"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

I was looking out old entries regarding poetry, and I cam across one from April 2010. I liked the entry so much and feel it so much today that I'm just going to repost it, in its entirety.

( Step into this time machine... )

The weather has been great; cool but pleasant yesterday, rain overnight; today it will be warm, nearly 80*F, and sunny. For more than a week now, my fasting blood glucose has been below 126. My weight is down to a range it hasn't been in three years. I got a very positive annual review. ( And other things are going well, too )

I don't want to short non-English poetry. Here are a couple of pieces by the master of haiku, Matsuo Basho. ( Read more... )

Dear, dear, I've fallen far behind.

Here's one from a favourite.

( The Eagle )

There was an excellent piece this morning on NPR on the experience of combat, a profile of a new book on a unit's experience in Afghanistan. As a thank you to Mr Junger for his book and a salute to the men of the 173rd, my poems for today come from another one man who came to South Asia and saw the glory of war, but who learned its true bitterness only later. <lj-cut>

Rudyard Kipling made a telling observation about warfare in what is now the murderous borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I expect a good many of the men and women who are serving out there now are reading Kipling and know this poem.

A scrimmage in a Border Station—
       A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
       Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
       No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
       Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—
The odds are on the cheaper man.

The whole poem, "Arithmetic on the Frontier" can be found on Wikisource.

Kipling also wrote a piece called "The King's Pilgrimage" after King George V visited the graves of troops from throughout the British Empire who fell in France and Belgium in World War I. It ends

And the last land he found, it was fair and level ground
About a carven stone,
And a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross
Where high and low are one.

And there was grass and the living trees,
And the flowers of the spring,
And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas
That ever called him King.

'Twixt Nieuport sands and the eastward lands where the Four Red Rivers spring,
Five hundred thousand gentlemen of those that served their King.

All that they had they gave - they gave -
In sure and single faith.
There can no knowledge reach the grave
To make them grudge their death
Save only if they understood
That, after all was done,
We they redeemed denied their blood
And mocked the gains it won.

I'm a day behind, so I'll add this poem today, another by cummings which I had not read before until the I found the page where I found the little lame balloon man. (It's here, for those who would read more cummings.)



it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be--
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.


This one struck me particularly as it echoes some things I had been thinking about. I was listening to the soundtrack from Rushmore in the car yesterday, and on came Cat Stevens' song "Here Comes My Bay". I'd always thought it was a cheerful, joyful song, I think because I'd never listened very closely to the lyrics. Actually hearing them, and thinking about them, my feelings are much more mixed. To me, it, and this poem, are much more about accepting life as it is, without resentment or envy. Which is not always easy--I know that bird's song.

Yesterday was so annoying, I'm tempted to put up Kipling's "If"...

Instead, here is one from The Aged Poet I refer to here from time to time. In fact, as a special bonus here's a chance to hear him reading it.

I tried to piece out what it tells me, and I come back to a very simple acknowledgment of the movement of lives through time and the desire to do so while retaining a little grace and dignity. I think my mother always focused on the second stanza, reading it as a rejection of the search for meaning in place of a focus on the self. But I think that says more about her hang-ups than her friend's. His awe at the way the mantel can take the marks of time and remain beautiful, turn them into part of its beauty, his appreciation for life-worn faces, how the treasures in his drawer touch him, his memory of his father's eye--this isn't self-absorption, much less selfishness or a desire to avoid responsibility. It's an acceptance and celebration of how time changes us, changes everything, and the beauty that can come out of that.

For today, I just chose something that came to me when I thought "poem"? It's by William Butler Yeats

When You are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I love Yeats' imagery (I can think of another poem of his I will have to use soon too). I'm not quite sure what to make of the reference to love having fled, though. Did the "one man" leave "you"--was love not strong enough? Or did he leave her by dying (hence the hiding among a crown of stars)? I like to think the latter--it's the romantic in me (as Captain Renault would say. :-)

Either way, as a romantic, I appreciate the idea of someone being loved by many for her beauty and grace, but being loved most and specially by the person who saw past what other people did.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.