open your window, wider, wider (Nabokov)

 

 

I read this poem a number of times over before I realised just how gentle and lovely it is. It reminds me now vividly of opening the shutter windows of a most homely home in Sardinia and, overlooking the early rural morning below, I heard the sound of waves of tinkling bells. (The shepherds were herding their sheep.)

 

 

Soft Sound

 

When in some coastal townlet, on a night

of low clouds and ennui, you open

the window – from afar

whispering sounds spill over.

 

Now listen closely and discern

the sound of seawaves breathing upon land,

protecting in the night

the soul that harkens unto them.

 

Daylong the murmur of the sea is muted,

but the unbidden day now passes

(tinkling as does an empty

tumbler on a glass shelf);

 

and once again amidst the sleepless hush

open your window, wider, wider,

and with the sea you are alone

in the enormous and calm world.

 

Not the sea’s sound . . . In the still night

I hear a different reverberation:

the soft sound of my native land,

her respiration and pulsation.

 

Therein blend all the shades of voices

so dear, so quickly interrupted

and melodies of Pushkin’s verse

and sighs of a remembered pine wood.

 

Repose and happiness are there,

a blessing upon exile;

yet the soft sound cannot be heard by day

drowned by the scurrying and rattling.

 

But in the compensating night,

in sleepless silence, one keeps listening

to one’s own country, to her murmuring,

her deathless deep.

 

 

 

 

- from ‘Collected Poems: Vladmir Nabokov’ (2012), translated by Dmitri Nabokov, edited by Thomas Karshan aa-and published by Penguin Classics, London, pp. 86-87!

 

 

 

 

 

8

One of my favourite Jammes poems

 

 

 

All the leaves are turning and it’s autumn already and it makes me think of Jammes. I so love this poem.

 

 

I want no other joy

 

I want no other joy when the summer

returns, than that of the year gone by.

Under dozing muscats I shall sit.

Deep in the woods, where fresh waters sing,

I will hear and feel and see everything

the forest fears, feels and sees.

 

I want no other joy when the autumn

returns, than that of the yellow leaves

raking the hills when it thunders,

than the dull sound of new wine barrels,

than heavy skies and cowbells ringing,

and beggars asking for alms.

 

I want no other joy when the winter

returns, than that of the iron sky,

than the smoke of the grinding cranes,

than embers singing like the sea,

than the lamp behind green panes

in the shop where the bread is bitter.

 

I want no other joy when the spring

returns, than that of the biting winds,

than peach trees, leafless, blooming,

than muddy paths turning green,

than the violet, than the bird singing

like a stream that gorges the storm.

 

 

 

~ from Under the Azure: Poems of Francis Jammes (2010), translated by Janine Canane and published by Littlefox Press, Victoria.

 

 

 

The Moths, by anthropologist Michael Jackson

 

 

I often carry a thin poetry volume around with me, tucked in between draft chapters I am currently editing. I’ve been carrying Michael Jackson’s, Duty Free: Selected Poems 1965-1988, around for a while now. He is quite a beautiful poet and I enjoy re-reading his poems, looking for the anthropology or ethnographer. The latter is not far away in the following.

 

THE MOTHS

 

Our house had filled with moths,

a slow silting of lintel and architrave

a cupboard dust,

until I looked much closer

and found the wood-grain one,

the white quill paperbark, the blotched

shadow of a patch of bush,

an elbowing riverbank that had gone deep blue.

 

The soft perimeter of forests

had entered our house

fluttering around the moon.

 

Then for five days they drowned

in sinks and pools or seemed to wane

into sanded wood or ash on windowsills

until they became

what they were when I first noticed them:

fragments of a dull interior.

 

 

 

from – Michael Jackson 1989, Duty Free: Selected Poems 1965-1988, John McIndoe, Dunedin NZ,  p. 43.

 

 

 

The second and eighth lines – ‘a slow silting of lintel and architrave’ and ‘an elbowing riverbank that had gone deep blue’ – are exceptional and beautifully crafted. But I think the poem, as a whole, is a little too clever. I would have resisted ‘fragments of a dull interior’ at least, I think. (She says sitting on a pedestal in front of her computer . . .)

