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Winter on the South Frontier
Friday, January 22, 2010 V.1.4. My special featured poet this week is Christopher T. George. Chris, born in Liverpool, England in 1948, emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1955 and now lives with his wife, Donna, and two cats in Baltimore, Maryland, near John Hopkins University. He is the Editor of Desert Moon Review (http://www.thedesertmoonreview.com) and coeditor, with Jim Doss and Dan Cuddy, of the electronic and print magazine Loch Raven Review at http://www.lochravenreview.net. His poetry has been published in print publications worldwide, including in Poet Lore, Lite, Maryland Poetry Review, Smoke, and Bogg, and, online at Crescent Moon Journal, Electric Acorn, Melic Review, Painted Moon Review, Pierian Springs, the poetry (WORM), and Web Del Sol Review. Chris's work is also featured in Poets Gone Wild: An Internet Anthology from Wild Poetry Press (2005) and he was, as well, the lyricist for Jack - The Musical, written with French composer Erik Sitbon, http://www.jack-themusical.com/, and he is an editor at Ripperologist magazine published in the UK, http://www.ripperologist.info. His work has, also appeared often in "Here and Now." Here's the rest of this week's posse. the truth of stuff T. S. Eliot The Ad-dressing of Cats Cat Morgan Introduces Himself Christopher T. George Dear Old Guy Me it's my story and i'm sticking to it Ursula K. Le Guin Seventy Taking Courage A Request Christopher T. George At the Fly in the Loaf, Liverpool, Saturday, 17 October 2009 Me high and mysterious grasses Charles Bukowski fast track the hookers, the madmen, and the doomed Christopher T. George A Rube in the House of Lords Me going home someday e. e. cummings 3-III 3-IV Christopher T. George My Belated Confession Me ambushed Christopher Goodrich Assuming I Die With My Eyes Closed Erica Goss Dust of an Ordinary Star Christopher T. George Cheesy Little Artsy Spy Buddy Movie Me when will the monkeys speak and what will they have to say? Rabindranath Tagore Freedom Bound Christopher T. George On Turning Sixty-two, January 10, 2010 Me there are rules about this sort of thing Wistawa Szymborska A Large Number Psalm Me trying to outrun the rain  I don't usually start out with one of my own poems, but in this case, I think I will, laying out the parameters of our relationship, so to speak. the truth of stuff as a poet i'm a prose writer with a very short attention span and little commitment to the whole truth and nothing but the truth though i do claim to be seeking a higher truth ha! so i tell these little 1-page 50-word stories that are at least partially if not wholly lies exaggerations and evasions if you are by nature someone who must believe in the truth of stuff because, after all, there it is, written out on paper - just believe this - all the good stuff i tell about my self is true; all the bad stuff is flat-out lies  Here's a good way to begin a week, two poems by T.S. Eliot from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The Ad-dressing of Cats You've read of several kinds of Cat, And my opinion now is that You should need no interpreter To understand their character. You now have learned enough to see That Cats are much like you and me And other people whom we find Possessed of various types of mind. For some are sane and some are mad And some are good and some are bad And some are better, some are worse - But all may be descried in verse. You've seen them both at work and games, And learnt about their proper names, Their habits and their habitat: But How would you ad-dress a Cat? So first, your memory I'll jog, And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG. Now Dogs pretend they like to fight; They often bark, more seldom bite; And yet a Dog is, on the whole, What you would call a simple soul. Of course, I'm not including Pekes, And such fantastic canine freaks. The usual Dog about the Town Is much inclined to play the clown, And far from showing too much pride Is frequently undignified. He's very easily taken in - Just chuck him underneath the chin Or slap his back or shake his paw, And he will gambol and guffaw. He's such an easy-going lout, He'll answer any hail or shout. Again I must remind you that A Dog's a Dog - A CAT'S A CAT. With Cats, some say, one rule is true: Don't speak until you are spoken to. Myself, I do not hold with that - I say, you should ad-dress a Cat. But always keep in mind that he Resents familiarity. I bow, and taking off my hat. Ad-dress him in this form: O CAT! But if he is the Cat next door, Whom I have often met before (He comes to see me in my flat) I greet him with an OOPSA CAT! I've heard them call him James Buz-James - But we've not got so far as names. Before a Cat will condescend To treat you like