by John Ashbery August 11, 2008
Does it mean one thing with work,
one with age, and so on?
Or are the two opposing doors
irrevocably closed? The song that started
in the middle, did that close down too?
Just because it says here I like tomatoes,
is that a reason to call off victory? Yet it says,
in such an understated way, that this is a small museum
of tints. I’m barely twenty-six, have been on “Oprah”
and such. The almost invisible blight
of the present bursts in on us. We walk
a little farther into the closeness we owned:
Surely that isn’t snow? The leaves are still on the trees,
but they look wild suddenly.
I get up. I guess I must be going.
Not by a long shot in America. Tell us, Princess A-Line,
tell us if you must, why is everything territorial?
It’s O.K., I don’t mind. I never did. In a hundred years,
when today’s modern buildings look inviting
again, like abstract bric-a-brac, we’ll look back
at how we were cheated, pull up our socks, zip
our pants, then smile for the camera, watch
the birdie as he watches us all day.
His thematically undistinguished narrative gives no
cause for complaints, does one no favors.
At night we crept back in, certain of acquittal
if not absolution, in God’s good time, whose scalpel redeems us
even as the blip in His narrative makes us whole again.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
I treasure this poem by Elizabeth Bishop. There is so much to learn from it.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you
meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.-- Even losing you
(the joking voice, a gestureI love) I shan't have lied.
It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop
Biography:
Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911, but spent part of her childhood with her Canadian grandparents after her father's death and mother's hospitalization. Of her childhood she noted, "My relatives all felt so sorry for this child that they tried to do their very best. And I think they did. I lived with my grandparents in Nova Scotia, then with the ones in Worcester, in Massachusetts, very briefly and got terribly sick. This was when I was six and seven.... Then I lived with my mother's older sister in Boston, she was devoted to me -- she had no children. My relationship with my relatives -- I was always sort of a guest, and I think I've always felt like that." Miss Bishop attended Vassar where she majored in English although she had originally intended to major in music composition and piano. "You had to perform in public once a month. Well, this terrified me. I really was sick. I played once and then gave up the piano because I couldn't bear it. The next year I switched to English." In addition to working on the school newspaper, The Vassar Miscellany, Bishop founded a literary magazine, Con Spirito, with fellow students Mary McCarthy, Eleanor Clark, and Muriel Rukeyser. It was as a Vassar student that Elizabeth Bishop met Marianne Moore. The two women first met in 1934 when Fanny Borden, the Vassar librarian, arranged an introduction. Miss Bishop described the meeting thus: "I first met Miss Moore by appointment in 1934, in the New York Public Library. I had actually picked out a tall, eagle-nosed, beturbaned lady, distinguished-looking but proud and forbidding, as a possible Miss Moore, when to my great relief, the real one spoke up." In the course of their conversation, the Vassar senior suggested they go to the circus in two weeks and Miss Moore, who had a passion for the circus, agreed. The older poet played at least a tangential role in the following year in Miss Bishop's decision not to enroll in Cornell Medical School. As she explained, "I had all the forms. But then I discovered that I would have to take German and more chemistry. I'd already published a few things and Marianne discouraged me, and I didn't go. I just went off to Europe instead." Miss Bishop traveled extensively in Europe and lived in New York, Key West, Florida, and, for seventeen years, in Brazil. She taught briefly at the University of Washington, at Harvard for seven years, at New York University, and just prior to her death in 1979, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Elizabeth Bishop won virtually every poetry prize in the country although she insisted, "They don't mean too much." Her first book, North & South, won the Houghton Mifflin Poetry Award for 1946. In 1955, she received the Pulitzer Prize for a volume containing North & South and A Cold Spring. Her next book of poetry, Questions of Travel (1965), won the National Book Award and was followed by The Complete Poems in 1969. Geography III (1976) received the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1976, Miss Bishop became both the first American and the first woman to win the Books Abroad/Neustadt Prize for Literature. In addition to her volumes of poetry, she translated a famous Brazilian diary, The Diary of Helena Morley, edited and partially translated An Anthology of Contemporary Brazilian Poetry (1972), and was a prolific contributor to The New Yorker. In 1967, Bishop was the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships. She received honorary degrees from Adelphi, Brandeis, Brown, Dalhousie, and Princeton Universities, as well as from Smith and Amherst Colleges. A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Bishop was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress in 1949-50. Elizabeth Bishop died on October 6, 1979. A new edition of her poems, The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, was published in early 1983, and The Collected Prose was published in 1984. Of her work, Robert Lowell remarked, "Elizabeth Bishop is the contemporary poet that I admire most .... There's a beautiful completeness to all of Bishop's poetry. I don't think anyone alive has a better eye than she had: The eye that sees things and the mind behind the eye that remembers." ..
