“Seraphim” by Mikhail Vrubel
Gaunt in gloom
The pale stars their torches,
Enshrouded, wave.
Ghost-fires from heaven’s far verges faint illumine —
Arches on soaring arches —
Night’s sin-dark nave.
.
Seraphim
The lost hosts awaken
To service, till
In moonless gloom each lapses, muted, dim,
Raised when she has and shaken
Her thurible.
.
James Joyce
I’m crying all the time now.
I cried all over the street when I left the Seattle Wobbly Hall.
I cried listening to Bach.
I cried looking at the happy flowers in my backyard, I cried at the sadness of the middle-aged trees.
.
Happiness exists, I feel it.
I cried for my soul, I cried for the world’s soul.
The world has a beautiful soul.
God appearing to be seen and cried over. Overflowing heart of Paterson.
.
Arctic, 1956
Allen Ginsberg
A ball will bounce; but less and less. It’s not
A light-hearted thing, resents its own resilience.
Falling is what it loves, and the earth falls
So in our hearts from brilliance,
Settles and is forgot.
It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls
.
To shake our gravity up. Whee, in the air
The balls roll around, wheel on his wheeling hands,
Learning the ways of lightness, alter to spheres
Grazing his finger ends,
Cling to their courses there,
Swinging a small heaven about his ears.
.
But a heaven is easier made of nothing at all
Than the earth regained, and still and sole within
The spin of worlds, with a gesture sure and noble
He reels that heaven in,
Landing it ball by ball,
And trades it all for a broom, a plate, a table.
.
Oh, on his toe the table is turning, the broom’s
Balancing up on his nose, and the plate whirls
On the tipof the broom! Damn, what a show, we cry:
The boys stamp, and the girls
Shriek, and the drum booms
And all come down, and he bows and says good-bye.
.
If the juggler is tired now, if the broom stands
In the dust again, if the table starts to drop
Through the daily dark again, and though the plate
Lies flat on the table top,
For him we batter our hands
Who has won for once over the world’s weight.
.
By Richard Wilbur
Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer by Caspar David Friedrich (1818)
1
My dear Mr Murray,
You’re in a damned hurry
To set up this ultimate Canto, [1]
But (if they don’t rob us)
You’ll see Mr Hobhouse
Will bring it safe in his portmanteau. —
Mr. Murray, Byron’s publisher
.
2
For the Journal you hint of, [2]
As ready to print off;
No doubt you do right to commend it
But as yet I have writ off
The devil a bit of
Our ‘Beppo’, when copied – I’ll send it. —
.
Henry Gally Knight
3
In the mean time you’ve ‘Gally’ [3]
Whose verses all tally,
Perhaps you may say he’s a Ninny,
But if you abashed are
Because of ‘Alashtar’
He’ll piddle another ‘Phrosine’. —
.
4
Then you’ve Sotheby’s tour, [4]
No great things to be sure —
You could hardly begin with a less work,
For the pompous rascallion
Who don’t speak Italian
Nor French, must have scribbled by guesswork.
.
5
No doubt he’s a rare man
Without knowing German
Translating his way up Parnassus,
And now still absurder
He meditates Murder
As you’ll see in the trash he calls Tasso’s.
.
6
But you’ve others his betters
The real men of letters —
Your Orators — critics — and wits —
And I’ll bet that your Journal
(Pray is it diurnal?)
Will pay with your luckiest hits. —
.
7
You can make any loss up –
With ‘Spence’ and his Gossip, [5]
A work which must surely succeed,
Then Queen Mary’s Epistle-craft, [6]
With the new ‘Fytte’ of ‘Whistlecraft’ [7]
Must make people purchase and read. —
George Chalmers, author of The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (1819)
.
8
Then you’ve General Gordon [8]
Who ‘girded his sword on’
To serve with a Muscovite Master
And help him to polish
A Nation so owlish,
They thought shaving their beards a disaster.
Thomas Gordon
.
9
For the man ‘poor and shrewd‘
With whom you’d conclude
A Compact without more delay,
Perhaps some such pen is
Still extant in Venice,
But please Sir to mention your pay? —
.
10
Now tell me some news
Of your friends and the Muse
Of the Bar, — or the Gown — or the House,
From Canning the tall wit
To Wilmot the small wit
Ward’s creeping Companion and Louse — [9]
John William Ward
.
11
Who’s so damnably bit
With fashion and Wit
That he crawls on the surface like Vermin
But an Insect in both, —
By his Intellect’s growth
Of what size you may quickly determine.
.
12
Now, I’ll put out my taper
(I’ve finished my paper
For these stanzas you see on the brink stand)
There’s a whore on my right
For I rhyme best at Night
When a C–t is tied close to my Inkstand.
