Channel Firing
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day
And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,
The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, 'No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:
'All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.
'That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening . . .
'Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).'
So down we lay again. 'I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,'
Said one, 'than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!'
And many a skeleton shook his head.
'Instead of preaching forty year,'
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
'I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.'
Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
Source of the text - The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, revised with new material, edited by Jon Silkin. London: Penguin Books, 1996, pp. 78-79.
Bourguignomicon: Dead-song. With insistent spondees and gallow-humor, God reassures the rueful departed that it’s just business as usual, this Great War.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
"Supernatural Love" by Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Supernatural Love
My father at the dictionary-stand
Touches the page to fully understand
The lamplit answer, tilting in his hand
His slowly scanning magnifying lens,
A blurry, glistening circle he suspends
Above the word “Carnation.” Then he bends
So near his eyes are magnified and blurred,
One finger on the miniature word,
As if he touched a single key and heard
A distant, plucked, infinitesimal string,
“The obligation due to every thing
That’s smaller than the universe.” I bring
My sewing needle close enough that I
Can watch my father through the needle’s eye,
As through a lens ground for a butterfly
Who peers down flower-hallways toward a room
Shadowed and fathomed as this study’s gloom
Where, as a scholar bends above a tomb
To read what’s buried there, he bends to pore
Over the Latin blossom. I am four,
I spill my pins and needles on the floor
Trying to stitch “Beloved” X by X.
My dangerous, bright needle’s point connects
Myself illiterate to this perfect text
I cannot read. My father puzzles why
It is my habit to identify
Carnations as “Christ’s flowers,” knowing I
Can give no explanation but “Because.”
Word-roots blossom in speechless messages
The way the thread behind my sampler does
Where following each X I awkward move
My needle through the word whose root is love.
He reads, “A pink variety of Clove,
Carnatio, the Latin, meaning flesh.”
As if the bud’s essential oils brush
Christ’s fragrance through the room, the iron-fresh
Odor carnations have floats up to me,
A drifted, secret, bitter ecstasy,
The stems squeak in my scissors, Child, it’s me,
He turns the page to “Clove” and reads aloud:
“The clove, a spice, dried from a flower-bud.”
Then twice, as if he hasn’t understood,
He reads, “From French, for clou, meaning a nail.”
He gazes, motionless. “Meaning a nail.”
The incarnation blossoms, flesh and nail,
I twist my threads like stems into a knot
And smooth “Beloved,” but my needle caught
Within the threads, Thy blood so dearly bought,
The needle strikes my finger to the bone.
I lift my hand, it is myself I’ve sewn,
The flesh laid bare, the threads of blood my own,
I lift my hand in startled agony
And call upon his name, “Daddy Daddy”—
My father’s hand touches the injury
As lightly as he touched the page before,
Where incarnation bloomed from roots that bore
The flowers I called Christ’s when I was four.
Source of the text - Gjertrud Schackenberg, Supernatural Love: Poems 1976-1992. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000, pp. 129-131.
Bourguignomicon: Lexicon-iambics. In these recursive, singsong-arpeggios, an earthly father learns of the deep roots of words from his christlike daughter.
Monday, October 10, 2011
"In this age of hard trying nonchalance is good, and" by Marianne Moore
IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING
NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND
really, it is not the
business of the gods to bake clay pots. They did not
do it in this instance. A few
revolved upon the axes of their worth
as if excessive popularity might be a pot;
they did not venture the
profession of humility. The polished wedge
that might have split the firmament
was dumb. At last it threw itself away
and falling down, conferred on some poor fool, a privilege.
Taller by the length of
a conversation of five hundred years than all
the others, there was one, whose tales
of what could never have been actual—
were better than the haggish, uncompanionable drawl
of certitude; his by-
play was more terrible in its effectiveness
than the fiercest frontal attack.
The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence
of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self protectiveness.
Source of the text - Marianne Moore, Poems. London: The Egoist Press, 1921, p. 14.
TJB: The poem—stately, rhymed syllabic-iambic—makes us wonder: who’s the polished wedge & poor fool? Does it matter, since fiction is preferred?
NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND
really, it is not the
business of the gods to bake clay pots. They did not
do it in this instance. A few
revolved upon the axes of their worth
as if excessive popularity might be a pot;
they did not venture the
profession of humility. The polished wedge
that might have split the firmament
was dumb. At last it threw itself away
and falling down, conferred on some poor fool, a privilege.
Taller by the length of
a conversation of five hundred years than all
the others, there was one, whose tales
of what could never have been actual—
were better than the haggish, uncompanionable drawl
of certitude; his by-
play was more terrible in its effectiveness
than the fiercest frontal attack.
The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence
of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self protectiveness.
Source of the text - Marianne Moore, Poems. London: The Egoist Press, 1921, p. 14.
TJB: The poem—stately, rhymed syllabic-iambic—makes us wonder: who’s the polished wedge & poor fool? Does it matter, since fiction is preferred?
"Annunciations I" by Geoffrey Hill
Annunciations
I
The Word has been abroad, is back, with a tanned look
From its subsistence in the stiffening-mire.
Cleansing has become killing, the reward
Touchable, overt, clean to the touch.
Now at a distance from the steam of beasts,
The loathly neckings and fat shook spawn
(Each specimen-jar fed with delicate spawn)
The searchers with the curers sit at meat
And are satisfied. Such precious things put down
And the flesh eased through turbulence the soul
Purples itself; each eye squats full and mild
While all who attend to fiddle or to harp
For betterment, flavour their decent mouths
With gobbets of the sweetest sacrifice.
Source of the text - Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 26.
TJB: Clot-prophecy. A critique of poetry “clean to the touch,” made in “the stiffening-mire” by careerist posers as if their Word were angelic.
I
The Word has been abroad, is back, with a tanned look
From its subsistence in the stiffening-mire.
Cleansing has become killing, the reward
Touchable, overt, clean to the touch.
Now at a distance from the steam of beasts,
The loathly neckings and fat shook spawn
(Each specimen-jar fed with delicate spawn)
The searchers with the curers sit at meat
And are satisfied. Such precious things put down
And the flesh eased through turbulence the soul
Purples itself; each eye squats full and mild
While all who attend to fiddle or to harp
For betterment, flavour their decent mouths
With gobbets of the sweetest sacrifice.
Source of the text - Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 26.
TJB: Clot-prophecy. A critique of poetry “clean to the touch,” made in “the stiffening-mire” by careerist posers as if their Word were angelic.
Monday, June 6, 2011
"In a Clearing" by W.S. Merwin
IN A CLEARING
The unnumbered herds flow like lichens
Along the darkness each carpet at its height
In silence
Herds without end
Without death
Nothing is before them nothing after
Among the hooves the hooves' brothers the shells
In a sea
Passing through senses
As through bright clearings surrounded with pain
Some of the animals
See souls moving in their word death
With its many tongues that no god could speak
That can describe
Nothing that cannot die
The word
Surrounds the souls
The hide they wear
Like a light in the light
And when it goes out they vanish
In the eyes of the herds there is only one light
They cherish it with the darkness it belongs to
They take their way through it nothing is
Before them and they leave it
A small place
Where dying a sun rises
Source of the text - W.S. Merwin, The Second Four Books of Poems. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1993, pp. 123-4.
TJB: Vast prairie or tiny clearing? Herds pass through a forest of death, pain; round a clearing of sense, of life, not of a light but the light.
Friday, June 3, 2011
"Ode to the Lemon" by Pablo Neruda
Oda al Limón
De aquellos azahares
desatados
por la luz de la luna,
de aquel
olor de amor
exasperado,
hundido en la fragancia,
solió
del limonero el amarillo,
desde su planetario
bajaron a la tierra los limones.
Tierna mercadería!
Se llenaron las costas,
los mercados,
de luz, de oro
silvestre,
y abrimos
dos mitades
de milagro,
ácido congelado
que corría
desde los hemisferios
de una estrella,
y el licor más profundo
de la naturaleza,
intransferible, vivo,
irreductible
nació de la frescura
del limón,
de su casa fragante,
de su ácida, secreta simetría.
En el limón cortaron
los cuchillos
una pequeña
catedral,
el ábside escondido
abrió a la luz los ácidos vitrales
y en gotas
resbalaron los topacios,
los altares,
la fresca arquitectura.
