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May Day

May Day
A Jackpine Sonnet

his hands would not
stay still
fingers intertwined
then fanned open

he tapped the tabletop
a frantic piano
pounding S-O-S

… ___ …

the black dog
above the ivory keys
gnawed
on memory’s bones

his fingers picked
at ancient scabs
until they bled red

so many things unsaid
so many tales untold

Comment:

A long time ago my grandfather taught me the basics of morse code. He told me he could recognize the ‘tapped signature’ of each of the operators with whom he worked. I sat at the table with him and he tapped away dit dit dit dot dot dot dit dit dit – it was all so long ago and I have forgotten so much of it now.

After my father suffered his second stroke, he sat at the table and endlessly tapped dit dit dit dot dot dot dit dit dit – SOS, May Day, May Day, Save Our Souls.

Older than either of them, I too sit at the table and endlessly tap with my fingers. For now, I play the piano, one handed, two handed, well-remembered scales with the middle fingers automatically overlapping the thumbs.

I guess I am waiting for the rhythms to change, for the black dog to kick in, for my own fingers to play, not the piano, but morse code. I wonder – will anyone answer when I call out? Will anybody come?

Light

Light
A Jackpine Sonnet

I love the way the light
rises in the morning,
stands still and stately at noon,
and fades as day slips into night.

Each day I watch the berries
on the mountain ash
changing color as daylight
strides strong across the sky
then slopes away to the west.

A long time ago, in Paris,
I saw Monet’s paintings
of the Cathedral at Rouen –
morning, noon, afternoon.

Seurat, Monet, and Sisley taught me
to appreciate the multiple ways
in which light fragments
and scatters into many colors
the cloak of berries on my tree.

Comment:

Moo thought this would be a lovely painting to accompany today’s poem. “Red berries,” he said, “and faces amongst the glowing foliage to match the low fires of the westering sun.” Sometimes Moo has a trick with words that is even better than his tricks with paint. Not that he would ever claim to be a poet, as I would never claim to be a painter. That said, by chance or fate, we sometimes luck out.

I saw those Monet paintings at Le Jeu de Paume in Paris, 1963 I believe it was. A long time ago. I remember standing in a circular room surrounded by water lilies – and I stood there, amazed, floating like a cloud in a floral paradise. Funny how those moments can linger, stamped on the retina, and recalled in the strangest of ways. I like the works of all three painters, but I must admit that Seurat, the founder of chromo-luminarism, also known as pointillism, can drive you dotty until you work out how all those little berries join together to make a perfect image.

Sisley, to my mind, is more akin to Monet – except for the actual choice of subjects, but that might just be my misinterpretation of their combined talents. No matter – what I see when the light hits the berries on my tree is a combination of creative memories that gift me with an insight into the multiple meanings of the structure of the evening light – the magic hour – as my friend Tony Bear calls it – that brings joy and delight to my garden each sunny evening, as it fades into night.



Anywhere

Anywhere
Jackpine Sonnet

I knew you the first day
I saw you. I knew your heart
before you could open it up
and let me in. I knew your soul
before you allowed me
to touch its beauty’s depth.

Did I know you from another
life? I just don’t know. I only
know that I knew who you were
and what you meant to me.

Once I saw you, how could I let
you go? I reached across the bridge
that spans the ages and saw you
as you always were, clad in white,
shining like the Milky Way
across a universe of falling stars
and you the only one I wanted
to catch, put in my pocket,
 and keep safe in my heart.

Comment:

“Know thy self!” So easy to say, but not so easy to do. Sometimes it is easier to know others, to see them clearly, than it is to know ourselves. As Robbie Burns once wrote – “Oh would some power the giftie gie us / to see ourselves as others see us.” The mirror of the self, alas, is a fairground mirror, snatched from the hall of mirrors, and it is a distorting mirror that turns us into different shapes and sizes.

And what about the ways in which people change? Miguel de Cervantes wrote that “the most difficult role in the play is that of the fool, for he who would play the fool must never be one.” How many of us wear a mask, play the fool, and it is only the joker’s bells that are heard, the fool’s mask that is seen?