a trusted friend, Some little token of esteem Is needed, like a dish of cream; And you might now and then supply Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie, Some potted grouse, or salmon paste - He's sure to have his personal taste. (I know a Cat who makes a habit Of eating nothing else but rabbit, And when he's finished, licks his paws So's not to waste the onion sauce.) A Cat's entitled to expect These evidences of respect. And so in time you reach you aim. And finally call him by his NAME. So this is this, and that is that: And there's how you AD-DRESS A CAT. Cat Morgan Introduces Himself I once was a Pirate what sailed the 'igh seas - But now I've retired as a com-misson-aire: And that's how you find me a-taking my ease And keepin' the door in a Bloomsbury Square. I'm partial to partridges, likewise to grouse, And I favour that Devonshire cream in bowl; But I'm allus content with a drink on the 'house And a bit of cold fish when I done me patrol. I ain't got much polish, me manners is gruff, But I've got a good coat, and I keep meself smart; And everyone says, and I guess that's enough: "You can't but like Morgan, 'e's got a kind 'art." I got knocked about on the Barbary Coast, And me voice it ain't no sich melliferous horgan; But yet I can state, and I'm not one to boast, That some of the gals is dead keen on old Morgan. So if you 'ave business with Faber - or Faber - I'll give you this tip, and it's worth a lot more: You'll save yourself time, and you'll spare yourself labour If jist you make friends with the Cat at the door. MORGAN  Now, for our first poem from featured poet Christopher T. George. All I know about Guy Fawkes and Guy Fawkes Day is what I learn from Chris's poem and, by extrapolation, that movie of a year or so ago - can't remember the name - but it sounds like a cross between Halloween and Hell Night in Detroit. I know it had something to do with blowing up Parliament, which we have to be careful about talking about - don't want to give those Tea Party people any ideas. Here's Chris’s poem. (He also sent an illustration for the poem, but it turned out to be too small to use here.) Dear Old Guy A bit of childhood fun, to dress up a dear old Guy and burn him on a bonfire amid bangers and skyrockets: a yearly whoop-up - whoopie! - born of religious intolerance, innocuous really, whether today with trilby or a mock mitre though with a barbwire kiss thugs might drag a Guy from his doorway swill and set him alight. Poor Guy.  Like I've said, said, sometimes I lie, which is a lie in itself because i'm more prone to lie often, not sometimes. it's my story and i'm sticking to it 15 degrees outside and i'm snug and warm inside, sitting by the window, eating my bacon and eggs watching all the freezing children walk to school through twelve-foot snowdrifts as slavering snow beasts slink from the dark forest, howling, appetite raging for the delicate taste of freezing school children... but wait... that's someone else's life, in fact, not a life at all, but one of those legends we all build around ourselves, legends we use, as in this case, a story to convince my son that walking four blocks to school under South Texas sunshine wasn't the worst thing that could happen or, legends we build to convince ourselves we are stronger, smarter, more heroic than we are, like, boy, if i'd been on that plane when that stinking terrorist tried to light his underwear i would have got him good, gone over the seat at him before anyone else noticed what he was doing, then a three-punch combination, nose, gut, haymaker to the jaw and it'd have been all over, except for my picture on the cover of Time Magazine legends to sooth that nagging suspicion of inadequacy the world daily reminds us is the modern state of man or woman, when little is expected beyond ardent consumption of the retail legends of others legends, as, in our recliner, we pat our little round bellies and squint through failing eyes at the Time Magazine upon which cover we will never be  Now I have a couple of short poems by the great science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin. The poems are from Le Guin's sixth volume of poetry, published by Shambhala in 2006. Seventy I've lived the life of man, the span, the seven ages. Now my life is out of bounds and doesn't keep the time. I'd make sense only to myself, but wear the old habit. I'd take my rage unsweetened, but see: I fall to rhyme. Oh, how am I metered? Taking Courage I will build a hardiness of counted syllables, asylum for the coward heart that stammers out my hours, and armature of resonance, a scaffolding of spell, where it can learn to keep the time and bid what comes come well. A Request Should my tongue be tied by stroke listen to me as if I spoke and said to you, "My dear, my friend, stay here a while and take my hand; my voice is hindered by this clot, but silence says what I cannot, and you can answer as you please such undemanding words as these. Or let our conversation be a mute and patient amity, sitting, all the words bygone, like a stone beside a stone. It takes a while to learn to talk the long language of the rock."  