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you
meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.-- Even losing you
(the joking voice, a gestureI love) I shan't have lied.
It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop
Biography:
Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911, but spent part of her childhood with her Canadian grandparents after her father's death and mother's hospitalization. Of her childhood she noted, "My relatives all felt so sorry for this child that they tried to do their very best. And I think they did. I lived with my grandparents in Nova Scotia, then with the ones in Worcester, in Massachusetts, very briefly and got terribly sick. This was when I was six and seven.... Then I lived with my mother's older sister in Boston, she was devoted to me -- she had no children. My relationship with my relatives -- I was always sort of a guest, and I think I've always felt like that." Miss Bishop attended Vassar where she majored in English although she had originally intended to major in music composition and piano. "You had to perform in public once a month. Well, this terrified me. I really was sick. I played once and then gave up the piano because I couldn't bear it. The next year I switched to English." In addition to working on the school newspaper, The Vassar Miscellany, Bishop founded a literary magazine, Con Spirito, with fellow students Mary McCarthy, Eleanor Clark, and Muriel Rukeyser. It was as a Vassar student that Elizabeth Bishop met Marianne Moore. The two women first met in 1934 when Fanny Borden, the Vassar librarian, arranged an introduction. Miss Bishop described the meeting thus: "I first met Miss Moore by appointment in 1934, in the New York Public Library. I had actually picked out a tall, eagle-nosed, beturbaned lady, distinguished-looking but proud and forbidding, as a possible Miss Moore, when to my great relief, the real one spoke up." In the course of their conversation, the Vassar senior suggested they go to the circus in two weeks and Miss Moore, who had a passion for the circus, agreed. The older poet played at least a tangential role in the following year in Miss Bishop's decision not to enroll in Cornell Medical School. As she explained, "I had all the forms. But then I discovered that I would have to take German and more chemistry. I'd already published a few things and Marianne discouraged me, and I didn't go. I just went off to Europe instead." Miss Bishop traveled extensively in Europe and lived in New York, Key West, Florida, and, for seventeen years, in Brazil. She taught briefly at the University of Washington, at Harvard for seven years, at New York University, and just prior to her death in 1979, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Elizabeth Bishop won virtually every poetry prize in the country although she insisted, "They don't mean too much." Her first book, North & South, won the Houghton Mifflin Poetry Award for 1946. In 1955, she received the Pulitzer Prize for a volume containing North & South and A Cold Spring. Her next book of poetry, Questions of Travel (1965), won the National Book Award and was followed by The Complete Poems in 1969. Geography III (1976) received the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1976, Miss Bishop became both the first American and the first woman to win the Books Abroad/Neustadt Prize for Literature. In addition to her volumes of poetry, she translated a famous Brazilian diary, The Diary of Helena Morley, edited and partially translated An Anthology of Contemporary Brazilian Poetry (1972), and was a prolific contributor to The New Yorker. In 1967, Bishop was the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships. She received honorary degrees from Adelphi, Brandeis, Brown, Dalhousie, and Princeton Universities, as well as from Smith and Amherst Colleges. A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Bishop was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress in 1949-50. Elizabeth Bishop died on October 6, 1979. A new edition of her poems, The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, was published in early 1983, and The Collected Prose was published in 1984. Of her work, Robert Lowell remarked, "Elizabeth Bishop is the contemporary poet that I admire most .... There's a beautiful completeness to all of Bishop's poetry. I don't think anyone alive has a better eye than she had: The eye that sees things and the mind behind the eye that remembers." ..
Apples
Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers,
the rindmapped with its crimson stain.
The russet, crab and cottage
redburn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every
branch and bubble in the grass.
