Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they
were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.

Once Paumanok,
When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,
Up this seashore in some briers,
Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,
And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,
And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,
And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing
them,
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

Shine! shine! shine!
Pour down your warmth, great sun.’
While we bask, we two together.

Two together!
Winds blow south, or winds blow north,
Day come white, or night come black,
Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
Singing all time, minding no time,
While we two keep together.

Till of a sudden,
May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate,
One forenoon the she-bird crouch’d not on the nest,
Nor return’d that afternoon, nor the next,
Nor ever appear’d again.

And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,
And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,
Over the hoarse surging of the sea,
Or flitting from brier to brier by day,
I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,
The solitary guest from Alabama.

Blow! blow! blow!
Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore;
I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.

. . .

Previous poems are here.

Reference:

Walt Whitman [1982]:  Complete Poetry and Collected Prose.  Selected by Justin Kaplan. New York, NY, USA:  The Library of America.

Rectius Vives

You will take a better course, Licinius
if you do not always thrust over the deep sea,
or hug the dangerous coast too close,
shivering at the prospect of squalls.

Whoever loves the Golden Mean
is safe (no squalor for him in a filthy garret),
and temperate (for him no mansion
that men will envy).

The huge pine is more cruelly tossed
by the winds, the loftiest towers
have the heaviest fall and lightning strikes
the tops of mountains.

The heart well prepared hopes in adversity
for a change in fortune, and fears it in prosperity.
Jupiter brings back ugly winters
and Jupiter

removes them. If all goes badly now, some day
it will not be so. Sometimes Apollo rouses
the silent Muse with his lyre. He does not always
stretch his bow.

In a difficult strait show spirit
and courage, and when the wind
is too strong at your back, be wise
and shorten the bulging sail.

Reference:

Horace [1997 AD/23 BCE]: The Complete Odes and Epodes. Translation by David West. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Previous poems by Horace:  Tu ne quaesieris (Ode I: XI) and Vides ut alta (Ode I: IX).

Technorati Tags: Horace

Petit Testament

In the twenty-fifth year of my age
I find myself to be a dromedary
That has run short of water between
One oasis and the next mirage
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I am content at last to be
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses.
Begin here:

In the year 1943
I resigned to the living all collateral images
Reserving to myself a man’s
Inalienable right to be sad
At his own funeral.
(Here the peacock blinks the eyes
of his multipennate tail.)
In the same year
I said to my love (who is living)
Dear we shall never be that verb
Perched on the sole Arabian Tree
Not having learnt in our green age to forget
The sins that flow between the hands and feet
(Here the Tree weeps gum tears
Which are also real: I tell you
These things are real)
So I forced a parting
Scrubbing my few dingy words to brightness.

Where I have lived
The bed-bug sleeps in the seam, the cockroach
Inhabits the crack and the careful spider
Spins his aphorisms in the comer.
I have heard them shout in the streets
The chiliasms of the Socialist Reich
And in the magazines I have read
The Popular Front-to-Back.
But where I have lived
Spain weeps in the gutters of Footscray
Guernica is the ticking of the clock
The nightmare has become real, not as belief
But in the scrub-typhus of Mubo.

It is something to be at last speaking
Though in this No-Man’s-language appropriate
Only to No-Man’s-Land.
Set this down too:
I have pursued rhyme, image, and metre,
Known all the clefts in which the foot may stick,
Stumbled often, stammered,
But in time the fading voice grows wise
And seizing the co-ordinates of all existence
Traces the inevitable graph
And in conclusion:
There is a moment when the pelvis
Explodes like a grenade. I
Who have lived in the shadow that each act
Casts on the next act now emerge
As loyal as the thistle that in session
Puffs its full seed upon the indicative air.
I have split the infinite. Beyond is anything.

 

Technorati Tags: Ern Malley

The evocative video uses footage from Ilya Khrjanovsky’s film 4, and is available here.

No one visits here
In the dark mountain hut
where I live alone.
But for this sweet loneliness
it would be too bleak to bear.

Reference:

Sam Hamill (Editor and Translator) [1997]: Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love and Longing.  Boston, MA, USA:  Shambhala, page 55.

From the farm they banished the people.
“Hurrah!” cried the beasts. “We’re all equal!”
But superior plotters,
With trotters, the rotters,
Took over. The End. (There’s no sequel.)

Joseph’s Amazement

When Christ, by growth, disclosed his descent
Into the pure receipt of Mary’s breast
Poor Joseph, stranger yet to God’s intent,
With doubts of jealous thoughts was sore oppressed 
And, wrought with diverse fits of fear and love,
He neither can her free nor faulty prove.

