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.