December Daily: poems
Dec. 22nd, 2022 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantHm, I think I overwrote an entry. Will fix that later. Meanwhile:
summerstorm - top 5 poems?
Not the top five, but five poems I've taken a lot of pleasure from:
Moon and Panorama of Insects (The poet asks for help from the Virgin) -- Gabriel Garcia Lorca
I ask the divine Mother of God,
of all things the heavenly queen,
give me the pure light of the little animals
that have a single letter in their vocabulary,
animals without soul, simple forms,
far from the despicable wisdom of the cat,
far from the factitious depth of the owls,
far from the sculptural wisdom of the horse,
creatures that love without eyes,
with a single sense of undulating infinity
and that are brought together in large piles
to be eaten by the birds.
I ask for the single dimension
the small flat animals have,
to tell the story of things covered in earth
under the hard innocence of the shoe;
There is no one who cries because he understands
the million tiny deaths that the market contains,
that Chinese crowd of decapitated onions
and that great yellow sun of old crushed fish.
You, Mother, always fearsome. Whale of all the heavens.
You, Mother, always a jokester. Neighbor of the borrowed parsley.
You know that I understand the smallest flesh of the world.
Here's the Spanish:
Luna y panorama de los insectos (El poeta pide ayuda a la Virgen)
Pido a la divina Madre de Dios,
reina celeste de todo lo criado,
me dé la pura luz de los animalitos
que tienen una sola letra en su vocabulario,
animales sin alma, simples formas,
lejos de la despreciable sabiduría del gato,
lejos de la profundidad ficticia de los búhos,
lejos de la escultórica sapiencia del caballo,
criaturas que aman sin ojos,
con un solo sentido de infinito ondulado
y que se agrupan en grandes montones
para ser comidos por los pájaros.
Pido la sola dimensión
que tienen los pequeños animales planos,
para narrar cosas cubiertas de tierra
bajo la dura inocencia del zapato;
no hay quien llore porque comprenda
el millón de muertecitas que tiene el mercado,
esa muchedumbre china de las cebollas decapitadas
y ese gran sol amarillo de viejos peces aplastados.
Tú, Madre siempre temible. Ballena de todos los cielos.
Tú, Madre siempre bromista. Vecina del perejil prestado.
Sabes que yo comprendo la carne mínima del mundo.
Portrait By a Neighbor - Edna St. Vincent Millay
Before she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
A-sunning in the sun!
It's long after midnight
Her key's in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
Til past ten o'clock!
She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,
She walks up the walk
Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
Any pays you back in cream!
Her lawn looks like a meadow,
And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
And the Queen Anne's lace!
Angels Among the Servants -- Nancy Willard
Build a chair as if an angel was going to sit on it. -- Thomas Merton
St. Zita, patron saint
of scrub buckets and brooms,
spiritual adviser to mops,
protector of charwomen,
chambermaids, cooks,
those who wait on us
and mend our ways,
for forty-eight years you
lit the morning fire
in the dark kitchen
of Fatinelli of Lucca
and baked his bread,
till the Sunday you knew
you could not serve
two masters and did not open
the bins of flour or unlock
the treasures of yeast
and water. Telling no one,
you trudged off to Mass,
still wearing his keys
on your belt.
And while you opened your mouth
for the wafer, a coin
minted from moonlight,
angels arrived in aprons
and mixed light and salt,
and kneaded loaf after loaf,
punching them down
for their own, good,
and praised the mystery
of bread, which rises to meet
its maker. But who
is the servant here?
The loaf will not rise
till the baker follows
the rules set down by the first loaf
for the ancient order of bread.
St. Zita, bless the fire
that boils water, the air
that dries clothes, and keys
that have lost their doors:
may angels keep them
from the deep river.
At the Feast in the Great Hall -- Ursula K. Le Guin
I
A bird flew through the candlelight
above the voices and the jangling harp,
window to window, through
and gone --
So our life, the harper sang,
a moment between dark and dark.
II
My wings
blundered in brightness, my eyes
dazzled, then I was across
and home in wide air and the night.
Only for a moment was I lost.
Ballad of the Paths in Västmanland -- Lars Gustafsson
(translated from Swedish by author and Christopher Middleton)
Under the visible script of small tracks,
gravel tracks, forest tracks, often with a grass
ridge in the middle, between deep ruts
hidden beneath twigs heaped in clearings,
still distinct in crumbling moss,
another script runs: the old paths.
They lead from lake to lake, from valley
to valley. Sometimes deeper furrows,
more distinct, and sturdy bridges
of medieval stone carry them over black streams;
sometimes they evaporate on bare rocky ground;
you lose them easily in swamps, so
imperceptibly that one moment they are there
and the next not. They do go on,
always there’s a going on, you only have
to seek, the paths are obstinate,
they know what they want, and with that knowledge
they combine considerable cunning.
You walk east, the compass points insistently east,
faithfully the path follows the compass, like a streak,
all is well, then the path veers north.
And north there’s nothing. What does the path want?
Soon comes an enormous moor, and the path knew it.
