Re: From Tor House

Civilized, crying how to be human again: this will tell you how.
Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away
from humanity,
Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,
Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity
Make your veins cold, look at the silent stars, let your eyes
Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man.
Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes;
Things are the God, you will love God, and not in vain,
For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length
You will look back along the stars' rays and see that even
The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven.
Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength
And sickness; but now you are free, even to become human,
But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman.

Men suffer want and become
Curiously ignoble; as prosperity
Made them curiously vile
But look how noble the world is,
The lonely-flowing waters,
The secret keeping stones,
the flowing sky.

I entered the life of the brown forest,
And the great life of the ancient peaks, the patience of stone,
I felt the changes in the veins
In the throat of the mountain
and, I was the stream
Draining the mountain wood; and I the stag drinking;
and I was the stars,
Boiling with light, wandering alone, each one the lord of his own summit;
and I was the darkness
Outside the stars, I included them, they were a part of me.
I was mankind also, a moving lichen
On the cheek of the round stone ... they have not made words for it,
to go behind things, beyond hours and ages,
And be all things in all time, in their returns and passages,
in the motionless and timeless center,
In the white of the fire ... how can I express the excellence
I have found, that has no color but clearness;
No honey but ecstasy; nothing wrought nor remembered;
no undertone nor silver second murmur
That rings in love's voice ...



Robinson Jeffers

Thank you for sharing, Szalkowski; I enjoyed reading the beautiful words as my greeting to the new day. Photographs and prose and Concierto de Aranjuez(my favorite)....too bad it's too early for a fine wine to top it off.
B

Rafua Shlema to your brother (a speedy, healthy recovery)



Post Edited (04-12-09 09:00)

---

The body betrays and the weather conspires, hopefully, not on the same day.

Bee wrote:

> ... and Concierto de Aranjuez

Best rendition that I've ever heard is by Sir Neville Marriner conducting The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.


> Rafua Shlema to your brother (a speedy, healthy recovery)


Dziekuja (Thank You). I'll pass on your well wishes; fortunately, it appears that he will make a full recovery.


I'll post a few more excerpts from Jeffers over the next couple days. There is a beautiful Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series book that appeared in the '60s or '70s with photographs of the Big Sur coast and Jeffers' poetry; its title is "Not Man Apart." FYI, Tor House was his longtime residence in Carmel: http://www.torhouse.org/history.htm

>Best rendition that I've ever heard is by Sir Neville Marriner conducting The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.<

Exactly the same copy that i have been playing all morning!!

(you have a good ear)

Please post more prose; I love to read it in the morning

I am so very glad to hear of your brother's recovery

Shoshana bat Yosef (now, isnt THAT a mouthful) "bee"

Obviously, the source poem for the title of the aforementioned book:

It is only a little planet
But how beautiful it is.
Water that owns the north and west and south
And is all colors and never is all quiet,
And the fogs are its breath…
All the free companies of windy grasses…
pure naked rock…
…A lonely clearing;
a little field of corn by the streamside;
a roof under spared trees.
Love that, not man apart from that…

Then what is the answer? Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence',
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled,
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history ... for contemplation or in fact ...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.



Robinson Jeffers

Szalkowski, I thought you might be interested in a new collection of poems called "Can Poetry Save the Earth" -- it sounds like a must have for those of us who need our dose of prose with our coffee.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472

'The Well Rising'
by William Stafford

NPR.org, April 10, 2009 ·


The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through the deep ground
everywhere in the field —

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer —

The swallow heart from wing beat to wing beat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples. I place my feet
with care in such a world.


B

I have heard the summer dust crying to be born
As much as ever flesh cried to be quiet.
. . . thence life was born,
Its nitrogen from ammonia, carbon from methane,
Water from the cloud and salts from the young seas . . .
. . .the cells of life
Bound themselves into clans, a multitude of cells
To make one being-as the molecules before
Had made of many one cell. Meanwhile they had invented
Chlorophyll and ate sunlight, cradled in peace
On the warm waves;
but certain assassins among them
Discovered that it was easier to eat flesh
Than feed on lean air and sunlight: thence the animals,
Greedy mouths and guts, life robbing life,
Grew from the plants; and as the oceans ebbed and
flowed many plants and animals
Were stranded in the great marshes along the shore,
Where many died and some lived. From these grew all
land-life,
Plants, beasts, and men; the mountain forest and the
mind of Aeschylus
And the mouse in the wall.