They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.
In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.
I, with as easy hunger, take entire
my season’s dole;welcome the ripe,
the sweet, the sour,the hollow and
the whole.
I love the above poem by
Laurie Lee
Though many biographies say that Laurie Lee was born is Slad, his family seems to have moved there when he was three. This move affected him a lot and has been written about in great detail many many years later in Cider with Rosie "I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began. The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt though the air like monkeys. I was lost and didn't know where to move. A tropic heat oozed up from the ground, rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles. Snow-clouds of elder-blossom banked in the sky, showering upon me the fumes and flakes of their sweet and giddy suffocation. High overhead ran frenzied larks, screaming, as though the sky were tearing apart." The autobiographical Cider with Rosie which is his most famous work, contains vivid records of his memories of his childhood in Slad before the arrival of the motorcar, including his school days. Laurie Lee studied at the village school and later went to Stroud Central School. At fifteen he left school and became an errand-boy. Lee also gave lectures on the violin. When he was twenty he left Slad for London to earn his living. He then spent four years travelling in Spain and the eastern Mediterranean. There he travelled on foot, playing his fiddle to earn his keep. Later, in December 1937, he joined the International Brigades to fight in the the Spanish Civil War, but after having a medical he was declared to be "physically weak" and was sent home. His Spanish experiences resulted in the pre Civil War book As I walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and the book considered by some to be his best work, A Moment of War (1991), a spare, unsentimental memoir of his experience as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War.
Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers,
the rindmapped with its crimson stain.
The russet, crab and cottage
redburn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every
branch and bubble in the grass.
They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.
In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.
I, with as easy hunger, take entire
my season’s dole;welcome the ripe,
the sweet, the sour,the hollow and
the whole.
I love the above poem by
Laurie Lee
Though many biographies say that Laurie Lee was born is Slad, his family seems to have moved there when he was three. This move affected him a lot and has been written about in great detail many many years later in Cider with Rosie "I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began. The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt though the air like monkeys. I was lost and didn't know where to move. A tropic heat oozed up from the ground, rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles. Snow-clouds of elder-blossom banked in the sky, showering upon me the fumes and flakes of their sweet and giddy suffocation. High overhead ran frenzied larks, screaming, as though the sky were tearing apart." The autobiographical Cider with Rosie which is his most famous work, contains vivid records of his memories of his childhood in Slad before the arrival of the motorcar, including his school days. Laurie Lee studied at the village school and later went to Stroud Central School. At fifteen he left school and became an errand-boy. Lee also gave lectures on the violin. When he was twenty he left Slad for London to earn his living. He then spent four years travelling in Spain and the eastern Mediterranean. There he travelled on foot, playing his fiddle to earn his keep. Later, in December 1937, he joined the International Brigades to fight in the the Spanish Civil War, but after having a medical he was declared to be "physically weak" and was sent home. His Spanish experiences resulted in the pre Civil War book As I walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and the book considered by some to be his best work, A Moment of War (1991), a spare, unsentimental memoir of his experience as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War.
Friday, August 22, 2008
I really love this poem I wrote today - Horizon
the sea and the sky
share one heart
only the horizon
knows the distance
between their longings-
echoed over and over
in a restless mass of tide
cresting between
anxious hints of hope
and the tremulous sighs
of anguish
I lived for about seven years by the sea 1996 till 2002 in the beautiful island of Langkawi. I just love the sea and its breeze. The sea dances a different dance everyday, according to the direction of the winds.
share one heart
only the horizon
knows the distance
between their longings-
echoed over and over
in a restless mass of tide
cresting between
anxious hints of hope
and the tremulous sighs
of anguish
I lived for about seven years by the sea 1996 till 2002 in the beautiful island of Langkawi. I just love the sea and its breeze. The sea dances a different dance everyday, according to the direction of the winds.
Chu I Po Poems
THE POEMS I READ TODAY
PO CHU I
Po Chu-i was a gentleman poet and government official during the golden age of the Tang dynasty in China. He was born in Shansi, but later settled in Ch'ang-an in the north-west.He held several government posts during his lifetime, including palace librarian and several provincial governorships. But, because of his willingness to openly speak out against government policies, he was also banished several times.
