POEMS AND PROSE

HONKY TONK IN CLEVELAND, OHIO

It's a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes.
The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.
The banjo tickles and titters too awful.
The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.
The cartoonists weep in their beer.
Ship riveters talk with their feet
To the feet of floozies under the tables.
A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed snickers:
"I got the blues.
I got the blues.
I got the blues."
And . . . as we said earlier:
The cartoonists weep in their beer.

Carl Sandburg

PASSERS-BY

Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blend
To form the city's afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love.
Records of great wishes slept with,
Held long
And prayed and toiled for. .

Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by.

Carl Sandburg

PALS

TAKE a hold now
On the silver handles here,
Six silver handles,
One for each of his old pals.

Take hold
And lift him down the stairs,
Put him on the rollers
Over the floor of the hearse.

Take him on the last haul,
To the cold straight house,
The level even house,
To the last house of all.

The dead say nothing
And the dead know much
And the dead hold under their tongues
A locked-up story.

Carl Sandburg

THE JUNK MAN

I AM glad God saw Death
And gave Death a job taking care of all who are tired
of living:

When all the wheels in a clock are worn and slow and
the connections loose
And the clock goes on ticking and telling the wrong time
from hour to hour
And people around the house joke about what a bum
clock it is,
How glad the clock is when the big Junk Man drives
his wagon
Up to the house and puts his arms around the clock and
says:
"You don't belong here,
You gotta come
Along with me,"
How glad the clock is then, when it feels the arms of the
Junk Man close around it and carry it away.

Carl Sandburg

I AM the mist, the impalpable mist,
Back of the thing you seek.
My arms are long,
Long as the reach of time and space.

Some toil and toil, believing,
Looking now and again on my face,
Catching a vital, olden glory.

But no one passes me,
I tangle and snare them all.
I am the cause of the Sphinx,
The voiceless, baffled, patient Sphinx.

I was at the first of things,
I will be at the last.
I am the primal mist
And no man passes me;
My long impalpable arms
Bar them all.

Carl Sandburg

WHO AM I?

My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off."

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.

Carl Sandburg

We have moved from China to the United States - and Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967).

Many of his poems are about his native Illinois, but today they are of mainly historical interest. I have a stock of more than 200 poems, but I doubt whether there are more than a dozen I would wish to post to this blog. Here is the first..

AT A WINDOW

Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.

Carl Sandburg

Today I m finishing my run of poems by Li Bai and we leave him lazily sunning himself in a clearing in the forest.

Perhaps he is exhausted after all that writing, as this is one of his shortest poems!

A SUMMER DAY

Naked I lie in the green forest of summer....
Too lazy to wave my white feathered fan.
I hang my cap on a crag,
And bare my head to the wind that comes
Blowing through the pine trees.

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

Here is another poem by Li Bai about the pain of separation.

She writes a letter:

THE RIVER-MERCHANT'S WIFE: A LETTER

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

Li Bai

(It is interesting to note that this translation is by Ezra Pound, the American poet.)

Li Bai returns to one of his favourite subjects - Wine.

AN EXHORTATION

Do you not see the waters of the Yellow River
Come flowing from the sky?
The swift stream pours into the sea and returns nevermore.
Do you not see high on yonder tower
A white-haired one sorrowing before his bright mirror?
In the morning those locks were like black silk,
In the evening they are all snow.
Let us, while we may, taste the old delights,
And leave not the gold cask of wine
To stand alone in the moonlight!

Gods have bestowed our genius on us;
They will also find its use some day.
Be not loath, therefore, to spend
Even a thousand gold pieces! Your money will come back.
Kill the sheep, slay the ox, and carouse!
Truly you should drink three hundred cups in a round!

Come, Chin, my friend!
Dear Tan-chiu, too.
To you I offer wine, you must not refuse it.
Now I will sing a snatch of song. Lend ear and hearken!
Little I prize gongs and drums and sweet-meats,
I desire only the long ecstasy of wine,
And desire not to awaken.

Since the days of old, the wise and the good
Have been left alone in their solitude,
While merry drinkers have achieved enviable fame.
The king of Chen would feast in ancient days
At his Palace of Peace and Pleasure;
Ten thousand measures of wine there were,
And reckless revelry forever.

Now let you and me buy wine today!
Why say we have not the price?
My horse spotted with five flowers,
My fur-coat worth a thousand pieces of gold,
These I will take out, and call my boy
To barter them for sweet wine.
And with you twain, let me forget
The sorrow of ten thousand ages!