Here's a second poem from our friend Christopher T. George, describing a trip back "home." At the Fly in the Loaf, Liverpool, Saturday, 17 October 2009 Nervous, you cross the fancy mosaic threshold of an ex-baker's shop, nudge past garrulous and muscular young guzzlers, ascend to the upstairs quiet hushed aerie where the poets gather. No, it's no longer your city, though the street sign "Baltimore" hard by the Fly in the Loaf at Hardman and Baltimore Streets recalls your "other city" all those three thousand miles away. . . "The Liverpool of America's East Coast" and how Adrian intro'ed you as "a poet from Philadelphia" ha! and he told of streets near his Mount Street home: Baltimore and Maryland, testimony to Liverpool's slavery past. It's no longer Ade's Liverpool or the slaver's Liverpool. Discursive as ever! Wrap your mind round that. . .wrap your words round that, Poet! Muscular words to tell of that evening, arc lamps burning, sweating, drops of perspiration dot the paper. Now! Squeeze the words out. Let the people hear. You're here.  It is a fact, I do enjoy the company of my animal buddies. high and mysterious grasses i promised Reba last night before i put her to bed that i'd take her for a walk this morning and i know she's sits by the door at home now waiting and i'll be there to get her as soon as i finish this because the joy to me of watching her joy when i reach for the leash feeds the new day like a shot of sunshine on the cold shoulders of a sleeping cat shivering in the morning chill - bringing back the morning dream of slow and stupid mice and warm milk waiting in a bowl by the fire and the safe lap of he who makes the sun to shine so bright on this winter morning begun by a walk through high and mysterious grasses  I have two poems now by Charles Bukowski, from his book what matters most is how well you walk through the fire. There are those old rascals of myth and legend beloved by all. Bukowski was certainly a n old rascal, seems like almost from the day he was born, but, self-loving ego-manic that it seems he must have been, it's hard to ever see him as beloved. (Though it's also true there were those, men and women, who called him the best friend ever.) But none of that means he isn't still only one step below Whitman in my pantheon of favorites. fast track jesus christ the horses again I mean I said I'd never bet the horses again what am I doing standing out here betting the horses? anybody can to to the racetrack but not everybody can write a sonnet... the racetrack crowd is the lowest of the breed thinking their brains can outfox the 15 percent take. what am I doing here? if my publisher knew I was blowing my royalties, if those guys in San Diego and the one in Detroit who send me money (a couple of fives and a ten) or the collector in Jerome, Arizona who paid me for some paintings, if they knew what would they think? jesus christ, I'm playing the starving poet who is creating great Art. I walk up to the bar with my girlfriend, she's a handsome creature in hotpants with long dark hair, I order a scotch and water, she orders a screwdriver jesus christ I don't have a chance did Vallejo,Lorca and Shelley have to do thought this? I drink some of the scotch and water and think, the proper mix of the woman and the poem is infinite Art. then I sit down with my Racing Form and get back to work. the hookers, the madmen and the doomed today at the track 2 or 3 days after the death of the jock came this voice over the speaker asking us all to stand and observe a few moments of silence. well, that's a tired formula and I don't like it but I do like silence. so we all stood: the hookers and the madmen and the doomed. I was set to be dis- pleased but then I looked up at the TV screen and there standing silently in the paddock waiting to mount up stood the other jocks along with the officials and the trainers: quiet and thinking of death and the one gone, they stood in a semi-circle the brave little men in boots and silks, the legions of death appeared and vanished, the sun blinked once I though of love with its head ripped off still trying to sing and then the announcer said, thank you and we all went on about our business.  