Ten years ago, in the Hospice for patients, the shy lady in the corner, body withered by cancer, stood up to dance.
She bowed to the band then floated into movement, dancing alone.
She clung to the empty air as she once clung to her lover.
Nymphs and shepherds played sweet music at midnight in this room turned sacred grove, where naiads and dryads emerged from the shadows.
Her dance-steps were a draught of joyous water from the fount of eternal youth and lasting love.
Commentary:
Moo offered me one of his paintings for this poem. He calls it Keep on the green side. Every Wednesday, in the hospice, a local band came in to play. Some patients danced, others sat and watched, some stood on the sidelines and listened to the music.
I had the fortune to be present at the singular performance recounted above. I never found out that lady’s name and I never saw her again afterwards. She remains a mystery, like the naiads and the dryads, and the hamadryads, who inhabited those mythological woods where so many of us dream our dreams of one last chance and one last dance.
Death is everywhere. It rides a pale horse in the lands where Odin reigned.
Sleipnir, his eight-legged steed, carried him round the world.
It also carried the god to the underworld, and brought him back, one of the few to enjoy a return ticket.
Purity, innocence, power, the White Horse rules these Wiltshire hills, a symbol of hope and renewal.
Above the horses, hill forts in high places, lie hidden.
Wave after wave of earth-wall and ditch blend into the landscape making the forts invisible from below.
Commentary:
Odin > Wodin > Wednesday, in English, not Mercredi (French) or Miercoles (Spanish). English, via Anglo-Saxon, often goes back to the Nordic gods of the invaders. Not so in Welsh for Wednesday in Welsh is Dydd Mercher, the word breaking down into “Dydd” (day) and “Mercher” (which is named after the Roman god Mercury). Alas, it is all too easy to reduce language to its most basic level. But dig below the surface and the wonders of language, history and culture, adoption and rejection, complication and simplification, are all there to be seen.
Our language links us, binds us, holds us across our culture and history. And remember ‘to lose our language is to lose ourselves.’ While to learn another language is to grow another heart and soul.
… and thus I sit in silence while unspoken words echo through my empty skull
I cannot produce the grit that oysters use to smoothly shape the pearl of great price that radiates with light
the word once spoken can never be recalled
word magic water magic liquid trickling from cup to earthen cup
time slowly dripping away filtering through my fingers
flickering and dying, and the snuffed candle flame absent now and everywhere the pain of its absence …
52
… and me like so many others caught up in time’s dance a shadow among other shadows moving on the cave wall while the fire flickers
I try to hold them as they flit by but they vanish drifting like dreams half-glimpsed in early morning light
dancers and dance must fail and fade away when the music ends
I recall snippets of song that fan the unborn fires within
what am I but a tadpole swimming bravely into my next metamorphosis
the dancers hold hands and sing, oranges and lemons as they circle under the arch
“Here comes a candle to light you to bed
and here comes a chopper to chop off your head
and when will that be ring the bells out at Battersea
I do not know booms the great Bell of Bow” …
Commentary:
And here ends Clepsydra. One sentence, one poem, 52 sequences. Time, frozen in the writer’s mind, the passing of time, measuring time, internal time, external time, sidereal time, historical time … all linked through memories … personal, cultural, literary, family, events … all tied up with what Miguel de Unamuno called intra-historia, those deep, very personal little histories, that lead us away from great historical events into the minds of the observers, the witnesses, the readers, all with their interior monologue and their own mindfulness.
For those of you who have chosen to walk this road with me, I offer you my gratitude. I do hope you have enjoyed – if not the whole journey, then selected parts of it that may have touched you, or amused you, or aroused your interest. Pax amorque.
The Red Zone: it’s a familiar concept. Monday Night football talks about it all the time.
“Success percentage in the Red Zone, offense and defense.”
It’s not just football. Other sports, soccer, rugby, have their red zones. So does life, my life, for better or for worse, and now I know I’m in the Red Zone.
I can see the goal line. I can feel the tension rising. I know the clock’s ticking down. I can sense it, but can’t see it. I no longer know the score, and I don’t know whether I’m playing offense or defense.