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

THE LONG-DEPARTED LOVER

Fair one, when you were here, I filled the house with flowers.
Fair one, now you are gone--only an empty couch is left.
On the couch the embroidered quilt is rolled up; I cannot sleep.
It is three years since you went. The perfume you left behind haunts me still.

The perfume strays about me forever, but where are you, Beloved?
I sigh--the yellow leaves fall from the branch,
I weep--the dew twinkles white on the green mosses.

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

Another tale of separation - a Chinese soldier away at the fort and his young bride at home, weeping.

BY THE GREAT WALL

I

Came the barbarian horde with the autumn;
Out went the imperial army from the House of Han.
The general has divided the tiger tallies,
And the dunes of White Dragon are now
The camping ground of the brave.
The moon in the wilderness
Follows the movement of his bow,
And upon his sword the desert frost blossoms.
He has not even entered this side of the Jewel Gate Pass.
But do not heave a long sigh, O little wife!

II

He rides his white charger by the Fortalice of Gold,
She wanders in dreams amid the desert cloud and sand.
It is a season of sorrow that she scarce can endure,
Thinking of her soldier lover at the border fort.
The fireflies, flitting about, swarm at her window,
While the moon slowly passes over her solitary bower.
The leaves of the green paulownia are tattered;
And the branches of the sha-tung blasted and sere.
There is not an hour but she, alone, unseen,
Weeps - only to learn how futile all her tears are.

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

CHUANG CHOU AND THE BUTTERFLY

Chuang Chou in dream became a butterfly,
And the butterfly became Chuang Chou at waking.
Which was the real--the butterfly or the man?
Who can tell the end of the endless change of things?
The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea
Returns anon to the shallows of a transparent stream.
The man, raising melons outside the green gate of the city,
Was once the Prince of the East Hill.
So must rank and riches vanish.
You know it, still you toil and toil--what for?

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

TO HIS TWO CHILDREN

In the land of Wu the mulberry leaves are green,
And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep.
In East Luh where my family stay,
I wonder who is sowing those fields of ours.
I cannot be back in time for the spring doings,
Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river.
The south wind blowing wafts my homesick spirit
And carries it up to the front of our familiar tavern.
There I see a peach tree on the east side of the house
With thick leaves and branches waving in the blue mist.
It is the tree I planted before my parting three years ago.
The peach tree has grown now as tall as the tavern roof,
While I have wandered about without returning.
Ping-yang, my pretty daughter, I see you stand
by the peach tree and pluck a flowering branch.
You pluck the flowers, but I am not there--
How your tears flow like a stream of water!
My little son, Po-chin, grown up to your sister's shoulders,
You come out with her under the peach tree,
But who is there to pat you on the back?
When I think of these things, my senses fail,
And a sharp pain cuts my heart every day.
Now I tear off a piece of white silk to write this letter,
And send it to you with my love a long way up the river.

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

Fu-sang Tree

THE SAME OLD DUST

The living is a passing traveller;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones lie dumb without a word
When the green pines feel the coming of the spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking ahead, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in life's vaporous glory?

Li Bai

Rabbit in the moon

Another little cameo by Li Bai - about a Chinese girl, sitting at her loom, weaving brocade.

It reminds me a little of the beginning of "The Lady of Shalott".

THE CROWS AT NIGHTFALL

In the twilight of yellow clouds
The crows seek their nests by the city wall.
The crows are flying home, cawing--
Cawing to one another in the tree-tops.
Lo, the maid of Chin-chuan at her loom
Weaving brocade,--for whom, I wonder?
She murmurs softly to herself
Behind the blue mist of gauze curtain.
She stops her shuttle, and broods sadly,
Remembering him who is far away--
She must lie alone in her bower at night,
And her tears fall like rain.

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

From our short acquaintance with Mr. Bai, we already know that he appears to have had three great loves in his life: Poetry, Wine and Young Ladies.

Yesterday it was an Imperial Concubine - and today he has a little dalliance with a 15-year-old girl, behind a curtain.

MAID OF WU

Wine of the grapes,
Goblets of gold--
And a pretty maid of Wu--
She comes on pony-back: she is fifteen.
Blue-painted eyebrows--
Shoes of pink brocade--
Inarticulate speech--
But she sings bewitchingly well.
So feasting at the table
Inlaid with tortoise shell,
She gets drunk in my lap.
Ah, child, what caresses
Behind lily-broidered curtains!