Here's a fun piece, number three for this week, from our friend Christopher T. George. A Rube in the House of Lords I'm introduced around the room by Lord Strawberry. I gladhand Lords Raspberry, Cherry, and Pomegranate, I think to myself, Jeez, all these guys is fruits! Then I gets to meet Lady Quince and I'm telling myself, she's no Lord, she's a Dame! Ain't nuthin like a Dame, whether it's at the Limey House of Lords or anyplace! I'm movin' in on her, nice and sweet, smooching her ladyness with my Western adventures, Rube in buckskin, when, with a whiff of death, Lord Wolfbane horns in. Then its duelling time, his place or mine, pistols or rapiers, popguns or pigstickers, rotten tomatoes, grapes or cherries, pigs in blankets, cornhusker pie.  I write in public and not at home because, at home, there's no one to write about but me. going home someday angels are dancing on the head of a pin down at the south-facing booth where, on most days, i rest my breakfast bones, a trio of religiosos, wise men in their field, perhaps, arguing out, it sounds like, the proposed text of some religious book or pamphlet they were at it las week as well, occupying, then too, my booth the three, one, older, hawk-nosed and bald, another younger, rotund to the butterball degree, and bald, and a third, young with hair, argue this week as to what is the most significent tenet of the Christian religion, virgin birth or the resurrection not being of the faith myself it's perhaps not kosher for me to weigh in on this discussion but i know lots of Christians and they, almost all but the Paulists, think highly of sex and would most certainly vote thumbs down on the idea propagation with out sex - most, i'm sure, would find the idea of putting up with teenagers without the precedent pleasure of sex to be not worth the trouble are these guys really that wise? i ask because it seems obvious to me the one central element of Christianity that sustains the belief of all its practitioners is the resurrection of Christ and his promise of everlasting life for all who put their faith in him everlasting life - that's a hard sell to beat - even i, the non-believer's nonbeliever am attracted to that, though my version of such everlastingness is not predicated on a ride through the clouds in a golden chariot, but a simple, more base rebirth as the atoms that temporarily gathered to make me disperse to a new purpose and the soul? i don't know about the soul, a slippery concept, at best, but i am finding it enticing to believe that the essence of me that animates the gathering of atoms that is my physical self is just a small part of a larger essence of us to which that part which was me will return in the end, then dissolve like smoke into the everything, the whole from which i have been for these few years of human life distant and distraught a return home  The next two poems are by e .e. cummings,poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. Born in 1894, he died in 1962, his body of work encompassing approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. This week's poems are from the collection, is 5, published in 1985 by Liveright Paperback. I am struck by the thought that cummings, born in the 19th century, is still, in the early years of the 21st, one of our most modern poets. from Three III it is winter a moon in the afternoon and warm air turning into January darkness up through which sprouting gently,the cathedral leans its dreamy spine against the thick sunset i perceive in front of out lady a ring of people a brittle swoon of centrifugally expecting faces clumsily which devours a man,three cats, five white mice,and a baboon. O a monkey with a sharp face waddling carefully the length of this padded pole;a monkey attached by a chain securely to this always talking individual,mysterious witty hatless. Cats which move smoothly from neck to neck of bottles,cats smoothly willowing out and in between bottles,who step smoothly mice;or leap through hoops of fire,creating smoothness. People stare,the drunker applaud while twilight takes the sting out of the vermilion jacket of nodding hairy Jacqueline who is given a mouse to hold lovingly, our lady what do you think of this? Do your proud fingers and your arms tremble remembering something squirming fragile and which had been presented unto you by a mystery? ...the cathedral recedes into weather without answering VI candles and Here Comes a glass box which the exhumed hand of Saint Ignatz miraculously inhabits. (people tumble down. people crumble to their knees. people begin crossing people)and hErE cOmEs a glass box; surrounded by priests moving in fifty colours ,sensuously (the crowd howls faintly blubbering pointing see yes) It here comes A Glass Box and incense with and o sunlight- the crash of the colours(of the oh silently striding)priests-and- slowly,al,ways; processional:and Enters this church. toward which The Expectant stutter(upon artificial limbs, with faces like defunct geraniums)  And now, another poem by Christopher T. George, our friend Chris. My Belated Confession I admit it - I cheated: I took steroids - they helped me to win all those awards, the Pushcart, the Pulitzer, and the Nobel - even if it's ignoble of me to admit it. Although I claimed that I took no stimulants (here, I dab my eye) I've let down my family, all my fans and all aspiring poets who believe they can reach the pinnacle without a fix. I confess, I juiced myself up real fine , , , I deserve to be stripped of everything. For my success, anonymity I would trade. My megalomaniac malice was incontestable, my artful duplicity all too contemptible: I fully deserve the world's tirade.  