It leads us around, with the certainty of someone who knows
what’s what. It knows where the moor is;
it knows where the hill is too steep; it knows
what happens to someone who circles the lake
to the north instead of south. It has done it all,
so many times, before. That’s the whole
point of being a path: it came to be made
long ago. Who made it? Charcoal burners, fisherfolk,
women with skinny arms gathering firewood?
The outlaws, shysters, gray as the moss —
still in their dreams the blood of fratricide
reddens their hands. Autumn hunters on the tracks
of pointer dogs with barks clear as frost?
All of them, none of them. We make the path together,
you, too, on a stormy day, on earth,
be the hour late or early:
we write the paths and they stick,
and the paths are more clever than us,
and they know all the things we wanted to know.
Upcoming prompts below the cut.
23fox - Top five Advent carols, maybe
24fox - Top five Christmas carols
25 break for Christmas
26ride_4ever - top 5 dS fanworks other than fic (arts, podfics, vids)
27azurelunatic - 5 reasons you enjoy a party in the dark times of the year
28james - Top 5 places in the past you would like to visit. Top 5 places in the present you would like to visit.
29laurenthemself - Top five snack foods (sorry, the requested date got taken between the time you posted and the time I edited)
30
31mergatrude - what five complements/encouragements would you give your young self.
summerstorm - top 5 poems?Not the top five, but five poems I've taken a lot of pleasure from:
Moon and Panorama of Insects (The poet asks for help from the Virgin) -- Gabriel Garcia Lorca
I ask the divine Mother of God,
of all things the heavenly queen,
give me the pure light of the little animals
that have a single letter in their vocabulary,
animals without soul, simple forms,
far from the despicable wisdom of the cat,
far from the factitious depth of the owls,
far from the sculptural wisdom of the horse,
creatures that love without eyes,
with a single sense of undulating infinity
and that are brought together in large piles
to be eaten by the birds.
I ask for the single dimension
the small flat animals have,
to tell the story of things covered in earth
under the hard innocence of the shoe;
There is no one who cries because he understands
the million tiny deaths that the market contains,
that Chinese crowd of decapitated onions
and that great yellow sun of old crushed fish.
You, Mother, always fearsome. Whale of all the heavens.
You, Mother, always a jokester. Neighbor of the borrowed parsley.
You know that I understand the smallest flesh of the world.
Here's the Spanish:
Luna y panorama de los insectos (El poeta pide ayuda a la Virgen)
Pido a la divina Madre de Dios,
reina celeste de todo lo criado,
me dé la pura luz de los animalitos
que tienen una sola letra en su vocabulario,
animales sin alma, simples formas,
lejos de la despreciable sabiduría del gato,
lejos de la profundidad ficticia de los búhos,
lejos de la escultórica sapiencia del caballo,
criaturas que aman sin ojos,
con un solo sentido de infinito ondulado
y que se agrupan en grandes montones
para ser comidos por los pájaros.
Pido la sola dimensión
que tienen los pequeños animales planos,
para narrar cosas cubiertas de tierra
bajo la dura inocencia del zapato;
no hay quien llore porque comprenda
el millón de muertecitas que tiene el mercado,
esa muchedumbre china de las cebollas decapitadas
y ese gran sol amarillo de viejos peces aplastados.
Tú, Madre siempre temible. Ballena de todos los cielos.
Tú, Madre siempre bromista. Vecina del perejil prestado.
Sabes que yo comprendo la carne mínima del mundo.
Portrait By a Neighbor - Edna St. Vincent Millay
Before she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
A-sunning in the sun!
It's long after midnight
Her key's in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
Til past ten o'clock!
She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,
She walks up the walk
Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
Any pays you back in cream!
Her lawn looks like a meadow,
And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
And the Queen Anne's lace!
Angels Among the Servants -- Nancy Willard
Build a chair as if an angel was going to sit on it. -- Thomas Merton
St. Zita, patron saint
of scrub buckets and brooms,
spiritual adviser to mops,
protector of charwomen,
chambermaids, cooks,
those who wait on us
and mend our ways,
for forty-eight years you
lit the morning fire
in the dark kitchen
of Fatinelli of Lucca
and baked his bread,
till the Sunday you knew
you could not serve
two masters and did not open
the bins of flour or unlock
the treasures of yeast
and water. Telling no one,
you trudged off to Mass,
still wearing his keys
on your belt.
And while you opened your mouth
for the wafer, a coin
minted from moonlight,
angels arrived in aprons
and mixed light and salt,
and kneaded loaf after loaf,
punching them down
for their own, good,
and praised the mystery
of bread, which rises to meet
its maker. But who
is the servant here?
The loaf will not rise
till the baker follows
the rules set down by the first loaf
for the ancient order of bread.
St. Zita, bless the fire
that boils water, the air
that dries clothes, and keys
that have lost their doors:
may angels keep them
from the deep river.
At the Feast in the Great Hall -- Ursula K. Le Guin
I
A bird flew through the candlelight
above the voices and the jangling harp,
window to window, through
and gone --
So our life, the harper sang,
a moment between dark and dark.
