Hiraeth

Clepsydra 31 & 32

31

… I become more aware
     of the world
          outside my mother’s womb

I listen to the house’s heartbeat
     the occasional creak
          intruding rarely
               the house inhaling
                    exhaling

 I pay attention
     to my own bodily sounds
          my heart rate slowing
               increasing

now I can hear
     the faint tick-tock
          of a distant clock

a sunray illuminates
     a dust mote
          that dances before my eyes

light without sound
     silent butterfly wings
          seeking celestial light …

32

… did I write
          these words for me
               or did I write them
                    for someone else

does it matter
     when the only thing that counts
          is the beauty released,
               when the butterfly breaks free
                    and takes flight …

Commentary:

“The only thing that counts is the beauty released when the butterfly takes flight.” Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? Just like the old poetic adage “beauty is truth and truth beauty.” But is it true? There are some very ugly truths and it is very hard to beautify them, even though we do our best to do so. I have always hated simplicities like “lipstick on a pig” or “silk purse out of sow’s ear”. And then there’s ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Probably true. Yet an ugly truth is still an ugly truth however much the spin doctors try to spin it.

And for whom does a poet (he in this case, the poet being me) write his poetry? Did I write those words for me, or for someone else? Good question. I certainly wrote them in the hopes that someone, somewhere, perhaps you, whoever you are, might read them. But I don’t know you, can’t know you, how could I know you? But if I don’t know you, how could I write for you? Did Cervantes write the Quixote for himself, or for his readers? And who were his readers, did he know them? He certainly didn’t know me, because he passed away on April 23, 1616, same date as William Shakespeare and the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega. The same date, you notice, but not the same day! Puzzle that one out, if you will. Meanwhile, he died 328 years, give or take a month or two, before I was born, so I don’t think he had me in mind as he penned his words, much as I didn’t have you (specifically) in mind, as I penned mine.

Carpe diem – seize the day. Don’t wase it on such idle philosophical speculations. Speculation / peculation – go buy yourself a lottery ticket – you may even win the jackpot. Of course, if you wish, you can be like me. I never buy lottery tickets and that would put money in my pocket every week (think of it as winnings!) except I never take it out. And remember – “Keep your water weak and your cider strong, keep your hands in your pockets and you won’t go wrong.”

Clepsydra 30

30

… 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.”

Clepsydra 28 & 29

28

… diagnosed
     with a terminal illness
          called life
               I know it will end
                    in death

I have seen many
     pass that way
          two-legged humans
               four-legged friends
                    and none have come back

I recall
     holding the dog’s shaved paw
          while the vet slipped
               that last redeeming needle
                    into the exposed vein

the dog’s eyes
     pleaded for release
          her tongue licked my hand
               oh so trusting
                    even at that
                         for me
                              so bitter end

and did the poor dog know
     what was coming
          did she live her life
               as I have led mine
                    waiting for that last word
                         to be spoken
                              the last order given …

29

… two of us
     me and my death
          walking side by side
               everywhere
                    sharing the same bed
                         sleeping between
                              the same sheets

I wonder if
     we dream
          the same dreams

my death
     how would I greet him
          when he came
               as executioner
                    not friend

I re-create him as a man
     or as a dark angel
          with all-comforting wings

is he open-eyed,
          while I am blindfolded
               not knowing the way
                    afraid of falling

this death
     is it cruelty
          or merely love               

the path is ahead is new
     and totally unknown …

Commentary:

Many of the images in these two pieces are exercises in intertextual examples, Stanza 29 in particular, drawn from the Neo-Stoicism of Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645). His advice, set out in poem after poem, is to embrace death before it comes. Prepare for it, mentally, and be aware that it is the natural end of life. As Dylan Thomas also writes, “Every morning when I wake, oh Lord this little prayer I make, that thou wilt keep thy watchful eye on all poor creatures born to die.” The Dunvant Male Voice Choir gives us this version of it. Remember to turn your sound on! I like this version, not just for the music, but also for the views over one of my favorite childhood beaches, Rhossili and the Worm’s Head, not far from my home in Gower.