I did something stupid last week, for which i have been amply rewarded with a very sore back. The bonus, set me to thinking about a poem. ambushed i have a hitch in my get-a-long this morning, a vintage mid-fifties phrase, probably planted in my young brain by Tennessee Ernie Ford or some such, meaning i'm limping around like an old man because of a pain in my hip, the result of my cheapness in refusing to pay $200 to have someone remove a fallen tree from my backyard resulting in $400 worth of personal pain and suffering after trying to do it myself, plus paying $300 to someone to do the job i couldn't finish but that's another story it's the phrase i'm interested in this morning, the phrase that slipped directly from my brain like a quarter passing, unhindered, through guts and gears of a malfunctioning vending machine in what secret fold of our brain do things like this abide, a homely phrase, a word you forgot you knew, an ugliness, deep buried, you think, never to see again the light of day - and suddenly there they are again, the good and the bad and the merely embarrassing, jumping right out, throwing themselves at the world like a giggle at your mother's funeral, a subversive fart while having tea with the queen, yourself revealed, not really yourself, you explain, but little pieces of your earlier self you though long left behind long banished or forgotten my mother would sometimes call window shades window lights, an embarrassment to her because she thought it revealed her country-poor upbringing my father stuttered when excited, like all of us sometimes ambushed by the past  Next, I have two poems from from the Fall 2006 issue of Hotel Amerika, a literary publication of Ohio University. This was the last issue published by the University. The journal was reborn at Columbia University in 2007. The first poem from the journal is by Christopher Goodrich, a poet and stage director living in New York City. He has an MFA from New England College. Assuming I Die With My Eyes Closed supine on a Serta, and assuming your are sitting next to me, your head resting on my chest, your hand reaching for your forehead, I ask that you force my eyelids open and position my eyebrows two or so inches above their normal setting and urge my mouth, if you don't mind, from its parched post into the shape of an O, three fingers long, two fingers wide. That way, once you are through grieving and have alerted the children, it will appear as if I'm on the verge of song, a rendition of "Walking my Baby Back Home" - not the traditional 1952 sing-a-long, more like James Taylor's fevered acoustic cry to a woman since departed And if you would then move my left leg so it's nearly touching the floor, and budge the right with bended knee so it might easily follow the left, I could fool you into believing I am rising for one final embrace, and who knows, we might dance a two step up the skinny hall and down again, my lips fixed to sing the song whose steady rise and fall will keep the rhythm as we sway left to right, right to left. The second poem I have this week from Hotel Amerika is by Erica Goss, a graduate student in the MFA program at San Jose State University, specializing in poetry and nonfiction. She lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her family. Dust of an Ordinary Star I walk the dog, we two alpha females hike the hills and imagine ourselves trotting over the tundra with the pack following, bringin home a caribou for the whole tribe to share. When the phone rings I am the older sister; I research the family diseases: I am supposed to keep secrets so I try not to remember what I am not supposed to know. Sometimes my thoughts spiral over and over and the sight of a kitchen knife fills me with despair. When this happens my eyes feel peeled open. I sink my hands into my garden soil and feel it collect under my fingernails; I pull up great handfuls of earth and smell them when no one is looking; sometimes I have dirt ringing my nostrils for hours but no one says anything. The dog and I are getting older, looking more alike: sagging jaws and weird little tufts of hair. This bothers me more than her. Neither one of us is interested in chasing after men on motorcycles anymore. I