Week 14: Standing In An Open Field
April is the wildest month, every day another tributary, every breath a simple prayer. It is also National Poetry Month and a good time for Standing In An Open Field, one poem restating another across language and culture and place.
04/01:
TWL, Lines 1-7: For Those That Follow
1 April is the cruellest month, breeding
2 Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
3 Memory and desire, stirring
4 Dull roots with spring rain.
5 Winter kept us warm, covering
6 Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
7 A little life with dried tubers.
1. APRIL: See Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, General Prologue: 1-4,12 (ca. 1372):
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote,
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
...Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.”
Where Chaucer, the Father of English Literature, commenced with gentle, sweet rains and the first flowers of spring, Eliot, modern poetry’s progenitor, felt the cruel end of a mindless winter and feared the season ahead.
April, a time for pilgrimages and the month of spring and lilacs, is also when Lent is observed, when Lincoln was shot and when Eliot lost a friend to war...
2. LILACS: See Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: Memories of President Lincoln (1892) 1:
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the Western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.”
WHITMAN, and especially Memories of President Lincoln, is alluded to extensively throughout this poem. For Memories, see notes 2, 8, 61, 186, 202, 214, 291, 322, 357, 380, 384 and 403. See also note 214 for a reference to These, I, Singing In Spring, another poem from his Leaves of Grass.
4. DULL ROOTS: See the Ghost, in William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.5.32-34:
“...And duller shouldst thou be than in the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf
Wouldst thou not stir in this.”
The Lethe is a river in Hades embanked by plants that cause forgetfulness (see Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.616).
Roots also appear at lines 7 and 19; see also notes 12, 22, 71, 176 and 324, and compare the “thirty good” passage at lines 331-359 (see note 331).
7. A LITTLE LIFE: See Prospero, in Shakespeare, The Tempest 4.1.156-158:
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
See also James B.V. Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night (1874):
“This little life is all we must endure,
The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,
We fall asleep and never wake again;
Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.”
04/02:
Introduction To An Open Field
Eight hundred years ago, A Sufi monk wrote a book of poems that he called El Hadiqa, or Walled Gardens. He wrote from his faith’s perspective, in his language and to the people of his Persian culture, and yet, as poetry makes possible, the poet, Hakim Sanai, speaks to me.
He has inspired me to rewrite some of his poems, which poetry also allows. I am not a translator, like David Pendleberry, who gives me my opening lines, but I have tried to transcribe some of the monk's faith-based existentialism. He echoes Ecclesiastes, constantly turning his eyes to a God he does not fully understand, and in this he reminds me that despite our divides of culture, religion and time, it is the same sun that rises over us all.
04/03:
Standing In An Open Field
The sun of truth rises unbidden,
and with it sets the moon of learning.
In this halt of just a week,
to be is not to be, and to come is to go.
- Sanai, tr. David Pendlebury
For all that I know,
that which I’ve learned,
I am a moon that mirrors
a distant sun:
I watch the fire burn,
but my reflected brilliance
fades with the light of day.
For all that I know,
that which I’ve found,
I am a rooster that crows
in the early dawn:
I watch the sun rise,
but all my hallelujahs
fade with the light of day.
As long as I am living
the sun will shine,
and the sun will shine
when I am gone,
and the moon will rise
and the rooster will crow
and the shadows will stir
and the gardens will grow.
For all that I know,
or so suppose,
I am a wildflower
where the garden grows:
I keep stretching to the sun,
but all my morning glory
fades with the light of day.
For all that I know,
and would believe,
life is a blessing
beyond understanding:
and I’ll keep following the fire
for as long as I can,
until I fade...
As long as I am living
the sun will shine,
and the moon will rise
and the rooster will crow
and the sun will shine
when I am gone,
and the shadows will stir
and the gardens will grow.
As long as I am living
and when I’m gone,
the shadows will stir
in this garden of mine
and the sun will shine
and the rooster will crow.
Hallelujah for all I know!
04/04:
Stand
I stand still in the woods, taking my time
To gather up the evidence of life
Around me, being witness to the day
That holds me, letting every tree and bird
Reprove me, move me closer to a way
To reconcile my foot of space on earth,
To know there is no richer place on earth
Than where I stand at any given time,
Nor given time is there a better way
To understand the earthiness of life
Than standing in a field, seeing a bird
Defying gravity, stretching its day
Heavenward, then with each passing day
Returning humbly to its rooted earth
For food, for rest, for giving birth; this bird,
With every beast and bloom of anytime,
Takes part in a community of life,
Sharing one space and orbiting one way
Around a single sun: so on this way
Of revolutions, in this timeless day
Among this great epitome of life,
I take my quiet stand upon the earth
That I may share this place as long as time
Will be defied, as long as field and bird
Commune with me, and I can hear the bird
Communicating heaven in a way
No other creature can, replaying time
Repeatedly, reflecting every day
From its perspective just above the earth,
Singing its simple evidence of life;
I feel that song, though I must live the life
Of one who cannot be the flying bird;
I hold my ground, though I am of the earth
Without the slightest chance to spin away;
I stand still in one place to see the day
Unrushed, though I am running out of time,
But still I stand, with time to look at life,
To live through every day, to watch a bird
Show me the way it lets go of the earth.
