Where should this music be?

Every Thought...

Week 16: Earthworm Theologies

I am continually inspired by Coleman Barks, an extensive re-translator of Rumi and Sanai who regularly found songs in Persian poetry and made those songs his own.  As I do now. We do not know the language, but we sing the song.


04/15:

TWL, Lines 19-30: Come In Under The Shadow 

19     What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
20     Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
21     You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
22     A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
23     And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
24     And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
25     There is shadow under this red rock,
26     (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
27     And I will show you something different from either
28     Your shadow at morning striding behind you
29     Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
30     I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

20. SON OF MAN: Eliot: “Cf. Ezekiel II, I.”  See Ezekiel 2:1:

“And [the Lord] said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.”

See also Ezekiel 37:3, later alluded to at line 186:

“Son of man, can these bones live?”

22. A HEAP OF BROKEN IMAGES: See Ezekiel 6:4:

“And ...your images shall be broken.”

For the recurrence of brokenness, see note 303. For the heap, see Job 8:13,17, describing the hypocrite who forgets God as being like a plant without earth and water; at verse 17:

“His roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones.”

See note 4 for the recurrence of roots in this poem.

23. THE CRICKET NO RELIEF: Eliot:  “Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.” See Ecclesiastes 12:5 at note 13 (“the grasshopper shall be a burden”).

25. UNDER THE ROCK: See note 28, and see Isaiah 32:2:

“And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”

26. ARIEL’S SONG, from Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.376-405, a song sometimes referred to by the first line of its second stanza, “Full Fathom Five,” is repeatedly alluded to throughout the poem.  See below, and see lines 26 (come), 48 and 125 (pearls), 119 (music), 182 (weeping), 186 (bones), 192 (father), 257 (waters), 276 (dogs) and 393 (chanticleer), and see notes 167 (fathom) and 266 (spirits):

“ARIEL [Sings].

Come unto these yellow sands,
    And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have and kissed
    The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there,
And sweet sprites bear
    The burden.

(burden dispersedly)

SPIRITS

Hark, hark! Bow-wow,
The watch-dogs bark, bow-wow.

ARIEL

Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock a diddle dow.

FERDINAND

Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?
It sounds no more, and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air. Thence I have followed it
(Or it hath drawn me rather) but 'tis gone.
No, it begins again.

ARIEL [Sings]

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

SPIRITS

   Ding-dong

ARIEL

Hark! now I hear them.

SPIRITS

   Ding-dong, bell.”

Shakespeare’s Ariel, a spirit “which art but air” (5.1.21), causes a passing ship to run aground, then brings all its passengers safely to shore. Compare Virgil, Aeneid 5.89, where Aeneas, having sailed through a tempest, lands on the yellow sands of hospitable Sicilian shores.  See also Thomas Heywood, Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels 4 (1635), in which another Ariel converges the elements of earth, water and air as “earth’s great Lord” and one of the princes who rule the waters. See also Heirarchy 1, echoing lines from Augustine’s Confessions (see note 307):

“I sought Thee round about, O Thou my God,
To finde thy aboad.
I said unto the Earth ‘Speake, art thou He?’
She answer'd me,
‘I am not.’

...I askt the Seas, and all the Deepes below,
My God to know.

...I askt the Aire, if that were hee? but know
It told me, No.

...I askt the Heavens, Sun, Moone and Stars; but they
Said ‘We obey.

...We are not God, but we by Him were made.’”

27. I WILL SHOW YOU: See Jeremiah 33: 2-3, 10, 11:

“Thus saith the Lord the maker thereof, the Lord that formed it, to establish it; ...Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. ...Again there shall be heard in this place, ...even in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man, and without inhabitant, and without beast, The voice of joy, and the voice of gladness ...For I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at the first...”

28. SHADOWS: See Eliot, The Death of Narcissus (1915):

“Come in under the shadow of this gray rock,
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow sprawling over the sand at daybreak, or
Your shadow leaping behind the fire against the red rock...”

See also Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster 3.2 (1620):

“Preach to birds and beasts
What woman is, and help to save them from you;
How heaven is in your eyes, but in your hearts
More hell than hell has; how your tongues, like scorpions,
Both heal and poison; how your thoughts are woven
With thousand changes in one subtle web,
And worn so by you;
...How all the good you have is but a shadow,
I' the morning with you, and at night behind you
Past and forgotten.”

See also The Allegory of the Cave, in Plato, Republic (360 B.C.E., tr. Benjamin Jowett, ca. 1893):

“[Socrates:] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

...[Glaucon:] You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

[Socrates:]  Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another  ...To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. “

30. A HANDFUL OF DUST: See John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: 4. The Physician Is Sent For (1638):

“What’s become of man’s great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself and consumes himself to a handful of dust; what’s become of his soaring thoughts, his compassing thoughts, when himself brings himself to the ignorance, to the thoughtlessness, of the grave?”