Now sense, the wakeful spy of jealous mind,
By strong conjectures deemeth her defiled,
But love, in doom of things best loved blind,
Thinks rather sense deceived than her with child
Yet proofs so pregnant were that no pretence
Could cloak a thing so dear and plain to sense.

Then Joseph, daunted with a deadly wound,
Let loose the reins to undeserved grief.
His heart did throb, his eyes in tears were drowned,
His life a loss, death seemed his best relief.
The pleasing relish of his former love
In gallish thoughts to bitter taste doth prove.

One foot he often setteth forth of door
But t’other’s loath uncertain ways to tread.
He takes his fardel for his needful store,
He casts his Inn where first he means to bed.
But still ere he can frame his feet to go,
Love winneth time till all conclude in no.

Sometime, grief adding force, he doth depart.
He will, against his will, keep on his pace.
But straight remorse so racks his ruing heart,
That hasting thoughts yield to a pausing space;
Then mighty reasons press him to remain.
She whom he flies doth win him home again.

But when his thought, by sight of his abode,
Presents the sign of mis-esteemed shame,
Repenting every step that back he trod,
Tears drown the guides; the tongue, the feet doth blame.
Thus warring with himself a field he fights,
Where every wound upon the giver lights.

“And was my love,” quoth he, “so lightly prized?
Or was our sacred league so soon forgot?
Could vows be void, could virtues be despised?
Could such a spouse be stained with such a spot?”
O wretched Joseph that hast lived so long,
Of faithful love to reap so grievous wrong.

Could such a worm breed in so sweet a wood?
Could in so chaste demeanour lurk untruth?
Could vice lie hid where virtue’s image stood?
Where hoary sageness graced tender youth?
Where can affiance rest to rest secure?
In virtue’s fairest seat faith is not sure.

All proofs did promise hope, a pledge of grace,
Whose good might have repaid the deepest ill.
Sweet signs of purest thoughts in saintly face
Assured the eye of her unstained will.
Yet in this seeming lustre seem to lie
Such crimes for which the law condemns to die.

But Joseph’s word shall never work her woe:
“I wish her leave to live, not doom to die.
Though fortune mine, yet am I not her foe,
She to herself less loving is than I.
The most I will, the lest I can, is this,
Sith none may salve, to shun that is amiss.

Exile my home, the wilds shall be my walk,
Complaints my joy, my music mourning lays,
With pensive griefs in silence will I talk;
Sad thoughts shall be my guides in sorrow’s ways.
This course best suits the care of cureless mind,
That seeks to lose what most it joyed to find.

Like stocked tree whose branches all do fade,
Whose leaves do fall, and perished fruit decay,
Like herb that grows in cold and barren shade,
Where darkness drives all quick’ning heat away,
So must I die, cut from my root of joy,
And thrown in darkest shades of deep annoy.

But who can fly from that his heart doth feel?
What change of place can change implanted pain?
Removing moves no hardness from the steel.
Sick hearts that shift no fits, shift rooms in vain.
Where thought can see, what helps the closed eye?
Where heart pursues, what gains the foot to fly?

Yet still I tread a maze of doubtful end.
I go, I come, she draws, she drives away,
She wounds, she heals, she doth both mar and mend,
She makes me seek and shun, depart and stay.
She is a friend to love, a foe to loathe,
And in suspense I hang between them both.”

Notes and Reference:

A fardel is a package.  Affiance is a binding marriage pledge.  I have modernized the spelling and added punctuation.   Previous poems by Robert Southwell are here and here.

Robert Southwell [2007]: Collected Poems. Edited by Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney. Manchester, UK: Fyfield Books, pp. 19-21.

Joseph’s Amazement

When Christ, by growth, disclosed his descent
Into the pure receipt of Mary’s breast
Poor Joseph, stranger yet to God’s intent,
With doubts of jealous thoughts was sore oppressed 
And, wrought with diverse fits of fear and love,
He neither can her free nor faulty prove.

Now sense, the wakeful spy of jealous mind,
By strong conjectures deemeth her defiled,
But love, in doom of things best loved blind,
Thinks rather sense deceived than her with child
Yet proofs so pregnant were that no pretence
Could cloak a thing so dear and plain to sense.

Then Joseph, daunted with a deadly wound,
Let loose the reins to undeserved grief.
His heart did throb, his eyes in tears were drowned,
His life a loss, death seemed his best relief.
The pleasing relish of his former love
In gallish thoughts to bitter taste doth prove.

