Observer

A sundrop moves across a magnolia flower.

"I watch how other things travel
to get an idea how I might move.
A cloud sweeps by silently,
gathering other clouds.
A doodlebug curls in his effort to get there.
A horse snorts before stepping forward.
A caterpillar inches across the kitchen floor.
When I carry him outside on a leaf,
I imagine someone doing that to me.
Would I scream?
In the heart of the day
nothing moves.
No one is going anywhere
or coming back.
The blue glass on the table
lets light pass through.
Something shines
but nothing moves.
I watch that too."

– "Observer" by Naomi Shihab Nye.

In the City: Three Easy Pieces

The Solitude

“On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.”

– E. B. White, ‘Here is New York’ (1949)

Thus begins the most quoted poetic homage (and even prophetic given the events of 9/11) to a city. Along with Street Haunting and The London Scene (collection of 6 essays) by Virginia Woolf, it is possibly the best piece of writing on the experience of a big city.

To read 'Here is New York': http://www.travel-studies.com/sites/default/files/White,%20Here%20Is%20New%20York.pdf

The Streetwalker

               "I’m becoming

the street.

           Who are you in love with

me?

     Straight against the light I cross."

    –Frank O’Hara, ‘Walking to Work’

Almost 80% of the journeys in midtown and downtown Manhattan are made on foot. People mostly walk for practical purposes like getting to work, going to the grocery store, picking up children from school and so on. They also walk to purposes of pleasure like to the movie hall, weekend brunch or the picnic in the park. And in this time and age, for the most important purpose of all–to maintain an active lifestyle (that means walking over 10,000 steps a day). 

For most people a saunter brings to mind a walk in the park among the bounties of nature, but here’s a different, an original perspective:

"Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No, one never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes–I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass.”

– Frank O’Hara, ‘Meditations In An Emergency’

The Sunsets

And people continue to notice the passing clouds, and the resulting sunsets more often. Not just because they are instagramming the shit out of it. I think it is because of the nature of light projection in the city. The tall buildings have often been likened to canyons but made of glass and metal. These reflective surfaces throw the light around in ways that change with the trajectory of the sun across the sky. Sample this: at 7:30 PM the light from the setting sun falls on the west face of the building on the easternmost part of the street, bounces and strikes the windows of the building on the opposite side and this room (that I am typing in) is bathed in gold. So, it is hardly a surprise that a 6 PM meeting on a certain floor, in a certain building in downtown may get interrupted if the room gets flooded by light from a sky streaked purple, mauve, red and orange.

Day Moon

Driving the car, walking the dog . . .
cresting the hill. When suddenly
you catch sight of the day-moon, why
does it come with what is almost a jolt of pain?

You mean the pain inflicted by its beauty? 
No, I mean the pain
caused by its having been up for hours,
and though you’d noticed, you had not seen.

Blaring at you from a sky
the blue of a fast car of a bygone day—
you have so far to go in your perceptual awakening
and the day-moon is the meter of your failings.

And if you’d seen, would you still feel
that soft and slightly sick spot in your stomach
whenever you stoop to self-reflection: now
you wouldn’t stoop, being perceptually awakened

though not boastful, no never boastful.

Meanwhile the day-moon circles the globe like Superman,
hauling the seas on his white shoulders
flying half a mile a second,
getting things done

but also as calm as the Virgin Mary.
See her face up there?
People used to say that it was made of cheese.
Such silent cheese. Such busy cheese.

– Lucia Perillo, Day-Moon

The Hare: A Memory

 “Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?”
― D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love 

Watercolour Pencils and Charcoal on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper

Watercolour Pencils and Charcoal on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper

Watercolour Pencils and Charcoal on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper

One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.

― W.B Yeats, "Memory"

With every mistake we must surely be learning

New Year dusk by Sonam Chhoki displayed along the Southbank, was part of Poetry Parnassus, an event that accompanied the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
 
It is said that it is imagination that distinguishes humans from other forms of life. Human imagination is the basis of all our understanding and also all that we seek to understand. No two humans share the same imagination. Imagination is subjective, limited by our particular experiences and perceptions. Often imagination is far removed from reality. That is why imagination is necessary for growth. And mistakes are an indicator that we are doing something different.

