A Thousand Blessings, a Flock of Thieves, and a Band of Angels
I have been thinking a lot these days about penguins, parachutes, poppies, portable potties, and intellectual honesty.
And I have been pondering the difference between guilt and responsibility, generosity and miserliness.
Not in the other guy, but at the prow of one's own vessel.
I have reached no conclusions, thank odd. I only know what I suppose I have always known: that poetry at its best has something to do with raising the frequency -- or perhaps grounding the anchor.
In recent months I have witnessed within a ten mile radius of our home, a Weeping Serbian Pine in a blistering terrain, a grape of bronze and aquamarine, a secret monument to the tribal archetypes, some bulldozers, the ghost of a pine, Mars, Venus, Jupiter -- and I have glimpsed the dance of the rain in a broken grain of sand.
Well, who among us hasn't ?
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.
I am circling the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon,
or a storm, or a great song.
- Rilke
Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun
Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person?
I blame the soup: I’m a primordially
stirred person.
Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.
The sound I make is sympathy’s: sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
heard person.
I need a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.
The mirror’s not convincing-- that at-best in-
ferred person.
As time’s revealing gets revolting, I start looking out.
Look in and what you see is one unholy
blurred person.
The only cure for birth one doesn’t love to contemplate.
Better to be an unsung song, an unoc-
curred person.
McHugh, you’ll be the death of me -- each self and second studied!
Addressing you like this, I’m halfway to the
third person.
(Heather McHugh)
Goe, and catch a falling starre,
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me, where all past yearse are
And who cleft the Divils foote,
Teach me to heare mermaid's singing
Or to keep off envies stinging
And fynde
What winde
Serves to advance an honest mynde.
- Donne
#alcoholink #fluidart #animalart #autumnart #zodiac #poetry #rilke #johndonne #heathermchugh #owling #autumnart #verseoftheday