Robinson Jeffers



[Shana, thanks for the NPR link. The above poem was affixed to my thesis as an antescript - a gift to all of the people that I worked with in Berkeley. References to chemistry, mountain backpacking, intellectual pursuits ... and the bright orange, "pet," squeekie mouse that I kept sitting on top of my vacuum chamber in the Rad Lab.)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2009 07:08AM by szalkowski.

Len, The moon is rising, the wind is just howling, not a single machine sound is disturbing the natural riot...and I am reading this poem. I love the morning before morning; the anticipation of it all.

I believe that I need a volume with the above poem, as I can certainly appreciate it over and over. A wise choice, indeed, to compliment your thesis.

S

... and now for something completely different.

Not really, but a different author. I just put that in to get the attention of all the Monty Python fans out there. (You know who you are.)

This is from the book "Markings." The Swedish title word, "Vägmärken," has the connotation of signpost.



Is it a new country
In another world of reality
Than Day’s?
Or did I live there
Before Day was?

I awoke
To an ordinary morning with gray light
Reflected from the street,
But still remembered
The dark-blue night
Above the tree line,
The open moor in moonlight,
The crest in shadow.
Remembered other dreams
Of the same mountain country:
Twice I stood on its summits,
I stayed by its remotest lake,
And followed the river
Towards its source.
The seasons have changed
And the light
And the weather
And the hour.
But it is the same land.
And I begin to know the map
And to get my bearings.



Dag Hammarskjöld

I enjoyed the sparseness of the prose of this last post; the edges of the word-painted picture seemed somehow sharpened by less said.

I have spent the last two nights looking for my precious little Spanish publication of Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra. It is this author who can celebrate a time and place when the air is laden with the heady rich scent of the season to come.

THE ALHAMBRA BY MOONLIGHT

I have given a picture of my apartment on my first taking possession of it; a few evenings have produced a thorough chance in the scene and in my feelings. The moon which then was invisible has gradually gained upon the night and now rolls in full splendour above the towers, pouring a flood of tempered light into every court and hall. The garden beneath my window is gently lighted up, the fountain sparkles in the moonbeams and even the blush of the rose is faintly visible.

I have sat for hours at my window, inhaling the sweetness of the garden and musing on the chequered fortunes of those whose history is dimly shadowed out in the elegant memorials around. Sometimes I have issued forth at midnight, when everything was quiet, and have wandered over the whole building. Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate and in such a place! The temperature of an Andalusian midnight in summer is perfectly ethereal. We seem lifted up into a purer atmosphere; there is a serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame that render mere existence enjoyment. The effect of moonlight, too, on the Alhambra, has something like enchantment. Every rent and chasm of time, every mouldering tint and weather-stain disappears, the marble resumes its original whiteness, the long colonnades brighten in the moonbeams, the halls are illuminated with a softened radiance, until the whole edifice reminds on of the enchanted palace of an Arabian tale.

At such a time I have ascended to the little pavilion called the Queen’s Toilette to enjoy its varied and extensive prospect. To the right, the snowy summits of the Sierra Nevada would gleam like silver clouds against the darker firmament, and all the outlines o fthe mountain would be softened, yet delicately defined. My delight, however, would be to lean over the parapet of the tocador and gaze down upon Granada, spread out like a map below me, all buried in deep repose and its white palaces and convents sleeping, as it were, in the moonshine.

Sometimes I would hear the faint sounds of the castanets from some party of dancers lingering in the Alameda; at other times I have heard the dubious tones of a guitar and the notes of a single voice rising from some solitary street and have pictured to myself some youthful cavalier serenading his lady’s window, a gallant custom of former days, but now sadly on the decline, except in the remote towns and villages of Spain. Such were the scenes that have detained me for many an hour loitering about the courts and balconies of the castle, enjoying that mixture of reverie and sensation which steal away existence in a southern climate, and it has been almost morning before I have retired to my bed and been lulled to sleep by the falling waters of the fountain of Lindaraxa.

--Washington Irving



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2009 11:46PM by Bee.

Turn away from humanity?

After that, the rest is automatically unreadable.

Quote
Vince
Turn away from humanity?

After that, the rest is automatically unreadable.

Vince,
Aren't you the forum resident troglodyte? I would have thought that line would engage you! <-- my first ever use of smiley, not as painful as I thought is would be

---

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2009 08:32AM by Frank Furter.

humanity

big word

4 silly bulls

not in word look-up thing



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2009 08:09AM by szalkowski.