And we can change in so many ways. Heraclitus – “we can never walk in the same river twice.” Why not? Because we change and the waters of the river change and everything is in fluctuation and nothing stays the same, not even for one day. Nostra vita brevis est … and it is subject to change.

How do we change? Let me count the ways – but, like petals on a daisy or seeds on a dandelion, the changes are almost impossible to count. Guillaume Apollinaire also wrote about change. “Je ne suis plus là moi-mème, je suis le quinze de l’onzième.” / “I am no more myself. I have become the fifth of the twelfth.” How often do people say – “I am a human being. I am not just a number.” Yet numbers are what we turn into. Statistics. Figures in columns. Dates in note books. Telephone numbers. Number plates on cars.

Oh the joys of time. Today’s heroes so soon turn into tomorrow’s forgotten people. Seeds on a dandelion, petals on a daisy, ants beneath the traveler’s feet … change is everywhere. And one day, even you, might look in that mirror and no longer recognize yourself. So – know yourself – yes – but always prepare for change.

Blood from Stones

Car tire over a pothole containing small monster figurines with aggressive faces
A car tire hovers above a pothole filled with snarling monster sculptures.
Image AI generated.

Blood from Stones

The road ahead a bandage
leaking grey blood from stones.
The snow plow brutal,
carelessly lifting scabbed edges
until the gore overflows.

Spring always promises renewal,
but freeze and thaw also open
old wounds making them bleed.

A merry, mazy life we lead,
threading the car’s needle through
holes torn in the asphalt’s fabric.

Some holes are so large they have
lives of their own, and names –
Grand Canyon, Yawning Gap,
Patty’s Peril, Big Bertha, each one
well-known to neighbors.

Others are pornographic,
their open orifices painted,
laughing in scorn, dentated
vaginas ready for anything.

Such decorated potholes
 are soon filled, their crude
messages swiftly erased.

Comment:

Three flat tires in the last month and spring’s potholes still out there, waiting to trap me. Apparently, one neighborhood on the North Side of the river decided to decorate their potholes with pornographic drawings. These were swiftly filled and their messages totally erased. Alas, we on the South Side are not so daring. We don’t go out and paint our potholes. Personally, I wish we did. July – and many potholes are still there.

Not only that, the road into town is being repaired. Hooray! However, the tarmac was stripped off two weeks ago and has yet to be replaced. Boo! More than that, at the end of our street, just before the highway, one or two enormous potholes still gape. They lead directly to a dip that rises abruptly when it meets with the now stripped highway. A champion clunker that – a genuine tank-trap. I think at least two of my flat tires occurred after going over that one.

It reminds me of my grandfather’s stories about WWI and ‘going over the top’. Now, each time I approach it in the car, I call out loudly, “Look out, grandpa, here I come.” I call that particular pothole Grandpa’s Revenge. My own personal name. I don’t know what the neighbors call it. And I don’t know why grandpa is seeking revenge! But below the tires, the pothole awaits, gnashing its teeth.

Railway Bridge

Railway Bridge

walking away
from Swansea sands

me crossing the bridge
shaking sand
from my sandals

a rare event
Swansea Bay Station
Cline Valley Line
a train at the platform

the station master
blows his whistle
doors close
slowly the train goes
under the bridge

I stand in a cloud
wrapped up
half-blinded
in huge puffs of smoke

filling my lungs
assaulting nostrils and eyes
with the sting of cinders
the stench of burning coal

sting and stench
and that short sharp whistle

they linger and cling
unforgettable
in my mind’s dark corners

Comment:

Me and my writing buddy also discussed linked poems. This is simply a chain in which each poem links back to another one. Yesterday, we wrote about Swansea Sands and how the poem was generated. Today we can look at the linking between that poem and this one, the old railway bridge that crossed the railway lines by Swansea Bay Station, and led back into Swansea, a town in those days, and the Civic Centre. Note, now, that each of those names could generate further links, further poems in the chain.