As I grow older and creakier, as my ailments accumulate, one by one, so I realize that indeed I have been “diagnosed with a terminal illness called life.” It’s funny to think of life as a terminal ailment. “Take two Tylenol and when you wake up tomorrow morning you’ll be feeling much better.” And yes, like every sane person “I know it [this terminal ailment] will end in death.” So, don’t be sad. Carpe Diem – seize each day and enjoy every one of them to the best of your ability. Remember the inscription on the Roman Sundial – horas non numero nisi serenas – I count only the happy hours. Whatever you do, have no regrets. If you do have some, make your peace with them now – or as soon as you possibly can. And, when the call comes, go willingly. Step with pride and joy onto that new and unknown path that will lead you to an eternity of joy, acceptance, and love.
                   

Empty Nest

Empty Nest

X marks the spot
where the energy ran out,
the moment when the tide turned
and water ebbed, and refused to flow.

A place… a time…the sudden scent
not of presence, but of absence.
The absence of movement,
noise, of that other body
that once walked the rooms,
opening and shutting doors,
windows, like a robin’s whistle,
a thrush’s trilled song…
gone now, gone, all gone.

We drift through silent sadness,
avoid each other’s eyes,
sit with our heads in our hands
or knit our fingers together
in desperate gestures
that express our emptiness,
the emptiness of an empty nest…

Commentary:

The poem speaks for itself, as a good poem ought to. Even bad poems speak for themselves sometimes. Amazing how empty the house seems when we sit in separate rooms, work at different computers, read in silence, or do the crossword or sudoku, miles away in time and space. And those little feet have gone now – not that they were that little this past visit. But holidays end, child and grandchild depart, the house returns to its former silence, and we are left to contemplate the emptiness of an empty nest.

Raven

Raven

When Raven flies through his trap door in the sky, a light bulb clicks off in my head and I fall into darkness. Is there some safety net before oblivion? Raven’s claws scar crow’s feet on a fingernail moon. His bleak black beak widens the hole in my head and the Easter egg of my skull shows thin blue cracks. Outside my window, the river moves backwards and forwards with the tide. Raven shrugs at cancerous creatures, promising nothing. He soars into clear skies in search of his private exit and extinguishes sun, moon, and stars, plunging our world into blackness. The light on the point picks out a heron, mobbed by a clacking ring of gulls. The sea mist wraps the real world tight in its cloak. Now sea and lighthouse, heron and gulls, are distant things of memory. Raven, shoulders hunched, stands like a stone, an anthracite block hacked out from the coal seam in my mind, hand carved from feathers and my forefathers’ blood.

Commentary:

I had forgotten all about this poem in prose. It comes from Fundy Lines, if I remember correctly. Photo credit (below) to one of my former students, an excellent poet herself, who took the trouble to locate the correct rock and then take a photo of book and rock together.


Moo thought his painting of a dark shape that looks a little bit like a bird of ill-omen would be just what this prose poem needed. Maybe he’s right. I trust him with his choice of paintings. Well, most of the time anyway. He can be a bit ‘off’ from time to time, but mostly we form a good team, especially where Surrealism is concerned.

I guess Raven formed part of my Surreal sequences. I really do enjoy Surrealism. The mixing of metaphors, for example, the unexpected meeting of a sewing machine with a carving knife and an umbrella on an operating table. And look what Raven’s up to. He discovers a trap door in the sky. Well, that would be very useful, if we had wings and could fly. Then he turns off the light bulb in my head. I didn’t even know I had one in there. I guess Raven, like coyote and zopilote is a bit of a Trickster. Next he changes into a woodpecker and widens the hole in my skull. Poor old me – avian trepanning – no wonder I have problems! My head becomes an Easter Egg and has cracks in it giving birth to what? Some mad ideas, I guess, pecking their way out into the wonderful world in which Moo and I live in perfect harmony with my beloved and our cat. And look at all those Welsh mining memories – lignite, house coal, steam coal, anthracite, jet – and remember, when the coal comes from the Rhondda down the Merthyr – Taff Vale line, I’ll be there.

