Premonitions

On reste ici

On reste ici

The double meaning
troubles my brain,
tugs heart strings,
sings a violin strain
or strums a throbbing
double-bass tightly
enclosed in my chest.

Rest, reste: here
we will remain and rest.
I like the sound of it.

Outside my window,
the mountain ash weeps
red autumn tears.
Robins flock, grow tipsy
feasting on its berries.
Ici on reste.

You and I, now,
and here we will remain
until, at last, in peace,
we will rest.

Commentary:

I live in a functionally bilingual province in a legally bilingual country. Yet I am consistently told that poems should contain only one language and should not wander between two (or more) of them.

This always reminds of the old joke – “I know what CBC Radio means, but what do the initials EC mean in ici [EC] Radio Canada?” This draws attention to one of my pet hates – the translators who translate for our politicians as they transfer their thoughts from one language to another. Suddenly, without warning, the husky-voiced male prime minister starts speaking French and his deep voice immediately changes into the high-pitched feminine interpreter’s alto. Most disconcerting. I flick back and forth between channels to catch those politicians in both languages. Alas, they rarely deliver the same message in both languages as the nuances and emotions change. Listen carefully and you’ll see (or hear) what I mean.

And so it is with poetry. I love the play on English – rest (to rest or to stay) and French rester (to stay or remain). Why shouldn’t I use that type of play in my poetry? It lends infinite shades of meaning and emotion to the verse. Ah well, the jury’s out. But don’t put foreign words (NB in Canada, French is NOT a foreign language) in your poems. You won’t get published and you won’t win any competitions, even if you do explain what the words mean. And remember, T. S. Eliot didn’t translate the foreign words he used in his Four Quartets. And he wasn’t a bad poet!

October

October

… and the wind a presence, sudden,
rustling dusty reeds and leaves,
the pond no longer a mirror,
its troubled surface twinkling,
sparking fall sunshine,
fragmenting it into shiny patches.

It’s warm in the car, windows raised
and the fall heat trapped in glass.
Outside, walkers walk hooded now,
gloved, heads battened down
beneath woollen thatches.

A wet dog emerges from the pond,
shakes its rainbow spray
soon to be a tinkle of trembling sparks
when the mercury sinks
and cold weather closes the pond
to all but skaters. Then fall frost will turn
noses blue and winter will start to bite.

Comment:

I was the first to like Moo’s painting, and indeed I do.
I hope someone likes my poem, too.

Autumn

Autumn
and all that jazz

1

Slow last drag of summer’s sad trombone
sliding its airs between stark, naked trees.

Golden memories float face down in tranquil
waters, life and the summer drained away.

A voice, her voice, ripples across the pond,
echoes over drowned and mirrored leaves.

2

Grey the sky, white the birch trees:
Narcissus kneeling, dark waters flooding

Tumble-dried by this autumn sky,
leaf words falling, still her voice echoes.

3

Tintinnabulation: a tin-pan alley of leaves
blown against windscreen and car windows.

I, who a grief ago sat here watching her walk,
now sit here alone, waiting for her return.

4

Here beginneth the gospel of the fall,
the fall of all things finally into deep water.

Fall, fall asleep to the rhythmic leaf beat
that summons us all to our appointed end.

5

I who am nothing know nothing, save that I
am a burnt-out ember, cold, in a grey-ash grate.

Grating of old bones, these hips and knees,
and if I fall, sweet heart, please love me more.

Commentary:

The trees and the grass are all stressed out and we are looking at an early fall this year. So many bright berries on our Mountain Ash and Crab Apple trees. Yet the grass all dry, the hollyhocks brittle, and so many flowers dried up and gone.

Water

Water

Here, in Island View, my lawn’s parched grass
longs for water, long-promised but never drawing near.
Do my flowers remember when the earth slept without form
and darkness lay upon the face of the deep?

The waters under heaven gathered into one place.
When they separated, the firmament appeared.
Light sprang apart from darkness
and with the beginning of light came the word,
more words, and then the world …

… my own world of water in which my mother
carried me until her waters broke
and the life sustaining substance drained away
throwing me from dark to light.

In Oaxaca, water was born free, yet everywhere
lies imprisoned in bottles, in jars, in frozen cubes,
its captive essence staring out with grief-filled eyes.

