THE KISS

Before you kissed me only winds of heaven
Had kissed me, and the tenderness of rain—
Now you have come, how can I care for kisses
Like theirs again?
I sought the sea, she sent her winds to meet me,
They surged about me singing of the south—
I turned my head away to keep still holy
Your kiss upon my mouth.
And swift sweet rains of shining April weather
Found not my lips where living kisses are;
I bowed my head lest they put out my glory
As rain puts out a star.
I am my love's and he is mine forever,
Sealed with a seal and safe forevermore—
Think you that I could let a beggar enter
Where a king stood before?

Sara Teasdale

Here is Sara Teasdale struggling again with an old dilemma.

NEW LOVE AND OLD

In my heart the old love
Struggled with the new;
It was ghostly waking
All night thru.
Dear things, kind things,
That my old love said,
Ranged themselves reproachfully
Round my bed.
But I could not heed them,
For I seemed to see
The eyes of my new love
Fixed on me.
Old love, old love,
How can I be true?
Shall I be faithless to myself
Or to you?

Sara Teasdale

JOY

I am wild, I will sing to the trees,
I will sing to the stars in the sky,
I love, I am loved, he is mine,
Now at last I can die!
I am sandaled with wind and with flame,
I have heart-fire and singing to give,
I can tread on the grass or the stars,
Now at last I can live!

Sara Teasdale

THE RIVER

I came from the sunny valleys
And sought for the open sea,
For I thought in its gray expanses
My peace would come to me.
I came at last to the ocean
And found it wild and black,
And I cried to the windless valleys,
"Be kind and take me back!"
But the thirsty tide ran inland,
And the salt waves drank of me,
And I who was fresh as the rainfall
Am bitter as the sea.

Sara Teasdale

SONG

Love me with your whole heart
Or give no love to me,
Half-love is a poor thing,
Neither bond nor free.
You must love me gladly
Soul and body too,
Or else find a new love,
And goodbye to you.

Sara Teasdale

I commented here two days ago that Sara Teasdale ended her own life.

She had contemplated suicide several times previously and she wrote this poem on one of those occasions.

TESTAMENT

I said, "I will take my life
And throw it away;
I who was fire and song
Will turn to clay."
"I will lie no more in the night
With shaken breath,
I will toss my heart in the air
To be caught by Death."
But out of the night I heard,
Like the inland sound of the sea,
The hushed and terrible sob
Of all humanity.
Then I said, "Oh who am I
To scorn God to his face?
I will bow my head and stay
And suffer with my race."

Sara Teasdale

Yesterday's poem had Sara Teasdale harking back to a previous love.

Her attitude is reflected again in this short poem.

THE FLIGHT

Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow,
Lift me up in your love as a light wind lifts a swallow,
Let our flight be far in sun or windy rain—
But what if I heard my first love calling me again?
Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam,
Take me far away to the hills that hide your home;
Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door—
But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?

But, if you DO like them, ENJOY!

IN A SUBWAY STATION

After a year I came again to the place;
The tireless lights and the reverberation,
The angry thunder of trains that burrow the ground,
The hunted, hurrying people were still the same—
But oh, another man beside me and not you!
Another voice and other eyes in mine!
And suddenly I turned and saw again
The gleaming curve of tracks, the bridge above—
They were burned deep into my heart before,
The night I watched them to avoid your eyes,
When you were saying, "Oh, look up at me!"
When you were saying, "Will you never love me?"
And when I answered with a lie. Oh then
You dropped your eyes. I felt your utter pain.
I would have died to say the truth to you.
After a year I came again to the place—
The hunted hurrying people were still the same....

Sara Teasdale

Today, the second poem by Conrad Aiken, which has been set to music by a number of composers, including Leonard Bernstein and Henry Cowell.

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

Conrad Aiken

For the next two days I shall be posting here poems by Conrad Potter Aiken (1889–1973), who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author.

According to local legend, Aiken wished to have his tombstone fashioned in the shape of a bench as an invitation to visitors to stop and enjoy a martini at his grave. Its inscriptions read "Give my love to the world," and "Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown."

All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.

Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head.

Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!—
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.

Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!—
But goldenrod and daisies wither,
And over them blows autumn rain,
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.