They tell me it’s a level playing field, but every day they change the rules, and today I wonder what the heck’s the name of the game I’m playing.
… now I am absent from myself but can an absence be a presence
I guess it can like when I lose a tooth I lament the loss of its presence and run my tongue around the tender gum
a space where my tooth once stood where the candle flame once flickered and flared before it disappeared …
38
… I grieve for my mother standing in the garden her magnolia bleeding ivory petals as soft as spring snow
some settled on her head crowning her with youthful beauty as she walked towards me eyes shining arms held out
yet when I try to recapture that scene I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree …
Commentary:
“Can an absence be a presence?” Good question I asked Moo that and he showed me several paintings of trees in winter and vacant faces that he had knowingly filled with sorrow. But I preferred the image of “I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree.” So I chose my own photo. Moo was very upset and asked me to put in one of his winter paintings anyway, so here it is.
Now Moo is very happy, and he needs to be, because he has had a bad day. I am so glad I am not Moo when he has a bad day. His cardiologist wanted Moo to wear a Holter. Moo didn’t want to wear one. But he listened to his specialist, and obeyed. He was very stressed when he went into the hospital. The acquisition of the Halter was meant to take 15 minutes, maximum. Moo sent 75 minutes sitting in a cold room with no shirt on, terminals attached, and no Holter available. “Can an absence be a presence?” Indeed it can. And Moo is still very upset and very stressed. Nobody’s fault. Things happen. “The candle flame once flickered and flared before it disappeared.” Now you see it, now you don’t. And Moo laments the absence of what should have been a presence and then became a delayed presence. Oh fickle life and times!
I still grieve for my mother, standing in the garden, her magnolia bleeding ivory petals as soft as spring snow. I remember that some settled on her head crowning her with youthful beauty as she walked towards me, eyes shining arms held out. Yet when I try to recapture that scene I only see a winter garden with withered blossoms on a leafless tree. Maybe Moo, with all his stressed out Moo-ds saw that scene more clearly than I did. So, Moo boosts me, and I boost Moo, and that’s what best friends always do. So you go out and boost your best friend too. Blessings and blossoms. And may you all help each other to fare well.
… my heart so broken I can’t count the pieces nor solve the puzzle
scars are trenches deep defensive lines gouged into my face
every night the black dog returns and I wake up from a dream to find myself pincered
attracted by the light squeezed tight between cave walls
my top half struggles to be free my bottom half hips down is held in a ferocious grip
I scream the way a stuck pig screams when the knife flashes and the hot blood spurts
all at sea I move up and down on dark restless waves
I reach for a life raft but find only an apple bobbing as it floats …
Commentary:
Moo thought I needed cheering up, so he did this painting for me. U R My Sunshine, he said to me, then gave me the painting for today’s post. I think he was rather taken with the phrase ‘attracted by the light’ … hence the nice, bright, sunny painting. Whenever I feel down, Moo reminds me that every cloud has a silver lining. Today’s clouds over Island View certainly do. They have actually brought rain and we need that rain so badly. We are in the middle of a drought, in places it is a severe drought. Wells are drying up, the river and the aquifers are low, we need rain – and now we have some. Too late for the apple orchards and the farmers who do not have enough winter feed for their cattle. Too late for the local deer who do not have their usual post-summer glossy looks. And too late for the trees that look drab, having lost their usual fall glow to appear very pale and peaky. Let us hope that a little more rain, on a regular basis, will change all that, and give us the sort of silver lining that, next year, will produce golden apples and brightly colored fall leaves
When I lost my place, I tied my hanky in a knot, to help me remember the number of my page. Last night I looked in pockets and sleeve, but I couldn’t remember where I put my hanky.
At midnight the stars dropped liquid fires and they pooled like letters on the fresh snow of my dreams.
One night I caught some falling stars and I joined them together, one by one, till they stretched their daisy chain across the garden. Words grow like flowers in the Spring.
Once I could accelerate the universe. But now I slow down when I spell my name. There is a circlet of gold on the sky’s bright brow. What gave these stars the right to write my future in expanding letters? A satellite moves in a straight line, north to south and starlight crumbles in the wake of artificial knowledge spanning the eye ball of the planet. Who will repair these broken tunes? Who will glue these scattered notes back into the piano’s frame?