It will be a long way from Canada to Taff’s Well. Maybe Raven will be kind and fly me there, through his Island View trap door that has direct access to the trap door just above Castell Coch, the Fairy Castle of my childhood. That would be faster, and easier, than my old two-wheeler Raleigh bicycle with it’s Sturmey-Archer three gear click on the handlebars. I bet Raven can fly faster than I can pedal. And if I could have pedaled as fast as Raven flies, downhill and uphill, I would have been King of the Mountains and an all time winner of the Tour de France. Now that would have been surrealistically surreal, seeing me as a cereal winner, with my snap, crackle, and pop! Not that my dad would have been happy. He never was happy with anything I did!

Slipping Away

Slipping Away

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.

Clepsydra 23 & 24

23

… gulls on the wharf-side roof
     fishing boats
          returning to port
               white wakes trailing,
                    pointing to where they’ve been

where have I been
     all my life         

where is the wake
     that tracked me to and from
          so many unimportant places

so often have I waited
     for that moment of reunion
          port station airport

birds leaving nest
     only to return
          then leave again
               are not more faithful

sweet brevity of life
     a stone memorial
          on the harbour wall
               raised to all
                    who went to sea
                         and never returned
                              dying in the waves’ embrace …

24

… a watery grave
     no church no candles
          just cold waters sliding shut
               as down to the depths they go
                    

sinking from level to level
     never to rise again
          not till seas run dry
               burnt up by the sun’s candle

even then they’ll walk no more
          with their beloveds
               hand in hand
                    on diminishing land
                         or sea-licked sand …

Commentary:

“Birds leaving nest, only to return, then leave again, are not more faithful.” A lovely photo, from Avila, of storks, bouncing on their nests, waiting for the wind to lift them up aloft. I thought of using sea side photo from PEI, but this image caught my eye, and my words. A verbal – visual link. Not easy to spot, but there, in the sky above them, a parent waits. As soon as one chick takes flight, the watching parent will drop, fly under the fledgling’s wings, and tutor the young bird in the art of soaring and flying. I have spent many a happy hour, just sitting there, watching them.

And here’s the photo from PEI. An osprey, returning to the nest, after a fishing expedition. One hopes for such moments. Then, suddenly, one day, the magic happens, and verbal and visual joining hands in a single moment of magic. And listen to that baby bird, beak open, shrieking, waiting for the parent to arrive. I can still hear the screeching, although we are in the age of silent, but colorful, pictures.

In the picture below, the Grande Réunion – you can see the White Geese gathered at Bic. They return every year, so beautiful. The first time I saw them, I thought they were a drift of late snow. Then they rose from the field, and flew up, into the air. I have often seen snow falling but that was the first time I saw snow actually rising, after it had settled. A memorable moment.

Moments of magic, as I said, and each of them linked – verbal to visual. Silent dialogs with my time and my place, now shared with whoever has ears to hear and eyes to see and an imagination to reconstruct the alternate realities.

Books

Books
… they fornicate at night
double in size and numbers
fall off the shelves
copulate in piles on the floor

… origami
I guess it’s what books do
when they wrap themselves
in their own pages
and enfold their stories
mingling their tales

… synaesthesia
the critics call it
that mixing of senses
taste with touch
and the lingering
smell of fresh print
tingling in the nostrils

… intertextuality
books talking to books
they start off with one word
and cling to each other …

… and you know
what happens next …

Commentary:

No comment!

St. Mary Redcliffe

St. Mary Redcliffe

Time and Temple Meads
have begrimed your wand-thin spire,
the tallest in England.

You waved goodbye
to the Cabot boys,
Nova Scotia bound,
as they set sail.

Starling lime your belfry,
gift and inspiration
of Merchant Adventurers,
that gentlemen’s company.

Worms wriggle and gnaw
at your ship’s figure-head,
harbored now, bare-breasted,
sturdy in your oak-beam nave.

Rust rustles and creaks
at the Edney Gates,
wrought to last centuries
by Bristol ironmasters,
themselves apprenticed
to learn time’s laws.

