The Discontent of Summer

Here, and at http://simorghpress.blogspot.com, is the second installment of my Waste Land tributes.  I also revised the first installment posted two weeks ago.  I know, it is a little gloomy, but stick with it: it learns what to say and it ends in peace.

Coming over the Starnbergersee...

A continuing tribute to The Waste Land,
Lines 8-18

And once awake we cannot help but wonder
Who we are and what we want to say.
We feel the rain before we hear the thunder
Whispering a thousand miles away.
Our points of origin are torn asunder,
Separating us from yesterday.
Behind the walls and roofs, within and under
Which we live, we don't know what to say

But on the open surfaces are stories,
Images for everyone to see:
The nakedness of all our twisted glories,
The disgrace of our identity.
We know we ought to stand up and look forward
To the tales untold of dreams to be
But here we are, ashamed of being mortal,
Suffering and wanting to be free.

     Now is the discontent of summer,
     Trying to read ourselves to sleep,

Mourning the loss of where we started from,
Starting to hear the distant thunder drum,

     Now is the discontent of summer,
     Trying to read ourselves to sleep,

Unsure we want to see what dreams may come,
Laying awake when we would rather slumber

     Now is the discontent of summer,
     Trying to read ourselves to sleep.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul.

Eightieth Year

My eightieth year started rainy and gray.
So did my spirit, with husband's greeting
That "going on eighty" commences today.
Hey, wait a minute!  What's going on?

Though my head is white, not even gray,
This special designation comes too soon.
Yet joy in the little as in mountain array
Says I'm here, here right where I belong.

Hear?  A concert of rock music, 1968
All but removed my eardrums tonight.
I'll sit this one out, better never than late
And leave Dick sitting alone for a spell.

I pondered a gallery showing abstract art,
Resisting to admire any at first.
Then, absorbing colors, layers, depth, and plan
Their glory, abandon, and stretch upon me burst.

Our world I love, all the infinite, and
Persons who excite me in daily encounters,
As chords are struck, minds are met.
Eightieth year?  Heaven-bound are these hunters.

Jaeger means hunter, and seventy-nine is on the mark!

Marilyn Jaeger, February 15, 2018

The Sweetest Dream

See http://simorghpress.blogspot.com/  for my new blog, which will include all poems and projects as I go, and, eventually, another link to one that I will get to, a publishable form of my annotated Waste Land, already fully revised and refreshed since you saw it last.  The goal (the dream?) is to have that really published before 2022, the 100th anniversary of Eliot's piece de resistance.

The Sweetest Dream

We are such stuff...
Whan that Aprill...
Winter kept us warm...

A poem in honor of the first seven lines of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

When we should sleep, perchance to dream of rest,
We wake up in the middle of a dream,
And, face to face with all our restlessness,

We realize: the more we dream the less
We sleep.  Yet in our deepest sleep we seem
To seek the sweetest dream: forgetfulness.

To let the mountain memories of yes-
terday, the pushing pulling of the stream,
The ocean of tomorrow's wantonness

Be all forgotten: sleep without the stress
Of time and place or meaningfulness, dream
Beyond the tests of schedule or address

Or past interpretations, dream the dream
Of peace and find the stream that lets you rest.

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

A winter sleep is warm and long and safe inside.  The doors are shut, the blinds are drawn and we are undercover and immortal, but

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

The sweetest dreams are moments of their own reality, unshaped by all that they are running from, untroubled by the great escape.

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

But winter turns to spring, tomorrow misremembers yesterday, the morning breaks with business and all the sweetness melts away.