Po Chu-i eventually retired to a monastery when he was in his 50s. One of his legs was paralyzed at the end of his life.His poetry often has the easy, retiring quality of Chan poetry of the time, but he also displayed a biting sense of humor often sharply critical of greedy government officials, military activity and overlooked social problems.
1.
To My Brothers & Sisters Adrift in Troubled Times
This Poem of the Moon.
Since the disorders in Henan and the famine in Guannei,
my brothers and sisters have been scattered.
Looking at the moon, I express my thoughts in this poem,
which I send to my eldest brother at Fuliang,
my seventh brother at Yuqian,
My fifteen brother at Wujiang and
my younger brothers and sisters at
Fuli and Xiagui.
My heritage lost through disorder and famine,
My brothers and sisters flung eastward and westward,
My fields and gardens wrecked by the war,
My own flesh and blood become scum of the street,
I moan to my shadow like a lone-wandering wildgoose,
I am torn from my root like a water-plant in autumn:
I gaze at the moon, and my tears run down
For hearts, in five places, all sick with one wish.
Chu-i Po
Song of Unending Sorrow.
China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,
Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,
But with graces granted by heaven and not to be concealed,
At last one day was chosen for the imperial household.
If she but turned her head and smiled, there were cast a hundred spells, And the powder and paint of the Six Palaces faded into nothing. ...
It was early spring.
They bathed her in the FlowerPure Pool,
Which warmed and smoothed the creamy-tinted crystal of her skin,
And, because of her languor, a maid was lifting her
When first the Emperor noticed her and chose her for his bride.
The cloud of her hair, petal of her cheek, gold ripples of her crown when she moved,
Were sheltered on spring evenings by warm hibiscus curtains;
But nights of spring were short and the sun arose too soon,
And the Emperor, from that time forth, forsook his early hearings
And lavished all his time on her with feasts and revelry,
His mistress of the spring, his despot of the night.
There were other ladies in his court, three thousand of rare beauty,
But his favours to three thousand were concentered in one body.
By the time she was dressed in her Golden Chamber, it would be almost evening;
And when tables were cleared in the Tower of Jade, she would loiter, slow with wine.
Her sisters and her brothers all were given titles;
And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy. ...
High rose Li Palace, entering blue clouds,
And far and wide the breezes carried magical notes
Of soft song and slow dance, of string and bamboo music.
The Emperor's eyes could never gaze on her enough-
Till war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth
And broke the tunes of The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
The Forbidden City, the nine-tiered palace, loomed in the dust From thousands of horses and chariots headed southwest.
The imperial flag opened the way, now moving and now pausing- -
But thirty miles from the capital, beyond the western gate,
The men of the army stopped, not one of them would stir
Till under their horses' hoofs they might trample those moth- eyebrows.... Flowery hairpins fell to the ground, no one picked them up,
And a green and white jade hair-tassel and a yellowgold hair- bird.
The Emperor could not save her, he could only cover his face.
And later when he turned to look, the place of blood and tears
Was hidden in a yellow dust blown by a cold wind. ...
At the cleft of the Dagger-Tower Trail they crisscrossed through a cloud-line Under Omei Mountain.
The last few came.
Flags and banners lost their colour in the fading sunlight....
But as waters of Shu are always green and its mountains always blue,
So changeless was His Majesty's love and deeper than the days.
He stared at the desolate moon from his temporary palace.
He heard bell-notes in the evening rain, cutting at his breast.
And when heaven and earth resumed their round and the dragon car faced home,
The Emperor clung to the spot and would not turn away
From the soil along the Mawei slope, under which was buried
That memory, that anguish.
Where was her jade-white face? Ruler and lords, when eyes would meet, wept upon their coats
As they rode, with loose rein, slowly eastward, back to the capital. ...The pools, the gardens, the palace, all were just as before,
The Lake Taiye hibiscus, the Weiyang Palace willows;
But a petal was like her face and a willow-leaf her eyebrow --
And what could he do but cry whenever he looked at them? ...
Peach-trees and plum-trees blossomed, in the winds of spring;
Lakka-foliage fell to the ground, after autumn rains;
The Western and Southern Palaces were littered with late grasses, And the steps were mounded with red leaves that no one swept away.