When we think of the great chain of being, we think of how all things are linked. From the Great Western Railway (GWR), to the Mumbles Railway, to the Cline Valley Branch line, and beyond. Each poem a railway station along the way. Main line, branch line, express train, goods train … links everywhere, and each link encapsulated in a memory of one kind or another. How could we not write poetry about such things?

McAdam Railway Station, in New Brunswick, Canada. 60 trains a day used to stop here. Now the station is a landmark, a memory, a place where ghost trains run and shadowy figures run wild up and down the grass grown tracks where the sleepers sleep, their dreams undisturbed. I could write a book of poems about this station. Wait a second, I already have and Geoff Slater, my painting buddy, decorated it for me with his wonderful paintings and drawings. What more can I say? Each link in the chain, a potential poem. Each stop along the way, material enough for a painting, a poem, or a book.

Follicle Folly

Pink rosebuds hanging with water droplets on green leaves background
Close-up of pink rosebuds adorned with glistening water droplets

Photo AI generated
Big Brother was watching
and listening

Follicle Folly

Jack Pine Sonnet

I am happy with smaller things
the buds just budding on the ash
grass just being grass and green
beneath drizzle and mizzle and
the lightest showers of spring rain

grey / gray I don’t know nor care
clouds descend dampen spring air
dampness curls my remaining hair
some gone but not as much as I see
lost hairs missing from my friends

I traveled with a friend who counted
every hair he lost but couldn’t count
the cost of the weight of his worrying
about every forlorn follicle he lost

Comment:

No comment. That’s what politicians say, and people taken into custardy. What’s yellow and deadly? Shark infested custard, of course. There’s no flies on me said the Portuguese Custard tart as I brushed the ants off it prior to devouring it. Try the Garibaldi cookie aka the dead flies grave yard. The body count of a Garibaldi should be high. You’d be raisin the roof, if the count wasn’t as high as the Count of Monte Cristo. Take off that Iron Mask when you’re talking to me. Who was that masked man? I don’t know. Ask Tonto, stupid.

Warning – these comments were artificially generated by a lost intelligence that is only just coming of age in a time of jerry attic semi-conductor memory loss with everything under lock and key in a small room upstairs under the roof where the thatch used to grow. Even worse than losing your follicles is losing your ….. add your own ending. Don’t make me pull out my remaining hair and waste my time by searching for a word to rhyme. And remember the village church’s limerick competition – the only clean one won it.

Orality and Literacy – Words – Spoken or written?

Ryan and Don Roger

13

Orality and Literacy
Words
Spoken or Written?

            We asked our AI friends what the rate of illiteracy was in Spain in 1605, the date of publication of DQI. According to them – Based on historical trends, the illiteracy rate in Spain in 1605 was extremely high, likely exceeding 90% to 95% of the general population. While exact nationwide surveys did not exist in 1605, historical insights from the period indicate that during the 16th and 17th centuries, the ability to read and write was generally restricted to elites, clergy, and urban professionals. Furthermore, female illiteracy was significantly higher, with hardly any women possessing writing skills during this era. And, in addition, literacy was slightly higher in major cities like Madrid or in northern Spain, while the rural south suffered from much higher illiteracy rates. Based on these insights it is easy conclude that well under 10% of the population in Cervantes’s time knew how to read and write.

            In Don Quixote, Cervantes reveals to us a rural society which is basically illiterate. Most of the multitude of characters can neither read nor write. Throughout the woven interplay of the novel, Cervantes juxtaposes the illusion of the literate nymphs and shepherds who come into the woods to dance and play with the reality of the goatherds, shepherds, and horse wranglers, like the Yanguesans (DQI, XV / 15) who, totally illiterate, work the woods for a living. This contrast is a theme of the times and can be clearly seen in the paintings of Velásquez. One has only to think of The Water Seller, The Old Lady Frying Eggs, The Topers, The Court Dwarves, and Vulcan’s Forge, to name a few paintings that illustrate the clash of youth, age, class.