Así, cuando tu mano
empuña el hemisferio
del cortado
limón sobre tu plato
un universo de oro
derramaste,
una
copa amarilla
con milagros,
uno de los pezones olorosos
del pecho de la tierra,
el rayo de la luz que se hizo fruta,
el fuego diminuto de un planeta.
English translation by Margaret Sayers Peden:
Ode to the Lemon
From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its plantarium
lemons descended to the earth.
Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.
Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.
So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth’s breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit,
the minute fire of a planet.
Source of the text - Pablo Neruda, Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda, translated with an introduction by Margaret Sayers Peden. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp. 324-327.
Bourguignomicon: Lemonawe. Neruda portrays the harvesting, opening, carving & squeezing of a lemon as heavenly, churchlike, acidic & worthy of our attention.
De aquellos azahares
desatados
por la luz de la luna,
de aquel
olor de amor
exasperado,
hundido en la fragancia,
solió
del limonero el amarillo,
desde su planetario
bajaron a la tierra los limones.
Tierna mercadería!
Se llenaron las costas,
los mercados,
de luz, de oro
silvestre,
y abrimos
dos mitades
de milagro,
ácido congelado
que corría
desde los hemisferios
de una estrella,
y el licor más profundo
de la naturaleza,
intransferible, vivo,
irreductible
nació de la frescura
del limón,
de su casa fragante,
de su ácida, secreta simetría.
En el limón cortaron
los cuchillos
una pequeña
catedral,
el ábside escondido
abrió a la luz los ácidos vitrales
y en gotas
resbalaron los topacios,
los altares,
la fresca arquitectura.
Así, cuando tu mano
empuña el hemisferio
del cortado
limón sobre tu plato
un universo de oro
derramaste,
una
copa amarilla
con milagros,
uno de los pezones olorosos
del pecho de la tierra,
el rayo de la luz que se hizo fruta,
el fuego diminuto de un planeta.
English translation by Margaret Sayers Peden:
Ode to the Lemon
From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its plantarium
lemons descended to the earth.
Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.
Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.
So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth’s breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit,
the minute fire of a planet.
Source of the text - Pablo Neruda, Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda, translated with an introduction by Margaret Sayers Peden. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp. 324-327.
Bourguignomicon: Lemonawe. Neruda portrays the harvesting, opening, carving & squeezing of a lemon as heavenly, churchlike, acidic & worthy of our attention.
Friday, January 7, 2011
"RE:Definition" by Talib Kweli and Mos Def
RE:DEFINITION
[Chorus]
One two three, Mos Def and Talib Kweli
We came to rock it on to the tip-top
Best alliance in hip-hop, wayohh
I said, one, two, three, Black Star shine eternally
We came to rock it on to the tip-top
And Hi-Tek make the beat drop, wayohh
[Talib Kweli]
RE:DEFinition, turning your play into a tragedy
Exhibit level degree on the mic, passionately
Niggas is sweet, so I bet if I bit I'd get a cavity
Livin to get high, you ain't flyer than gravity
We Die Hard like the battery done in the back of me by the mad MC
Who think imitation is the highest form of flattery, actually
Don't be mad at me, I had to be the one to break it to you
You get kicked into obscurity like judo--no, Menudo
'Cause you pseudo, tryin to compete with reality like Xerox
Towards destruction you spiraling like hairlocks, wipe them teardrops
Chasing stars in your eyes, playing games with your lives
Now the wives is widows soakin up pillows, weepin like willows
Still mo' blacks is dyin, kids ain't livin, they tryin
"How to Make a Slave" by Willie Lynch is still applyin
Regardless, the Mos is one of my closest partners
Rockin ever since before Prince was called The Artist
Rockin before Funkmaster Flex was rockin Starter
When 'Pac and Biggie was still cool, before they was martyrs
Life or death, if I'm choosin, with every breath I'm enhancin
Stop, there comes a time when you can't run
[Mos Def]
What, lyrically handsome, call collect a king's ransom
Jams I write soon become the ghetto anthem
Way out like Bruce Wayne's mansion, move like a phantom
You'll talk about me to your grandsons
Cats who claimin they hard be mad fag
So I run through 'em like flood water through sandbags
Competition is mad, what I got, they can't have
Sinkin they ship like Moby Dick did Ahab
Son, I'm way past the minimum, enter a millennium
Where rap stars hold a gat to your back like Palestinians
Ancient Abyssinia, shorn a horn of Gideon
Official b-boy gentlemen won't turn off at the interim
Born inside the winter wind, day after December 10
These simpletons, they mentionin the synonym for feminine
Sweeter than some cinnamon in Danish rings by Entenmann's
Rush up on adrenaline, they get they asses sent to them
(Gentlemen) you got a tenement, well then assemble it
Leave your unit tremblin like herds of movin elephant
Intelligent embellishment, follow for your element
From Flatbush settlement, skin posseses melanin
Hotter than tales of crack peddlin, makin 'em WOOP
Like blue gelatin, swing like Duke Ellington
Broader than Barrington Levy, believe me
The hot Apache red who burnt down your chief teepee
You see me?
