Escapism is a bad thing. Or is it? It is the gateway to creative art, that much is certain
Escapism is a bad thing. Or is it? It is the gateway to creative art, that much is certain. This poem is a meditation on day-dreaming. And how day-dreaming can become a meditational aid. And how dream and reality are so similar, but the former lacking in the latter's somewhat bumpy ride. Day-dreaming is bad, slothful, leads one into inappropriate habits. But the man who stays at home gives the world little reason to regret his lack of adventurous spirit. While politicians, warlords, empire builders in their more concrete achievements bring quite often ruin and devastation upon us all. The man who stays at home has as good a time as the inveterate restless traveller. But I would say that, wouldn't I?
Caribbean
penis always decently sheathed, erect
or flaccid. always deliciously full. thick
at rest. hardly any thicker when
at play. constant in every way.
great muscularity with innocence.
power, like his penis, sheathed. always
smiling he confronts the world, modestly
accepts its adulation.
white and brown and black we ride the surf
of the constant Caribbean. after tea,
before the sudden setting of the sun
hand in hand and hand on waist we wander
the footprint margin of the southern shore.
limestone, metamorphic, sedimentary
unpredictable volcanic
the island chain
lazily from Haiti to Venezuela
describes its Caribbean arc.
magic islands of the Americas
far-distant magic islands calling me
to inundation of the whirling senses
among your coral reefs and waving palms.
in the waters of your blue lagoons
finally put off my ageing body
mind-young coalesce with those dark bodies
become your native son and with your sons
frolic beyond dear Huxley's Mexique Bay.
in and out of the corporeal as one
with the spirits of your sunshine, water, air.
Shelley-esque, merge with your random numen
abandoning the last three thousand years
of human's nature's bondage to the will.
here in my garden's northern sunshine
I share your liberation, your excess,
sink southward into freedom, borne aloft
then downward into paradise again,
too wise for wisdom, too old for holding back:
saturated in your Caribbean
satiated by your clearer passions.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
but no, I shall not go.
reality's the drudge that sweeps the floor.
I want more than that. I want much more:
the sparkling jewels imagination pledges,
the pledge redeemed by vision.
desire articulated by the dreaming mind,
brought to full fruition in coruscating art
and art and art! - so much more real
so much more really there
than any magic island. there for all to share.
no longer there, but here.
physical reality? no thanks! what?
travel halfway across the weary world
to bitter disillusion and despair
at close on seventy years? bodily
exhaustion? tedium? endless enervation?
much better in my homely house to dream
imagine in my garden I am sitting
beside the Caribbean's whispering verge
constantly attended by her sons
who in imagination bring and share
all the promise of those sunlit islands
with none of the involvement, stress, remorse.
I never was adventurous, you see.
or only in the mind where I am free
to come and go upon the wings of whim,
her silver-gossamer wings with rainbow sheen
opening and folding while I dream -
while I dream of magic islands calling me
to inundation of the whirling senses...
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People sometimes send me their poems for my opinion and of late I have received a number o
People sometimes send me their poems for my opinion and of late I have received a number of poems from a young man who lives in New Delhi, India. They are of a high quality, especially bearing in mind that his first language is Hindi - not that his talent needs any qualification from me. It is apparent in every line. He sent me this poem 'Coda' just a day or two ago and I was so struck by it that I have made a reading to share with friends on You Tube. He has not told me his real name and I know him only by the pseudonym 'Snug'
Coda is a very good poem and I find the language very moving. Snug has a great feel for language, by which I mean that his language is something like a physical presence, immediate. The images in the poem are also immediate and often, in his poetry, I feel what he means even without actually knowing always exactly what he is attempting to say. One cannot do better than this for poetic immediacy.
'Incipient desire is memory's muse' is a beautiful line.And his poetry (what I have so far seen of it) seems shot through with melancholy, like all the best poetry.
CODA
'The serene sky lost into the night.'