A young boy on a tricycle pedals the streets
with a dozen prison cells, each with forty captives:
forty fresh clean litres of drinkable water. He holds
out his hand for money and invites the villagers
to pay a ransom, to set these prisoners free.

Real water yearns to be released, to be spontaneous,
to trickle out of the corner of your mouth,
to drip from your chin, and fall to the ground.

It is a mirage of palm trees upon burning sand.
It is the hot sun dragging its blood red tongue across the sky
and panting for water like a great big thirsty dog.

Commentary:

This year, spring came with lots of rain. At one stage it looked like the waterlogged plants in our flower beds would all drown. Then, just before summer came, the rain went away and we suffered day after day of unbearable heat followed by nights during which the temperatures scarcely dropped.

As a result, the woods dried up and dry lightning strikes started fires. At one stage close to forty wild fires burned, many out of control. Entry to the woods was forbidden by law. Gradually, the fire-fighters fought back, extinguished the fires, one by one, and reclaimed control. I hope everyone realizes the enormous debt we owe to those brave men and women who risk their lives to save not only our lives, but our houses and our properties.

The fires have gone now. We had a day’s rain, 11 mms fell, but it’s not enough. We need more, a great deal more. We need to soak the trees, the grass, and to feed the streams and rivers. We also need to refill the aquifers on which life on earth, as we know it, depends. We need deep ends in our pools, not the shallow ends of depends, when it depends on whether or not the skies open and the heavenly waters fall.

CBC radio last night – farmers say they have lost their winter hay. How will the animals survive our winters with the hay fields burned and dry? One farmer said that, having no hay himself, it would cost him a minimum of $55,000 to bring in hay – if he could find anyone to sell it to him. Unfortunately, the same is true across the Maritimes – drought, forest fires, and a lack of winter hay. Spare a thought (and a prayer or two) for all those poor creatures, born to die, who will suffer this winter on account of this summer’s heat.

This Vessel in which I Sail

This Vessel in which I Sail

Trapped in this fragile vessel, with the pandemic
a passenger waiting to board, I drift from port to port,
looking for a haven, safe, to have and to hold me.

No harbour will let me dock. “No room at this inn,”
they say. “No haven here.” They wave me away.

Now I have no destination. Aimless, I float and every
where I go the message is: “No vacancy: no room at all.”

Unwanted, abandoned, I wander with wind and waves,
my only friends seals, porpoises, and whales.
I walk the whale road, leaving a frail, white wake behind.

This vessel has become a gulag now, a prison
camp where I exist just to survive. Each hour of each day
endless, boundless, like this shadowy, haunted sea.

Today there is no motion, no goal. What is there to achieve
but survival? Each day’s journey is sufficient unto itself.

Commentary:

Moo’s cartoon, Naval Gazing, dates from 2015. That year I spent eight weeks in Moncton at the Georges Dumont, gazing at my navel while waiting for my anti-cancer radiation treatment. Naval gazing / navel gazing, indeed. Good one, guys. You make a great pairing.

The poem dates from 2020 when Covid stalked the streets and we wore masks when we were not confined to our houses. I thought of the tour ships, wandering the seas, with the disease on board, and no port wanting them. It was a strange time.

Golden Oldies, then, both poem and painting. There are signs, small at present, but still visible, that such days are on their way back. We must each ask the question – What is there to achieve but survival? Hopefully we will come up with a similar answer – Each day’s journey is sufficient unto itself. Journey well and journey safely, my friends.

Apocalypse when?

Apocalypse When?

A strange, milk-cloud sky, skimpy, with the sun
a pale, dimly-glowing disc and my pen scarce
casting a shadow as the nib limps over the page.

Out on the west coast, fires still range free and this
is the result, these high, thin clouds casting a spider
web cloak over the sun face and darkening the day.

The west coast: five or six hours by plane and three
whole days to get there by train, even longer by bus,
all chop and change with multiple stops.

The wind blew and the clouds came widdershins,
backwards across the continent. Today they reached
across the ocean to claw the sun from European skies.

It is indeed a small world after all. Isostasy:
you push the balloon in here, and it bulges out
over there in the place you least expected.

Now we are all interconnected in an intricate network
of a thousand ways and means. What does it all mean?
Ripples ruffle the beaver pond’s dark mirror.

