Intertextuality

Clepsydra 35 & 36

35
… to save myself
     I must grasp it firmly
          as I would a nettle
               not with my hands
                    but with my teeth

but my hands are tied
     behind my back
a cloth is bound
     over my eyes         
          and I cannot see … 

36

… I struggle and squirm
     until released
          I float ashore
               and stand on the sea wall
                    calling out to the moon
                         begging her not to hide
                              her scarred face


I entreat the ebbing tide
     to carry me with it out to sea
          past the island
               beyond the lighthouse
                    into deep water

waves stronger than any

     thing I have known
          thrust rough fingers
               under my arms
                    lift me up
                         then drag me down

to the depths
     where I can finally rest
          in peace …

Commentary:

Mors omnia solvit – death solves everything. But does it? What about the crossword, the jigsaw puzzle, the unsolved ? What about the problem of life itself? What is it? How does it function? And what is that poor bird doing lying on its PEI beach half-covered in sand? What problems did he have solved?

” my hands are tied behind my back, a cloth is bound over my eyes and I cannot see” …  so how can I tell where I am going and why I am going there? Simple questions – yet there are no answers, none that are given to me anyway. And who am I to reason why? Is my detiny, as always, to just do and die?

I do not know. The bird on the beach does not know. The ebbing tide doesn’t know, or care what it carries out with it. And what are we anyway? Why do we search for meaning in the meaningless? For answers in the absurd? And why does Sisyphus roll his rock up the hill, release it, then walk back down, pick it up and carry it up again? And why must we imagine that Sisyphus is happy? Our daily work – ce boureau sans merci – why should we be thankful for it?  Because there is nothing else? Because otherwise we would be abandoned? Or just because?

Oh, ho-ho-ho-ho, tell me if you know, who the… where the … why …. the what for … where did that one go? Even poor old Alf and dear old ‘Erbet, somewhere on the Somme, didn’t know the answer to that one. And they had their little dugout made a mess of by a bomb. Well, at least they found another hole, but when that other shell went over, it left them still wondering! And don’t we all?

Clepsydra 34

34

… 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

Book of Life

Book of Life

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!

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 27

Clepsydra 27

… the museum closes its doors
     inside the clepsydra murmurs
          on and on

evening falls from the sky
     in great cataracts of light
          stars flare like candles

who will see
     that last drop of water
          trembling at
               the clepsydra’s edge,

who will snuff out
     that last flickering
          flame of my life
               as the final verses
                    of the children’s song
                         loom closer

… Here comes a candle
     to light you to bed.
          And here comes a chopper
               to chop of your head…

Commentary:

Moo got it right this time – “evening falls from the sky in great cataracts of light, stars flare like candles …” Lovely painting of a star ‘flaring like a candle’ against the evening sky. I think he called the painting Affirmation. Yup, he’s nodding his head, and he has his eyes wide open. He’s not dropping off into one of those drowsy moments of old age. Too early in the morning to do ‘noddy’ I say. Oh-oh, there he goes. It’s Billy Cotton Band Show Time … “Wakey-wakey!” Now how many of you remember the Billy Cotton Band Show on BBC Radio on Sunday afternoons, just as people are dropping off to sleep after the enormous Sunday dinner and dessert? Hands up if you’re over eighty and remember that. Oh dear. Not a good idea. Moo’s hand’s gone up and he’s still got his eyes shut. Ah well, appearances aren’t everything.

And look at that comma after – the clepsydra’s edge, (line 10) -. The one that got away. There’s always one that gets away, no matter how hard we try – and try we do. Clepsydra is meant to be a single sentence, with no punctuation other than an ellipsis at the beginning and end of each sequence. And what have we here? A common or garden comma, growing like a large, spring dent-de-lion / dandelion in the middle of a patch of flowery images and metaphors. Out, out fowl spot! What bird was that? A Flying MacBeth just dropped something on my windshield. ‘What a foul fowl was that fellow,’ said the soccer referee pointing to the penalty spot. A round spot with a whale of a tail.

“Any questions?” I asked my students at the end of class one day. A brave young lad raised his hand. “I have a question, sir?” [I liked it when they called me, sir. It happened about once or twice a year. I always knew something drastic was about to happen when I received a knighthood.] “Ask away,” I replied. “What the heck are you on? I’d love to have some of that. Can you give me some, sir!” Two knighthoods in one day. I’ll be a KG next, instead of an RG. I bet you don’t get that joke! Answers by snail mail and dog sled, please!

Clepsydra 25 & 26

25

… how will it all end
     does it not need closure
          something to bring
               the water-wheel full circle
                    a golden key to open
                         what

the museum’s door
     memory’s door
          the archives where
               so many memories lie
                    gathering dust

though some may tell the truth
     whatever that is

or does the story go on and on
     never pausing
          never ending
               wrinkle after wrinkle
                    threaded through time
                         after time
                              the candle
                                    burning

the clepsydra
     dripping all life away
          the pendulum
               swaying
                    back and forth …

26

… Westminster Chimes
     chiming the quarters
          church bells
               ringing out a warning

the hills alive
     alight
          with burning beacons

what new armadas
     sailing now off our coast
          what fireflies flicker
               their thunderous roar
                    frightening birds in trees
                         driving deer
                              into the woods

how many people
     cast forth like bread
          upon the waters
               to return ten-fold

hark to the bells
     ringing out again
          St. Clement’s
               St. Martin’s
                    the Old Bailey
hark to the children singing
     dancing in a circle
          never-ending
               until the music ends

and the last child
     is caught by
          the lowering arms
               trapped
                    a fish flapping
                         in the osprey’s grasp …

Commentary:

I wonder how many people still sing the children’s song about the bells of London? Images from it – intertextuality – occur throughout Clepsydra.

