from "The Conference of the Birds" by Farid ud Din Attar

from The Conference of the Birds

‘A lover’, said the hoopoe, now their guide,

‘Is one in whom all thoughts of Self have died;

Those who renounce the Self deserve that name;

Righteous or sinful, they are all the same!

Your heart is thwarted by the Self’s control;

Destroy its hold on you and reach your goal.

Give up this hindrance, give up mortal sight,

For only then can you approach the light.

If you are told: “Renounce our Faith,” obey!

The Self and Faith must both be tossed away;

Blasphemers call such action blasphemy –

Tell them that love exceeds mere piety.

Love has no time for blasphemy or faith,

Nor lovers for the Self, that feeble wraith.

They burn all that they own, unmoved they feel

Against their skin the torturer’s sharp steel.

Heart’s blood and bitter pain belong to love,

And tales of problems no one can remove;

Cupbearer, fill the bowl with blood, not wine –

And if you lack the heart’s rich blood take mine.

Love thrives on inextinguishable pain,

Which tears the soul, then knits the threads again.

A mote of love exceeds all bounds; it gives

The vital essence to whatever lives.

But where love thrives, there pain is always found;

Angels alone escape this weary round –

They love without that savage agony

Which is reserved for vexed humanity.

Islam and blasphemy have both been passed

By those who set out on love’s path at last;

Love will direct you to Dame Poverty,

And she will show the way to Blasphemy.

When neither Blasphemy nor Faith remain,

The body and the Self have both been slain;

Then the fierce fortitude the Way will ask

Is yours, and you are worthy of our task.

Begin the journey without fear; be calm;

Forget what is and what is not Islam;

Put childish dread aside – like heroes meet

The hundred problems which you must defeat.’

Source of the text – Farid ud Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds, translated by Afkham Barbandi and Dick Davis. London: Penguin Books, 1984, p. 56-57.

TJB: To thine own self be not true. In smooth singsong couplets, the hoopoe bird delivers its argument: love transcends self, blasphemy, & faith.

"Camera Obscura" by Simon Armitage

Camera Obscura

Eight-year-old sitting in Bramhall’s field,

shoes scuffed from kicking a stone,

too young for a key but old enough now

to walk the short mile back from school.

You’ve spied your mother down in the village

crossing the street, purse in her fist.

In her other hand her shopping bag nurses

four ugly potatoes caked in mud,

a boiling of peas, rags of meat, or a tail of fish

in grease-proof paper, the price totted up

in penciled columns of shillings and pence.

How warm must she be in that winter coat?

On Old Mount Road the nearer she gets

the smaller she shrinks, until you reach out

to carry her home on the flat of your hand

or your fingertip, and she doesn’t exist.

Source of the text – Simon Armitage, from Poetry December 2015, vol. CCVII, no. 3, p. 258.

TJB: Riddle-like, packed with details—clues?—the poem has a narrator seeing a past self seeing his mum at a distance, then a lyrical revelation.

"Song of Perfect Propriety" by Dorothy Parker

SONG OF PERFECT PROPRIETY

Oh, I should like to ride the seas,

    A roaring buccaneer;

A cutlass banging at my knees,

    A dirk behind my ear.

And when my captives’ chains would clank

    I’d howl with glee and drink,

And then fling out the quivering plank

    And watch the beggars sink.

I’d like to straddle gory decks,

    And dig in laden sands,

And know the feel of throbbing necks

    Between my knotted hands.

Oh, I should like to strut and curse

    Among my blackguard crew. . . .

But I am writing little verse,

    As little ladies do.

Oh, I should like to dance and laugh

    And pose and preen and sway,

And rip the hearts of men in half,

    And toss the bits away.

I’d like to view the reeling years

    Through unastonished eyes,

And dip my finger-tips in tears,

    And give my smiles for sighs.

I’d stroll beyond the ancient bounds,

    And tap at fastened gates,

And hear the prettiest of sounds—

    The clink of shattered fates.

My slaves I’d like to bind with thongs

    That cut and burn and chill. . . .

But I am writing little songs,

    As little ladies will.

Source of the text – Dorothy Parker, The Collected Poems of Dorothy Parker.  New York: The Modern Library, 1959, p. 56-57.

TJB: Arr, the same joke twice. The poet politely & with musical, stately-homely rhythm, glorifies the lives of pirates, then other, crueler folk.