Imagination is also the basis of all our desires, all that we seek and all that we feel we are devoid of. It is the single largest source of misconceptions and misapprehensions. Fear the root cause of all evil and sadness in the world is often a result of our highly developed and complex imagination.

But imagination begins with our ability to 'see'. What we see and what we do not see determines the limits of our imagination. And the nature and extent of our mistakes.

With Infinite Truths lies the Eternal Truth

Who sees it all?

Varuna has but a thousand eyes

Indra, a hundred

And I, only two*

*Hymn from the Rig Veda, one of the four canonical texts of Hinduism.

In the begining there was the word

and some time back there was this post.

Lets pretend nothing bad ever happens.

Even if it does, it happens to others, far away.

Other lives like so many species of flies.

Each distinct and separate from us.

Lets pretend that words are living–

Poetry saves lives. These squiggles have depth and meaning.

Lets pretend art is beauty. And beauty is our saviour.

We shall rage against the night for beauty. And only beauty.

Lets pretend every dissenting voice is a cynic.

A miasma. A pebble in the eye.

We shall write them words full of beauty.

See. Lets pretend they shall. 

Lets pretend everyone else is stupid.

Lets pretend we get depressed

because no one understands what we understand.

We see things that no one else sees.

We shall collect words that speak to us.

We shall read more. Every sentence, every paragraph

another brick in our immaculate comprehension.

Lets pretend this is the true purpose of life.

Rainy Day Thoughts

I am holding Granta's May edition titled ‘Britain’ in my hands, and staring at the cover all I can think of is:

And the crack in the tea cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.*

How strange this connection between man and poetry. 

If you have ever read a poem and felt the lines spoke to you; they articulated your thoughts and hopes then you'd understand why 'In relation to the future, a poem is like a note sealed in a bottle and thrown into the sea'. Charles Simic in a recent post in NY review of books states, “If poetry is not the most utopian project ever devised by human beings, I don’t know what is”. You’ll have to read Simic’s post to work out how (or even whether) this sentiment applies to your understanding of poetry. For words and the constant misunderstanding of the intent behind them could, if one is pressed for a quick response, be summarized as the sum total of the drama that is human existence. Though one would, perhaps, end with a flourish– ‘all existence is meaningless’.

Talking about meaning and misunderstanding, or should it be called different ways of understanding, the poem that comes to mind is Yeats ‘The Second Coming’**. Lines from this poem get quoted with regular frequency whenever the world has faced a crisis in recent history, just like Keynes during an economic crisis. And just like Robert Frost and the end of 'The Road Not Taken' (it is the sigh– I shall be telling this with a sigh––that makes one pause and consider the road not taken), here too it is the last few lines that have been widely interpreted.

Though if you read the poem carefully and ‘see’ the vast image brought forth by the Spiritus Mundi (spirit of the world) would you still believe that the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem could be our saviour? And if you read about Yeats and his theory of gyres then the doubts will recede further.

Why does a poet write? Why does a reader read? Sometimes these seem like questions worth considering, though most of the time a person pens a few lines and moves on. Another person reads them and moves on. Just like life.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.***

*W.H. Auden, As I walked out one evening.

**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?

Interesting trivia: The Second Coming has not only been quoted in many books, comics and music albums, but also has been the source of the titles of some very popular books:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

***The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald.

Everything

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else. – Buddha
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it – Confucious
One must love everything– Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

Lately, I have been contemplating the word 'Everything'. Over the years as 'belongings' have diminished to only so much and nothing else, everything has become a well-worn word. Everything is disposable. We don't need everything. Everything isn't important. Everything must go.

3 suitcases, 2 checked in bags. 20 cartons of books and household goods. That is all. But is all everything? Einstein said, 'Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted'. Now you see what I mean? How do we make sense of everything?