Commentary:

Yesterday, via Zoom, I met with the Canadian Alumni of Bristol University. Sarah Price (Bristol Alumni Association) and Heather Proctor (Alumna) set the meeting up for us. Golden Oldies, all of us, we sat there and reminisced about our days, so long ago for most of us, at Bristol. I graduated in 1966, the same year I came to Canada. Most of the other alumni graduated long before I did. My last visit was in 1986 when I met with the Spanish Department, much changed, and talked abut my most recent research. One alumnus had visited just last year and talked of his returning to his old hall, his old room, his olde department, and all the changes that he had seen.

Most of those gathered had been in halls of one sort or another. Their experiences and friendships seemed very different to mine. Digs out in Knowle, Bristol, my first year. Then rooms in a rooming house, up by the Clifton Suspension Bridge, with other members of the Cross-Country team, for my next two years. Summers in Spain and France distanced me enormously from both England and the university. I remember coming back from Spain one summer and standing at the bus stop in Clifton, waiting for a bus to take me to Temple Meads Railway Station, a Number 18, if I remember correctly. Well, the bus arrived and drove towards me at enormous speed. It didn’t look as if the driver had any attention of stopping. So, I ran out into the road, waving my arms. He braked, gave me a very strange look, and asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to go to Temple Meads. He said well get on the ****ing bus then. I looked at a great expanse of green metal, with windows, but no door, and asked him “Where’s the door?” Of course, after three months in Spain, like an idiot, I was standing on the wrong side of the road, and the wrong side of the bus. Such bitter-sweet memories.

I suppose I wasn’t a very good student. My only talent was speaking Spanish fluently. I worked hard at that, completely immersed in Santander, playing soccer on the sand, wandering through bars at night, learning to drink from a porrón and a bota without disgracing myself, and fishing on the weekends for panchos and julias in the Bay of Santander. I also learned how to row an old battered row boat, un bote. And it was all marvelous fun.

I also wrote a great deal of poetry and even managed to publish regularly in the Nonesuch Magazine. St. Mary Redcliffe, the poem above, dates from those days. I loved that church and visited it regularly. I wonder how many other Bristol students went in there and walked around inside. I also wonder how many stood with Jorge Luis Borges by the polished, black slate of the city hall, with its coal mine on the green, and gazed at their reflections in those shiny azabache mirrors. As I wrote yesterday on my blog – “How much can we know, your life of mine, my life of yours? At what point do those twin railway lines meet at the edge of time? Or are they doomed to a parallel universe where mind and mind, rail and rail, neither meet nor understand?” Sometimes, we can take a great joy in working out the answers to such questions. 

Clepsydra 22

22

… winds kiss words from lips
      sand creaks
           squeaks underfoot
                    creeps between dry toes

the sand cleanses
     purges
          brings closure
               each magnificent moment
                    lighting a candle

is this beach an altar
     under the rocks’
         shadow church
              it doesn’t matter

mindfulness
     holding each memory
          each piece of colored glass

wave after wave
     climbing ashore
          washing footprints
               memories away
                    closing
                         door after door …

Commentary:

“Wave after wave climbing ashore, washing footprints, memories away, closing door after door.” Everything turns out in black-and-white – here a crow, there a seagull. What does each say to each, when they meet upon the beach? Silence and stillness. No sound of wind or wave, no sign of the tide rising or falling, and what do the birds say to each other, when they meet like this? Two solitudes, mine and thine, and somehow the silence must be broken, or in our separate solitudes we will remain. What if I open my solitude and show it to you? Will you then open yours and spread it willingly before me? Or will you turn away, crow spurning seagull and there’s no going back.

And did my feet, in ancient time, walk upon the beach in Santander? Did they wander over the cliffs at Cabo Mayor? What did I say to the sands in Swansea Bay when, sitting on the steps by the railway station, I dusted the sand from between my toes, placed socks upon my feet, and did up my sandals? Private places, private memories, private conversations live on in the privacy of my head.

A dozen heads, all crowded onto the computer screen, zoomed in so they can be together for an hour or two, repeating their memories to each other – how much did they really share? How much can we know, your life of mine, my life of yours? At what point do those twin railway lines meet at the edge of time? Or are they doomed to a parallel universe where mind and mind, rail and rail, neither meet nor understand? Tell me, if you can, what the crow thought of the gull when they met, that morning on the sand.