Her Pear-Garden Players became white-haired
And the eunuchs thin-eyebrowed in her Court of PepperTrees;
Over the throne flew fire-flies, while he brooded in the twilight.
He would lengthen the lamp-wick to its end and still could never sleep. Bell and drum would slowly toll the dragging nighthours
And the River of Stars grow sharp in the sky, just before dawn,
And the porcelain mandarin-ducks on the roof grow thick with morning frost
And his covers of kingfisher-blue feel lonelier and colder
With the distance between life and death year after year;
And yet no beloved spirit ever visited his dreams. ...
At Lingqiong lived a Taoist priest who was a guest of heaven,
Able to summon spirits by his concentrated mind.
And people were so moved by the Emperor's constant brooding
That they besought the Taoist priest to see if he could find her.
He opened his way in space and clove the ether like lightning,
Up to heaven, under the earth, looking everywhere.
Above, he searched the Green Void, below, the Yellow Spring;
But he failed, in either place, to find the one he looked for.
And then he heard accounts of an enchanted isle at sea,
A part of the intangible and incorporeal world,
With pavilions and fine towers in the five-coloured air,
And of exquisite immortals moving to and fro,
And of one among them-whom they called The Ever True-
With a face of snow and flowers resembling hers he sought.
So he went to the West Hall's gate of gold and knocked at the jasper door And asked a girl, called Morsel-of-Jade, to tell The Doubly- Perfect.
And the lady, at news of an envoy from the Emperor of China,
Was startled out of dreams in her nine-flowered, canopy.
She pushed aside her pillow, dressed, shook away sleep,
And opened the pearly shade and then the silver screen.
Her cloudy hair-dress hung on one side because of her great haste,
And her flower-cap was loose when she came along the terrace,
While a light wind filled her cloak and fluttered with her motion
As though she danced The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
And the tear-drops drifting down her sad white face
Were like a rain in spring on the blossom of the pear.
But love glowed deep within her eyes when she bade him thank her liege, Whose form and voice had been strange to her ever since their parting --
Since happiness had ended at the Court of the Bright Sun,
And moons and dawns had become long in Fairy-Mountain Palace.
But when she turned her face and looked down toward the earth
And tried to see the capital, there were only fog and dust.
So she took out, with emotion, the pledges he had given
And, through his envoy, sent him back a shell box and gold hairpin,
But kept one branch of the hairpin and one side of the box, Breaking the gold of the hairpin, breaking the shell of the box; "Our souls belong together," she said, " like this gold and this shell --
Somewhere, sometime, on earth or in heaven, we shall surely
And she sent him, by his messenger, a sentence reminding him
Of vows which had been known only to their two hearts:
"On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the
Palace of Long Life, We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever. Chu-i Po
PO CHU I
Po Chu-i was a gentleman poet and government official during the golden age of the Tang dynasty in China. He was born in Shansi, but later settled in Ch'ang-an in the north-west.He held several government posts during his lifetime, including palace librarian and several provincial governorships. But, because of his willingness to openly speak out against government policies, he was also banished several times.
Po Chu-i eventually retired to a monastery when he was in his 50s. One of his legs was paralyzed at the end of his life.His poetry often has the easy, retiring quality of Chan poetry of the time, but he also displayed a biting sense of humor often sharply critical of greedy government officials, military activity and overlooked social problems.
1.
To My Brothers & Sisters Adrift in Troubled Times
This Poem of the Moon.
Since the disorders in Henan and the famine in Guannei,
my brothers and sisters have been scattered.
Looking at the moon, I express my thoughts in this poem,
which I send to my eldest brother at Fuliang,
my seventh brother at Yuqian,
My fifteen brother at Wujiang and
my younger brothers and sisters at
Fuli and Xiagui.
My heritage lost through disorder and famine,
My brothers and sisters flung eastward and westward,
My fields and gardens wrecked by the war,
My own flesh and blood become scum of the street,
I moan to my shadow like a lone-wandering wildgoose,
I am torn from my root like a water-plant in autumn:
I gaze at the moon, and my tears run down
For hearts, in five places, all sick with one wish.
