WORDS

"GIRL AND SHELTIE DOG"

Vintage picture, artist unknown to me

"WORDS FOR IT"

"I wish I could take language

and fold it like cool, moist rags.

I would lay words on your forehead.

I would wrap words on your wrists.

"There, there" my words would say-

or something better.

I would ask them to murmur,

"Hush" and "Shh, shh, it's all right."

I would ask them to hold you all night.

I wish I could take language

and daub and soothe and cool

Where fever, blisters and burns.

Where fever, turns you against you.

I wish I could take language

And heal the words that were the wounds

You have no names for."

~By Julia Cameron

ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE

"WOMAN IN A WHEAT FIELD"

~ by Sigalit Aharoni



Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?"

"SUMMER DAY"

~ by Mary Oliver

VINCE

In my primary blog, "Celtic Lady", I wrote about a new poetry book compiled by Caroline Kennedy: "She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems". She includes several poems by my favorite woman poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, fondly called Vince by  her family and friends.

She includes Sonnet LXIII, probably my favorite of all Millay's poems. I am printing it below, plus another poem that did not make the anthology but which is probably my second favorite of the many sonnets and lyrics written by Vince.

"WHAT LIPS MY LIPS HAVE KISSED,

AND WHERE, AND WHY (SONNET XLIII)"

"What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more."

~~~~~~~~~~

"PITY ME NOT BECAUSE THE LIGHT OF DAY"

"Pity me not because the light of day

At close of day no longer walks the sky;

Pity me not for beauties passed away

From field and thicket as the the year goes by;

Pity me not the waning of the moon,

Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,

Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,

And you no longer look with love on me.

This have I known always: Love is no more

Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,

Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,

Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn

What the swift mind beholds at every turn."

Added later: In her comment, WOL reminded me of this Millay poem. It is also one of my favorites and I feel I must add it!

"LOVING YOU LESS THAN LIFE, A LITTLE LESS"

"Loving you less than life, a little less
Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall
Or bush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess
I cannot swear I love you not at all.
For there is that about you in this light--
A yellow darkness, sinister of rain--
Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight
To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.
And I am made aware of many a week
I shall consume, remembering in what way
Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,
And what divine absurdities you say:
Till all the world, and I, and surely you,
Will know I love you, whether or not I do."

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

"LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI"

by Arthur Hughes

I finally saw "Bright Star" today. It is the new Jane Campion film featuring the love story of the English romantic poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. I had expected to see it that weekend, but it didn't open in Bismarck until last Friday.

It was worth the wait. I highly recommend it, even though it made me weep. The theme of this blog is a line from an Archibald MacLeish poem: "a poem should not mean but be."

"Bright Star" underlines this theme. At one point in the film, Fanny says that "poems are difficult to work out", or words to that effect. Keats later tells her that reading a poem is like jumping in a lake. The point at first is not necessarily to reach the other side, he says. It is to experience the sensation of being in the water.

A reader just needs to jump into a poem - to feel its rhythmic waves wash over you, to hear the cadences reaching you from the shore; to be immersed in its loveliness, its freshness, its coolness; sometimes to feel its ferocity or terrible beauty.

I printed some of Keats' most famous poems, or parts of them, on my regular blog, Celtic Lady, on September 17 (www.celticanamcara.blogspot.com). Here I print one of my favorites of Keats' poems, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" in its entirety. This poem inspired many painters, and was especially loved by the Pre-Raphaelites. Since I couldn't choose just one painting, I'm printing four of the most famous.

"LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI"
by Henry Maynell Rheame

"LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI"

By John Keats

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,

Alone and palely loitering;

The sedge has wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

I se a lilly on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;

And on thy cheek, a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a Lady in the meads

Full beautiful, A fairy's child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light

And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;

For sideways would she lean, and sing

A faery's song.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

She found me roots with relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said,

I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,

and there she gaz'd and sighed deep,

And there I shut her wild sad eyes --

So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss

And there I dream'd, ah woe betide

The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

Who cry'd -- "La belle Dame sans mercy

Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom

With horrid warning gaped wide,

and I awoke, and found me here

On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

"LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI"

by Sir Frank Dicksee

"LA BELLE DAME SAN MERCI"

by J. W. Waterhouse

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

BLUE HERON OF LOUISIANA by Marcia Baldwin

This poem was submitted by Judie from Florida. Thanks so much, Judie! I was not familiar with this wonderful poem.

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair of the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things,
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of  still water.
And I feel above me the day blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ by Wendell Barry

A NEW BLOG

"WINTER BEACH GRASS" by Nancy Merkle

I have opened this new blog as a place for myself and others to share a love of fine paintings and fine poetry.

If you have a favorite poem, e-mail me the name and author, or the URL address. If I like it, I will print it. I will choose a painting to go with it, and post it here, naming you as the "contributor".

"ARS POETICA"

"A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the water leaves
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love, the leaning grasses
And two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be"

~ by Archibald MacLeish