My eyes on which you put your fingers are fingers.
Fingers which roll the uneven memory
Surpass trajectory and become oblivion.
And return oblique from light to darkness-
Not oblivious.
Darkness and love floors the heart-
Incipient desire is memory's muse-
As willing and unwilling failings
Abide the bittersweet tear and dew.
'Tardiness is washing me up as I smell the gunpowder.'
Ah! Violence has failed me.
I must step inside the well and contemplate.
Water is heavy as I.
Inside the well we had met
Astounded by a razor's nakedness-
Time was trundled on water
And the sky delved into a tub
Like a pail full of deep dolor
The way we live-
Looking through a dismantled piece's lens-
Dreary out its window-
A basic of all glass.
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Male Model Leaning Against A Tree
(Photographic Still Life)
standing against the t
Male Model Leaning Against A Tree
(Photographic Still Life)
standing against the trunk and drawing strength
from rasp of naked bark against his skin
he sensuously bathed in full sun's glare
absorbing health from that carressing light,
heat of the eye that viewed him from the sky.
the camera's eye, unfolded heart of the rose,
from the heart of its petals patiently watching
receptive tender organ fragrantly blooming,
saving for a time when he shall be old
this vision of the meaty strength of youth,
sinecure of summer, sun and eye.
carress of grass beneath his unshod feet,
cool silky blades tickling his naked toes
force ascending thru him earth to sky
to branch into the branches of the tree
waving and twinkling in the heated breeze
then out into the atmosphere, then free,
escaped into the universe at last.
it took him with it as it blazed along -
rather his spirit, free now of the flesh.
his body was the conduit, muscle bone
and skin part of the living substance which
was tree, his sap the tree's sap pushing upward,
outward in all directions rocketing
energetic movement from his stasis
locked into the universal power,
root power that never dwindles, never passes
even when the tree and we are gone.
then seated amid shrubbery, rustic king,
power of this clipped suburban woodland,
smile benign, muscles stretched relaxed
sensing already the adoring years
when he is pinned into a magazine,
icon, boundary lord, a latter Greek
aware of his own body and the gaze
of coming decades - how could he know,
he couldn't possibly know that this his image,
this one and the other, flashed upon
a flickering silver screen repeated in bedroom,
study, living room, would bring delight
to those as yet unborn when he posed here.
we feel his power and his presence, sense
his joy (tinged perhaps with nervousness?) -
but no, there is no doubt upon that open face,
that easy muscularity relaxed
absorbing all the summer and the light
thru naked flesh, watching the one who watches,
we who thru the cameraman observe
what he desired above all else to show:
himself, the curve and mound and length and flow
of flesh, desirability wanting
to be desired, admiring us who must
desire his form, breathing incarnation
of the god from which all gods derive
and have their strength, source of their endurance,
living mental entities, sculpted psyche.
(Although these two pictures were published quite a few years ago, the subject is still alive at age 70. The pictures were taken from Tim in Vermont's Vintage Physique website, an excellent resource for the male model magazines of yesteryear. I have of course doctored the pictures for so-called decency's sake - not that there is anything indecent about the male body!)
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This is a new departure for me. I have created this video without any additional music or
This is a new departure for me. I have created this video without any additional music or effects since Stevens's poetry is sufficient unto itself, the sound of the verse is all we need. I should be interested to know what people think of this rather stark rendition!
The Idea of Order at Key West...... She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there was never a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
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This section is dedicated to megansspark my dear American friend, whose lovely videos can
This section is dedicated to megansspark my dear American friend, whose lovely videos can be found on You Tube - see my 'Favourites' list for a selection.
Cavafy Poems 70-72
70. 1903
Hid in a mask of agression: asking eyes.
The face pale at twilight, luminous
in the crooked street
like a hungry ghost,
an urgent vampire scenting blood.
Instant pull of primal recognition,
hunter to prey.