The forest mutters wind-words, devious and cruel,
that I sense, but cannot understand. High in the sky
clouds turn into horsemen on plunging steeds.

Fear, fire, flood, foe, poverty, pandemic, crops destroyed,
unemployment, and, waiting in the wings, the threat of civil
unrest, leading to the apocalypse and the war to end all wars.


Hello again – our old friend is back!

Hello again – our old friend is back!

Co-[vidi]-s
17 March 2020

I saw time change with the clocks
and my body clock
is no longer in sync
with the tick-tock chime
that denounces each hour.

Hours that used to wound
now threaten to kill.
They used to limp along,
but now they just rush by
and I, who used to run
from point to point,
now shuffle a step at a time.

Around us, the Covidis
thrives and flowers.
Wallflowers, violets,
we shrink into our homes,
board up the windows,
refuse to open doors.
We communicate by phone,
e-mail, messenger, Skype.

Give us enough rope
and we’ll survive a little while,
fearful, full of anguish,
yet also filled with hope.

Comment:

A Golden Oldie, written on 17 March 2020, St. Patrick’s Day.

Only yesterday, I read that Covid is back once more, in a new and mutated shape. Masking is once again demanded in the local Horizon hospitals especially in areas where patients and the public gather. I lost a couple of good friends to Covid last time round. I hope I don’t lose any in this new session. Guess I’ll be continuing to get my vaccinations and keep them up to date.

Whoever is reading this, I wish you all the best. May you stay Covid and illness free. May you also enjoy a long and happy life with sunshine days – and enough rain to keep the forests cool, the trees happy, the flowers flourish, and the wildfires at bay.

Clepsydra 12 & 13 – Pilgrim in this barren land …

Clepsydra 12 & 13 –
Pilgrim in this barren land …

12

… pilgrim in this barren land
     lost in my wanderings
          the wander-lust still tugging at me

in my back-pack
               dusty with memories
                    photos that only I have seen
                         sepia
                              spotted in places

only I know names and faces
     recall relationships
          a mystery to me, an outsider,
               such images haunt me
                    move me in ways
                         I do not understand

the irregular heart-beat
     of my life walks inside me
          down new corridors of time
               fresh music
                    strums my heart-strings

a heart
     a bridge a time too far
          lost I wander the woods
               searching for things
                    I know I must find
                         my lost self among them …


13

… but to find myself
     I must first lose myself,
          not in a barren land
               nor in the inner depths
                    of my suffering mind
                         nor the deeper depths
                              of another’s body

am I nothing more
     than an offering on the altar
          where nothing alters more
               than this interchange
                    eye to eye
                         mind to mind
                              body to body

will the I ever transform
     into the power of us
          together
               both of us

and are we much more
     than one plus one
          with three or four or more
               conjured from the word
                    that was from the beginning

or is all of this
     nothing more than
          the woven magic of pillow-talk …

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

1. If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

That is a very hard question to answer. I think of all the material things that everyone else can think of, but I do not want to sell commonplace things – antique furniture, paintings, books, stamps, groceries – I could go on and on, but I will resist the temptation to do so.

When I lived in Santander, Spain, the local wines were sometimes called ‘sol embotellado’ / bottled sunshine. I wouldn’t want to open a wine shop, but I would love to bottle the essence of a warm sunny summer day and – why should I sell it? I wouldn’t. I would give it away, free of charge, to all the needy people, inner city boys and girls, the impoverished, those who live in the streets and sleep in doorways or under bridges at night. Oh, the joy and happiness that would come when they opened their bottle of summer sunshine and felt the warm fresh air gather around them so they could breathe it in.

But why stop there? I would also give away ‘essence of butterflies’, that special feeling that comes on the colored wings of a butterfly and combines with the joy of flowers and the gift of taking flight. How special that would be. But sell it? It is much too valuable to sell. Put a dollar, Euro, yen, rupee, or sterling price upon it, and all its powers would vanish, like fairy dreams fading away.

Among other things, I would also like to offer the gift of the joy of words. Colors, in the imagination of Blake, were ‘sky wounds’. What joy to take a normal word, add a second word to it and create a new verbal image – ‘sky wounds’. And what happens when the sky is wounded, you ask. Well, the wound opens, the blood pours out and ‘le soleil se couche dans son sang qui se fige’ – ‘the sun sets in its own congealing blood’. Baudelaire, if I remember correctly, from Les Fleurs du Mal. What beauty in those new images. What joy in remembering and recreating them. I would bottle such gifts and give them away in my shop.