GRAVES AND BURIAL SCENES recur at  lines 71-75, 193, 246 and 388; see also notes 0.3, 2, 7, 30, 71, 74, 186, 214, 246, 298 and 378.


04/16:

Earthworm Theology

from Walled Gardens

God knows what depths and shallows
each soul can navigate,
the draught of every creature. God creates...
– Sanai, tr. Coleman Barks

...and through this sacred rhythm
I come to appreciate
that everything is sacred. God creates

and bestows each godly wisdom
within. There is no mind.
Another knowing lives outside of time,

beyond the basic neurons
that spark our mortal fire,
above the carnal pulse of our desire;

nor can I have desire
of such capacity
to wish for all that God has given me.

Before this altar silence
becomes my eloquence
and emptiness my path to sustenance,

and I will find tomorrow
connected to today,
and I will learn to celebrate the way

that God has set before me,
this day, my daily earth,
the life I live, the wisdom I am worth.


04/17:

Beehive Truth

from Walled Gardens

It is better, in this beehive,
to be tailored in the truth of humility
than underdressed in the lies of violence.
This is no place to be naked and raving.
Leave your lie of strength at the door
and put on the armor of lowliness.
God will recognize your allegiance,
and you will trample the heights of heaven
beneath your feet.


04/18:

The Task Of Truth

We are books & blogs on shelves & screens
Collecting dust, the timeless mask,
And who will have tomorrow’s task
Of reading remnants of ourselves
In search of truth and what it means
Beneath the leaves, behind the scenes?

Between the lines, before each word
Was written true, reality
Turned into shards of history,
And who should have the thankless chore
Of faithful repetition, word
For word, unspun, unchecked, unstirred?

Our government’s gone partisan.
The fourth estate’s gone commentary.
Truth has left the sanctuary.
Cyberspace is shopping carts
& garbage cans.  The classroom’s gone
To Googling itself.  Log on,

And look beyond this timeless mask
Of our neglect, beneath the dust
Of idle grayness over us,
Past existential grime.  Our time
In history remains, the task
Of truth prevails.
But who will ask?


04/19:

Ecumenical Mantra, Part 1

from Walled Gardens

Sew no purse,
Tear no veil,
Lick no plate,
Buy no flattery.

See no colors, make no claims.
Look past form, shape and shade,
Everything defined in terms
Of evil, good, black and white,

But let the air be hot and wet,
Let the earth feel cold and dry.
Let there be no contradiction.
Fire is hot and water wet,
Everything defined;
Fire dry and water cold
For all Eternity, and yet
Without the quintessential word
Laying down Eternity
Everything is argument
And all things contradict.


04/20:

Hell and Heaven

a response to Sartre’s No Exit

Hell is other people —
  Heaven is the presence of God.

Hell is a closed room —
  Heaven is an open field.

Hell is being forever judged —
  Heaven is being accepted.

Hell is seeing ourselves as others see us —
  Heaven is putting ourselves aside.

Hell is the dark glass of human mirrors —
  Heaven is seeing face to face.

Hell is the parsing of pimples —
  Heaven is the end of imperfections.

Hell is inescapable reflections —
  Heaven is the lark flying free.

Hell refuses to look at loveliness —
  Heaven is knowing love.

Hell is the end of hope and the continuation of fear —
  Heaven is all we hope for and the end of all we fear.

Hell is remaining alive but being forever dead —
  Heaven is being born anew, having defeated death.

Hell is a faithless existentialism —
  Heaven is a higher existence.

Hell is existing in the company of absentees —
  Heaven is living in the presence of God.

Hell is a room with no exit —
  Heaven is a doorway and the will to walk through it.

Hell is here and now, for those who live it —
  Heaven is here and now, for those who believe it.


04/21:

Moleskin 2.8: The Talk

Almost as close, just across a soybean field, were the Ericksens, then the Andersons, young families with kids my age who played as I played, moms who kept house and dads with distant jobs. By sheer time spent, I remember the first set of kids —Dean, Wayne and their older sister Loreen —more than the second —was it Lonny and two others? —and yet it was an episode with the Andersons that sticks with me most, or rather a talking to I had with my parents afterwards, at the end of a domino row. The first tile fell when I had asked my parents about sex one day, and they answered. I don’t recall the phrasing, but I’m pretty sure they never repeated it.  But I did, the next day, to the Anderson kids, and they did to their parents at dinner time, and then their parents called mine, and then the last domino fell, somewhat sternly —“Jon, they were quite upset” —but tolerably —“we’re not mad at you.” Thus my first education about sex, with all its social ramifications, and an eye opener, by the way, on different styles of parenting.