Intertextuality

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.

Gone out

Gone out

“She has lived.
Now she has gone out.”

And all too soon
I too will go out
and people
will be able to say
he has gone out.

Or not.
Maybe there’ll just be
a silence.
Few people know me.
Even fewer care about me,
know who I really am
what I’ve actually done.

What have I done?
Nothing, really.
Nothing at all.

But I have struck a match or two,
lit some candles,
and allowed them to shine
in the darkness …

…

and soon, I too,
like those candles,
will go out.

Commentary:
The opening quote, changed and adapted, is from Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim. I was reading it a few days ago, by candlelight, as we had a brief, and totally unexpected power outage because some idiot ran into a power pole on the highway below us and cut off our power.

Reading by candlelight is so inspirational. It brings back memories of my childhood in Wales, summer evenings in the bungalow, no power, no running water, reading by lamplight or candle light. The candle’s scent, the flicker of shadowy thoughts across the page, each word held for a moment or two in a magic, shimmering glow. I recall also the candles on the high altar, lit for midnight mass, and the church all a-sparkle with shimmering light, incense, and flowers.

Power outage – I often think they should be called power out[r]ages. Then I think of the war zones, rife with suffering, where power outages are only one of the many outrages from which people are suffering. “Man’s inhumanity to man.” Robbie Burns, I believe. I regret calling that driver who took out the power pole an idiot. Shame on me. I found out later that he was a human being, suffering, just like me, from the attributes of ageing. A heart attack took him and his leaden foot, dead on the accelerator, sped him into the power pole.

DOA – dead on arrival at the power pole, and at the hospital. “He has lived. Now he has gone out,” snuffed out like the candles I blew out when the power was finally restored. It’s so easy to relight a candle, so hard to relight the beauty of a lost human life.




Clepsydra 18-20

18

… as free as the birds
     a sky full at North Cape
          where shores retreat
               year after year
 
the big red mud diminishes
     under advancing waters
          sea-threatened cliffs
               undermined roads
                    houses
                         the lighthouse

gulls follow the fishing boats
     herring gulls
          blotting out
               sun and sky
                    above the reef

with its seals
     basking in sunshine
          knowing themselves
               being themselves
                    thinking themselves safe

kings and queens
     of their sealdom
          never questioning …

19

… an osprey
     sudden the swoop
          turned into a stoop

water shattered
     total immersion
          then emerging
               with lusty thrusts of wings

claws clasping
     imprisoned prey
          prised from the sea
               raised to the skies
                    up and away
                         murderer and victim

oblivious below
     the black horse
          with cart and farmer
               gathering seaweed

all of them
     having no doubts
          safe in the security
               of their roles …

20

… while lost in the labyrinth
      I searched for a thread
               on life’s loom

a thread woven
     by an unknown
          unseen hand
               a hand and thread
                    I could never control

yet one day
     that thread
          will lead me out
               from the dark

then shall I see
     the sun’s great candle
          beneath which red rocks
               wave and water battered
                    crumble

here at North Cape
     in a way that nobody
          can understand …

Commentary:

The osprey “emerging with lusty thrusts of wings, claws clasping, imprisoned prey prised from the sea, raised to the skies, up and away, murderer and victim.” The words are based on the photograph. A quiet day, somebody shouted, and pointed, and clickety-click, I was lucky enough to capture the whole thing on my digital camera. This one shot summarizes it all.

The stanzas (16 & 17) that precede this moment are available here. Clepsydra, the book, is one single poem, one single sentence, that rambles on and on. Each stanza stands alone, each poem (numbered) stands alone, and the whole book stands alone as a single sentence summarizing what I have seen and where I have been. Bakhtinian Chronotopos – my dialog with my time and my place. In this case, my many dialogs with my multiple times and multitudinous places.