One two three, Mos Def and Talib Kweli
We came to rock it on to the tip-top
Best alliance in hip-hop, wayohh
I said, one, two, three, Black Star shine eternally
We came to rock it on to the tip-top
Because we rulin hip-hop, yes we is rulin hip-hop
Talib Kweli is rulin hip-hop
Say we Black Star we rule hip-hop-ah-ahh-ah-ahh-ahh
Whoahhhh!
Source of the text - The Anthology of Rap, edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 661-663.
Bourguignomicon: Juicy assonance. A few unspeakably great lines [flood water through sandbags! intelligent embellishment!] lay on a bed of self-introduction.
[Chorus]
One two three, Mos Def and Talib Kweli
We came to rock it on to the tip-top
Best alliance in hip-hop, wayohh
I said, one, two, three, Black Star shine eternally
We came to rock it on to the tip-top
And Hi-Tek make the beat drop, wayohh
[Talib Kweli]
RE:DEFinition, turning your play into a tragedy
Exhibit level degree on the mic, passionately
Niggas is sweet, so I bet if I bit I'd get a cavity
Livin to get high, you ain't flyer than gravity
We Die Hard like the battery done in the back of me by the mad MC
Who think imitation is the highest form of flattery, actually
Don't be mad at me, I had to be the one to break it to you
You get kicked into obscurity like judo--no, Menudo
'Cause you pseudo, tryin to compete with reality like Xerox
Towards destruction you spiraling like hairlocks, wipe them teardrops
Chasing stars in your eyes, playing games with your lives
Now the wives is widows soakin up pillows, weepin like willows
Still mo' blacks is dyin, kids ain't livin, they tryin
"How to Make a Slave" by Willie Lynch is still applyin
Regardless, the Mos is one of my closest partners
Rockin ever since before Prince was called The Artist
Rockin before Funkmaster Flex was rockin Starter
When 'Pac and Biggie was still cool, before they was martyrs
Life or death, if I'm choosin, with every breath I'm enhancin
Stop, there comes a time when you can't run
[Mos Def]
What, lyrically handsome, call collect a king's ransom
Jams I write soon become the ghetto anthem
Way out like Bruce Wayne's mansion, move like a phantom
You'll talk about me to your grandsons
Cats who claimin they hard be mad fag
So I run through 'em like flood water through sandbags
Competition is mad, what I got, they can't have
Sinkin they ship like Moby Dick did Ahab
Son, I'm way past the minimum, enter a millennium
Where rap stars hold a gat to your back like Palestinians
Ancient Abyssinia, shorn a horn of Gideon
Official b-boy gentlemen won't turn off at the interim
Born inside the winter wind, day after December 10
These simpletons, they mentionin the synonym for feminine
Sweeter than some cinnamon in Danish rings by Entenmann's
Rush up on adrenaline, they get they asses sent to them
(Gentlemen) you got a tenement, well then assemble it
Leave your unit tremblin like herds of movin elephant
Intelligent embellishment, follow for your element
From Flatbush settlement, skin posseses melanin
Hotter than tales of crack peddlin, makin 'em WOOP
Like blue gelatin, swing like Duke Ellington
Broader than Barrington Levy, believe me
The hot Apache red who burnt down your chief teepee
You see me?