            The question of learning is an interesting one, explored in depth by Walter J. Ong in Orality and Literacy (1982). Learning in an oral society is done by word of mouth. One method of handing down knowledge is the proverb, its wisdom passed down from generation to generation. Sancho Panza, totally illiterate, is famous for his stringing together of proverb after proverb. He is the prime example of what one might call oral sagacity. Don Quixote, on the other hand, amazes us at first with his mastery of the ballads and the major exploits of knights errant in the novels of chivalry that he recites and imitates at will, and later with his mastery of such themes as the Golden Age and Arms and Letters. 

As Ong points out, the presence of writing changes totally the ways in which people think and learn. The word, once spoken, can never be recalled. But, when the word is written down it can be redacted, erased, changed, crossed out. More, the immediate transference of ideas from person to person in the oral exchange of conversation is totally different from the thoughtful exchange of written letters and ideas. In the latter, one trains oneself to think before you ink. That thought process can then be transferred back to the thinking process, both by literate and illiterate people. In this way, the processing of thought changes. And that is what happens to Sancho Panza in DQII.

The question of authority arises here. In an oral society, authority rests with the older members, who have lived long, and understand much, and a great deal of it preserved in proverbs. In a literate society, the authority resides in the written word, especially when it is tested and approved by the Inquisition (in the case of Spain) and royal permission. In a literate society, those who have studied a subject become the authority in that subject. I know professors who never again took a course or opened their books after they attained their doctorates. The PhD gave them the right to be an authority and to know it all. I also know professors who never stopped learning, who continued reading, and publishing, and taking courses, and building their initial knowledge base into a life long learning process.

Is knowledge static? I certainly hope not. As T. S. Eliot writes in Burnt Norton, “Words strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden, under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, will not stay still.” The lapidarian truth of the folkloric proverb softens as change surges around us. The authorities of the sixties, when I was in graduate school, faded gradually, and new names, new theories, new doctrines replaced them. We started to explore these ideas in 5 – Book Burnings and 6 – Censorship. With the proliferation of knowledge via the internet and the intrusion of an abundance of AI into our lives, this question of authority – what is true and what is false – must form a part of our current thought and teaching and learning methodology. How do we distinguish truth from fiction, real news from fake news?

In an oral society, with no writing, your word is your bond. Think of the cowboy movies – “White man speak with forked tongue.” Now make the appropriate gesture from the many Cowboy and Indian movies you have seen. White man wants it in writing. For the red man, his word is his bond, sealed maybe, with a slash of the knife across the wrist – blood brothers. We have entered a world with different cultures and expectations. Now ask yourself, how many written treaties has the white man broken across the centuries. Is his word, written or spoken, truly his bond? I guess it depends upon the courts and the lawyers.

            “My word is as good as my bond,” 007 aka James Bond aka Sean Connery aka Daniel Craig aka Pierce Brosnan aka Roger Moore aka 3M-007. How many levels of different linguistic reality, at the intertextual level, can you count in that delightful sentence? Just think about it. And tell me, if you are an authority on the subject, who is the real James Bond! Meanwhile, remember that The Olde Order Changeth Lest One Good Custom Should Corrupt The World. Now, could that be Tennyson, Idylls of the King, or is it a quote from The Wycliffe Star? You are the authority. You choose!

Mindfulness

Mindfulness

Poems arrive, as silent as the deer
that troop through my garden.

Some times they hurry past,
and catch them if you can.

Sometimes, they stay, wait, nibble
 at an overhanging branch.

Just when you think you can
reach out and grasp them,
they sense the bark of a dog,
the sigh of the wind
through leafless trees.

You blink, and they have gone.

Was your camera ready?
Was your note book open,
your pen in your hand?

Or did they flit away like dreams
 in the morning when the sun
comes into the bedroom
and sparks diamond fires
from the lashes that stand guard?

Censorship

Person in a black hoodie with face covered and mouth taped shut at sunset.
A hooded figure stands with a taped mouth in this powerful depiction of silenced expression.

Image generated by AI

Ryan and Don Roger

6

Censorship

            Censorship plays an important part in many societies and can take multiple forms. The Spanish Inquisition, for example, along with book burning, played a powerful role in the printing industry. Every book had to be examined and approved by a member of the Inquisition. Political correctness is itself a form of censorship. It encourages people to think about what they say and how they are saying it. Many sorts of political correctness arise from the feminist movement that began to question the male domination of the English language. Actors and actresses became actors. In cricket, wicket-keepers, bowlers, and fielders passed the linguistic test, but batsmen and batswomen became batters. I sincerely hope that glove men, for wicket-keepers, do not turn into glove persons.