Chu-i Po
Song of Unending Sorrow.
China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,
Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,
But with graces granted by heaven and not to be concealed,
At last one day was chosen for the imperial household.
If she but turned her head and smiled, there were cast a hundred spells, And the powder and paint of the Six Palaces faded into nothing. ...
It was early spring.
They bathed her in the FlowerPure Pool,
Which warmed and smoothed the creamy-tinted crystal of her skin,
And, because of her languor, a maid was lifting her
When first the Emperor noticed her and chose her for his bride.
The cloud of her hair, petal of her cheek, gold ripples of her crown when she moved,
Were sheltered on spring evenings by warm hibiscus curtains;
But nights of spring were short and the sun arose too soon,
And the Emperor, from that time forth, forsook his early hearings
And lavished all his time on her with feasts and revelry,
His mistress of the spring, his despot of the night.
There were other ladies in his court, three thousand of rare beauty,
But his favours to three thousand were concentered in one body.
By the time she was dressed in her Golden Chamber, it would be almost evening;
And when tables were cleared in the Tower of Jade, she would loiter, slow with wine.
Her sisters and her brothers all were given titles;
And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy. ...
High rose Li Palace, entering blue clouds,
And far and wide the breezes carried magical notes
Of soft song and slow dance, of string and bamboo music.
The Emperor's eyes could never gaze on her enough-
Till war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth
And broke the tunes of The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
The Forbidden City, the nine-tiered palace, loomed in the dust From thousands of horses and chariots headed southwest.
The imperial flag opened the way, now moving and now pausing- -
But thirty miles from the capital, beyond the western gate,
The men of the army stopped, not one of them would stir
Till under their horses' hoofs they might trample those moth- eyebrows.... Flowery hairpins fell to the ground, no one picked them up,
And a green and white jade hair-tassel and a yellowgold hair- bird.
The Emperor could not save her, he could only cover his face.
And later when he turned to look, the place of blood and tears
Was hidden in a yellow dust blown by a cold wind. ...
At the cleft of the Dagger-Tower Trail they crisscrossed through a cloud-line Under Omei Mountain.
The last few came.
Flags and banners lost their colour in the fading sunlight....
But as waters of Shu are always green and its mountains always blue,
So changeless was His Majesty's love and deeper than the days.
He stared at the desolate moon from his temporary palace.
He heard bell-notes in the evening rain, cutting at his breast.
And when heaven and earth resumed their round and the dragon car faced home,
The Emperor clung to the spot and would not turn away
From the soil along the Mawei slope, under which was buried
That memory, that anguish.
Where was her jade-white face? Ruler and lords, when eyes would meet, wept upon their coats
As they rode, with loose rein, slowly eastward, back to the capital. ...The pools, the gardens, the palace, all were just as before,
The Lake Taiye hibiscus, the Weiyang Palace willows;
But a petal was like her face and a willow-leaf her eyebrow --
And what could he do but cry whenever he looked at them? ...
Peach-trees and plum-trees blossomed, in the winds of spring;
Lakka-foliage fell to the ground, after autumn rains;
The Western and Southern Palaces were littered with late grasses, And the steps were mounded with red leaves that no one swept away.
Her Pear-Garden Players became white-haired
And the eunuchs thin-eyebrowed in her Court of PepperTrees;
Over the throne flew fire-flies, while he brooded in the twilight.
He would lengthen the lamp-wick to its end and still could never sleep. Bell and drum would slowly toll the dragging nighthours
And the River of Stars grow sharp in the sky, just before dawn,
And the porcelain mandarin-ducks on the roof grow thick with morning frost
And his covers of kingfisher-blue feel lonelier and colder
With the distance between life and death year after year;
And yet no beloved spirit ever visited his dreams. ...
At Lingqiong lived a Taoist priest who was a guest of heaven,
Able to summon spirits by his concentrated mind.
And people were so moved by the Emperor's constant brooding
That they besought the Taoist priest to see if he could find her.
He opened his way in space and clove the ether like lightning,
Up to heaven, under the earth, looking everywhere.
Above, he searched the Green Void, below, the Yellow Spring;
But he failed, in either place, to find the one he looked for.