One two three, Mos Def and Talib Kweli
We came to rock it on to the tip-top
Best alliance in hip-hop, wayohh
I said, one, two, three, Black Star shine eternally
We came to rock it on to the tip-top
Because we rulin hip-hop, yes we is rulin hip-hop
Talib Kweli is rulin hip-hop
Say we Black Star we rule hip-hop-ah-ahh-ah-ahh-ahh
Whoahhhh!
Source of the text - The Anthology of Rap, edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 661-663.
Bourguignomicon: Juicy assonance. A few unspeakably great lines [flood water through sandbags! intelligent embellishment!] lay on a bed of self-introduction.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
from "STUDYING HUNGER" by Bernadette Mayer
Bourguignomicon: This syncopated Sapphic-sonic aria cleaves a fine line between wholeness & division in love, & between true thought & artifice of thought.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
"Invocation" by Ann Lauterbach
INVOCATION
Speak, Mistress Quaker, a parable waits from which
blessings issue, conditionally, as in a hunt, a possible hearing
wherein the manifest flirts, beguiling, almost at home.
Speak on, Troubled Specter, as in a calm
carefree silence whose message embraces its
quick. Seed that, so
the trail is viable, literal, glad
as in love's timing: tick-tock luck.
A siege of incipient cures! A brevity so enhanced
the Pilgrim finds her way along the path of red berries
through the wild into the dilated Spot where following ends and begins
and ends again. You were in a tale, a choice you had not made,
whose dim constellation gathers dew on the sleeve of hours,
the iteration of just cause, saving one against the others, as in a court.
Be kind, Mistress of Woes, Hooligan of Ages. Be a Treaty we sign.
Chafe against brittle nudity, swallow the excellent potion, remain among thieves.
Remain among thieves, steal Advent from avarice, dark from idiot sight.
to Bernadette Mayer
Source of the text - Lauterbach, Ann. On a Stair. New York: Penguin Books, 1997, p. 85.
Bourguignomicon: As if spoken by high priestess to goddess commissioning new work from a sacred Spot, the poem commands truth then peace then Christlikeness.
Speak, Mistress Quaker, a parable waits from which
blessings issue, conditionally, as in a hunt, a possible hearing
wherein the manifest flirts, beguiling, almost at home.
Speak on, Troubled Specter, as in a calm
carefree silence whose message embraces its
quick. Seed that, so
the trail is viable, literal, glad
as in love's timing: tick-tock luck.
A siege of incipient cures! A brevity so enhanced
the Pilgrim finds her way along the path of red berries
through the wild into the dilated Spot where following ends and begins
and ends again. You were in a tale, a choice you had not made,
whose dim constellation gathers dew on the sleeve of hours,
the iteration of just cause, saving one against the others, as in a court.
Be kind, Mistress of Woes, Hooligan of Ages. Be a Treaty we sign.
Chafe against brittle nudity, swallow the excellent potion, remain among thieves.
Remain among thieves, steal Advent from avarice, dark from idiot sight.
to Bernadette Mayer
Source of the text - Lauterbach, Ann. On a Stair. New York: Penguin Books, 1997, p. 85.
Bourguignomicon: As if spoken by high priestess to goddess commissioning new work from a sacred Spot, the poem commands truth then peace then Christlikeness.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
"Truth" by Geoffrey Chaucer
Truth
Or “Balade de bon conseyl”1
Flee fro the prees,° and dwelle with soothfastnesse,° crowd / truthfulness
Suffyse unto thy thing,2 though it be smal;
For hord hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse,3
Prees hath envye, and wele blent° overal; prosperity blinds
Savour no more than thee bihove shal;° is good for you
Rule wel thyself, that other folk canst rede;° advise
And trouthe shal delivere,° it is no drede.° set (you) free / fear
Tempest thee° nought al crooked to redresse,° Trouble yourself / put to rights
Bewar therfore to sporne° ageyns an al;° kick / an awl (a pointed tool)
Stryve nat, as doth the crokke° with the wal. piece of (breakable) crockery
Daunte° thyself, that dauntest otheres dede;° Control / the deeds of others
And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.
That thee° is sent, receyve in buxumnesse,° That which to you / humility
The wrastling for this world axeth° a fal. asks for
Here is noon hoom,° her nis° but wildernesse. not (your) home / is nothing
Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste,° out of thy stal! beast
Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al;° for everything
Hold the hye° wey, and lat thy gost° thee lede, high, main / spirit
And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.