The shape, the size, the feel of everything, as certain as the seasons, shifts and changes. And often slides into nothing. Yesterday what was everything, today it's nothing. Nothing. Always following everything. Like the shadow following the form. Till the inevitable moment in time when they merge to the point that it becomes almost redundant to separate nothing from everything. If you have nothing, you have everything.

I

Cleaning an Attic
By Brent Pallas

The day had finally come   

when everything there   

seemed misplaced or out of place   

as an ex's box of things. The unused   

beside the irreplaceable, the easy-   

to-assemble uncomplicated now   

by disuse. Some hand   

of randomness leaving behind   

its lampshades stained   

like ancient maps, its ladders   

still climbing upward, and enough   

old tools to restart a world.   

Every drawer filled   

with the other half of things.   

Everything care embraced,   

and held once as new,   

left too ragged for another winter   

to wear. Its ring of keys   

dangling by a nail   

for rooms left long ago. And whatever   

I said I'd never forget   

found, just as it seemed   

completely forgot—all its letters   

beginning with Dear....

II

Everything
By Fanny Howe

Infinite nesting

pushes all matter

towards emptiness:

child-nodes,

tree-droppings

with a root element of null.

None is always included

in every cluster

of children.

Nothing in nothing

prepares us.

Yet a fresh light was shed

on immortality

for me climbing the stairs

firm foot first.

Everything was in the banister:

crows on branches, crickets,

architects, handsaws and democrats.

Red moon at 3 am.

III

Hold Everything Dear

by Gareth Evans, from 'Hold Everything Dear' by John Berger

As the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journey

as the rose buds a green room to breathe

and blossoms like the wind

as the thin birches whisper their stories of the wind to the urgent

in the trucks

as the leaves of the hedge store the light

the day thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a sparrow in the turning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky

and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

the calligraphy of birds across the morning

the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth

one step ahead of time

the broken teeth of tribes and their long place

steppe-scattered and together

clay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug

carrying itself towards us through the soil

the pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walking

the map of the palm held

in a knot

but given as a torch

hold everything dear

the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

the justice of a grass that unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days

as it sinks to become what it loves

memory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seed

the words

the bread

the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

the yearning to begin again together

animals keen inside the parliament of the world

the people in the room the people in the street the people

hold everything dear

Three Poems, One Art

 Or You May Leave a Memory, Or You Can be Feted by Crows

 

Last night we sat talking, as it happens ever so often when the rain refuses to abate and all life and meaning gets erased by the sight and sound of water. From water we came, and water shall obliterate us. But in the meantime we talk– about art. For when life all around us seems to be going down the drain, art is the tiny straw that one clings onto in a desperate attempt to keep one’s head above the raging waters. Nietzsche said we have art in order not to perish of truth. I would like to say after we had been talking for hours the sun broke through the clouds and once again it was glorious spring. But the truth is there is only snow and rain. And the forecast for the next seven days is equally grim.

But we continue to keep talking about art. Sometimes late into the night, sometimes via email. Is it a comfort to know that you too are not waving but drowning? We keep repeating the same things– our sacred chant. Few words suffice– craft, judgment, sanity, fun. However, three poems would be, perhaps, even more eloquent.

I

In My Craft Or Sullen Art

By Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art

Exercised in the still night

When only the moon rages

And the lovers lie abed

With all their griefs in their arms,

I labor by singing light

Not for ambition or bread

Or the strut and trade of charms

On the ivory stages

But for the common wages

Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.

II

After Arguing against the Contention That Art Must Come from Discontent

By William E. Stafford

Whispering to each handhold, “I'll be back,”  

I go up the cliff in the dark. One place  

I loosen a rock and listen a long time

till it hits, faint in the gulf, but the rush

of the torrent almost drowns it out, and the wind—

I almost forgot the wind: it tears at your side  

or it waits and then buffets; you sag outward. . . .

I remember they said it would be hard. I scramble  

by luck into a little pocket out of

the wind and begin to beat on the stones

with my scratched numb hands, rocking back and forth

in silent laughter there in the dark—

“Made it again!” Oh how I love this climb!