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

P.S. The age of consent nowadays in China is 14. I dont know what it was in the 8th century.

THE IMPERIAL CONCUBINE

When a little child,
She was reared in a golden house,
Now ripe and lovely, she dwells
In the imperial palace of purple.
She will come forth from the innermost chamber,
A mountain flower in her glossy hair,
Robed in pink embroidered silk;
And always return at evening,
Accompanying the imperial palanquin.
Only, alas!--the hours of dance and song
Swiftly vanish into the sky
To tint, perhaps, the flying clouds in happy colors!

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

THREE WITH THE MOON AND MY SHADOW

With a jar of wine I sit by the flowering trees.
I drink alone, and where are my friends?
Ah, the moon above looks down on me;
I call and lift my cup to his brightness.
And see, there goes my shadow before me.
Hoo! We're a party of three, I say,--
Though the poor moon can't drink,
And my shadow but dances around me,
We're all friends tonight,
The drinker, the moon and the shadow.
Let our revelry be meet for the spring time!

I sing, the wild moon wanders the sky.
I dance, my shadow goes tumbling about.
While we're awake, let us join in carousal;
Only sweet drunkeness shall ever part us.
Let us pledge a friendship no mortals know,
And often hail each other at evening
Far across the vast and vaporous space!

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

Today I am moving on from Maxwell Bodenheim, as I have exhausted my supply of his best poems.

It is difficult to find a worthy sucessor and I shall work my way through a small list of poets who may interest you.

The first is a writer from the Tang Dynasty of China - Li Bai (701-762)

He was part of the group of Chinese scholars called the "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup" and more than 1,000 of his poems remain today. I won't post them all!

Li Bai is best known for the extravagant imagination and striking Taoist imagery in his poetry, as well as for his great love for liquor.

He is said to have drowned in the Yangtze River, having fallen from his boat while drunkenly trying to embrace the reflection of the moon!

On to the first poem, which is very apt for this time of the year.

Li Bai

AWAKENING FROM SLEEP ON A SPRING DAY

Life is an immense dream. Why toil?
All day long I drowse with wine,
And lie by the post at the front door.
Awakening, I gaze upon the garden trees,
And, hark, a bird is singing among the flowers.
Pray, what season may this be?
Ah, the songster's a mango-bird,
Singing to the passing wind of spring.
I muse and muse myself to sadness,
Once more I pour my wine, and singing aloud,
Await the bright moonrise.
My song is ended--
What troubled my soul?--I remember not.

Li Bai
(Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

Sedate and archaic, a twilight-frilled haze
Walks over the meadows like rolled-out centuries
Quivering in sprightly welcome.
Trees pushed down by silence;
Trees lolling in comely abandon;
Trees pungently flamboyant,
Their leaves spinning in the wind's golden elusiveness.
Trees probing the shrilly sensitive sunset
Like little, laced nightmares leaning
Upon a scarlet breast;
Trees sprinkling their stifled mockery
Upon the blue tomb of the air;
Trees, are you silenced beings
Whitening into the winding paradise
Of old loves seeking a second death?
And has this archaic, twilight-frilled haze
Moulded me to your semblance?

Maxwell Bodenheim

Tooday, another of Bodenheim's short romantic poems, which you may enjoy.

The lilies sag with rain-drops:
Their petals hold fire that does not break out.
(As though it slept between vapor-silk
It could not burn).
And a young breeze stumbles upon the lilies
And strokes them with his spinning hands. . . .
The lilies and the young breeze are not unlike
Your silence and the rush of soft words breaking it.

Maxwell Bodenheim

Pain is a country cousin of yours.
He flings buds of awakening desires
Upon the stately weddings in your heart,
And laughs.
You must teach him better manners;
Bind his mouth with pale sleep;
Caress him with trailing hands
That loosen the buds he has stolen, into flowers.

Maxwell Bodenheim

POET-VAGABOND GROWN OLD

The dust of many roads has been my grey wine.
Surprised beech-trees have bowed
With me, to the plodding morning
Humming tunes frail as webs of dead perfume,
To his love in golden silks, the departed moon.
Maidens like rose-flooded statues
Have bathed me in the wine of their silence.

But now I walk on, alone.
And only after watching many evenings,
Do I dance a bit with dying wisps of moon-light,
To persuade myself that I am young.

Maxwell Bodenheim

Bodenheim is often at his best in his short romantic poems, where he captures a single thought - as in this one about the pain, and pleasure, of being in love.