And then he heard accounts of an enchanted isle at sea,
A part of the intangible and incorporeal world,
With pavilions and fine towers in the five-coloured air,
And of exquisite immortals moving to and fro,
And of one among them-whom they called The Ever True-
With a face of snow and flowers resembling hers he sought.
So he went to the West Hall's gate of gold and knocked at the jasper door And asked a girl, called Morsel-of-Jade, to tell The Doubly- Perfect.
And the lady, at news of an envoy from the Emperor of China,
Was startled out of dreams in her nine-flowered, canopy.
She pushed aside her pillow, dressed, shook away sleep,
And opened the pearly shade and then the silver screen.
Her cloudy hair-dress hung on one side because of her great haste,
And her flower-cap was loose when she came along the terrace,
While a light wind filled her cloak and fluttered with her motion
As though she danced The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
And the tear-drops drifting down her sad white face
Were like a rain in spring on the blossom of the pear.
But love glowed deep within her eyes when she bade him thank her liege, Whose form and voice had been strange to her ever since their parting --
Since happiness had ended at the Court of the Bright Sun,
And moons and dawns had become long in Fairy-Mountain Palace.
But when she turned her face and looked down toward the earth
And tried to see the capital, there were only fog and dust.
So she took out, with emotion, the pledges he had given
And, through his envoy, sent him back a shell box and gold hairpin,
But kept one branch of the hairpin and one side of the box, Breaking the gold of the hairpin, breaking the shell of the box; "Our souls belong together," she said, " like this gold and this shell --
Somewhere, sometime, on earth or in heaven, we shall surely
And she sent him, by his messenger, a sentence reminding him
Of vows which had been known only to their two hearts:
"On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the
Palace of Long Life, We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever. Chu-i Po
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Mohmoud Darwish's Final Journey
Dear me, I have never read his works but from the reception he received at his funeral, he is definitely worth gold in the hearts of the Palestinian.
The following article was published in BBC NEWS on August 13, 2008:
From a formal honour guard in the presidential compound to a jostling crowd around a hillside gravesite, Mahmoud Darwish's final journey reflected his place in the emotions of Palestinians.His poetry on the Palestinian identity earned him a Palestinian Authority-sponsored funeral with a fanfare second only to late leader Yasser Arafat's.But with youths in jeans and sunglasses and security guards sharing emotional hugs, among the thousands who turned out to pay their respects, the massive popular following of his simple, evocative writing was evident."I have cried four times - after my father died, after Arafat died, after the fall of Baghdad, and when Darwish died," said Assad Salim Kayyal, 50, a construction worker from near Acre (Akko in Arabic) in northern Israel.He and his family had travelled from Jdeideh, the Israeli-Arab village where Darwish lived as a child, a few kilometres away from his birthplace Birweh, which was razed in the wake of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.Refugee poetMany mourners from the area expressed sadness that Darwish was buried in the West Bank city of Ramallah, rather than the home area he had been exiled from for much of his life.Stripped of his Israeli-Arab citizenship after being active in the Israeli Communist Party and then joining the Palestine Liberation Organisation, he moved to Cairo and then Beirut in the early 1970s.Assad Salim Kayyal says he wept at Darwish's funeralHe later moved on to Paris and the US, returning to his Palestinian roots when Israel gave him permission in the late 1990s - but even then only to the occupied West Bank and Gaza.Exile was a major theme in his life and his poetry, as Leila Jammal - also from the Acre area originally but long resident in the US - recalled as she walked behind the coffin clutching a single white lily.After two high-profile speaking engagements in American universities, the man who once wrote "my homeland is not a suitcase" had asked to go with her to "eat fish and remember Akko"."We are refugees. Wherever we go, deep inside, we feel like refugees," she said.Some also shared the sadness Darwish expressed in his later years over the fighting between Palestinian political factions and the decline of a unified Palestinian voice."Now we have lost everyone. There are very few to speak for us now," said one mourner who preferred not to be named.Israeli reactionSince the poet's death after open-heart surgery in Texas on Saturday, candle-lit vigils have been held in Ramallah, while radio stations have broadcast Darwish's recitals and the widely-loved songs written from his best-known poems.Arab writers and commentators described him as "an epoch-making poet", a "symbolic figure" whose death had left Palestinians "orphaned", and as the "essential breath" of the Palestinian people.Leila Jammal also originally came from Acre, like