am a mother; twice I gave birth to healthy, perfect sons; once I had a daughter but she was not perfect so I cast her body from mine; when she was gone my spine made a great lurch and I stopped sleeping. I plant seeds; I collect leaves, eggs and stones; I once found a jawbone with all its teeth still attached. I lie awake at night and stare out the window; I see lights out in the forest and wonder if they are flashlights or just the sweep of distant headlights; I wonder where people go at three in the morning while I am trapped here in my bed. I send letters: they enter the secret house of the mailbox, deposits that can never be withdrawn, they settle into rectangular drifts awaiting the great paw of the mail carrier. When the sky is too loud I head for the woods; a silent redwood pulls the sunlight down; I place my ear against her trunk and hear the settling dust of an ordinary star.  Now, another one from our friend and featured poet of the week, Christopher T. George. I have seen this movie many times, and loved it every time. Cheesy Little Artsy Spy Buddy Movie As Pettigrew, the English butler, I'd served the Edwards family faithfully for two decades. They saw me for what I was: the perfect English servant in classic stereotypical mold. I found young Bart Edwards drunk and stoned out of his skull in the closet, once again, sprawled in his own vomit. "Ah there you are Pettigrew," he slurred as I cleaned him up. Unfortunately, I was pressed for time and had to take him with me on my latest assignment to clandestinely enter Russia through frozen Lake Ladoga; we arrived in Moscow in time to rendezvous with Natasha just as she was to dance the Black Swan at the Bolshoi; she gave me the microchip from inside her black bra: I put it in my black eyepatch - the plans to the secret Arctic facility, which Bart and I reached by scaling the Slemskya glacier: I, Lefty Pettigrew, 006, and Black Bart blasted the cave with Semtex, guided by landsat technology. So we foiled the Ruskies' infernal plot to dominate the world. Then we enjoyed a night of debauchery with Natasha and the White Swan, Martina, smooches goodbye and we crippled the North Koreans and Iranians. Unfortunately, we shot up the set so badly the movie went way over budget and we landed home penniless. Once again, I found young Bart Edwards drunk and stoned out of his skull in the closet, sprawled in his own vomit. "Ah there you are Pettigrew," he slurred as I cleaned him up.  This next piece came out of, as often happens, a story in the Science Section of the New York Times. when will the monkeys speak and what will they have to say? every morning i think is this the morning it stops? - is this the morning i cast my net and it comes back empty but for an old black boot, three empty bottles of Jax beer, and the rubber floormat for a '49 Hudson Hornet? every morning i cast the net sometimes near and sometimes far, like this morning very far pulling out from the soupy sea the story in the New York Times, last week about research demonstrating monkeys could talk - that is they have the physical equipment required to vocalize - but don't and i wonder why is it disinterest in speaking or is it just disinterest in speaking to us as secretly they jabber away with each other in a whisper under their bed covers at night and it all reminds me of a science fiction story i wrote 45 years ago - before, i stroke my ego by adding, Planet of the Apes and Koko and her offspring - about apes who lacked the ability to talk (as was the belief at that time) but could learn American Sign and were taught to Sign by a zoologist and, once learning this skill, they taught it to their offspring and soon there was a flourishing civilization of apes and their kind in competition with the human race, a competition resolved without violence because the greatest of all the apes made an impassioned speech in Sign at the United Nations proving that all species could live together and that any species, given a chance, could produce its own Gandhi or Christ ~~~~~~~~~ or i could write about what i just read today, that the human Y chromosome has been evolving very rapidly, much more rapidly than any other part of the human body, leaving us all wondering now just exactly what it means that the chromosome for macho stupidity is quickly taking over the human race but that's a dead end for sure ~~~~~~~~~ so i think again of the monkeys and it reminds me of the story of the boy who never said a word until a day during his eight year when he finally spoke up at the family dinner table, saying, "these peas suck" causing amazement all around as all had thought he was physically unable to speak and they ask him why, for heavens sake, have you never talked before and he said, "the peas never sucked before" and maybe that's why we haven't