My tongue stumbles against my teeth and trips on my lip. A leaf of fire scorches the deep bell sound of my throat.
Commentary:
I looked over my shoulder, backward into time and space, and discovered this poem, penned more than a quarter of a century ago and abandoned in an old folder. Moo tells me he hasn’t painted for some time – I wondered if he was on a rotating striking, like our posties (Canadian for mail men and women), but he assured me that he had been sleeping, not sleep-walking in circles. Anyway, he felt inspired, put paintbrush to postcard and gave new life to my Book of Life. Thank you, Moo.
Do you remember when we used to tie knots in our hankies to remember what we had to do? Paper tissues put an end to that. No point in tying a knot in a soggy tissue, even if you could. And as Francisco de Quevedo told us – no point in looking in your hanky after you’ve used it. No point in searching for diamonds and emeralds, let alone pearls of wisdom, they just won’t be there. Good one, Franky. Of course, he was writing in Spanish, not English and my translation can’t do him justice.
It used to be fun watching the night sky out here in Island View. So clear – the satellites passed overhead and followed different paths from the stars. No Platonic dancing to ethereal music for them. Tone deaf, the lot of them, cutting their own little paths across the night sky. We used to get Northern Lights too, Aurora Borealis. They were always spectacular. Great crackling curtains of light hanging down from the heavens almost to the rooftops. Moo wishes he could paint everything h sees. I wish I could write down in verse every thought I think. If each of us had our wishes fulfilled, we’d have two books of life – one in color and one in black and white!
… but the light cannot last forever so where do I go when the door in my head slams shut
then I know I have lost the key to my mind’s labyrinth I struggle but I realize there’s no escape
Ariadne’s thread the one that should lead me out of the labyrinth turns into a woven web trapping me leading nowhere
the minotaur half-bull – half-man bellows stifles all thoughts
my heart turns to stone indigestible in the throat’s gorge or the stomach’s pit and my mouth’s too dry to spit
in this starless night when fear descends with the dark a guillotine slices its way through muscle and bone to sever all hope
no glow worm can worm its way into my mind to enlighten the path …
Commentary:
“… the minotaur, half-bull, half-man, bellows and stifles all thoughts …” I asked Moo for a painting of a Minotaur, but he didn’t have one. So I pottered about and found this photo of Los Toros de Guisando, a pre-Roman set of sculptures, in the Province of Avila, carved by the Celts. Not exactly a Minotaur, but certainly a set of taurine images that baffle with their size, silence, and presence. Indeed, they conjure up the images of the poem’s next verse ” … stone, indigestible in the throat’s gorge or the stomach’s pit …”
This is the cave painting, circa 5,000 BC of a bull, as found on the wall of the Caves of Altamira. Alas, he cannot bellow. Or should I say, Thank heavens, he can neither bellow nor pursue us. He stands silent on his cave wall. This photo comes from a glass ash tray my father purchased as a souvenir when we visited those caves (circa 1963-65, before they were closed to the public). Intertextuality – this bull as text and the long history of his multiple appearances. Metaphor and magic, mysterious and marvelous.
The idea that “religion is a glow-worm that glows in the darkness” is a metaphorical observation on the nature of faith. Its most famous expression comes from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The statement suggests that religion appears most valuable and needed when people are in a state of ignorance, uncertainty, or despair.” Wikipedia – AI Generated. Our poet, that’s me, in case there are any doubts, refers back to this idea when he writes “no glow worm can worm its way into my mind to enlighten the path”. This too links back to the poetry of St. John of the Cross and his references to the dark night of the soul when hope seems lost and we despair of everything. Then we link to Goya’s etching – The Sleep of Reason – “when reason sleeps, monsters are born.”
However dark the night, someone has walked this way before us. We can follow in their footsteps and hope for the dawn. When it arrives, we can rejoice. But never forget the law of circularity, what goes round, comes round. Night will come back, the way will again be dark, but the light will always return once more. Images and symbols, metaphors and mystery, even the unspeakable can be spoken in the ways in which the ancient artists, sculptors, painters, saints, and philosophers have shown us.