Soon lost in the eddies of the crowd
I let them pass, those pleading eyes.
The hounds and horses off away
on a false scent and a cold return.
Lapsed attention; cowardice; remorse.
Needful eyes negate aggressive features,
half parted lips hungry and expectant,
never found again.
71. The Shop Window
Twilight, time of assignation,
sunset after flaring sun,
day's work done, evening's freedom
frolicsome. Or else return
to respective lonely rooms
and a quiet meal, nothing and no one.
In the busy street they loitered
and like wind drifted leaves
together rested by the lighted window
of a tobacconist - bowls of shredded leaf,
polished gleaming wood of pipes.
Their glances met.
Each read the other's face
and similar need.
Some flustered steps further up the street,
a sudden gust of wind, a secret sign,
each reading aright the over-emphatic nod.
The pungent back of a cab
(in those days sealed,
perfect for lovers' closeness)
heat of each other's nearness
hand to hand
lips upon hot lips.
72. Rare Pleasures
Thick scent of hothouse blooms
in a closed conservatory -
those hours of my embracing the extraordinary:
lilies of the valley for whose sake
I put aside the everyday
and gathered the exquisite in my arms.
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This is my translation/recreation of the ninth poem from Stefan George's collection Algaba
This is my translation/recreation of the ninth poem from Stefan George's collection Algabal.
Da auf dem seidenen lager
neidisch der schlummer mich mied
so bringt keine wundersager
so will ich keun lullendes lied.....
Sleep
(Da auf dem Seidenen Lager)
There upon my sumptuous silken bed
sleep, my lover, still avoided me
nor would he come into my willing arms
although I would have granted any wish.
Not any sparkling tale in any tongue
not any langourous and lulling song
sung in choric line by Attic vestals
who once could charm for me my lover sleep
and draw him through the secret paths to home -
none of these. Only the sensuous sound
of shrilling flutes beside the sweeping Nile
can bring him creeping to my warm embrace.
In airy dream pavilions I brood,
consecrated, and with unction blessed;
and to their wailing I attune my flight,
my vast wings soothed by the immortal dead.
Then when sleep beside me lies, his limbs entwined
about my breathless body, again
the flautists play their thrilling melody;
and he is mine in union divine.
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THE CITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE: PART FOUR
He had been made a god of the sea
and nothing
THE CITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE: PART FOUR
He had been made a god of the sea
and nothing had been denied him.
All doors had opened at his touch,
all dreams had turned to reality.
His modes of being were numerous
and gave way to new existences
when and where he wished.
No locks no bars no disapproval
no denial.
In his freedom he had been like a soaring duck
climbing to the boundless skies
searching for far distant horizons
and great stretches of calm and unruffled lake water.
And could one girl humiliate him so
that all the wide and open things should close
that all that boundless ceaseless ebb and flow
should be restricted to a sullen pose?
Where now the glory of the dreaming state
when all his dreams were turned to dross?
Dreams now could only be used to abate
the cold sense of insufferable loss.
The sea, which had been his goal,
now turned in upon itself in self destruction,
chaos now it was, void and desolate.
He slipped back into an unregenerate sphere
of nightmare and destruction.
Oceanus now a raving tyrant
Tethys an insubordinate slut
and all the Oceanides a manic pack
ravening upon his now listless desire.
Chaos void and desolate
chaos void and desolate.
When dreams have no contact with the real world
they are void and in vain. Glaucus was a
disproportionate thing, nor man nor fish,
and Scylla saw the absurdity. He
in his own eyes was lord of wealthy lands,
heir to a huge empire of endless dreams
and seething vision. But when that world came
in contact with the pinprick of the real
then all the glorious golden palaces
fell and there was nothing left to uphold
the vain and empty dream. That's the moral.
The mind that dwells on things wild, unholy,
impure and boundless is doomed
from the start to destruction.
