Words, Poems, Reveries, Muse

Yamanoue no Okura, “A Lament on the Evanescence of Life”

What we must accept
  as we journey through the world
Is that time will pass
  like the waters of a stream;
in countless numbers,
in relentless succession,
it will besiege us
  with assaults we must endure.
They would not detain
  the period of their bloom
when, as maidens will,
they who were then maidens
  encircled their wrists
    with gemmed bracelets from Cathay,
and took their pleasure
  frolicking hand in hand
    with their youthful friends.
So the months and years went by,
and when did it fall –
that sprinkling of wintry frost
  on glistening hair
    as black as leopard flower seeds?
And whence did they come –
those wrinkles that settled in,
marring the smoothness
  of blushing pink faces?
Was it forever,
the kind of life those others led –
those stalwart men,
who, as fine young men will do,
girded at their waists
  sharp swords, keen-bladed weapons,
took up hunting bows,
clasped them tight in their clenched fists,
placed on red horses
  saddles fashioned of striped hemp,
climbed onto their steeds,
and rode gaily here and there?
they were not many,
those nights when the fine young men
  pushed open the doors,
the plank doors of the chamber
  where the maidens slept,
groped their way close to their loves,
and slept with their arms
  intertwined with gemlike arms.
Yet already now
  those who were maidens and youths
    must use walking sticks,
and when they walk over there,
others avoid them,
and when they walk over here,
others show distaste.
Such is life, it seems, for the old.
Precious though life is,
it is beyond our power
  to stay the passing of time.

(Translated by Steven D. Carter)

***

*A poem I read back in July, which instantly drew me in with its mysterious strength and powerful imagery. (Re-reading it after a discussion with David about Monet's artistic treatment of water and the place Giverny, and yes, I still love it － it glistens with a sense of transience in beauty and anguished sadness for Eternal Recurrence.)

“The Rose-Way in Giverny,” by Virginia Konchan

And in the reticulate distance
the cued inertia of Lucifer
astounds. Our feet bleed:
buoyant, the body at its task.
What you wanted was what I 
wanted－slant of sun to the left,
twinkling of civilization elsewise;
and the moon (whelp of history)
to our backs, all come-hither
and dream. Motion understood 
is philosophy deferred: peace;
the felt pathos of space and time.
Look, darling, at the establishing
shot. It's downright Biblical,
this thrown-together vista,
world upon world without end.

***

“Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando down the centre vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leaf, dip, relief — the instant it all took to happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter of rhymes: I say 'patter' intentionally, for when a gust of wind did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one.”

“I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness—in a landscape selected at random—is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern—to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.”

—Vladimir Nabakov, Speak, Memory

***

While under the bridges
Of embrace expire
Eternal tired tidal eyes

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

Love elapses like the river
Love goes by
Poor life is indolent
And expectation always violent

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

The days and equally the weeks elapse
The past remains the past
Love remains lost
Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

－Guillaume Apollinaire

Julien Dillens, Marbre, Figura tombale － Femme au bouquet (1885-1889), Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

***

my love for you makes you ancient
to me. my greatest wish would be
that I were to you,

ancient, too. that looking upon
each other, the waters of old rome
would be seen trickling beneath our
feet, not

that we would live forever, but that
we already have.

—from a poem by Ricky Garni

***

"He seeks life where it is to be found: in all that is most delicate, in the folds of things."
...
－Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Andreas, 1932

***

As Distant Music, Obscurely, or But Half Revealed...

During this state of repose, he took his station winter and summer by the stove, looking through the window at the old tower of Lobenicht, not that he could be said properly to see it, but the tower rested upon his eye as distant music on the ear - obscurely, or but half revealed to the consciousness. No words seem forcible enough to express his sense of the gratification which he derived from his old tower, when seen under the circumstances of twilight and quiet reverie... At length some poplars in a neighboring garden shot up to such a height as to obscure the tower, upon which Kant became very uneasy and restless, and at length found himself positively unable to pursue his evening meditiations. Fortunately, the proprietor of the garden was a very considerate and obliging person, who had, besides, a high regard for Kant, and accordingly, upon a presentation of the case being made to him, he gave orders that the poplar should be cropped. Kant recovered his equanimity, and once more found himself able to pursue his twilight meditations in peace.

Thomas de Quincey — The Last Days of Immanuel Kant — via the liner notes for Gavin Bryars' After the Requiem.