.
13
It was Mahomet’s notion
That comical motion
Increased his ‘devotion in prayer’ —
If that tenet holds good
In a Prophet, it should
In a poet be equally fair. —
.
14
For, in rhyme or in love
(Which both come from above)
I’ll stand with our ‘Tommy‘ or ‘Sammy‘)
But the Sopha and lady
Are both of them ready
And so, here’s ‘Good Night to you dammee!’
Lord Byron
p. 342-344
Lord Byron: The Major Works (Ed. Jerome J. McGann)
[1] Childe Harold Canto IV. Hobhouse left Venice with the MS of the canto the same day as this letter.
[2] Journal. Murray never did publish this journal he contemplated.
[3] Minor poet Henry Gally Knight wrote Alashtar and Phrosine (both 1817).
[4] Sotheby’s tour: Farewell to Italy (1818).
[5] ‘Spence’ Edward Malone’s edn. of Spence’s Observations was published in 1820.
[6] George Chalmers, The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (1819).
[7] ‘Whistlecraft’: the pseudonym under which Frere composed the ottava rima poem (The Monks and the Giants) which so influenced Byron’s Beppo.
[8] ‘Gordon’: the contemporary soldier and traveller Thomas Gordon.
[9] Wilmot: Byron’s first cousin Sir Robert Wilmot.
[10] Ward: Byron’s old friend John William Ward
‘Once someone asked the Prophet to provide
A prayer-mat, and the best of men replied:
“The desert’s arid sands are burning now.
Pray there; against the hot dust press your brow
And feel it sear your flesh; the wounded skin
Will be an emblem of the wound within.”
If no scar marks your heart, the countenance
Of love will pass you by without a glance;
But heart’s wounds show that on the battlefield
Your friends have found a man who will not yield.’
.
extract from The Conference of the Birds (spoken by a hoopoe)
By Farid Ud-Din Attar (Trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis)
BeadBonny ash. Drawn by Gordon Aitcheson http://gordonaitcheson.blogspot.ca/2010/03/ash-trees-in-winter.html
This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
.
A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Crash through the squares with a rebel tread.
Lift up proudly the crag of your head.
We’ll cleanse the towns of the world as they drown
in the second flood that our angers spread.
The piebald days, they plod.
The wagon years creak as they come.
Speed is our only god,
our heart is a summoning drum.
.
The heavens were strong, but our gold is stronger.
Ah, will the wasps of bullets yet sting?
The others lug guns out, but we have our songs.
Our boisterous shout is the gold we ring.
Green, spill on the fields anew,
cover the past with your pride,
Rainbow, arch over the blue
for the galloping years we ride.
.
The starry skies in their boredom yawn,
shut out from the songs where our ardours thrive.
Ho there, Great Bear, let us all be drawn
right up to heaven while yet we’re alive.
Drink then to joy and shout.
Spring in our blood comes to pass.
O hearts, exult as you beat,
our breasts are cymbals of brass.
.
V. Mayakovsky
(Translated by Jack Lindsay)
When first mine eyes did view and mark
Thy fair beauty to behold,
And when mine ears listened to hark
The pleasant words that thou me told,
I would as then I had been free
From ears to hear and eyes to see.
.
And when my lips gan first to move,
Whereby my heart to thee was known,
And when my tongue did talk of love
To thee that has true love down thrown,
I would my lips and tongue also
Had then been dumb, no deal to go.
.
And when my hands have handled aught
That thee hath kept in memory,
And when my feet have gone and sought
To find and get thy company,
I would each hand a foot had been,
And I each foot a hand had seen.
.
And when in mind I did consent
To follow this my fancy’s will,
And when my heart did first relent
To taste such bait my life to spill,
I would mine heart had been as thine,
Or else thy heart had been as mine.
.
By Thomas Wyatt
This Sixth Molar,
molested unmercifully
by years’ ravages,
abstract it, Dentist, please –
first bit of the whole foul heap
to go for good.
.
In vain to me the smileing Mornings shine,
And redning Phoebus lifts his golden Fire:
The Birds in vain their amorous Descant joyn;
Or chearful Fields resume their green Attire:
These Ears, alas! for other notes repine,
A different Object do these eyes require.
My lonely Anguish melts no Heart, but mine;
And in my Breast the imperfect Joys expire.
Yet morning smiles the busy Race to chear,
And new-born Pleasure brings to happier Men:
The Fields to all their wonted Tribute bear:
To warm their little Loves the Birds complain:
I fruitless mourn to him, that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.
.
Thomas Gray
hissing fragments of stars 