make his hungry hopes prevail

Oer the warm heart of charity

Leaves his lame halt and hastens bye

The maid afield now leaves the farm

With brimming bottles on her arm

Loitering unseen in narrow lane

To be oertook by following swain

Who happy thus her truth to prove

Carrys the load and talks of love

Full soon the harvest waggons sound

Rumbling like thunder all around

In ceasless speed the corn to load

Hurrying down the dusty road

While driving boy with eager eye

Watches the church clock passing bye

Whose gilt hands glitter in the sun

To see how far the hours have run

Right happly in the breathless day

To see it wearing fast away

Yet now and then a sudden shower

Will bring to toil a resting hour

When under sheltering shocks a crowd

Of merry voices mingle loud

Wearing the short lived boon along

With vulgar tale and merry song

Draining with leisures laughing eye

Each welcome bubbling bottle drye

Till peeping suns dry up the rain

Then off they start to toil again

Anon the fields are wearing clear

And glad sounds hum in labours ear

When childern halo 'here they come

And run to meet the harvest home

Stuck thick with boughs and thronged with boys

Who mingle loud a merry noise

Glad that the harvests end is nigh

And weary labour nearly bye

Where when they meet the stack thronged yard

Cross bunns or pence their shouts reward

Then comes the harvest supper night

Which rustics welcome with delight

When merry game and tiresome tale

And songs increasing with the ale

Their mingled uproar interpose

To crown the harvests happy close

While rural mirth that there abides

Laughs till she almost cracks her sides

Now harvests busy hum declines

And labour half its help resigns

Boys glad at heart to play return

The shepherds to their peace sojourn

Rush-bosomed solitudes among

Which busy toil disturbed so long

The gossip happy all is oer

Visits again her neighbours door

For scandals idle tales to dwell

Which harvest had no time to tell

And on each bench at even tide

Which trailing vine leaves nearly hide

And free from all its sultry strife

Enjoy once more their idle life

A few whom waning toil reprieves

Thread the forests sea of leaves

Where the pheasant loves to hide

And the darkest glooms abide

Beneath the old oaks mossd and grey

Whose shadows seem as old as they

Where time hath many seasons won

Since aught beneath them saw the sun.

Within these brambly solitudes

The ragged noisy boy intrudes

To gather nuts that ripe and brown

As soon as shook will patter down

Thus harvest ends its busy reign

And leaves the fields their peace again

Where autumns shadows idly muse

And tinge the trees with many hues

Amid whose scenes I'm feign to dwell

And sing of what I love so well

But hollow winds and tumbling floods

And humming showers and moaning woods

All startle into sudden strife

And wake a mighty lay to life

Making amid their strains divine

All songs in vain so mean as mine

John Clare

Home.

As Kurt said to me earlier today, "You CAN and OUGHT to go home."

Amen.

Wendell Berry, Rest in Peace

Wendell Berry has passed.

When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Thanks, Ors.

Happy, Birthday, William Ernest Henley

Dew-Smith, William Ernest Henley, 1893

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley, born on this day in 1849

Happy Birthday, Ogden Nash

Free from flashiness, free from trashiness

Is the essence of Ogdenashiness.

Rich, original, rash and rational,

Stands the monument Ogdenational.

Ogden Nash, born on this day in 1902

Pleased.

 The HUNTING of the SNARK

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies--

     Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!

Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,

     The moment one looked in his face!

He had bought a large map representing the sea,

     Without the least vestige of land:

And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be

     A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,

     Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"

So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply

     "They are merely conventional signs!

"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!

     But we've got our brave Captain to thank:

(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best--

     A perfect and absolute blank!"

This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out

     That the Captain they trusted so well

Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,

     And that was to tingle his bell.

He was thoughtful and grave--but the orders he gave

     Were enough to bewilder a crew.

When he cried "Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!"

     What on earth was the helmsman to do?

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:

     A thing, as the Bellman remarked,

That frequently happens in tropical climes,

     When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked."

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,

     And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,

Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,

     That the ship would not travel due West!

But the danger was past--they had landed at last,

     With their boxes, portmanteaus, and bags:

Yet at first sight the crew were not pleased with the view,

     Which consisted to chasms and crags.

Lewis Carroll

Great-Heartedly.

Kepler, Nova Orbis Terrarum Delineatio (detail), 1627

MAP

Flat as the table

it’s placed on.

Nothing moves beneath it

and it seeks no outlet.

Above—my human breath

creates no stirring air

and leaves its total surface

undisturbed.

Its plains, valleys are always green,

uplands, mountains are yellow and brown,

while seas, oceans remain a kindly blue

beside the tattered shores.

Everything here is small, near, accessible.

I can press volcanoes with my fingertip,

stroke the poles without thick mittens,

I can with a single glance

encompass every desert

with the river lying just beside it.

A few trees stand for ancient forests,

you couldn’t lose your way among them.

In the east and west,

above and below the equator—

quiet like pins dropping,

and in every black pinprick

people keep on living.

Mass graves and sudden ruins

are out of the picture.

Nations’ borders are barely visible

as if they wavered—to be or not.

I like maps, because they lie.

Because they give no access to the vicious truth.

Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly

they spread before me a world

not of this world.

Wisława Szymborska

Stretch.

The poet only desires exhalation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head who splits.

G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy

Happy Birthday, Izaak Walton

Huysmans, Walton, 1672

Oh the gallant Fisher's life,

It is the best of any,

'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,

And 'tis belov'd of many:

Other joyes

are but toyes,

only this

lawful is,

for our skill

breeds no ill,

but content and pleasure.

In a morning up we rise,

Ere Aurora's peeping,

Drink a cup to wash our eyes,

Leave the sluggard sleeping:

Then we go

to and fro,

with our knacks

at our backs,

to such streams

as the Thames,

if we have the leasure.

When we pleas to walk abroad

For our recreation,

In the fields is our abode,

Full of delectation.

Where in a brook

with a book,

or a Lake,

fish we take;

there we sit,

for a bit,

till we fish intangle.

Izaak Walton, born on this day in 1593