***

My sky
interchanges with yours,
so does my dove
now
it flies over yours,
I see two shadows
falling
in
the oatfield
We look with
each other’s eyes,
we find
a place:
rain
we say
like a story
the half-sentence
green,
I hear:
Your mouth
with the speech
of birds
carries twigs and feathers
up to my brow

—Johannes Bobrowski

Sappho

***

Part One...

"Any great realization is only half completed in the brain's pool of light; the other half is formed in the dark soil of our innermost being, and above all it is a state of the soul on whose furthest tip the thought sits perched, like a flower..."

~ Robert Musil, Young Torless

***

Suddenly, softly, as if a breath breathed
On the pale wall, a magical apparition,
The shadow of the jasmine, branch and blossom!

It was not there, it is there, in a perfect image;
And all is changed. It is like a memory lost
Returning without a reason into the mind...

And it seems to me that the beauty of the shadow
Is more beautiful than the flower; a strange beauty,
Pencilled and silently deepening to distinctness.

As a memory stealing out of the mind's slumber,
A memory floating up from a dark water,
Can be more beautiful than the thing remembered.

~ Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

***

On almost the incendiary eve
When at your lips and keys,
Locking, unlocking, the murdered strangers weave……..
On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances,
When near and strange wounded on London’s waves
Have sought your single grave,
One enemy, of many, who knows well
Your heart is luminous
In the watched dark, quivering ….

— From Deaths & Entrances: Dylan Thomas

***

EN:TRANCES

What is the allure and attraction which so invites the photographer to capture entrances?
I feel it strongly and I cannot adequately explain it- through the last two decades as a semi-serious photographer I am drawn to capture the magic of what may lay beyond. The other, the secret, the forbidden—perhaps even the sexual or inticingly erotic?
Closed doors represent a world where we need use our imagination to its fullest. We see the promise of new colour and new experience—a closed glimpse of the exotic ‘other’ life we wish to inhabit. (via Lushlight)

***

且也相與吾之耳矣，庸詎知吾所謂吾之乎？且汝夢為鳥而厲乎天，夢為魚而沒於淵。不識今之言者，其覺者乎，其夢者乎？造適不及笑，獻笑不及排，安排而去化，乃入於寥天一。
（況且人們交往總借助形骸而稱述自我，又怎麼知道我所稱述的軀體一定就是我呢？而且你夢中變成鳥便振翅直飛藍天，你夢中變成魚便搖尾潛入深淵。不知道今天我們說話的人，算是醒悟的人呢，還是做夢的人呢？心境快適卻來不及笑出聲音，表露快意發出笑聲卻來不及排解和消洩，安於自然的推移而且忘卻死亡的變化，於是就進入到寂寥空虛的自然而渾然成為一體。）

~莊子內篇<大宗師>；張耿光釋義

***

荀子性惡篇：「人之性惡，其善者偽也。今人之性，生而有好利焉，順是，故爭奪生而辭讓亡焉；生而有疾惡焉，順是，故殘賊生而忠信亡焉；生而有耳目之欲，有好聲色焉，順是，故淫亂生而禮義文理亡焉。然則從人之性，順人之情，必出於爭奪，合於犯分亂理，而歸於暴，故必將有師法之化，禮義之道，然後出於辭讓，合於文理，而歸於治。用此觀之，然則，人之性惡，明矣。其善者偽也。」

***

金剛經：「一切有為法，如夢幻泡影，如露亦如電，應作如是觀。」

"How should he explain it? As in the sky: Stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, dew, a bubble. A dream, a flash of lightning, and a cloud－thus we should look upon the world (all that was made). Thus he should explain; therefore it is said: He should explain."

~Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, or Diamond-Cutter (from Prajnaparamita/ Perfection of Wisdom genre), English translations by E.B. Cowell, F. Max Mulller, and J. Takakusu.

***

One of my very favourite performances of Svetlana Zakharova: her mystery, her sensuality, her musicality and the suspenseful poetry... This personal love affair of mine is ongoing, and only growing stronger (I am led－in hands and heart－and "possessed" by such passion for this poetic muse). She takes my breath away.

"...[a beauty which] is a consummate example of poetic inspiration, eliciting from the poet's soul a sigh which is at once the poem itself－Dante's response to Beatrice's presence－and a resigned acknowledgement of her transcendent otherness." (Many thanks to Leanne & Cassandra for this.)

～The Body of Beatrice, by Robert P. Harrison