Therfore, thou Vache,6 leve° thyn old wrecchednesse;° cease / misery
Unto the world leve now to be thral;° slave
Crye him mercy,° that of his hye goodnesse for mercy from him (i.e., God)
Made thee of nought,° and in especial from nothing
Draw unto him, and prey in general
For thee, and eek for other,° hevenlich mede;° also for others / heavenly reward
And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.
Notes:
1. “Ballad of good counsel”
2. Let your own possessions be enough for you. (This was a literary and philosophical commonplace.)
3. For hoarding (greed) brings about hate, and advancement (social and professional ambition causes) insecurity.
4. In trust of her who turns like a sphere. (The allusion is to the goddess Fortune and her revolving wheel.)
5. The “envoy” (in French, “a thing sent,” i.e., a letter) is a coda to the poem that traditionally sends it off to a prince . . . or alternatively to a lady.
6. Sir Philip de la Vache was a friend and associate of Chaucer’s who was temporarily out of favor during the late 1380s, at the time Chaucer may have written a version of this poem: the word “vache” also means “cow” in French, linking the envoy to the pattern of reference in line 18.
Source of the text – Chaucer, Geoffrey. Dream Visions and Other Poems, edited by Kathryn L. Lynch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007, pp. 219-220.
TJB: Deadpan epigram. In aphorisms & tightly-locked rime royal, this epistle, from a wealthy civil servant, counsels patience, modesty, & prayer.
Or “Balade de bon conseyl”1
Flee fro the prees,° and dwelle with soothfastnesse,° crowd / truthfulness
Suffyse unto thy thing,2 though it be smal;
For hord hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse,3
Prees hath envye, and wele blent° overal; prosperity blinds
Savour no more than thee bihove shal;° is good for you
Rule wel thyself, that other folk canst rede;° advise
And trouthe shal delivere,° it is no drede.° set (you) free / fear
Tempest thee° nought al crooked to redresse,° Trouble yourself / put to rights
In trust of hir that turneth as a bal.4
Moche wele stant° in litel besynesse;° Great well-being rests / activityBewar therfore to sporne° ageyns an al;° kick / an awl (a pointed tool)
Stryve nat, as doth the crokke° with the wal. piece of (breakable) crockery
Daunte° thyself, that dauntest otheres dede;° Control / the deeds of others
And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.
That thee° is sent, receyve in buxumnesse,° That which to you / humility
The wrastling for this world axeth° a fal. asks for
Here is noon hoom,° her nis° but wildernesse. not (your) home / is nothing
Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste,° out of thy stal! beast
Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al;° for everything
Hold the hye° wey, and lat thy gost° thee lede, high, main / spirit
And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.
Envoy5
Therfore, thou Vache,6 leve° thyn old wrecchednesse;° cease / misery
Unto the world leve now to be thral;° slave
Crye him mercy,° that of his hye goodnesse for mercy from him (i.e., God)
Made thee of nought,° and in especial from nothing
Draw unto him, and prey in general
For thee, and eek for other,° hevenlich mede;° also for others / heavenly reward
And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.
Notes:
1. “Ballad of good counsel”
2. Let your own possessions be enough for you. (This was a literary and philosophical commonplace.)
3. For hoarding (greed) brings about hate, and advancement (social and professional ambition causes) insecurity.
4. In trust of her who turns like a sphere. (The allusion is to the goddess Fortune and her revolving wheel.)
5. The “envoy” (in French, “a thing sent,” i.e., a letter) is a coda to the poem that traditionally sends it off to a prince . . . or alternatively to a lady.
6. Sir Philip de la Vache was a friend and associate of Chaucer’s who was temporarily out of favor during the late 1380s, at the time Chaucer may have written a version of this poem: the word “vache” also means “cow” in French, linking the envoy to the pattern of reference in line 18.
Source of the text – Chaucer, Geoffrey. Dream Visions and Other Poems, edited by Kathryn L. Lynch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007, pp. 219-220.
TJB: Deadpan epigram. In aphorisms & tightly-locked rime royal, this epistle, from a wealthy civil servant, counsels patience, modesty, & prayer.
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