ESCAPE FROM WOOMERA (for Will)

            (The world is very vast)

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, blossom the lovely stars, the [1967: beyond the reality principle]

PIPE DREAMS

EAST TOTEM WEST

The world is very vast

                vintage los angeles: la cienega boulevard, 1931

Learning Russian 1: "I enter the dark temples" [A. Blok]

Вхожу я в темные храмы,

Совершаю бедный обряд.

Там жду я Прекрасной Дамы

В мерцаньи красных лампад.

В тени у высокой колонны

Дрожу от скрипа дверей.

А в лицо мне глядит, озаренный,

Только образ, лишь сон о Ней.

О, я привык к этим ризам

Величавой Вечной Жены!

Высоко бегут по карнизам

Улыбки, сказки и сны.

О, Святая, как ласковы свечи,

Как отрадны Твои черты!

Мне не слышны ни вздохи, ни речи,

Но я верю: Милая - Ты.

25 октября 1902

I enter darkened temples,/ I perform a humble rite./ There I await the Beautiful Lady/ In the glimmering icon light. In the shadow of a pillar base/ I shiver at the creak of the doors. /And only a brightly lit image, a dream,/ Of Her stares me in the face. O, I am familiar with these rizas/ Of the majestic Eternal Wife!/ High up along the cornices run /Smiles, fairy-tales and dreams. O, Holy Lady, how the candles are gentle,/ How Your features comfort me!/ I hear neither sighing nor speaking,/ But I believe: the Beloved is Thee. 25 October 1902

GO GO GO: Reminescences of T.S.Eliot

go, go, go, said the bird...

[http://www.ilgiornale.it/interni/ferrara_il_cav_cede_passo_e_questione_ore/governo_tecnico-gianni_letta-dimissioni-silvio_berlusconi-giuliano_ferrara/07-11-2011/articolo-id=555703-page=0-comments=1]

WHILE DYNASTIES PASS: three poems (Michaelian, Michaelian, Hardy), and war

Almanac

Yesterday afternoon

I put our garden space to bed.

One rake, one shovel, and half a yard

of damp, composted dairy manure.

Sweat on my neck and arms,

back, chest, legs, brow.

Leaves from the neighbor’s dogwood tree

in my hair and beard.

Today, I am ready for anything.

Even the death

of fear.

Traveler

I’m beginning to think

like this jade plant in the mist

a jeweled leaf for each

passing kingdom.

        (WHILE DYNASTIES PASS) 

From Songs and Letters, November 16, 2008

[A letter to William M.: 'There is a really Basho-like precision clarity and sadness in TRAVELER. So beautiful.- What ALMANAC had brought to my mind was much gloomier and hard- the distant thud of grand history and poured out blood, that fear of which one cannot actually get rid of- even while he sets his house and private life in some meaningful and possibly loving order. Both exist in fact; this experience of my own proximity, that horror. (And I'd thought of Hardy's poem, written during World War One).']

[In Time of "The Breaking of Nations" 

 I

Only a man harrowing clods

In a slow silent walk

With an old horse that stumbles and nods

Half asleep as they stalk.

            

                II

Only thin smoke without flame

From the heaps of couch-grass;

Yet this will go onward the same

Though Dynasties pass.

            III

Yonder a maid and her wight

Come whispering by:

War's annals will cloud into night

Ere their story die.

THOMAS HARDY      ]

In Time of "The Breaking of Nations" [THOMAS HARDY]

     

          
                I
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
            
                II
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.


            III
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.