Conrad Aiken

Here is another poem by Deborah Agar

Gauguin

NIGHT: SAN FRANCISCO

Rain drenches the patio stones.
All night was spent waiting
for an earthquake, and instead

water stains sand with its pink foam.
Yesterday’s steps fill in with gray crabs.
Baritone of a fog horn. A misty light

warns tankers, which block the green
after-sunset flash. My lover’s voice calls
to others in his restless sleep.

The venetian blinds slice streetlights,
light coils around my waist and my lover’s neck,
dividing him into hundredths.

Would these fractions make me happier?
My hands twist into a crocodile.
My index finger the tooth that bites

Gauguin’s Tahiti. My thumb is the head feather
of a California quail crying chi-ca-go.
Night barely continues. Is this the building

staying still? Is this hand the scorpion
that will do us in? A few of Irving Street’s
sycamores will blue the air come morning.

I am returning today to more serious poetry with this by a contemporary American writer, Deborah Ager.

She has edited and published "32 Poems" (a poetry magazine) since 2003.

MORNING


We are what we repeatedly do.
—Aristotle


You know how it is waking
from a dream certain you can fly
and that someone, long gone, returned

and you are filled with longing,
for a brief moment, to drive off
the road and feel nothing

or to see the loved one and feel
everything. Perhaps one morning,
taking brush to hair you’ll wonder

how much of your life you’ve spent
at this task or signing your name
or rising in fog in near darkness

to ready for work. Day begins
with other people’s needs first
and your thoughts disperse like breath.

In the in-between hour, the solitary hour,
before day begins all the world
gradually reappears car by car.

Deborah Ager

Here is a verse from one of the most prolific poets - Anon

THE FROG

What a wonderful bird the frog are--
When he sit, he stand almost.
When he hop, he fly almost.
He ain't got no sense hardly.
He ain't got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got--almost.

Note: The frog is an amphibian in the order Anura (meaning "tail-less" from Greek an-, without + oura, tail). Wikipedia.

I am leaving Aesop for the moment, but not yet returning to serious poetry.

Leave it to the experts!

LORD FINCHLEY

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.

ONE day the Countrymen noticed that the Mountains were in labour; smoke came out of their summits, the earth was quaking at their feet, trees were crashing, and huge rocks were tumbling.

They felt sure that something horrible was going to happen. They all gathered together in one place to see what terrible thing this could be.

They waited and they waited, but nothing came.

At last there was a still more violent earthquake, and a huge gap appeared in the side of the Mountains.

They all fell down upon their knees and waited.

At last, and at last, a teeny, tiny mouse poked its little head and bristles out of the gap and came running down towards them, and ever after they used to say:

“MUCH OUTCRY, LITTLE OUTCOME.”

BELLING THE CAT

LONG ago, the mice had a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat.

Some said this, and some said that; but at last a young mouse got up and said he had a proposal to make, which he thought would meet the case.

“You will all agree,” said he, “that our chief danger consists in the sly and treacherous manner in which the enemy approaches us. Now, if we could receive some signal of her approach, we could easily escape from her. I venture, therefore, to propose that a small bell be procured, and attached by a ribbon round the neck of the Cat. By this means we should always know when she was about, and could easily retire while she was in the neighbourhood.”

This proposal met with general applause, until an old mouse got up and said:

“That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat?”

The mice looked at one another and nobody spoke. Then the old mouse said:

“IT IS EASY TO PROPOSE IMPOSSIBLE REMEDIES.”

THE FROG AND THE OX

“OH Father,” said a little Frog to the big one sitting by the side of a pool, “I have seen such a terrible monster! It was as big as a mountain, with horns on its head, and a long tail, and it had hoofs divided in two.”

“Tush, child, tush,” said the old Frog, “that was only Farmer White’s Ox. It isn’t so big either; he may be a little bit taller than me, but I could easily make myself quite as broad; just you see.”

So he blew himself out, and blew himself out, and blew himself out. “Was he as big as that?” asked he.

“Oh, much bigger than that,” said the young Frog.

Again the old one blew himself out, and asked the young one if the Ox was as big as that.

“Bigger, father, bigger,” was the reply.

So the Frog took a deep breath, and blew and blew and blew, and swelled and swelled and swelled.

And then he said: “I’m sure the Ox is not as big as—”

But at this moment he BURST.