Fairy dreams – yes, I would offer them as well to those who needed them. And not the sort that fade away, but those fairy dreams that suspend us in the wondrous beauty of their ethereal light. And I would bottle hope, and self-belief, and the power to change oneself from what one is to what one is destined to be. And I would add essence of self-knowledge and powder of Davey Lamp light that would enable the seekers to seek in the darkest corners of their souls and find that elusive inner self, and bring it out from the darkness. And I would stock fragrant filaments of firefly that would also allow my customers to enlighten that darkest of nights, the dark night of the soul. And a map of hidden foot paths that would allow the wanderer to wander and never get lost.

How about an elixir of happiness and joy? A quintessence of rainbows, perhaps? Or a magic lantern that would shine out from heart and eyes and enlighten the soul friends of those lucky souls who were able to locate and enter my shop of conditioners, vital vitamins, and soul magic for all those lost and lonely people. And there, that mirror on the wall – look in it, gaze deep into your own eyes, and maybe, just maybe, you will find my shop.

And “What will your shop be called?”, you ask. Look into your heart and you may find the answer engraved therein. It will be called The Gift Shop of Hope Restored. I look forward to welcoming you when you open the door and step in.

Comment
1. The number at the beginning of this post, refers to its position in The Book of Everything. In that book, I have included 100 blog prompts (The Book of Everything) and 11 more (and a little bit extra) to give a total of 111 responses to prompts. Each one is a little bit crazy, just as this one is. But what fun to read, and write, and think slightly differently.

On Loneliness

Loneliness

58 What relationships have a positive impact on you?

I think one of my poems answers this question best. I write “one of my poems” but it is really my ‘free’ translation of one of Francisco de Quevedo’s sonnets – Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos. I have changed the poem slightly, but I am sure Don Francisco (1580-1645) will excuse Don Roger’s impoverished effort (2023).

On Loneliness
29 December 2023

Resting in the peace of these small rooms,
with few, but welcome books together,
I live in conversation with my friends,
and listen with my eyes to loving words.

Not always understood, but always there,
they influence and question my affairs,
and with contrasting points of view,
they wake me up, and make me more aware.

The wisdom of these absent friends,
some distant from me just because they’re dead,
lives on and on, thanks to the printed word.

Life flits away, the past can’t be retained.
each hour, once past, is lost and gone,
but with such friends, I’m never left alone.

And there are so many of those literary friends. I still read Rudyard Kipling and I have just finished Kim, Captains Courageous, Stalky and Co., Puck of Pook’s Hill, and Rewards and Fairies. I read these first when I was nine or ten years old, and I return to them regularly. Other friends include Garcilaso de la Vega, Fray Luis de León, St. John of the Cross, Quevedo, Góngora, Calderón, Miguel de Unamuno, Antonio Machado, various members of the Generation of 1898, the majority of the poets from the Generation of 1927… and these are just my Spanish literary friends. I have French friends, English friends, Anglo-Welsh friends, Canadian friends, Mexican friends, and, in translation, many, many more. My relationship with each of these friends has had an impact upon me.

A recent painting, by my friend Moo, is called Fiat Lux – Let There Be Light. It is reminiscent of Dylan Thomas’s poem, Light breaks where no light shines. Intertextuality – Quevedo drew inspiration from the Stoics. I drew inspiration from Quevedo. Moo drew inspiration from Dylan Thomas. The nature of creativity, and its continuing links throughout the ages, shines clearly through these wonderful associations. Long may they continue, and may others enjoy them and be influenced by them as much as I have.

Comment:
The funny thing is that I do not remember writing this blog prompt, nor do I remember having translated Quevedo’s poem into English. I wonder how many other forget-me-nots there are out there. Or, to be more precise, in my books and in my notes. A treasure trove – that’s my guess. Borges wrote of Quevedo that he was more a library than an author, and I am beginning to think that way about my self. A strange world, this, one in which the creator abandons, and then forgets, his creations. Perhaps we should change the image – not so much a library as an orphanage, and so many lost and abandoned orphans wandering around The Little World of Don Rogelio.