"Columba aspexit" by Hildegard of Bingen, translated by Peter Dronke

Columba aspexit

[original text in Latin]

Columba aspexit

per cancellos fenestrae,

ubi ante faciem eius

sudando sudavit balsamum

de lucido Maximino.

Calor solis exarsit

et in tenebras resplenduit,

unde gemma surrexit

in edificatione templi

purissimi cordis benivoli.

Iste, turris excelsa

de ligno Libani et cipresso facta,

iacincto et sardio ornata est,

urbs precellens artes

aliorum artificum.

Ipse, velox cervus,

cucurrit ad fontem purissime aque

fluentis de fortissimo lapide,

qui dulcia aromata irrigavit.

O pigmentarii!

qui estis in suavissima viriditate

hortorum regis,

ascendentes in altum

quando sanctum sacrificium

in arietibus perfecistis:

Inter vos fulget hic artifex,

paries templi,

qui desideravit alas aquile,

osculando nutricem Sapientiam

in gloriosa fecunditate

Ecclesie.

O Maximine,

mons et vallis es,

et in utroque alta

edificatio appares,

ubi capricornus

cum elephante exivit,

et Sapientia

in deliciis fuit.

Tu es fortis et suavis

in cerimoniis

et in choruscatione altaris,

ascendens ut fumus aromatum

ad columpnam laudis:

Ubi intercedis pro populo

qui tendit ad speculum lucis,

cui laus est in altis.

[English translation by Peter Dronke]

1a.   The dove peered in

        through the latticed window,

        where before her gaze

        raining, a balm rained down

        from the brightness of Maximinus.

1b.   The sun’s heat blazed

        and streamed into the darkness

        from which blossomed the gem

        —in the building of the temple—

        of the purest generous heart.

2a.   He, the sublime tower

        made of Lebanon’s tree,

        made of cypress,

        is decked with jacinth and sardonyx,

        city that no architect’s skill can match.

2b.   He, the swift hart

        ran up to the fountain

        of purest water

        bubbling from the mightiest stone

        whose moisture made the sweet perfumes flow.

3a.   You perfumers

        who live in the gentlest greenness

        of the king’s gardens,

        you who mount into the heights

        when you have consummated

        the holy sacrifice among the rams,

3b.   Lucent among you

        is this architect, wall of the temple,

        he who longed

        for an eagle’s wings as he kissed

        his foster-mother, Wisdom,

        in Ekklesia’s glorious fecundity!

4a.   Maximinus, you are mountain and valley,

        and in both you appear, a pinnacle,

        where the mountain-goat walked, and the elephant,

        and Wisdom played in her delight.

4b.   You are both brave and gentle;

        in the rites and in the sparkling of the altar

        you mount as a smoke of fragrant spices

        to the column of praise

5.    Where you plead the cause of your people

       who aspire to the mirror of light

       for which there is praise on high.

Source of the text in Latin: Fiona Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age.  New York: Doubleday, 2001, p. 195-197.

Source of the English translation: The Medieval Lyric, Third Edition, edited by Peter Dronke.  Suffolk, England: D.S. Brewer, 1996, p. 76-77.

TJB: 9 ways of looking at a saint. This hagiography-verse uses great moving-image-scenes: the saint as tower, deer, lush mountain, altar-smoke.

"The Tyre" by Simon Armitage

THE TYRE

Just how it came to rest where it rested,

miles out, miles from the last farmhouse even,

was a fair question. Dropped by hurricane

or aeroplane perhaps for some reason,

put down as a cairn or marker, then lost.

Tractor-size, six or seven feet across,

it was sloughed, unconscious, warm to the touch,

its gashed, rhinoceros, sea-lion skin

nursing a gallon of rain in its gut.

Lashed to the planet with grasses and roots,

it had to be cut. Stood up it was drunk

or slugged, wanted nothing more than to slump,

to spiral back to its circle of sleep,

dream another year in its nest of peat.

We bullied it over the moor, drove it,

pushed from the back or turned it from the side,

unspooling a thread in the shape and form

of its tread, in its length and in its line,

rolled its weight through broken walls, felt the shock

when it met with stones, guided its sleepwalk

down to meadows, fields, onto level ground.

There and then we were one connected thing,

five of us, all hands steering a tall ship

or one hand fingering a coin or ring.