Albert Camus lent me the phrase ‘murderer and victim’. ‘Nous sommes, ou meurtrier ou victime‘. Quoted from memory. I hope I am not too far wrong. My memory fades as I age. Louis Aragon suggested I borrow his line “rois tombés de leurs chariots” – that I found in his collection Il ne m’est Paris sans Elsa. Here, I have applied it to the seals at North Cape, PEI – “seals – basking in sunshine – kings and queens of their sealdom.” Intertextuality – texts talking to texts and recalling segments of texts within other texts.” Wonderful. Alas, I fear the coming days when the memory may no longer be so clear. ‘What will be, will be’ said the Osprey as he pulled the flounder from the sea and carried him too his nest in a nearby tree.

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!

Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams

Amnesia survives in these amniotic waters,
moving in time to the water pump’s heart beat.
I close my eyes and dream. Nothing is the same.

Do I drift dreamily or dreamily drift?
The bath-tub’s rose-petals bring memories –
primroses, bluebells, cowslips, daffodils dancing

beneath the trees in Blackweir Gardens,
or beside Roath Lake, where I biked
on gravel paths so many years ago.

Photos float before me, pictures of moments
I alone recall. Spring in Paris, the trees
breaking into bud along the Champs-Élysées.

Santander in summer, walking the Piquío
as it slumbers beneath the jacarandas.
One winter in Wales, up in Snowdonia,

I ran down a valley between high hills,
on a freezing night, with only the stars
to keep me company, so cold, I nearly froze.

Autumn at the Peace Park in Mactaquac,
with leaves reflected in the head pond.
Or the Beaver Pond with its fall orgy

of gaudily painted trees, leaves drifting down
on this first chill wind, to settle like tiny,
colorful birds in my beloved’s hair.

I remember the look in her eyes when
I caught a falling leaf and put it in
her pocket, telling her to save it,
like a falling star, for a rainy day.

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.

Silence

Silence

Pain stops at the edge of silence
and silence is the sound of sunlight
breaking against the walls of the room
in which I sit and listen, in silence,
waiting for the notes to begin again.

Silence, yes, yet my silence lies broken
by the renewed intrusion of the clock,
by the electric hum from lights and heating.

Ghostly noises break into my thoughts:
cheers from a distant tennis court,
those eternal advertisements
that invade my innermost being.

What triviality now shatters
the Messiaenic mood that wrapped me
for a moment in a many-colored cloak
woven from musical oblivion.

Time’s teeth start to gnaw again
and the grandfather clock
nibbles at my soul, extracting
its essence in a surge of sound,
tick-tock, tick-tock.

Westminster Chimes choke
life from the hour and ring
the tick-tock knell that files
my life away, second by second,
minute by minute, day by day.

Comment:

Silence is the fifth poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time.

“So,” said Moo, “today I offer this painting where the title, Sound of Silence, fits well with the title of your poem. That said, I am not sure that the painting itself, qua painting, is as suitable as earlier pairings. De gustibus non est disputandum / there is no arguing about taste. I guess you either like something or you don’t.”

“It certainly isn’t in your usual style. In fact, it looks more like a colored pencil sketch than a painting. Where did you draw the title from?”

“Actually, it’s from one of your poems about Avila, in Spain, the city where, or so they say, you can hear the silence. You complained about all the noise that you found, especially the church bells, in that otherwise silent city.”

“Ah yes. I remember that poem. And I’ll never forget the sound of the bells echoing from wall to wall in those narrow, medieval streets. Bells from all the churches inside the walls of the city, tolling at exactly the same time, calling the faithful to prayer.”

“And that is one of the differences between us that I mentioned yesterday. My paintings, whatever they depict, are always silent. I have heard you read your poems out loud on Spotify and I have also heard other people reading them on your behalf, not always successfully. Poetry is designed not only to be read silently, but also to be read out loud, before an audience. Painting, on the other hand, is always silent. It does not speak, nor can it be heard. A painting is just there, in two dimensions, powerful, if you are lucky, weak and wobbly if the artist does not fulfill his task.”

“Interesting, dear Moo. And the images that I draw from Messiaen’s music are interesting too. For musical notes, without words, change into images within the listener’s mind, and then, when heard by the poet in me, become verbal images upon the page. Fascinating.”

“It is. Some time soo we must talk about intertextuality, the ways in which one artistic form or text can influence another. Hopefully, you’ll find a poem and I’ll find a painting that illustrate just that.”