heard anything from the monkeys yet  The next poem is by Rabindranath Tagore, from the collection of his work, Selected Poems, first published by Penguin Books in 1985. Tagore, born in 1861, was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samai, a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal. Though he was sent to England to study when he was seventeen years old, he obtained most of his education at home. As an adult he managed his family estates, in addition to his literary activities. He and Gandhi were very close friends and, occasionally involved himself in the Indian nationalist movement. Knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, he resigned the honor a few years later in protest of British policies in India. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, he was a success in all literary genres, he was first and foremost a poet. He wrote two autobiographies, one in his middle years and one shortly before his death in 1941. Freedom Bound Frown and bolt the door and glare With disapproving eyes, Behold my outcaste love, the scourge Of all proprieties. To sit where orthodoxy rules Is not her wish at all - Maybe I shall seat her on A grubby patchwork shawl, The upright villagers, who like To buy and sell all day, Do not notice one whose dress Is drab and dusty-grey. So keen on outward show, the form Beneath can pass them by - Come my darling, let there be None but you and I, When suddenly you left your house To love along the way, You brought form somewhere lotus honey In your pot of clay. You came because you heard I like Love simple, unadorned - an earthen jar is not a thing My hands have ever scorned. No bells upon your ankles, so No purpose in a dance - Your blood has all the rhythms That are needed to entrance. You are ashamed to be ashamed By lack of ornament - No amount of dust can spoil You plain habiliment, Herd-boys crowd around you, street-dogs Follow by your side - Gipsy-like upon your pony Easily you ride. You cross the stream with dripping sari Tucked up to your knees - My duty to the straight and narrow Flies at sights like these. You take your basket to the fields For herbs on market-day - You fill your hem with peas for donkeys Loose beside the way, Rainy days do not deter you - Mud caked to your toes And kacu-leaf upon your head, On your journey goes. I find you when and where I choose, Whenever it pleases me - No fuss or preparation: tell me, Who will know but we? Throwing caution to the winds, Spurned by all around, Come, my outcaste love, O let us Travel, freedom-bound.  And finally, one last poem, a birthday poem, in fact, from our featured poet, Christopher T. George, complete with a photo of the birthday boy himself, taken by his father Gordon B. George.  Good work, Mr. George, and happy birthday, Chris, pretty well preserved, considering. On Turning Sixty-Two, January 10, 2010 I'm thirteen years younger than Elvis - and he's very much dead. Instead, I'm still alive, savoring each minute, got my ticket to ride, not prepared to rot. I know I have enemies who deride, Mateys, take a firebrand up yer nose. Why d'you suppose I would give it up?  We had some unusually cold weather a week ago, thee nights in a row of temps in the low twenties and high teens, making all sorts of changes in what we normally see as we look around the countryside. there are rules about this sort of thing it's a drab and dreary place now after three nights in a row of hard freeze - dry grass, bare trees and shrubs - all the color gone, lying in brown wilt on the ground, meaning booming business for the plant nurseries in a couple of weeks as folks try to replace all that they lost but that's not my way - i look for what's still green, the native growth that does not wilt and die when assaulted by the native climate - so most of my plant shopping isn't done at the nurseries but out in the hills, hiking through the limestone and granite with a small shovel and transplant pot, figuring, if it can grow and survive out here through drought and freeze, my backyard will be a cakewalk, a garden of ease for the weary plant - it's about listening to Mother Nature, letting Her tell us how we should fit into the scheme of things - it's a good rule, recognizing the supremacy of the natural order - course, round here the green and lovely Matriarch of us all, maker and keeper of all the rules, doesn't always speak English, leaving me, often, to fall back on simpler rules from simpler sources like, don't buy your bar-b-que where you can't smell the smoke  Wistawa Szymborska is a Polish poet, born in 1923. Winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, she is a poet, essayist and translator. Though her poetry is widely read in Poland and cherished by her fellow Polish poets, she has a relatively small body of published