Once on the road it picked up pace, free-wheeled,

then moved up through the gears, and wouldn’t give

to shoulder-charges, kicks; resisted force

until to tangle with it would have been

to test bone against engine or machine,

to be dragged in, broken, thrown out again

minus a limb. So we let the thing go,

leaning into the bends and corners,

balanced and centred, riding the camber,

carried away with its own momentum.

We pictured an incident up ahead:

life carved open, gardens in half, parted,

a man on a motorbike taken down,

a phone-box upended, children erased,

police and an ambulance in attendance,

scuff-marks and the smell of burning rubber,

the tyre itself embedded in a house

or lying in the gutter, playing dead.

But down in the village the tyre was gone,

and not just gone but unseen and unheard of,

not curled like a cat in the graveyard, not

cornered in the playground like a reptile,

or found and kept like a giant fossil.

Not there or anywhere. No trace. Thin air.

Being more in tune with the feel of things

than science and facts, we knew that the tyre

had travelled too fast for its size and mass,

and broken through some barrier of speed,

outrun the act of being driven, steered,

and at that moment gone beyond itself

towards some other sphere, and disappeared.

Source of the text – Simon Armitage, The Shout: Selected Poems.  Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2005, p. 67-68.

TJB: Unsteerable. Like a Frost woodpile or jar in Tennessee only cut loose, moved, then disappearing. This rolling story chews on its many verbs.

"Loco" by Deborah Slicer

Loco

If titmouse wags her song at me again like a scolding finger—you-loco—

          I aim to pop her,

then lie down among the cows and rusting tractors along the creekside,

          frigid,

while the bull soliloquizes like widower Macbeth.

          For the milk of human kindness doth flow from mine ears

and I have murderous thoughts

          against myself

because I didn’t grieve you better.

If that same murder of crows bobs the back field in their blackcoats

          like a convention of metaphysicians

muttering Kant-kant-kant-kant,

          I’ll give them one barrel of heaven, the other hell.

My buck fawn’s back legs yodel through the early morning plenary,

          my buck fawn runs their arguments reductio

loco. His tongue shinnies up their one-eyed sunflower stalks,

          his back talk pins their heavy-headed arguments to the ground.

Come winter I’ll eat my own hands before those oily axioms touch my mouth.

If bobwhite calls her lover’s name in her sleep at dusk,

          reminding me, again, I’m loverless, lonesome

as a criminal past, well, then—

          what? Make another meal of self-pity?

Oh World, blow your noise through the keyhole of me,

          so when Night walks by on its tip-toes with its ear to the wall of my bedroom

let it hear the loco-commotion

          of the bus stop at five-fifteen on any Friday afternoon.

I have a crazy angel in my throat.

          She grabs sorrow by the ankles, swings it round,

round in my mouth,

          until it’s a tale of childish fury,

signifying the best it can—

          a fluster of wings in the chimney, ashes sassing.

Blood bird,

          my bird, she eats the ashes;

these ashes are enough.

Source of the text – Deborah Slicer, the white calf kicks.  Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press, 2003, p. 3-4.

TJB: Angry at birds. The long-lined semi-sonnet, with Shakespearean-natural images, threatens violence of the little bird-poems the poet invokes.

"Silver Star" by Richard Hugo

Silver Star

This is the final resting place for engines,
farm equipment and that rare, never more
than occasional man. Population:
17. Altitude: unknown. For no
good reason you can guess, the woman
in the local store is kind. Old steam trains
have been rusting here so long, you feel
the urge to oil them, to lay new track, to start
the west again. The Jefferson
drifts by in no great hurry on its way
to wed the Madison, to be a tributary
to the ultimately dirty brown Missouri.
This town supports your need to run alone.

What if you’d lived here young, gone full of fear
to that stark brick school, the cruel teacher
supported by your guardian? Think well
of the day you ran away to Whitehall.
Think evil of the cop who found you starving
and returned you, siren open, to the house
you cannot find today. You question
everyone you see.  The answer comes back wrong.
There was no house.  They never heard your name.

When you leave here, leave in a flashy car
and wave goodbye.  You are a stranger
every day.  Let the engines and the farm
equipment die, and know that rivers
end and never end, lose and never lose
their famous names.  What if your first girl
ended certain she was animal, barking
at the aides and licking floors?  You know
you have no answers.  The empty school
burns red in heavy snow.