… but before all that did I emerge slowly from the grain of a granite heart as a sculpture emerges from stone
I broke out of a silent world left the flesh-and-blood house where my mother lodged me abandoned that amniotic silence broken only by my mother’s heartbeat
my own heart responded to that rhythm until I materialized and slipped into this waiting world
only to be held at the hips trapped a climber in a cave half out yet not able to break completely free
and me visited all my life by the nightmare of that pincer grip until the doctor forceps in hand pincered me and drew me forth white meat from a reluctant lobster’s claw silent dangling upside down a special lobster blue at the bottom red at the top breathless motionless
until that first slap broke the silence and wailing I came into that waiting world …
Commentary:
Nice painting, Moo. I like that. Its original title is Walking on Air, and I guess that’s what it might have felt like, dangling up side down, held by my feet, trying to walk on my hands, and look at all those suggestive colours. Colors / colours – English or Canadian? Does it matter? Red is still red and a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Ecclesiastes, if I am not mistaken. “Great knowledge brings great grief; for in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” So, we live and we learn, but what do we learn? Only the wisdom of all the wise people who walked this way before us. “In my beginning is my end …” – T. S. Eliot – “and in my end is my beginning.” In blood we begin our days, and in blood will we end them, just as the day begins with the spilling of the sun’s blood and ends in an evening of glory. Except when it’s cloudy, and then, of course, we have to guess what’s happening.
Guess-work – we guess how it began and we guess how it will end. And there’s the Clepsydra for you – drop after drop of water and people gathering knowledge, only to know how little they know, for, as Erich von Richthofen said, in the Medieval Course at the University of Toronto, a long time ago, in the 60’sixties of the last century which was also in the last millennium – “The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”
Some days I feel you are slipping away, sliding slowly into yourself, losing all thoughts and feelings in your mind’s twisting maze of secret ways.
It gets harder and harder for me to drag you away from the color tv and back into the black and white realities of the daily life we used to share.
I do my best. I drive you out for a daily walk in the local park. I do the shopping on my own, selecting the groceries I think will please you.
I pick up your prescriptions from the pharmacy. I prepare a croissant sandwich for your lunch. Every night, I cook you the supper of your choice.
The possibility of losing you starts to affect me. Already I am feeling alone and desperate and I grieve for that which I might lose, your active presence.
What is happening to us? Is it just old age? The longer it goes on, the more it seems that you are like a sailing ship at sea, diminishing in the distance, or like early November snow, slowly fading away.
Commentary:
Moo liked this poem. He thought that First Snow was an excellent choice for the painting. This is Canada. We all know how that first, early snow storm can suddenly drift away into nothingness. The original poem ended with the line ‘like a sailing ship at sea, diminishing in the distance’ but Moo begged me to add another line – and so I did ‘or like early November snow, slowly fading away’. Good old Moo, he mothers me like a mother duck with only one duckling. He has some good ideas, though, and I love some of his paintings. It’s Thanksgiving Monday in Canada today and yes, we can all give thanks for Moo and his paintings! Well, I can anyway. So, here goes – thank you Moo.
Not that there’s any early snow here. Not yet, anyway. Frost yes, but last year I only used the snowblower on three occasions. That is a crazy winter. We used to get nine feet of winter snow here in Island View, and when the spring melt came, our black Labrador retriever could swim around the block in the flooded ditches. Now we scarcely get enough water to fill the aquifer and we live in fear of a water shortage that may, next year or the year after, dry up our wells. “De Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.” No water shortage yet this year – but we are being very, very careful with our water usage. The St. John River is lower than anyone can remember – four feet down at least as it descends towards the sea. And that is not good news for anyone. “Those who have eyes, but will not see until the river fails to reach the sea.”
Many of us care. And we all do our little bit. No watering the lawns. No washing the car. No watering the flowers. Use the dish-washer once every few days, one weekly load, not multiple daily loads. Don’t leave the tap running while you brush your teeth. When they stayed with us, our friends from Oaxaca looked on in astonishment at the amount f water we wasted. We learned a great deal about water conservation from them. I must include them in my Thanksgiving Thanks as well.
rogermoorepoet 