Poor fervent Nietzsche took that long last fall
into the void, into oblivion.
He was sucked down beneath the covering pall
of mind and drowned in his own sensation.
His conscious thought, a buoyant float that swam
above the swarming depth of stored up deeds
and meditated slights, took in one dram
of this chaotic swarm, stuck in the reeds,
then slowly, then more fast, began to sink
below the bordered line 'twixt void and mind.
Enclosed by all that depth, he could not think,
he could not understand the subtle blind
that closed his eyes to concrete outward form
and made of mind a massy munching worm.
We must bind our thoughts and fix them in one
pure shape, nor let them wander high and wild
and free. It is enough that they are based
on conflict and chaos, that they are the
children of the unknown. There is no cause
to shout their lineage in the marketplace.
O Venice! Venice! Consummate mistress
of the world of form! Perfect dream founded
in reality! You stand at the edge of
chaos yet you have tamed the depth and dance
above the seething gulf of unconscious
nescience. No Glaucus are you, no Nietzsche.
The blight is held beyond your boundaries.
You have caged the beasts, yet you have also
paid them their due. You know your glory is
founded on Chaos and therefore you have
raised a column and on it you have set
a lion, symbol of the force which you have
tamed. And that lion and that column stand beside
the water at the edge of which you stand.
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THE CITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE: PART THREE
"It was a normal catch of fish. I laid
it on
THE CITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE: PART THREE
"It was a normal catch of fish. I laid
it on the fresh green grass of the meadow
by the shore. But no sooner had I spread
the catch when all the fish began to move
toward the sea. Slipping and slithering
on their bellies they went, in ones and twos
with determined staring eyes and thrusting
fins and tails, gasping in the unaccustomed
air. I could not think what moved them, nor where
they took the fighting energy to reach
at last the wind-blown shore, to fight against
the landward flowing surf, to escape the
floundering of the nearest falling waves
and at last to fling themselves in freedom
to the pull and ebb of the swirling depths.
There was no motive for that sudden rush
to the sea, no force that could have moved them.
They had been prosaic gasping fish when
I carried the net across the beach to
this soft and springy turf where I now stood.
But no sooner had I laid them on the...
grass. I had laid them on the grass. So now
I bent down and examined the grass, felt
its smooth texture, smelled it. It had the smell
of the sea, heavily concentrated,
as if these blades had been ruffled by the
shorewards blowing breeze for a thousand years.
The smell was in my nose, my throat, my lungs,
a wild and unholy smell, physical
and inescapable. Like a tame beast
I responded to this goading scent, fell
upon my knees and hands and tore the grass
in overwhelming mouthfuls.
"At first: calm.
And the sun seemed to stand still in the sky
and the falling of the waves was far off,
at the lip of a whorled and echoing
sea shell...Then the dome of the sky was split
in two, the sea fell with a wild crash
into the whorled and echoing shell. My
feet were rushing me inconsequently
to the sea, to the glorious foaming
sea, to the wilderness of vast waters.
"The cool waters calmly clothed me, softly
sheathed me with translucent green. It was like
sinking into my own mind, as when one
drinks too much and falls into a pleasant
soporific state. Gone was the naked
lightning of my initiation at
the waters' hands. The whorled and echoing
shell was sunk in peace upon a sandy
bed. I had fallen below the waters'
falling, entering the world of silence
and silent, moving currents of the sea.
Tethys' arms were opened in welcome and
Oceanus greeted his long-lost child.
The sea nymphs and Oceanides danced."
* * * * *
And here I would make my point and also
carry on the tale: Glaucus had attained
the thing he had most desired. He had sunk
into the perfect, continuuous dream,
into the unending subconscious state;
had now gained the heights of perfect freedom.
But here's the rub. Ovid tells us how the
sea god (for sea god now he was, having
quite put off all human attributes) met
one day the girl called Scylla. How Glaucus,
seeing her naked limbs, and filled with lust,
called out to the girl, his cries echoing
with a hollow sound across the waters.