“SELF-CONCEIT MAY LEAD TO SELF-DESTRUCTION"

THE FOX AND THE CROW

A FOX once saw a Crow fly off with a piece of cheese in its beak and settle on a branch of a tree.

“That’s for me, as I am a Fox,” said Master Reynard, and he walked up to the foot of the tree.

“Good-day, Mistress Crow,” he cried. “How well you are looking today: how glossy your feathers; how bright your eye. I feel sure your voice must surpass that of other birds, just as your figure does; let me hear but one song from you that I may greet you as the Queen of Birds.”

The Crow lifted up her head and began to caw her best, but the moment she opened her mouth the piece of cheese fell to the ground, only to be snapped up by Master Fox.

“That will do,” said he. “That was all I wanted. In exchange for your cheese I will give you a piece of advice for the future—

“DO NOT TRUST FLATTERERS.”

THE BALD MAN AND THE FLY

THERE was once a Bald Man who sat down after work on a hot summer’s day.

A Fly came up and kept buzzing about his bald pate, and stinging him from time to time.

The Man aimed a blow at his little enemy, but—whack—his palm came on his head instead.

Again the Fly tormented him, but this time the Man was wiser and said:

“YOU WILL ONLY INJURE YOURSELF IF YOU TAKE NOTICE OF DESPICABLE ENEMIES.”

I am back after a short break with prose, not poetry, and this little moral story from Aesop's Fables.

It is just as relevant today as when it was written in the 6th century B.C.

THE WOLF AND THE LAMB

ONCE upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a hillside when, looking up, what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to drink a little lower down.

“There’s my supper,” thought he, “if only I can find some excuse to seize it.”

Then he called out to the Lamb, “How dare you muddle the water from which I am drinking?”

“Nay, master, nay,” said Lambikin; “if the water be muddy up there, I cannot be the cause of it, for it runs down from you to me.”

“Well, then,” said the Wolf, “why did you call me bad names this time last year?”

“That cannot be,” said the Lamb; “I am only six months old.”

“I don’t care,” snarled the Wolf; “if it was not you it was your father;” and with that he rushed upon the poor little Lamb and—

WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA—

ate her all up. But before she died she gasped out—

“ANY EXCUSE WILL SERVE A TYRANT."

THE BRITISH

We are a people living in shells and moving
Crablike; reticent, awkward, deeply suspicious;
Watching the world from a corner of half-closed eyelids,
Afraid lest someone show that he hates or loves us,
Afraid lest someone weep in the railway train.

We are coiled and clenched like a foetus clad in armour.
We hold our hearts for fear they fly like eagles.
We grasp our tongues for fear they cry like trumpets.
We listen to our own footsteps. We look both ways
Before we cross the silent empty road.

We are a people easily made uneasy,
Especially wary of praise, of passion, of scarlet
Cloaks, of gesturing hands, of the smiling stranger
In the alien hat who talks to all or the other
In the unfamiliar coat who talks to none.

We are afraid of too-cold thought or too-hot
Blood, of the opening of long-shut shafts or cupboards,
Of light in caves, of X-rays, probes, unclothing
Of emotion, intolerable revelation
Of lust in the light, of love in the palm of the hand.

We are afraid of, one day on a sunny morning,
Meeting ourselves or another without the usual
Outer sheath, the comfortable conversation,
And saying all, all, all we did not mean to,
All, all, all we did not know we meant.

A.S.J. Tessimond

Is it true?

How do others see us?

NOTE: I am away for the weekend - so there will be no more posts here until Monday.

MEETING

Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.

We then, at first encounter, should be silent;
Not court the cortex but the epidermis;
Not work from inside out but outside in;
Discover each other's flesh, its scent and texture;
Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends,
The hands, the hair - before the inept lips open.

Instead of which we are resonant, explicit.
Our words like windows intercept our meaning.
Our four eyes fence and flinch and awkwardly
Wince into shadow, slide oblique to ambush.
Hands stir, retract. The pulse is insulated.
Blood is turned inwards, lonely; skin unhappy...
While always under all, but interrupted,
Antennae stretch... waver... and almost... touch.

A.S.J. Tessimond

How often have you been prepared to open the tenth door to someone?

