Water is Taught by Thirst (a Poem in My Pocket)

Water, is taught by thirst.

Land -- by the Oceans passed.

Transport -- by throe --

Peace -- by its battles told --

Love, by Memorial Mold --

Birds, by the Snow.

    --Emily Dickinson

don't forget to carry a poem with you on Thursday, April 30th! And if you feel like it, stop back again and tell me which poem you carried, I'd love to know.

Vernal Equinox: I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Dust

Spring today.  Although I love spring, all I can think about is this poem, "The Waste Land," and the first section. I think I'll just revel a little in my cloud of black gloom and existential angst.

You can read and if you like, go listen to Eliot himself reading in his evil little voice--but trust me, it grows on you:

T.S. Eliot reading "The Burial of the Dead"


I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD


April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.






photo from Flickr Creative Commons, by Two Stout Monks

The Lesson of the Moth

I was talking to a moth

the other evening

he was trying to break into

an electric light bulb

and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him

because it is the conventional

thing for moths or why

if that had been an uncovered

candle instead of an electric

light bulb you would

now be a small unsightly cinder

have you no sense

plenty of it he answered

but at times we get tired

of using it

we get bored with the routine

and crave beauty

and excitement

fire is beautiful

and we know that if we get 

too close it will kill us

but what does that matter

it is better to be happy

for a moment and be burned up with beauty 

than to live a long time

and be bored all the while

so we wad all our life up

into one little roll

and then we shoot the roll

that is what life is for

it is better to be a part of beauty

for one instant and then cease to 

exist than to exist forever

and never be a part of beauty

our attitude toward life

is come easy go easy

we are like human beings

used to be before they became 

too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him

out of his philosophy 

he went and immolated himself 

on a patent cigar lighter

i do not agree with him

myself i would rather have

half the happiness and twice the longevity

but at the same time i wish

there was something i wanted 

so badly as he wanted to fry himself

--archy

Last night I watched "Man on Wire," a documentary about Philippe Petit, the man who walked a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center.

Petit had a burning need to perform an act so daring that in the moment of action he would exist in both life and death at the same time, willingly, compulsively.  It was so obvious to me that the walk itself was an ecstatic experience for him--in the mind-blowing sex sense of the word, but in the religious sense as well--that he had entered a place of "mystical self-transcendence."  He could only get there by suspending his regular life and going to a weird extreme that would be difficult for us to understand.  But it was his weird extreme.  For others with this tendency it might be something else...flying into a flame, for instance...I watched it and related so strongly that I began to wonder some strange wonderings...

Sarge, who loves Petit, and also has an encyclopedic store of poetry in his head, as well as an extensive collection of poetry books, and always the perfect quote for the moment, found this passage from "archy and mehitabel" and presented it to me today.  And we discussed the idea of these two styles of being--the moth, and archy.  Sarge, whose personal history includes a remarkable amount of adventure and bravery, although he wouldn't like me to say so (oops, flagged for blogging rule violation) it's true anyway, says he's archy through and through.  I asked him if he thought that I was archy or the moth, and no matter how hard I begged, he wouldn't bite.  He said that each person has to know that for himself.  So with that in mind, I've decided that somehow, I don't know how yet, or maybe I do but I can't remember, I'm the moth not archy.

So do you "shoot the roll"? Did you ever? Do you want to? Will you? Is your tightrope over the abyss a man you loved, a woman, a pursuit? Was it liquor or art? Did you put one foot on the wire and then hate it and turn back? Did you continue with clenched teeth or with reckless abandon? Or are you an onlooker on the ground, 100 stories below, whether like archy a bit jealous, or just happy that it's not you up there...

Daddy: October 1943- January 2005

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going—
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

(Ichikyo, written on the morning of his death, 1360)

Buffalo Dusk

The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the
prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a
great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.







***
Hedgehog came home yesterday with this poem. For homework she had to answer some analytical questions about it. I asked her how the poem made her feel; she said "Mama, I was choked up with tears when I first read it." They are studying the prairies, the frontier, the Plains Indians, and the pioneers, and this is how they are doing it. This is what they do in their second grade classroom; and this is why I believe in progressive, unorthodox education for children, more strongly than I believe in almost anything else in the world.

Poem by Carl Sandburg, image by buckchristensen, Flickr Creative Commons

Dad: October 7 1943-January 17 2005

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes,  

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Hark! I hear them--ding-dong bell.