One foot he often setteth forth of door
But t’other’s loath uncertain ways to tread.
He takes his fardel for his needful store,
He casts his Inn where first he means to bed.
But still ere he can frame his feet to go,
Love winneth time till all conclude in no.

Sometime, grief adding force, he doth depart.
He will, against his will, keep on his pace.
But straight remorse so racks his ruing heart,
That hasting thoughts yield to a pausing space;
Then mighty reasons press him to remain.
She whom he flies doth win him home again.

But when his thought, by sight of his abode,
Presents the sign of mis-esteemed shame,
Repenting every step that back he trod,
Tears drown the guides; the tongue, the feet doth blame.
Thus warring with himself a field he fights,
Where every wound upon the giver lights.

“And was my love,” quoth he, “so lightly prized?
Or was our sacred league so soon forgot?
Could vows be void, could virtues be despised?
Could such a spouse be stained with such a spot?”
O wretched Joseph that hast lived so long,
Of faithful love to reap so grievous wrong.

Could such a worm breed in so sweet a wood?
Could in so chaste demeanour lurk untruth?
Could vice lie hid where virtue’s image stood?
Where hoary sageness graced tender youth?
Where can affiance rest to rest secure?
In virtue’s fairest seat faith is not sure.

All proofs did promise hope, a pledge of grace,
Whose good might have repaid the deepest ill.
Sweet signs of purest thoughts in saintly face
Assured the eye of her unstained will.
Yet in this seeming lustre seem to lie
Such crimes for which the law condemns to die.

But Joseph’s word shall never work her woe:
“I wish her leave to live, not doom to die.
Though fortune mine, yet am I not her foe,
She to herself less loving is than I.
The most I will, the lest I can, is this,
Sith none may salve, to shun that is amiss.

Exile my home, the wilds shall be my walk,
Complaints my joy, my music mourning lays,
With pensive griefs in silence will I talk;
Sad thoughts shall be my guides in sorrow’s ways.
This course best suits the care of cureless mind,
That seeks to lose what most it joyed to find.

Like stocked tree whose branches all do fade,
Whose leaves do fall, and perished fruit decay,
Like herb that grows in cold and barren shade,
Where darkness drives all quick’ning heat away,
So must I die, cut from my root of joy,
And thrown in darkest shades of deep annoy.

But who can fly from that his heart doth feel?
What change of place can change implanted pain?
Removing moves no hardness from the steel.
Sick hearts that shift no fits, shift rooms in vain.
Where thought can see, what helps the closed eye?
Where heart pursues, what gains the foot to fly?

Yet still I tread a maze of doubtful end.
I go, I come, she draws, she drives away,
She wounds, she heals, she doth both mar and mend,
She makes me seek and shun, depart and stay.
She is a friend to love, a foe to loathe,
And in suspense I hang between them both.”

Notes and Reference:

A fardel is a package.  Affiance is a binding marriage pledge.  I have modernized the spelling and added punctuation.   Previous poems by Robert Southwell are here and here.

Robert Southwell [2007]: Collected Poems. Edited by Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney. Manchester, UK: Fyfield Books, pp. 19-21.

“Pas de deux for Lovers”

To wake
and go
would be so simple.

Morning ought not
to be complex.
The sun is a seed
case at dawn into the long
furrow of history.

Yet

how the
first light
makes gold her hair

upon my arm.
How then
shall I leave,
and where away to go. Day
is so deep already with involvement.

Reference:

Thomas W. Shapcott (Editor) [1970]:  Australian Poetry Now. Melbourne, Australia:  Sun Books.

Lines for a Friend 1948-1964

“Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath.” – Tennyson

over before you knew it
misdiagnosed and done for
they cremated their error
you became some ashes a little placque a case history
paintings you did are lost also your poems
nothing but ashes in a wall of dead remains
you will not see again the way
the morning sun floods down O’Connell Street
perhaps you are the sun now
perhaps not

childhood was the salt edge of the Pacific
was the school under the old trees
it was soon after that they disposed of you
I went to the funeral you and I were the only two
there really the only two who knew the gods had gone
death and morning the only two,
damned because poets

over before we know it
we pack our lives in little souls and go
out with the tide the long procession
the ant the elephant the worker the child
even those doctors who stood around they will die sometime
their money cannot buy them out of it
we know what is to come a silence teeming
with the unfinished spirits good and bad,
and how we’ve lived determines what we’ll be
next time around, if time’s not buried with us.

Reference:

Thomas W. Shapcott (Editor) [1970]:  Australian Poetry Now. Melbourne, Australia:  Sun Books, p. 210.