The meadow's massive
Green wave rises
Over the rolling ridge,
Crested with the white foam
Of a thousand oxeye daisies
Which blush
As the midsummer sun
Sets scarlet
In a haze of heat
Over Poughkeepsie.

Seven weeks have gone by,
Seven kinds of blossom
Have been picked or mowed.
Now the leaves of the Indian corn grow broad,
And its cobs make much of themselves,
Waxing fat and fertile.
Was it here,
Here, that paradise was revealed
For one brief moment
On a night in midsummer?



Dag Hammarskjöld

This is very nice, Len. I hope that there are more passages from this collection

S

I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings
Of expectation.

Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence.

Smiling, sincere, incorruptible-
His body disciplined and limber.
A man who had become what he could,
And was what he was-
Ready at any moment to gather everything
Into one simple sacrifice.



Dag Hammarskjöld

Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow,
The faucet leak, and learn to leave them so.
Feel how the breezes play about your hair
And sunlight settles onyour breathing skin.
What else can matter but the drifting glance
On Dragonfly or sudden shadow there
Of swans aloft and the whiffle of their wings
On air to other ponds? Nothing but this:
To see, to wonder, to recieve, to feel
What lies in the circle of your singleness.
Think idly of a woman or a verse
Of bees or vapor trails or why the birds
Are still at noon. Yourself, be still ---
There is no living when you're nagging time
And stunting every second with your will.
You work for this: to be the sovereign
Of what you slave to have ---- not
Slave.

Marya Mannes

One of my favorites in the social commentary category

Dear Shana,

An excellent lead-in for one of my Tsevtaeva poems:




We shall not escape Hell, my passionate
sisters, we shall drink black resins –
we who sang our praises to the Lord
with every one of our sinews, even the finest,

we did not lean over cradles or
spinning wheels at night, and now we are
carried off by an unsteady boat
under the skirts of a sleeveless cloak,

we dressed every morning in
fine Chinese silk, and we would
sing our paradisal songs at
the fire of the robbers’ camp,

slovenly needlewomen, (all
our sewing came apart), dancers,
players upon pipes: we have been
the queens of the whole world!

first scarcely covered by rags,
then with constellations in our hair, in
gaol and at feasts we have
bartered away heaven,

in starry nights, in the apple
orchards of Paradise,
-Gentle girls, my beloved sisters,
we shall certainly find ourselves in Hell!

1915


Marina Tsvetaeva

Darkness, swirling mists of uncertainty,foreboding -- bring it on!

I was just explaining to FF how the Northern European embraces the melancholy like a high art, and that the Mediterranean can have wine(whine) with a side of tears any day of the week, (and beg for more at the end of the day). THIS is a great poem, and I can't wait for more.

That picture of Master eeek's of the Merced Dawn River just evokes all of the above, which is why I like it so much (leave the pretty sunny rainbows to those who fear to embrace the melancholy!)

B

As I love to
kiss hands, and
to name everything, I
love to open
doors!
Wide – into the night!

Pressing my head
as I listen to some
heavy step grow softer
or the wind shaking
the sleepy and sleepless
woods.

Ah, night
small rivers of water rise
and bend towards – sleep.
(I am nearly sleeping.)
Somewhere in the night a
human being is drowning.



Marina Tsvetaeva
(from a series of poems titled INSOMNIA)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2009 02:45PM by szalkowski.

Quote
szalkowski
Somewhere in the night a
human being is drowning.

Marina Tsvetaeva
(from a series of poems titlesd INSOMNIA)

(Oh, dear, Vince is trying to throw the life ring...!)

What a fantastic collection this must be. Is it available here in the US? (much of my Spanish collection is not)

Very appropriate, as I seem stuck on the four hour sleep plan for years. I think that I will set this one aside to read again in the evening.

S

I’m glad your sickness is not caused by me.
Mine is not caused by you. I’m glad to know
the heavy earth will never flow away
from us, beneath our feet, and so
we can relax together, and not watch
our words. When our sleeves touch
we shall not drown in waves of rising blush.

I’m glad to see you calmly now embrace
another girl in front of me, without
any wish to cause me pain, as you
don’t burn if I kiss someone else.
I know you never use my tender name
my tender spirit, day or night. And
no one in the silence of a church
will sing their Hallelujahs over us.