04/05:
Invocations (Translating Sanai)
from Walled Gardens
How can one give a name to God?
Whose every name is a lasting testimony
Of constant grace and steadfast pity,
Exceeding heaven and earth and every angel,
Whose every verb addresses our endless needs,
Whose every truth gives proof of the one who provides,
You, most merciful and compassionate,
You, forming the thoughts in our heads,
Shaping beauty around our warts,
Covering our foolishness with wisdom,
Showering our mortality with mercy, you,
Creator and sustainer of earth and time,
Guardian and defender of spirit and space,
The single source of space and soul,
The sole commander of time and place,
Of fire and wind and water and ground:
You are in control, you have the power
Over all, you are ineffable...
How can one give a name to the One
Who stands alone where there can be no other?
And yet there are those who do not know,
Souls outside who haven’t heard
And hearts who cannot see, who have no name:
Have grace and pity on hearts and souls
Who want so much to know.
Faithful and faithless alike will walk
This path together, setting out to see
The one and only, maker and enabler,
All powerful, almighty and immortal,
All knowing, living and eternal,
Giver, taker, conquerer and forgiver,
The push of every movement,
And the place of every rest:
God stands alone and has no equal:
Let nothing come before, let no one stand beside,
And those asserting otherwise, beware!
How can one give a name to God?
Our weakness proves God’s perfection;
God’s power appoints our list of names.
Faithless and faithful alike
Will return from the mansion
With the happiness of their host
And nothing more, but knowing God
Transcends all dreams; awareness of God
Shakes all reasoning and perception;
And standing before God’s throne
Surpasses every posture and position:
And for the knowing soul, God’s throne itself
Will be the carpet under his feet,
And for the seeing soul, all praise is folly
Unless it is given to God.
And as a seeking soul, I want to turn to God
And call on God. ...but how?
04/06:
Saffron
from Walled Gardens
Taste and see...
Was once a man could tell the difference,
could look into the souls of fools: once was
the kind of man who measured ignorance
with ridicule, who magnified the flaws
of every mote in his periphery
with arrogance. But let the evidence
speak for itself, just as it always does:
“Saffron, my friend, what have you heard of it?
I said Saffron, fool, what have you seen of it?
You know its name, you taste it every day,
but say just a word of it
and you give yourself away.”
Was once a man of quiet innocence
and simple faith in everything that was
in front of him, whose life experience
confirmed what he believed, who had no cause
to quarrel with the things he could not see,
no arguments with those whose arguments
defined what they denied, who simply was.
“Saffron, you ask, what have I heard of it
beyond its name, what do I know of it?
I have it by me, of this I can be sure,
and it is good. I’ve tasted it
a hundred times and more.”
This was a man who found the resonance
of saffron in his day to day: he was
a willing member of the audience
who loved life with an unreserved applause
but otherwise had nothing more to say,
no arguments for those whose arguments
speak for the sake of speaking for their cause.
“Saffron, my friend, what have you heard of it?”
“Saffron, you ask, what have I heard of it?”
“I said Saffron, fool, what do you know of it?”
“Beyond its name, what do I know of it?”
“You know its name,...”
“I have it by me,...”
“...you taste it every day,...”
“...of this I can be sure,...”
“...but say just a word of it...”
“...and it is good. I’ve tasted it...”
“...and you give yourself away.”
“...a hundred times and more.”
04/07:
Moleskin 2.6: Red River Valley
Joshua Paul was born on the Minnesota side of the Red River Valley during the post-Woodstock years, son of a young pastor and organist team who proudly served a two-point parish. It was during the first four years of Joshua’s life, about which he surely remembers little, that my own memories began to form in full color: now we lived alongside the Buffalo River, whose floodstages our mother would monitor as a side job; as a family, we immersed ourselves in the farming culture, appreciating the black gold soil around us and the sugar beets and soy fields that practically blended into our yard; and, as my brothers toddled at home, I started going to Glyndon Elementary by way of a big yellow school bus. And we got to know our neighbors: the Ericksons and Andersons, the Johnsons and the Kassenborgs.
No comments:
Post a Comment