work, only 230 poems to date. Though her published work may be small, it is widely known, having been published in most European languages, as well as Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese. I have this week, two poems from her book View With a Grain of Sand, published by Harcourt Brace in 1995. The poems were translated to English by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, winners of the 1996 PEN Translation Prize. A Large Number Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while the rest go blindly by, never coming to mind and never really missed. But even a Dante couldn't get it right. Let alone someone who is not Even with all the muses behind me. Non omnis moriar - a premature worry. But am I entirely alive and is that enough. It never was, and now less than ever. My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses. I whisper my reply to my stentorian calling. I can't tell you how much I pass over in silence. A mouse at the foot of the maternal mountain. Life lasts as long as a few signs scratched by a claw in the sand. My dreams - even they're not as populous as they should be. they hold more solitude than noisy crowds. Sometimes a long-dead friend stops by awhile. A single hand turns the knob. An echo's annexes overgrow the empty house. I run from the doorstep into a valley that is quiet, as if no one owned it, already an anachronism. Why there's still all this space inside me I don't know. Psalm Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states! How many clouds float past them with impunity; how much desert sand shifts from one land to another; how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil in provocative hops! Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers or alights on the roadblock at the border? A humble robin - still its tail resides abroad while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop bobbing! Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant between the border guard's left and right boots blithely ignoring the question "Where from?" and "Where to?" Oh, to register in detail, at a glance the chaos prevailing on every continent! Isn't that a privet on the far bank smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river? And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms, would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters? And how can we talk of order overall when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom? Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting! And dust blowing all over the steppes as if they hadn't been partitioned! And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves, that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters! Only what is human can truly be foreign. The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.  I've come to realize as I've grown older, that life is never so complicated that you can't grab hold of it and hold it down for a moment or two while you catch your breath. trying to outrun the rain drivers on the interstate are racing by, as if trying to outrun the rain, even though the steady mix of rain and fog has been out there for three days so i'm thinking, what's the rush, that which was chasing you is now being chased by you such is life - the demons that drive us are never outrun, always waiting for us at the finish line ~~~~ i'm listening to the three guys sitting in front of me, medical instrument sales it sounds like, the one furthest from me, a young manager i think, some kind of regional VIP down to motivate the troops, never stops talking, the other two listen, and at the end he talks about his young daughter and the man behind the demon-chaser shows through and he and i both wish he was back with her because i know him, having been him through many of the early years of my son's life, chasing the demon, seeking always those few moments when i could be out of my life for a while and into his, finding never enough of those moments as a parent until it came to me that the demon i raced was not behind me, but in me and winning the race was not about running faster because in the end he would always win and the way to beat him was to let him go, let him finish ahead and wait for me while i walk a slower path - knowing i will lose in the end anyway, my choice being in how i choose to get to that end place where demon waits ~~~~ too many mornings i tried to outrun the rain now i just try to enjoy the wet  That's it. Come back next week. All of the material presented in this blog remains the property of those who created it, including my stuff, but i'll lend it out if you want it and will promise to tell where it came from. I am allen itz, owner and producer of this blog, and you're not. |
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