UNLYRIC LOVE SONG

It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first:
To offer you now at last my least and my worst:
Minor, absurd preserves,
The shell's end-curves,
A document kept at the back of a drawer,
A tin hidden under the floor,
Recalcitrant prides and hesitations:
To pile them carefully in a desparate oblation
And say to you "quickly! turn them
Once over and burn them".

Now I (no communist, heaven knows!
Who have kept as my dearest right to close
My tenth door after I've opened nine to the world,
To unfold nine sepals holding one hard-furled)
Shall - or shall try to - offer to you
A communism of two...

See, entry's yours;
Here, the last door!

A.S.J. Tessimond

This trumpeter of nothingness, employed
To keep our reason dull and null and void.
This man of wind and froth and flux will sell
The wares of any who reward him well.
Praising whatever he is paid to praise,
He hunts for ever-newer, smarter ways
To make the gilt seen gold; the shoddy, silk;
To cheat us legally; to bluff and bilk
By methods which no jury can prevent
Because the law's not broken, only bent.

This mind for hire, this mental prostitute
Can tell the half-lie hardest to refute;
Knows how to hide an inconvenient fact
And when to leave a doubtful claim unbacked;
Manipulates the truth but not too much,
And if his patter needs the Human Touch,
Skillfully artless, artlessly naive,
Wears his convenient heart upon his sleeve.

He uses words that once were strong and fine,
Primal as sun and moon and bread and wine,
True, honourable, honoured, clear and keen,
And leaves them shabby, worn, diminished, mean
He takes ideas and trains them to engage
In the long little wars big combines wage...
He keeps his logic loose, his feelings flimsy;
Turns eloquence to cant and wit to whimsy;
Trims language till it fits his clients, pattern
And style's a glossy tart or limping slattern.

He studies our defences, finds the cracks
And where the wall is weak or worn, attacks.
lie finds the fear that's deep, the wound that's tender,
And mastered, outmanouevered, we surrender.
We who have tried to choose accept his choice
And tired succumb to his untiring voice.
The dripping tap makes even granite soften
We trust the brand-name we have heard so often
And join the queue of sheep that flock to buy;
We fools who know our folly, you and I.

A.S.J. Tessimond

BLACK MORNING LOVESONG

In love's dances, in love's dances
One retreats and one advances,
One grows warmer and one colder,
One more hesitant, one bolder.
One gives what the other needed
Once, or will need, now unheeded.
One is clenched, compact, ingrowing
While the other's melting, flowing.
One is smiling and concealing
While the other's asking kneeling.
One is arguing or sleeping
While the other's weeping, weeping.

And the question finds no answer
And the tune misleads the dancer
And the lost look finds no other
And the lost hand finds no brother
And the word is left unspoken
Till the theme and thread are broken.

When shall these divisions alter?
Echo's answer seems to falter:
'Oh the unperplexed, unvexed time
Next time...one day...one day...next time!'

A.S.J. Tessimond

I am returning to one of my favourite poets, A.S.J. Tessimond, with these introspective reflections.

ANY MAN SPEAKS

I, after difficult entry through my mother's blood
And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world);
I, intricate, easily unshipped, untracked, unaligned;
Cut off in my communications; stammering; speaking
A dialect shared by you, but not you and you;
I, strangely undeft, bereft; I searching always
For my lost rib (clothed in laughter yet understanding)
To come round the corner of Wardour Street into the Square
Or to signal across the Park and share my bed;
I, focus in night for star-sent beams of light,
I, fulcrum of levers whose end I cannot see...
Have this one deftness - that I admit undeftness:
Know that the stars are far, the levers long:
Can understand my unstrength.

A.S.J. Tessimond

Today I am moving away from China and featuring poems by two Japanese Zen Buddhist monks.

First something from Monk Sougi (1421-1502). It is in the form of a 'renga', where the first two lines give a hint, a "link" to the meaning, which is developed in the final three lines.

Hito wo yume to ya
omoishiruramu;
sumi suteshi,
sono wa kochou no
yadori nite

That man's life is but a dream -
is what we now come to know.

Its house abandoned,
the garden has become home
to butterflies.

The second poem is by Monk Ryokan (1758-1831}.

Yo no naka wa
nani ni tatoen
yamabiko no
kotauru koe no
munashiki ga goto

Our life in this world -
to what shall I compare it?

It is like an echo
resounding through the mountains
and off into the empty sky.

(The English translations are by Steven D. Carter)