“Oranges and lemons,”
ring the bells of St. Clement’s.

“You owe me five farthings,”
say the bells of St. Martin’s.

“When will you pay me,”
ask the bells of Old Bailey.

“When I grow rich,”
sing the bells of Shoreditch.

“And when will that be,”
sing the silver bells of Battersea.

“I do not know,”
booms the great bell at Bow.

“Here comes a candle
to light you to bed.
And here comes a chopper
to chop off your head.”

The song appeared at children’s parties. Two of them joined hands, held their hands high, like London’s Tower Bridge, and the children, in a long chain passed beneath the ‘bridge’ as the song was sung. At the end, the children speeded up and they tried to avoid the last verse when the bridge’s arms descended and two children were caught. These then had to replace the original two gate-keepers and the game started again. At least, that was how I remember it being played.

It is worth remembering how violent in their imagery children’s songs can be. The games seem sweet, but they often have dark undertones, some going back to the Black Death – “Ring a ring a rosies, a pocket full of posies, atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down.” If you don’t know what that all signifies, go down the rabbit hole with Alice and the white rabbit and look it all up! And find out what a farthing is, and a penny farthing – go on – I double-dog dare you!

And remember – poetry carries its own meaning – or multiple meanings – and they are not always easy to find. Dig, my friends, dig. There’s gold in them there hills.

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!

Cage of Flame

Cage of Flame

Now you are a river
flowing silver beneath the moon.
High tide in the salt marsh:
 your body fills with shadow and light.
 I dip my hands in dappled water.

Twin gulls, they float down stream,
then perch on an ice-floe
of half-remembered dreams.

Eagle with a broken wing,
why am I trapped in this cage of flame?
When I turn my feathers to the sun,
my back is striped
with the black and white
of a convict’s bars.

Awake, I lie anchored
by what pale visions
fluttering on the horizon?

White moths wing their snow
storm through the night.
A feathered shadow ghosts
fingers towards my face.
Butterflies stutter
against a shuttered window.

A candle flickers in the darkness
and maps in runes
the ruins of my heart. Eye of the peacock,
can you touch what I see
when my eyelids close for the night?

The black rock of the midnight sun
rolled up the sky.
Last night, the planet quivered
beneath my body
and I felt each footfall
a transient god.

When will I be released
from my daily bondage?

Commentary:

Moo reminded me that this poem also existed as a prose poem. here it is in prose layout. Think about it and let me know which version you prefer. Is one easier to read than the other? Do the rhythms come through more strongly in one version? Meanwhile, since he hasn’t painted a cage of flame, nor a river flowing silver, he suggested that if I really felt like the poem suggested I might feel like, then All Shook Up – with its warm, colorful flame images, might be just the poem to fit the crime. Better, he said than playing billiards on a cloth untrue, with a twisted cue, and elliptical billiard balls.

I wonder how many people recognize that little tip of the hat to the past glories of English Comic Opera? Since Canada post is on rotating strike – talk about twisted cues and elliptical billiard balls – then send your answers by highly trained snails (snail mail) or dog sled via whatever route still has enough snow for the huskies to haul on. Meanwhile, Ottawa has declared that the Maritime provinces are continuing with their suffering a buffering from lack of rain and severe drought. I do long for that river flowing silver, not to mention high tide in the salt marsh. We need water badly. And the sooner the better. Aquifers, rivers, wells, they all need filling.

Ah, the majestic game of cricket – and how I long for that summer test match curse – Rain Stopped Play. Or as the BBC commentator said on the radio one day – I heard him – “play has been stopped because of piddles on the putch – oh, sorry, I mean puddles on the pitch.” I wonder what Mr. Hugh Jarce would have thought of that. I know he always loved that old cricketing Chestnut – ‘The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey.” Unlike much wanted rain, it didn’t stop the match, but the commentators who perpetrated that jest laughed so much, the commentary stopped for nearly five minutes. Oh, the things one remembers as one gets old. Now, where did I put my glasses? I wonder if my beloved knows.

Cage of Flame

Now you are a river flowing silver beneath the moon. High tide in the salt marsh: your body fills with shadow and light. I dip my hands in dappled water. Twin gulls, they float down stream, then perch on an ice-floe of half-remembered dreams. Eagle with a broken wing, why am I trapped in this cage of flame? When I turn my feathers to the sun, my back is striped with the black and white of a convict’s bars. Awake, I lie anchored by what pale visions fluttering on the horizon? White moths wing their snow storm through the night. A feathered shadow ghosts fingers towards my face. Butterflies stutter against a shuttered window. A candle flickers in the darkness and map in runes the ruins of my heart. Eye of the peacock, can you touch what I see when my eyelids close for the night? The black rock of the midnight sun rolled up the sky. Last night, the planet quivered beneath my body and I felt each footfall of a transient god. When will I be released from my daily bondage?

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!