Source of the text – Richard Hugo, Selected Poems.  New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979, p. 87-88.

TJB: Timor mortis conturbat this tiny town. Using details visible from the highway, the poet imagines the reader imagining youth in this hamlet.

"View of Delft" by Carol Ann Davis

View of Delft

The human figures

seem to match in vacancy

the waiting boat,

its scrubbed planks and face.

Like an afterthought, the water

cuts through the picture below-meridian,

shines at a slant like a knife on a cutting board—

     from this view,

one can guess how the customs house door

arches into total darkness, which is to say

fine buildings are reflected

in the brown water, nothing more

than a shallow swath

catching imaginary light

from the sky;

                      the city floats

between this water

and insubstantial heaven,

the water, between blue shingles of castle

and two nuns—

one thin, one round—

their habits set

against the weight

and business of the wharf,

they must think:

what we are God is not.

Detail on the steeples.

God is not.  Perfect angles.

Source of the text – Carol Ann Davis, Psalm.  Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press, 2007, p. 18.

TJB: Disagree those are nuns or that heaven’s insubstantial. Otherwise, this poem describes some of what’s visible or implied in the masterpiece.

"Penmaen Pool" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Penmaen Pool

For the Visitors’ Book at the Inn

Who long for rest, who look for pleasure
Away from counter, court, or school
O where live well your lease of leisure
But here at, here at Penmaen Pool ?

You’ll dare the Alp ? you’ll dart the skiff ?—
Each sport has here its tackle and tool :
Come, plant the staff by Cadair cliff ;
Come, swing the sculls on Penmaen Pool.

What’s yonder ?—Grizzled Dyphwys dim :
The triple-hummocked Giant’s stool,
Hoar messmate, hobs and nobs with him
To halve the bowl of Penmaen Pool.

And all the landscape under survey,
At tranquil turns, by nature’s rule,
Rides repeated topsyturvy
In frank, in fairy Penmaen Pool.

And Charles’s Wain, the wondrous seven,
And sheep-flock clouds like worlds of wool,
For all they shine so, high in heaven,
Shew brighter shaken in Penmaen Pool.

The Mawddach, how she trips ! though throttled
If floodtide teeming thrills her full,
And mazy sands all water-wattled
Waylay her at ebb, past Penmaen Pool.

But what’s to see in stormy weather,
When grey showers gather and gusts are cool ?—
Why, raindrop-roundels looped together
That lace the face of Penmaen Pool.

Then even in weariest wintry hour
Of New Year’s month or surly Yule
Furred snows, charged tuft above tuft, tower
From darksome darksome Penmaen Pool.

And ever, if bound here hardest home,
You’ve parlour-pastime left and (who’ll
Not honour it ?) ale like goldy foam
That frocks an oar in Penmaen Pool.

Then come who pine for peace or pleasure
Away from counter, court, or school,
Spend here your measure of time and treasure
And taste the treats of Penmaen Pool.

Source of the text – Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, now first published, Edited with notes by Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate.  London: Humphrey Milford, 1918.

TJB: Born adman? Perhaps the best poem composed in a guest log, this light verse—intensely alliterated & interrupted—names a litany of features.

"The Loba Addresses the Goddess / or The Poet as Priestess Addresses the Loba-Goddess" by Diane di Prima

THE LOBA ADDRESSES THE GODDESS / OR THE

   POET AS PRIESTESS ADDRESSES THE LOBA-

                                    GODDESS

Is it not in yr service that I wear myself out

running ragged among these hills, driving children

to forgotten movies? In yr service

broom & pen. The monstrous feasts

we serve the others on the outer porch

(within the house there is only rice & salt)

And we wear exhaustion like a painted robe

I & my sisters

wresting the goods from the niggardly

dying fathers

healing each other w / water & bitter herbs

that when we stand naked in the circle of lamps

(beside the small water, in the inner grove)

we show

no blemish, but also no superfluous beauty.

It had burned off in watches of the night.

O Nut, O mantle of stars, we catch at you

lean mournful

ragged triumphant

shaggy as grass

our skins ache of emergence / dark o’ the moon

Source of the text – Diane di Prima, Loba.  New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

TJB: In priestly grandeur & amplifying asides, we hear poetry as hard work, as sacred self-sacrifice. What would the bricklayers or nurses think?