 

 

 

Field notebook excerpt: a day of particular import

 

 

The image above is from one of my field notebooks. It’s a poem I scrawled on a Frida Kahlo sticky-note while flying in a little Cessna, from camp to a nearby mining town, on the day Kevin Rudd said “sorry.” That was five years ago today. I still have very mixed feelings on the subject. (Aboriginal children are still being taken from their families at an alarming rate – still – in Australia, today.)

 

 

‘The plane turns on a wing,

aroun’ to the east,

over and away

from the mangroves.

 

The sound of the engine straining

(we’re still climbing),

and today

there is mist below,

above the open green plain,

between rivers.

 

I can see neither buffalo

nor crocodile.

But I search,

and feel

excitedly sad.

 

This is

 

“sorry” day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But then I found myself describing them with words they would not use, and could not tell the way the drummers held the line

 

 

I have always enjoyed Michael Jackson‘s ethnography. Paths toward a clearing: Radical empiricism and ethnographic enquiry (1989) is perhaps his best known work. This week I finally found time to borrow some of his poetry from the library. It is beautiful, and really quite brilliant.

I have chosen to share the following poem for obvious reasons. It is taken from Jackson’s 1989 collection, Duty Free: Selected poems 1965–1988, John McIndoe, New Zealand, pp. 14 – 15.  If I could share the whole volume I would – it is a really beautiful collection.

 

FIELDWORK

 

Even now they file at first light

through the elephant grass, along

the red path to their farms, leaving

me behind. I used to follow them

and ask if I could hoe or weed,

stack unburned branches beyond

the outer fence. They used to

laugh outright, though some said I

could try my hand, knowing it would

provide for more amusement later

when I tried to keep in line.

At last I gave up going. I passed

the day learning new words from

women. At dusk the men returned

and granted me an hour or two of

conversation. ‘Ask what you want

and we will tell you what we know,’

they said. And so I queried them

on this and that, and learned about

their farms that way, and what they did

among the trees along the ridge

at harvesting (a sacrifice to keep

the spirits off), and for a year

my work went well. But then I found

myself describing them with words

they would not use, and could not tell

the way the drummers held the line

that moved, hoeing and chanting,

down the further slope, or how

the pitch of women’s voices flowed

across the valley as they closed

the earth. These gestures are

like rain. The crops will grow

out of these acts. There is no

book in it, no facts, no line

that leads to some result;

but it holds good like any truth

and I have learned to write as

they might sow, scything the grain

against the downhill wind. We

do not make it grow, we point the way.

In this I go along with them.

 

 

 

 

 

Aye, it’s beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prisons and poetry: Merry Christmas everybody, all the bodies.

 

 

Happy season of spending time with our loved ones. And thoughts with those incarcerated, who cannot. Last year about this time I wrote a similar-such post about Indigenous incarceration rates in the Northern Territory. This is a post of poetry.

 

The poems below are taken from, Poems from Prison (1973).^[1] The editor of the volume, Rodney Hall, was invited to comment on some manuscripts by prisoners at Parramatta Gaol. He declined to comment on the manuscripts but asked, rather, to speak directly with the men who had written them. His visit turned into many, and many into a series of fortnightly workshops.

 

‘Our meetings were described in the gaol magazine (CONtact) as: “highly informal and usually irreverent,” and leading to “a rapid maturing of the poetry being written here at Parramatta Gaol.” Highly informal indeed – most sessions are spent in a brilliant crossfire of wit and anecdote – and altogether irreverent. As to the maturing of the poetry, perhaps it has been simply the stimulus of finding an audience, but whatever the reason we’ve managed to get through a lot of work and the development has been remarkable. This book is the result’ (1973: x).

 

For what it is worth to know, all of the writers represented in the collection had been convicted of crimes of violence. The following poems were written by one Jack Murray.  Jack’s biographical note reads: ‘Born in Sydney 1940. Left school at twelve, started off on the wrong path, never really left it. Married with two sons. Realises poetry has opened a new world. Ambitions: to lead a completely uninvolved life’ (1973, p. 3).

 

Sometimes homesick

 

Snow taps at

the window

and sends me

into panic

 

I may fly

down to spain

to steal something

 

or shoplift

a parrot from

Harrods

 

to send you

in a letter

 

Did you  know

the snow killed

Napoleons white horse?