—the whispering to stones, the drag, the weight  

as your muscles crack and ease on, working  

right. They are back there, discontent,

waiting to be driven forth. I pound

on the earth, riding the earth past the stars:  

“Made it again! Made it again!”

III

You May Leave a Memory, Or You Can be Feted by Crows

By Dick Allen

Three years, Huang Gongwang

worked on his famous handscroll,

Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.

As he put successive applications of ink to paper

over the “one burst of creation,” his original design,

it is said he often sang like a tree frog

and danced on his old bare feet.

One day, he adds one hemp fiber stroke,

the next a moss dot.

What patience he had,

like a cat who comes back season after season to a mole’s tunnel.

Honors may go to others.

Riches may go to others.

Huang Gongwang has one great job to do.

And he sings like a tree frog,

and he dances on old bare feet.

One life, three poems

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

Edgar Allen Poe, "Alone", written when the poet was only 20 years old.

                When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings

of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less

than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up

with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices

like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle

passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.

I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away

from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them.  

How I am, a poem by Jason Shinder.
Copyright© 2005 by Jason Shinder. First published in The American Poetry Review, November/December 2005.

                              An open door says, “Come in.”

A shut door says, “Who are you?”

Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors.

If a door is shut and you want it shut,

     why open it?

If a door is open and you want it open,

     why shut it?

Doors forget but only doors know what it is

     doors forget.

Doors a poem by Carl Sandburg, from The Sandburg Range.

Arboretum

We had the problem of age, the problem of wishing to linger.
Not needing, anymore, even to make a contribution.
Merely wishing to linger: to be, to be here.

And to stare at things, but with no real avidity.
To browse, to purchase nothing.
But there were many of us; we took up time. We crowded out
our own children, and the children of friends. We did great damage,
meaning no harm.

We continued to plan; to fix things as they broke.
To repair, to improve. We traveled, we put in gardens.
And we continued brazenly to plant trees and perennials.

We asked so little of the world. We understood
the offense of advice, of holding forth. We checked ourselves:
we were correct, we were silent.
But we could not cure ourselves of desire, not completely.
Our hands, folded, reeked of it.

How did we do so much damage, merely sitting and watching,
strolling, on fine days, the grounds of the parks, the arboretum,
or sitting on benches in front of the public library,
feeding pigeons out of a paper bag?

We were correct, and yet desire pursued us.
Like a great force, a god. And the young
were offended; their hearts
turned cold in reaction. We asked

so little of the world; small things seemed to us
immense wealth. Merely to smell once more the early roses
in the arboretum: we asked
so little, and we claimed nothing. And the young
withered nevertheless.

Or they become like stones in the arboretum: as though
our continued existence, our asking so little for so many years, meant
we asked everything.

Arboretum a poem by Louise Glück.

April

In the tiny corner of this tiny part of that tiny speck suspended in a sunbeam* April is celebrated as the National Poetry Month. Which is absolutely marvelous. We need not just one day but 30 days at a stretch to bring to the frontal conscience of the world at large, that which is important. Well, a tiny part this maybe but it does think it’s the edge (or is it the end?) of the world and of all western civilization. So February is devoted to Black History and March to Women’s History and then comes April. And with the advent of spring comes poetry. But naturally.

Most people have a difficult relationship with poetry that is if they bother to have any relationship at all. But that’s just because they read bad poems or more likely they don’t read enough poems. Or even more likely because they don’t know how to read poems. But those concerns for a month at least are laid to rest. Every publication worth it’s weight in ink is publishing poems. And for those who read all (and any kind of poems), read a lot of poems and often enough know exactly how they ought to be read this is marvelous. Ah! But I already said that.

When confronted with so many poems, and so many unheard of poems you know what is even more marvelous? Coming upon one that echoes something you felt in the not so recent past. And if that happens before you have emptied your cup of coffee in the morning it is beyond marvelous.

