poetry | dual personalities

To go with the drift of things

by chuckofish

I had a rather sad weekend, spending a good deal of it thinking about what I had been doing the weekend before when daughter #1 was visiting. I try not to do this, but it is hard.

I watched a depressing movie about Sylvia Plath (played by Gwyneth Paltrow).

And I read some sad poems.

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

― Robert Frost, Reluctance

I watched some stressful World Series games. But this guy always cheers me up.

I will miss our skipper in the off-season. See, there I go again! Well, onward and upward this week and go Cards!

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Gathering leaves

by chuckofish

It is that time of year when the leaves begin to fall and we begin to think about cleaning them up.

Gone are the days when we had lots of free help.

Sigh.

The boy did come over on Sunday and he helped me achieve an ant apocalypse by destroying a giant ant hill that had been built over the course of some years in a low wall surrounding a tree in the front yard. He came over for brunch, but somehow he always ends up doing some much-needed man-work around the house/yard, for which I am most appreciative.

Here’s a poem to start off the week. Have a good one!

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?”

― Robert Frost

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October 8, 2013

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass (1892)

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September 12, 2013

A caged bird sings

by chuckofish

Clasped Hands of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning by Harriet Goodhue Hosmer

On this day in 1846 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning eloped! You know the famous story of their love. Six years her junior, the poet Robert Browning exchanged 574 letters with Elizabeth Barrett over a twenty-month period. Immortalized in the 1930 play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolf Besier, their romance was bitterly opposed by her father, who did not want any of his children to marry. After they married, her father never spoke to her again. Gee whiz.

Anyway, she was a darn good poet, mostly known today for her famous How Do I Love Thee sonnet. But she wrote a lot more than that. Here is the beginning of Aurora Leigh (1850) and a link so you can read the whole thing.

OF writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others’ uses, will write now for mine,–
Will write my story for my better self,
As when you paint your portrait for a friend,
Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it
Long after he has ceased to love you, just
To hold together what he was and is.

You can read the rest here.

And if you feel like it, you can watch either of the film versions of the famous play:

1934

(They are both pretty good. I prefer John Gielgud (in anything) to Charles Laughton, but I was never a big fan of Jennifer Jones.)

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July 30, 2013

One more anniversary post

by chuckofish

Reblogged from Bless This Mess who reblogged it from somewhere else.

Who knew July was such a month for wedding anniversaries? My dual personality’s. The boy’s. And our brother celebrated one back in June.

Well, it’s okay to be proud of some things. I ran across this picture on a blog and I thought it was worth sharing with our readers. Something to aspire to, as it were–the long marriage, that is, not the shirts!

I know a couple who has been married for 70 years–they’re in their nineties! This is mind-boggling to say the least. And awesome.

Likewise awesome is this poem by Anne Bradstreet (the 17th-century Puritan who was the first poet and first female writer in the British North American colonies to be published.*)–To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

I better end this post before I get started on Puritans. Most the people who read this popular poem at their own weddings nowadays probably don’t even know who Anne Bradstreet was and that she was a Puritan! Zut alors!

*According to Wikipedia.

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July 11, 2013

Into each life some rain must fall

by chuckofish

I was talking to daughter #1 yesterday–I was at work and she was walking down Columbus Avenue on her way to work in New York City. It started to rain and she had to run. There were no toadstools to wait under.

AP photo

It was rainy as well in my flyover town, and I was reminded of this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882).

The Rainy Day

THE DAY is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

But you know, the sun always comes out again…and the tiger lilies are blooming!

Who can be sad for long when these wonderful flowers are blooming in our backyard and all along flyover byways?

Quote | July 4, 2013

I am an American

by chuckofish

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

Have a great 4th of July–celebrate responsibly! Read some Emerson!

Concord Hymn

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

And last but not least…Happy Birthday to our dear brother!

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June 21, 2013

“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.” *

by chuckofish

On Saturday I’m flying to Florida to meet up with “my girls” for a week on the beach.

On Tuesday my dual personality will leave for her biennual journey to England to visit her in-laws.

Posting will most probably be intermittent, but don’t worry, we’ll be checking in from time to time. My husband will be loaded down with all manner of laptop, iPad, iPhone, etc. so I will not be cut off from the world. God forbid.

In Sanibel: Team Skinnypants

While we are gone, the boy and his bride will move into their new (old) house. That worked out nicely, right?

*T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

You remember…

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

8 Comments

June 13, 2013

The old rag and bone shop

by chuckofish

Photo of WBY by Lady Ottoline Morrell

In honor of William Butler Yeats’ birthday, here’s a poem for June 13.

“The Circus Animals’ Desertion” (1939)

I
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

II
What can I do but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?

And then a counter truth filled out its play,
The Countess Cathleen was the name I gave it:
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love
And not those things that they were emblems of.

III
Those masterful images, because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse, of the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone
I must lie down where all ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

Enjoy the day! Clearly WBY knew how to party down.

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April 9, 2013

April is…

by chuckofish

A new calendar page:

crazy weather:

“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.”
– Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, 1926