What relationships have a positive impact on you?

Daily writing prompt
What relationships have a positive impact on you?
View all responses

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.

The 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.

Intertextuality

Intertextuality

Wednesday Workshop
25 August 2021

            This is another academic word that has a simple meaning. In essence, it means texts talking to texts. Quevedo (1580-1645) writes ‘escucho con mis ojos a los muertos’ / ‘I listen with my eyes to dead men.’ He is suggesting that, each time we read a text written by another person we enter into a dialog with that text and that author. His metaphoric conversations with the writings of the long-dead Seneca become intertextual the moment he put pen to paper and wrote about them.

This intertextuality is a key component of my writing.  You may not recognize all the phrases that I have used previously by other writers. I do. Some other readers will. Just take, as an example, the titles of some of my earlier books. The title of Broken Ghosts (Goose Lane, 1986) comes from these lines penned by the Swansea poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953). ‘Light breaks where no sun shines; / where no sea runs, the waters of the heart / push in their tides; and, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads, the things of light / file through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.” Stars at Elbow and Foot, the title of my Selected Poems (Cyberwit.net, 2021) was also inspired by one of Dylan Thomas’s poems. “And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon; when their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, they shall have stars at elbow and foot.” The title of Though Lovers Be Lost (Kindle, 2016) also comes from this same poem, one of my favorites, obviously.

Sometimes readers are aware of these intertextual clues that I sow throughout my poems. Sometimes not. It doesn’t matter. There is a resonance in such chosen words and that resonance is there, irrespective of whether you are aware of the word-source or not. That said, the recognition and acknowledgement of intertextual relationships expands the poetic meanings of the creative world even further. It also establishes verbal links between author and author, epoch and epoch, genre and genre, thus establishing a wider intertextual network and a stronger chain of linked literary thoughts and meanings. In our creative journeys, we rarely walk alone, whether we are aware of it, or not.

The art of writing poetry about paintings is known as ekphrasis – which basically just means a verbal description of a visual work of art, whether it’s real or imaginary. The conversion of the visible (painting) to the printed page (verbal) is another link in the great chain of intertextuality, for paintings, too, are narratives with a different form of text. Other component parts are audible to verbal (alliteration, onomatopoeia), touch and feel (tactile) to verbal (as in synesthesia or the mixing of the senses) and the transfer of taste to verbal forms. Many of these transitions and transformations are present, not only in my own poetry, but in surrealism (verbal and visual) as well.

A Thought for the New Year

Couldn’t find a photo of Don Quixote so I attached this instead. A suitable symbol for Brexit!

A Thought for the New Year

“Sábete, Sancho, … Todas estas borrascas que nos suceden son señales de que presto ha de serenar el tiempo y han de sucedernos bien las cosas, porque no es posible que el mal ni el bien sean durables, y de aquí se sigue que, habiendo durado mucho el mal, el bien está ya cerca.”
Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote de la Mancha.

“Know this, Sancho, … All these squalls that beset us are signs that the weather will soon clear up and better things will come to us, because it isn’t possible for good or ill to endure, and from here it follows that, these ills having lasted so long, good times are now close.”
My translation.

Comment: This quote was sent to me by Marina, my close friend from Avila, with whom I have maintained contact, even though it is now twelve full years (2008-2020) since we last saw each other and talked, except on Messenger. Break ups and lost and absent friends and families: it seems to be the story of my life. And how could it be otherwise when one is a migrant who emigrates and immigrates and passes on and through, rarely resting in the same place for long? I guess it is also the story of the Intelligentsia: those whose learning and understanding and life experience moves them out from one place and into many others. Cualquier tiempo pasado fue mejor / any time from the past was better. Hiraeth: the knowledge that the past is lost, save in our minds, and can never be recovered, even though sometimes we wish so badly to do so. The Intelligentsia: always dissatisfied, both with the past which they can never recreate and which they view through the pink lens of nostalgia and with the present which is never as beautiful as that pastel pink past, that in reality probably never existed. Toda la vida es un sueño y los sueños sueños son / The whole of life is a dream and dreams are just dreams, and nothing more (Calderon de la Barca).