(how could you

I just made it up)

 

Yesterday

 

I bought a

stick-on face

for the hustle

 

the trick was

in the performance

they threw more

than fruit

 

Wrote some poems

from prison

read them over later

found I’d blundered

 

there is no more

room in my world

I’ve been here

before

 

the walls drip waste

its been too long

too much

 

 

(1973, pp. 3-4)

 

And the following, which is particularly fitting. Also by Jack.

 

Second year’s end

 

Reality is immovable as

a statue

rust-welded to a horse

fetlocks trapped

in stone,

the revealing of finality

so many miles

from home.

 

What premonitions go unheeded,

smiles the moon,

constant crown witness

against me

trudging

a thousand miles

round a stone room

where no swans swim.

 

It’s raining in the park

gently,

artificial tears fall

from the statue’s face,

stained

chalk-white by sweet shit.

Truth of another

kind.

 

 

(1973, p. 14).

 

 

 

Merry Christmas and to all a good night. And day. And year. Truly.

Warmliest of kindly regards,

 

Bree. x

 

 

 

---

[1] Edited by Rodney Hall, published by University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, QLD.

 

Vladimir Nabokov: not prose

 

Vladimir and a hat.

 

 

Easter

For his father’s death

 

I see a radiant cloud, I see a rooftop glisten

like a mirror, far away . . . I listen

to breathing shade, light’s stillicide . . .

You’re absent – why? You’re dead, and on a day

the humid world is bluish. God’s sacred spring is on her way,

swelling, calling . . . And you’ve died.

 

And yet, if every stream anew the wonder sings,

and yet, if every falling golden thaw-drop rings –

if these are not bedazzling lies,

but quivering, dulcet convocations: ‘Rise again’ –

a mighty ‘Blossom!’, then you are in this refrain,

you’re in this splendor, you’re alive! . . .

 

 

From Vladimir Nabokov: collected poems, newly translated by Dmitri Nabokov, edited with a new Introduction by Thomas Karshan. Published by Penguin Classics, London & New York.

 

 

 

 

Poetry turnstyle: Rimbaud and his Vowels

 

Rimbaud, by Pedro Covo

 

I was gifted this poem many years ago, by a friend. It is a poem not easily forgotten.

 

Vowels

 

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,

I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:

A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies

which buzz around cruel smells,

 

Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,

lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;

I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips

in anger or in the raptures of penitence;

 

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,

the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows

which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

 

O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,

silences crossed by [Worlds and by Angels]:

-O the Omega! the violet ray of  [His] Eyes!

 

 

 

I should note that this poem reads very differently, depending on the translator. To read more about Arthur Rimbaud, follow this link to the relevant wiki-entry.

 

 

 

Pablo Neruda’s saddest poem

 

 

Just because. It is beautiful. This is Neruda’s, Saddest Poem.

 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

 

Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars,

and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.”

 

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

 

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.

I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

 

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.

How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.

 

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.

And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

 

What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.

The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

 

That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.

My soul is lost without her.

 

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.

My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

 

The same night that whitens the same trees.

We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

 

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.

My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

 

Someone else’s. She will be someone else’s. As she once

belonged to my kisses.

Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

 

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.

Love is so short and oblivion so long.

 

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,

my soul is lost without her.

 

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,

and this may be the last poem I write for her.

 

 

 

 

A lover’ly little poem by Maria Wine

 

Artur & Maria, second and third from the left (c. 1947)

 

I am re-posting this poem from some time ago. I thought of it this morning, and I think it’s beautiful. I found it in a second-hand collection of poetry entitled, The Penguin Book of Women Poets (1978).

The following little poem was written by the late Maria Wine (1912 – 2003), a Swedish writer and poet of Danish origin. She was married to the late Swedish writer and literary critic, Artur Lundkvist. From the little I have read it seems that the two shared a rich and dynamic life together until Artur’s death in 1991. It is also apparent that they enjoyed a rather unconventional relationship, which is reflected, however subtly, in the little poem below.

 

 

Love Me

 

Love me

but do not come too near

leave room for love

to laugh at its happiness

always let some of my blond hair

be free.

 

 

 

Translated from Swedish by Nadia Christensen.