We blew a luminous confusion of thoughts
Upon the silence of our souls,
Staining it to little, weeping tints.
Our hands pressed serpentine pain into each other
And stroked it away to twilights of relief.
Our lips shook before the tread of coming words,
But closed again, finding no need for them.

Maxwell Bodenheim

The illustration I have chosen for this poem is "Two Lovers" (1630) by the Persian artist Riza cAbbasi, working at the court of Shah cAbbas,

VAUDEVILLE MOMENT

They have carved a battle
Across your hard face:
Transfigured conflict,
Lines like suspended lances.
Your voice must be the uneven
Clink of the last carver's chisel.
Your soul must be a pious subterfuge
Squinting its admiring eyes
At the lifeless battle lining your face. . . .
Middle aged vaudeville conductor,
With a hunted leanness on your body,
Sometimes the swing of your baton
Sways with a brooding patience
That violates your ended face.

Two acrobats appear,
With their automaton bows.
Their unlit motion does not strike
The air into a hugging flame.
They are blue and orange corpses
Whirled in a sacrilegious festival.
They vividly resemble
The chiseled battle that grips
This lean conductor's face:
Motion without life,
And life that holds no motion!

Maxwell Bodenheim

In contrast to the short poems of Bodenheim that I have posted here recently, here is one of his longer ones - probably inspired by a girl he had seen in a honky- tonk bar.

PRONOUNCED FANTASY

A negro girl with skin
As black as a psychic threat,
And plentiful swells of blonde hair,
Sat at a badly tuned piano
And vanquished her fingers upon the keys.
A midnight exultation
Fastened itself on her face,
Quivering over the shrouded prominence
Of her lips and nose.
Her dress was pink and short,
And hung upon her tall, thin body,
Like a lesson in buffoonery.
She lectured her heart on the piano
With violence of minor chords.
Her voice was a prisoner
Whose strong hands turned the bars of his cell
Into musical strings.

"Wen' tuh Houston, tuh get mah trunk,
Did'n get mah trunk, but ah got dam' drunk.
Well, ahm satisfi-i-ied
Cause ah gotta be-e-e-ee."

The negro girl turned and cursed
With religious incision
At a parrot in a white spittoon.
He pampered his derision
While she played another tune.
Then he saw her long blonde hair
And paused in the midst of his squawk.

II

I found the negro girl
Walking down a railroad track.
The unconscious humour of sunlight
Disputed the gloom of her skin.
Her gray and dirty clothes
Disgraced the haste of her body.
Her feet and arms were bare
And thin as sensual disappointments.
An egg stood straight upon
The blonde attention of her hair.
The upturned remonstrance of her head
Revealed her balancing effort.
Lacking a more intense food
She dined upon the air
And sang with loosened despair.

"Gonna lay mah head right down upon dat--
Down upon dat railroad track!
Gonna rest mah head right down upon dat railroad track.
An' wen the train goes by--'m boy--
Ahm gonna snatch it back."

The negro girl received my gaze
And broke it on her poignant face.
"Why do you carry the egg?" I said.
"If I could only hate it less
I might break it, and undress,"
She answered with motionless lips.

Maxwell Bodenheim

MOONLIGHT BENDS OVER THE BLACK SILENCE

Moonlight bends over the black silence,
Making it bloom to wild-flowers of sound
That only green things can hear.
A wind sprawls over an orchard,
Frightening its silent litany to sound.
A thread of star-light has fallen to this tree
And curls among its leaves, tangling them to silence. . . .
Standing amidst these things, Beloved,
We feel the words our hearts cannot form.

Maxwell Bodenheim

YOUR BODY WAS PUZZLING

Your body was puzzling, like a half-made figure
Till the final shaping of your voice came
And riotous secrets of lines curved out
And trembled upon your limbs.
Then silence touched your body to motion:
Your limbs released fleeing andantes of pain
And your heart flung little crescents of budding caresses
Into the waiting hunger of your eyes.

Maxwell Bodenheim

YOUR CRISS-CROSSED RINGLETS OF HAIR

Your criss-crossed ringlets of hair
Are tipped with faltering opalescence.
At dawn a lost smile ever returns
And hides in your hair because he fears
The solemn marble profile of your face.
His presence caresses your lips to wings of color
That beat against each other and release
Dulcet, feathery tinges of love descending to your heart.
And thus, each morning, your rising heart
Wears a new bridal robe.

Max Bodenheim