But she, terrified of this unknown thing,
ran for safety to higher ground, knowing
no creature from the sea could reach her there.
From this safe eminence she looked down at
the sea god with frightened yet curious eyes.
(And here we swerve aside from Ovid and
remake the tale to fit our own vision.)
At first she trembled, confronted by this
thing of totally unknown origins.
But when he said "I love you, human girl,"
she began to shake again, but this time
with laughter, uncontrollable laughter.
"You silly grotesque monster!" she called out.
And, laughing still, her laughter echoing
as his cries of lust had echoed just now,
she wandered out of sight below the hill.
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THE CITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE: TWO
In order to say what is in my mind
when I speak of t
THE CITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE: TWO
In order to say what is in my mind
when I speak of the city at the edge
of the water, I must recount the tale
(with help from Ovid's Metamorphoses)
of how the man called Glaucus was turned to
a sea god. This tale for me is symbol
more than tale and represents my vision
of the city. And symbol and vision,
when subtly entwined by my weaving mind,
create my metaphysical Venice.
Glaucus was born by the sounding sea,
dropped on the wiry turf of the headland
on a night when the essence grew strong
of fishnets drying on the sands
and in the breezes of the shore
bleached and salted and dried,
white in the steeping moonlight.
The child's first breath was from the sea,
the breathings of the waves were in his lungs
and his first glance encompassed the realm of Ocean
and all the Oceanides and sea-nymphs dancing.
All things flowed from the sea,
influenced by the sea-changes
that swayed with Glaucus' heart,
reflecting his elation and depression,
beating with his heartbeat and pause
of his heart's beating: the sea his mother,
his father, his passion and his ebb.
Triumphant waves join the sun in choric praise
of the sea's strength when the sun is on the sea,
turning all joy in upon the sea and sun,
urging all the ripples to diamonds and shimmered mirrors.
The sea-nymphs playfully frolic and dive and swirl
along the glittering pathways and highroads
of the never ending, moving seascape.
Porpoises and dolphins, skimming Ocean's surface,
give free vent to their open elation and unforced gaiety,
joining all the other creatures of the sea
in their child-like games and bliss
among the sparkling, never ceasing waters.
Often the boy would stand ankle deep
in watered sand, watching the leap
of the further wave - the steep summit
ascending, ascending, the brave sweep
of the forward curving mass, deep and hollow,
bending and falling, toppling and swirling,
hauling down its billow and sending out
a sudden shout of glee. Then the long slow fingers
of dismembered wave reaching towards his feet,
carressing his ankles in loving sumptuousness,
distressing his passion to be one with the sea.
Yet the sea could calm him with continual falls of waves
(hypnotic insistence of perpetual flux)
and smooth his aching mind as the cliffs were smoothed
to achieve the sea's own mood of mindlessness.
When manhood came upon the boy he turned
his hand to the fisherman's craft and spurned
all works and ways but those that could be done
at the sea's edge or on the sea. Alone,
when mending his nets or painting his boat,
or half asleep on the warm sand, a note
of peaceful calm would stain the empty sea
and spread toward the horizon. And he,
sensing this mysterious quiet, would stare
across the hardly moving waters where,
at the horizon's edge, a long thin line
of foaming surf would be the only sign
of movement on the still and empty blue.
It might be nothing - the wind passing through
the water's hair - a normal school of fish -
yet truth must answer to his fervent wish
and it must be the sea's mother, Tethys,
attended by the water's boil and hiss
as she proceeded on her splendid way.
And at these times night would descend on day
and all his happiness be blotted out
through knowing he could never join that rout
of laughter and of sparkling waves, never
meet his mother face to face. For whether
he walked the land or sailed the sea his soul
was chained to the solid earth. The bright goal,
the silent moving ebbing and flowing
were always beyond his earth-bound knowing.
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