Thank you for loving me like this,
for you feel love, although you do not know it.
Thank you for the nights I’ve spent in quiet.
Thank you for the walks under the moon
you’ve spared me and those sunset meetings unshared.
Thank you. The sun will never bless our heads.
Take my sad thanks for this: you do not cause
my sickness. And I don’t cause yours.



Marina Tsvetaeva








Bent with worry, God
paused, to smile.
And look, there were many
holy angels with bodies of

the radiance he had
given them,
some with enormous wings and
others without any,

which is why I weep
so much
because even more than God
himself I love his fair angels.



Marina Tsvetaeva

More of the best...I will follow up on this author.

S

Quote
Bee
More of the best...

I have only recently been able to tell the difference between stars and planets. Maybe before I die I will learn to appreciate poetry and opera.

---

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

Quote
Frank Furter

Quote
Bee
More of the best...

I have only recently been able to tell the difference between stars and planets. Maybe before I die I will learn to appreciate poetry and opera.

In some ways, its like cultural food (you would hate the yogurt that I am used to) I was raised with the stories and translations of Puccini et al, so when I hear them, I actually know what is being said, rather than being bowled over by the drama. the same is for poetry; one must start with baby steps (you need to look up a really fun one(The Cremation of Sam Magee) that is not a classic or anything, but fun nonetheless. here, i will do it for you. I memorized this poem when I was 11 years old for a recital. It was nearly a scandal!

Robert W. Service, a Canadian poet and novelist, was known for his ballads of the Yukon. He wrote this narrative poem which is presented here because it is an outstanding example of how sensory stimuli are emphasized and it has a surprise ending.

Robert William Service was born in Preston, England, on January 16, 1874. He emigrated to Canada at the age of twenty, in 1894, and settled for a short time on Vancouver Island. He was employed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Victoria, B.C., and was later transferred to Whitehorse and then to Dawson in the Yukon. In all, he spent eight years in the Yukon and saw and experienced the difficult times of the miners, trappers, and hunters that he has presented to us in verse.

During the Balkan War of 1912-13, Service was a war correspondent to the Toronto Star. He served this paper in the same capacity during World War I, also serving two years as an ambulance driver in the Canadian Army medical corps. He returned to Victoria for a time during World War II, but later lived in retirement on the French Riviera, where he died on September 14, 1958, in Monte Carlo.

Sam McGee was a real person, a customer at the Bank of Commerce where Service worked. The Alice May was a real boat, the Olive May, a derelict on Lake Laberge.

Anyone who has experienced the bitterness of cold weather and what it can do to a man will empathize with Sam McGee’s feelings as expressed by Robert Service in this poem.


The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert W. Service


There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ‘taint being dead--it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows—O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked;” . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up at the.......(look it up kids) except Bee

---

Old Dude

Sic erat.

Once again, I am indebted to Bee for her seemingly prescient lead-in (i.e., “The Cremation of Sam McGee”).



It nearly cancels my fear of death, my dearest said,
When I think of cremation. To rot in the earth
Is a loathsome end, but to roar up in flame - besides, I am used to it,
I have flamed with love or fury so often in my life,
No wonder my body is tired, no wonder it is dying.
We had great joy of my body. Scatter the ashes.



Dag Hammarskjöld







I know the truth – give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look – it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
The storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
Who never let each other sleep above it.



Marina Tsvetaeva




[Aside to Bee: I told you that you would know when I decide to bury this thread.]
[For those of you that didn’t have three years of Latin in high school: ‘Thus it was.’]

Epilogue

A PM exchange has prompted me to add a final poem to this thread.
[If you have never read any of Richard Brautigan's works, at the very least read "Trout Fishing in America" - which, of course, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with trout fishing. I especially like the following chapter: "The Cleveland Wrecking Yard."]
My favorite Brautigan poem follows:



The Horse That Had a Flat Tire

Once upon a valley
there came down
from some goldenblue mountains
a handsome young price
who was riding
a dawncolored horse
named Lordsburg

I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever

In the valley
there was a beautiful maiden
whom the prince
drifted into love with
like a New Mexico made from
apple thunder and long
glass beds.

I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever

The prince enchanted
the maiden
and they road off
on the dawncolored horse
named Lordsburg
toward the goldenblue mountains.

I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever

They would have lived
happily ever after
if the horse hadn’t had
a flat tire
in front of a dragon’s
house.



Richard Brautigan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2009 08:48PM by szalkowski.