"How Is This Poem by Nobel Laureate in Literature Czeslaw Milosz Relevant to The Democratic Party As It Currently Exists?" (originally posted May '08)

for Vast Left



A Task


In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life

Only if I brought myself to make a public confession

Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:


We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons


But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one


Considered himself as a lost man.


. --Czeslaw Milosz

Poetry Corner: Charles Flint

Something from my old friend Charles Flint who I so far cannot re-find even with the help of the internets tubeses. ; (

THE FURIOUS AND SAD OLD SURREALIST MASTER DISOWNING HIS ESTABLISHMENT DAUGHTER

When you leave the darkness of learning
and find snow
I will not be at the window.
When the cement fist of money
which has killed all the animal images
approaches you
do not turn to me.
I will not know what to do.
When the table guarding the door
tries to keep you from hearing sound
do not ask me for help.
I will have gone mad.

When I have reached the end
and have no strength to turn
toward the field where the found
is hiding the stone of hope
and when I have only one wish left
it will be telling you to go away
to where the snow has been covered
with dust and noise.

Only then will the windowlocks unfreeze
in the night which shows no light or darkness.
And the horses galloping toward afternoon
will shake the easiest victories
into your opened hands.


.

Happy New Year (plus a storm)

moderate to heavy snowfall is expected this afternoon ocean effect snow bands may persist through 1 am strong north winds with gusts up to 60 mph are expected late today and into this evening likely yielding near whiteout conditions.

The Turning Year

Nightfall. Clouds scatter and vanish.
The sky is pure and cold.
Silently the River of Heaven turns in the Jade Vault.
If tonight I do not enjoy life to the full,
Next month, next year, who knows where I will be?

Su Tung P'O

Plus Milosz re: It's Not the End of the World Hillary Harridan Bitchez So Get Over It & btw STFU

Wasn't I talking about the O.J. Simpson verdict just the other day?

Hmm.

Well, anyway.

Must be time for more Milosz.

A SONG ON THE END OF THE WORLD

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.


On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.


And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.


Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.


---Czeslaw Milosz, Warsaw, 1944

Interlude

Blue sky here, not as blue as the deep azure skies of Tibet, but blue enough, nearly cloudless. Walked dog and self to the bayside beach through Crowe's Pasture, got waved at by many oyster-farmers driving through an otherwise quiet meadow. It reminded me of this poem by Czeslaw Milosz.

GIFT

A day so happy.

Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.

Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.

There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.

I knew no one worth my envying him.

Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.

To think that I was once the same man did not embarrass me.

In my body I felt no pain.

When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

Berkeley, 1971

.

Department of And Now For Something Completely Different

THE RADIANCE

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?

We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves birds and animals and the ants.

Perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in your mother's womb.

Is it logical you would be walking around entirely orphaned now?

The truth is, you turned away yourself,

and decided to go into the dark alone.

Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what you once knew

and that's why everything you do has some weird failure in it.


By Kabir, version by Robert Bly

How Is This Poem by Nobel Laureate in Literature Czeslaw Milosz Relevant to The Democratic Party As It Currently Exists?

A Task


In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life

Only if I brought myself to make a public confession

Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:


We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons

But pure and generous words were forbidden


Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one


Considered himself as a lost man.


.

A Poem Tinkerbell-ianly to Resurrect the Magical Unity Pony Of Democratic Intra-Party Civility & Working-Togetherness To Defeat Bushist Fascism

(Yes, I know I've posted this poem so often that to post it again is really like beating a dead horse. Pony. Whatever. But I'm doing it again, so sue me.)

Think of this poem as a virtual butterlamp being offered in order to raise the spirit of community and magically resurrect the Magical Unity Pony Of Democratic Intra-Party Civility & Working-Togetherness, a pony who currently lies pitifully abed, with her big round sad eyes looking really, well, sad.



ON ANGELS

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.


There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.


Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at the close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.


They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for humans invented themselves as well.


The voice--no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with lightning.


I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:


day draws near
another one
do what you can.




--Czeslaw Milosz

Poet Jane Cooper (1924-2007)

This morning I found out that my wonderful teacher and mentor, Jane Cooper, has died -- actually that she died last fall, a few months after Grace Paley. I knew about Grace from the Times, but somehow I missed Jane's obit, here.

Jane was kind enough to get me my first job -- an actual job in the actual field of poetry, a miracle in itself. We kept in touch until I moved to Asia -- pre-internet. I'm too sad to write more, but I wanted to note and honor her passing. Here's one of her poems:

Souvenirs

Anyway we are always waking
in bedrooms of the dead, smelling
musk of their winter jackets, tracking
prints of their heels across our blurred carpets.

So why hang onto a particular postcard?
If a child's lock of hair brings back
the look of that child, shall I
nevertheless not let it blow away?

Houses, houses, we lodge in such husks!
inhabit such promises, seeking the unborn
in a worn-out photograph, hoping to break free
even of our violent and faithful lives.

From: Calling Me From Sleep, by Jane Cooper