            Nowadays, some people feel that the correction of language has gone too far and this has resulted in the anti-woke movement, as it is called. This rejects both the correction, and the hyper-correction, of what some people call imbalances in language, culture, and society. I will self-censor myself, rather than being censored by another person or persons, and refrain from what I personally feel about these ideas. Here, I merely point out that they exist.

            Lazarillo de Tormes, for example, was heavily censored by the Spanish Inquisition. All anti-clerical references in the original edition, and there were many of them, were removed. The resultant volume, heavily redacted and much smaller, became known as Lazarillo Castigado / Lazarillo chastised.

            To the best of my knowledge, the only piece removed from Don Quixote was the episode in which he made a rosary from the tail of his shirt, by tying ten small knots in it, and one large one. Since the shirt tail was used for many purposes, including wiping oneself, the censor thought this idea was indecent. Cervantes replaced the shirt tail with ten acorns and a chestnut in later editions.

He also managed to escape censure by placing all his questionable statements in the mouth of a mad man. Whenever an anti-clerical comment was made, readers (and listeners, for in those days, not everybody could read), chuckled at the enormity of the statement and rejoiced in the fact that only a madman could say such things.

            Together with censorship comes correction. Thus Sancho, who is illiterate and can neither read nor write, is also unable to spell. In this fashion, he offers a series of incorrect pronunciations and phonetic equivalents that Don Quixote joyfully and carefully corrects. We see this in other characters too. In DQI, VII or 7, the devil named by the housekeeper, becomes ‘the sage Muñaton’ in the mouth of the niece. Don Quixote changes this to ‘Freston’. The housekeeper continues with ‘Freston’ or ‘Friton’ and adds “I know only that his name ended in ton.”

            In our modern society, I see an enormous change taking place. Where I was educated by reading books, many books in my case, today’s younger generation teach themselves via AI and Chat. They watch videos. Watch TV. Text on cell phones. They listen to multiple podcasts. All this is audio-visual, little of it is written down. As a result, essays I received from my students were filled with phonetic spellings of words that they had heard, but not seen in written form. In addition, schools are no longer teaching cursive. My grand-daughter can print. She can neither read nor write joined letters. However, she can text faster with her two thumbs than I can with my index finger! The new generations have entered an electronic world that is totally alien to me.

            Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Who shall guard the guards? Who shall police the police? Who shall program the programmers? And with what shall they program them? A long time ago, the BBC in England banned Sesame Street because it was too simplistic. Today, Sesame Street equivalents rule. So, let us extend our questions – “Who shall censor the censors?”

            Sometimes, it takes a madman to do it, in our case, a madman called Don Quixote! He, in his madness, encourages us, nay (or as Rocinante might say ‘neigh!’), he forces us to re-examine our links to language, to reality, to illusion. Reading his text, we learn to ask questions of the world around us. How many of our realities are illusions? How many of our illusions are corruptions of reality? How many times has Don Quixote been banned by figures in authority because of its attacks on authority?

            Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Who shall guard the guards? Who shall program the programmers? “Who shall censor the censors?” And who will protect us if we speak truth to authority, and authority doesn’t like the truths we offer? The author of Lazarillo remains anonymous. Cervantes distanced his words from himself and put them in the mouth of a madman. Other people have taken evasive action in other ways.

The alternative – stay silent and bleat with the sheep – “Four legs good! Two legs bad!” And when the Mastiffs with their spiked collars come for us, we can always, like the sheep, change our chant. “Four legs bad! Two legs good!” After all, all sheep are equal, even when some sheep are more equal than others, and all of us can imagine we are animals on George Orwell’s Animal Farm – and then we can say what we want and nobody will listen, nobody will pay attention, and nobody will understand. And remember, somebody, somewhere will want Animal Farm banned. And 1984.