II
My wings
blundered in brightness, my eyes
dazzled, then I was across
and home in wide air and the night.
Only for a moment was I lost.
Ballad of the Paths in Västmanland -- Lars Gustafsson
(translated from Swedish by author and Christopher Middleton)
Under the visible script of small tracks,
gravel tracks, forest tracks, often with a grass
ridge in the middle, between deep ruts
hidden beneath twigs heaped in clearings,
still distinct in crumbling moss,
another script runs: the old paths.
They lead from lake to lake, from valley
to valley. Sometimes deeper furrows,
more distinct, and sturdy bridges
of medieval stone carry them over black streams;
sometimes they evaporate on bare rocky ground;
you lose them easily in swamps, so
imperceptibly that one moment they are there
and the next not. They do go on,
always there’s a going on, you only have
to seek, the paths are obstinate,
they know what they want, and with that knowledge
they combine considerable cunning.
You walk east, the compass points insistently east,
faithfully the path follows the compass, like a streak,
all is well, then the path veers north.
And north there’s nothing. What does the path want?
Soon comes an enormous moor, and the path knew it.
It leads us around, with the certainty of someone who knows
what’s what. It knows where the moor is;
it knows where the hill is too steep; it knows
what happens to someone who circles the lake
to the north instead of south. It has done it all,
so many times, before. That’s the whole
point of being a path: it came to be made
long ago. Who made it? Charcoal burners, fisherfolk,
women with skinny arms gathering firewood?
The outlaws, shysters, gray as the moss —
still in their dreams the blood of fratricide
reddens their hands. Autumn hunters on the tracks
of pointer dogs with barks clear as frost?
All of them, none of them. We make the path together,
you, too, on a stormy day, on earth,
be the hour late or early:
we write the paths and they stick,
and the paths are more clever than us,
and they know all the things we wanted to know.
Upcoming prompts below the cut.
23
fox - Top five Advent carols, maybe24
fox - Top five Christmas carols25 break for Christmas
26
ride_4ever - top 5 dS fanworks other than fic (arts, podfics, vids)27
azurelunatic - 5 reasons you enjoy a party in the dark times of the year28
james - Top 5 places in the past you would like to visit. Top 5 places in the present you would like to visit.29
laurenthemself - Top five snack foods (sorry, the requested date got taken between the time you posted and the time I edited)30
31
mergatrude - what five complements/encouragements would you give your young self.
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/22 11:01 pm (UTC)https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/poeta-en-nueva-york-785140/html/a17d2a80-fa3c-40bd-b333-4d82ae223500_3.html#I_34_
(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 01:14 am (UTC)And why on earth autocorrect capitalized Insects but not lorca?
(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 09:05 pm (UTC)In 1929-1930 Lorca visited America; he desultorily works on a collection of poems he wrote during this time until he is ASSASSINATED (I learned something) in 1936. The collection 'Poeta en Nueva York' comes out posthumously in 1940, and contains the poem 'Luna y panorama de los insectos (poema de amor).'
The entirely different poem 'Luna y panorama de los insectos (el poeta pide ayuda a la Virgen)' was written at the same time; it sometimes appears in editions of 'Poeta en Nueva York' as an extra, like this one where it's an appendix.
We have the original manuscript, and the Lorca Foundation's catalog, which I take as pretty definitive, lists it as 'Luna y panorama de los insectos: El poeta pide ayuda a la Virgen' and includes the tantalizing note that the manuscript has the crossed out alternate title 'Aventuras idiotas del Capitán John'.
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/22 11:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 01:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 12:35 am (UTC)eta: oh my gosh I looked her up and I'm pretty sure I've seen her! I went to Italy as a teenager, I know we visited Lucca, and the photo of her on Wikipedia looks really familiar--especially that gorgeous dress.
(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 01:11 am (UTC)The image I got when you said, "I think I've seen her" was of a painting or something, so the link was a bit of a shock. Cool, though. Somehow it never occurred to me, in the 30?! years I've been carrying the poem around, to look up the saint herself.
(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 01:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 01:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/24/22 02:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 06:41 am (UTC)Just last week I was thinking of that metaphor of life being a bird flying through a great hall and now I have a wonderful poem to go with it.
(no subject)
Date: 12/24/22 02:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/25/22 04:32 pm (UTC)Yes, I really like that it offers two perspectives and the idea that maybe the noisy hall isn't the only option around.
(no subject)
Date: 12/23/22 02:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/24/22 02:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/24/22 10:13 pm (UTC)I also liked the Swedish one, which had not come across despite being Swedish (which is not strange, there is a ton of Swedish poetry and I'm not even much of a poetry reader).
(no subject)
Date: 12/28/22 04:04 am (UTC)I'd love to see it in Swedish, even though I probably wouldn't get anything out of it -- I have Dora-the-Explorer-level Spanish, so I can at least look at the Lorca and match up one word with another, but all I could do with Swedish is say, "Well, it doesn't look like it contains the words of that one drinking song."
(no subject)
Date: 12/24/22 11:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/28/22 04:04 am (UTC)