K. 453
Karl Kirchwey
(from The New York Review of Books)

On May 27, 1784,
   as he followed Vienna’s back streets home,
Mozart paused, startled, by a pet shop door
   and listened to the allegretto theme

from his own piano concerto in G-Major
   repeated by a starling in a cage.
He’d written it only five weeks before—
   had God given them both the same message?

He counted out thirty-four copper Kreutzer.
   Pleasure was like the iridescent sheen
in the dark plumage: an imagination livelier,
   perhaps, more fecund and ready than his own!

He entered this in his new quarto accounts ledger,
   but where the price should go, he wrote the tune
instead—transcribed it a second time, rather—
   and then, in his small hand, wrote Das war schön.**

*For me April till now has been about Carl Sagan for no particular reason at all except there are times when he is sorely missed.
**that was beautiful

My tree

My bare branched tree speaks in silence
forlorn and longingly–
it is not another spring that it seeks
but a mild breeze–
to sway its unburdened arms
in abandonment–
simplicity– is free.

In time of roses

  in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so (forgetting seem)

in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me
 
in time of daffodils a poem by e.e. cummings 

What kind of bird would I choose to be

He asked me       if I had a choice

what kind of bird

would I choose to be.

I know what he thought I’d say

since he tried to        end

my sentences half the time

anyway. Something exotic

he thought. He thought

maybe macaw.

That would fit

all loudmouthed

and primary colored

he would think.

(He thinks too much

I always thought.)

But really       at heart

I’m more

don’t laugh now

     an L B J

          little brown job

except               except

I’m not the

flit        from

branch

to        branch        type

such a waste

of energy all that

wing flap

and scritch scritch scratch.

Really now

can you see me

seed pod clamped

between my beak

like some landowner,

Havana cigar

clenched

between his teeth?

No         I think         not

I think

green heron.

You ask why?

Personality

mainly.

That hunched look

wings tucked to neck

waiting        waiting

in the sun

on a wide slab of rock

alongside a slow river

like some old man

up from a bad night’s dream

where he’s seen his coffin

and you say to him

Have a nice day

and he says        Make me.

Oh          you want looks

I’ll give you

looks:

long olive green feathers

a trace of

iridescence

I could stand

going out       iridescent

chestnut sides and head

a black crown

yes        a crown

something regal

to flash when you get

too close

dark bill         bright

yellow legs

and that creamy streak

down my throat and pecs

good

        not great

but good         pecs

just enough for a quick

hop to the next.

The best part

no sexual dimorphism

male         female

both alike

endless possibilities.

Diana García, “On the First Day She Made Birds” from When Living Was a Labor Camp.

The Robin is the One

The Robin is the One
That interrupt the Morn
With hurried – few – express Reports
When March is scarcely on –

The Robin is the One
That overflow the Noon
With her cherubic quantity–
An April but begun –

The Robin is the One
That speechless from her Nest
Submit that Home – and Certainty
And Sanctity, are best
(The Robin is the One by Emily Dickinson)

Winter bird

The winter bird is contemplative.
Unlike the bird of spring,
or even the bird of autumn
it is much less inclined to sing.

In winter there’s isn’t enough daytime to spare,
but all the time in the day to reflect. Winter is a time to prepare

For the ecstasies of spring
The headiness of summer, the enchanting rain
The mellow pleasures of autumn
Till winter comes visiting again.

And the winter bird sits down to comprehend:
Does a circle have a beginning? Is the beginning also the end?

Wild flowers

A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.
(Having misidentified a wildflower by Richard Wilbur)

As I wander'd the forest,
The green leaves among,
I heard a wild flower
Singing a song.

I slept in the Earth
In the silent night,
I murmur'd my fears
And I felt delight.

In the morning I went
As rosy as morn,
To seek for new joy;
But O! met with scorn.
(The Wild Flower's Song by William Blake)

The good Will of a Flower
The Man who would possess
Must first present
Certificate
Of minted Holiness.
(The good Will of a Flower by Emily Dickinson)