DarwishBut in Israel there has been mixed feeling. Many respected his abilities as a writer, but others saw some of his writing as anti-Semitic and even racist - in one poem he urged Israelis to "leave our land / Our shore, our sea / Our wheat, our salt, our wound" and "take with you your dead".However, acclaimed Israeli writer Avraham B Yehoshua said he was deeply saddened by Darwish's death."Of course there were poems that were very much aggressive," he said, "but it's important that we know what they are thinking - you have to know your enemy because your enemy is your neighbour and future friend."Haunting soundWaiting at the Palestinian Authority's presidential compound to meet the helicopter from Jordan bearing Darwish's wreath-topped coffin were some of the PA's biggest names, clad in dark suits and ties.Peace negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo wept as the poet's body was carried along a red carpet stretched across the tarmac, and long-time legislator and academic Hanan Ashrawi gave an interview in soft, emotional tones.Darwish won many international prizes for his workAfter a private ceremony for dignitaries and family members, including Darwish's octogenarian mother, mourners from across the West Bank and Arab-populated areas of Israel lined the coffin's route to the burial site at the Cultural Palace.Mona al-Zuhairi, 24, stood tearfully near the graveside after failing to push her way through the tight scrum that formed around the coffin.But she felt Darwish would have liked the emotional, jostling crowd, where bystanders squeezed up against sobbing relatives and only a cordon of a few security officers holding hands kept the mourners back from the coffin itself."He loved life, and all the contradictions between death and living," she said.Wreath after wreath was passed over the heads of the crowd and placed on the coffin.But even those struggling for photos were momentarily stilled as the haunting sound of Lebanese singer Marcel Khalifa, singing Darwish's words, echoed over the Palestinian hillside where the late poet was laid to rest - in the soil of his homeland, if not the village of his birth.On the author's website---------------------------Mahmoud Darwish has quietly left us on Saturday 9 August 2008 after 67 years of a life jumping from one peak to another, rising higher every time, transcending his own successes. He was a beautiful human being, able to see what no one else can see: in life, politics, and even people, expressing his visions in a language that seems to be made only for him to write with. When he decided to take on this difficult surgery we thought that he can beat death, like he did several times before… but he, it seems, with his prophetic insight, could clearly see his “ghost coming from afar”. He wanted to surprise death rather than wait for the “time bomb” that was his artery to explode unannounced… he went prepared, as he always is, leaving us behind to “nurture hope”.
Darvish's Biography
Darwish is considered to be the most important contemporary Arab poet working today. He was born in 1942 in the village of Barweh in the Galilee, which was razed to the ground by the Israelis in 1948. As a result of his politi-cal activism he faced house arrest and imprisonment. Darwish was the editor of Ittihad Newspaper before leaving in 1971 to study for a year in the USSR. Then he went to Egypt where he worked in Cairo for Al-Ahram Newspaper and in Beirut, Lebanon as an editor of the Journal “Palestinian Issues”. He was also the director of the Palestinian Research Center. Darwish was a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO and lived in exile between Beirut and Paris until his return in 1996 to Palestine. His poems are known throughout the Arab world, and several of them have been put to music. His poetry has gained great sophistication over the years, and has enjoyed international fame for a long time. He has published around 30 poetry and prose collections, which have been translated into 35 languages. He is the editor in chief and founder of the prestigious literary review Al Karmel, which has resumed publication in January 1997 out of the Sakakini Centre offices. He published in 1998 the poetry collection: Sareer el Ghariba (Bed of the Stranger), his first collection of love poems. In 2000 he published Jidariyya (Mural) a book consisting of one poem about his near death experience in 1997. In 1997 a documentary was produced about him by French TV directed by noted French-Israeli director Simone Bitton. He is a commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters. Muhamoud Darwish is the winner of 2001 Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom. The prize recognizes people whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and expression. As defined by the foundation, cultural freedom is the right of individuals and communities to define and protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalization.In the words of poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Mr. Darwish is “the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light into the world’s whole heart. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world – his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered.”Mr. Darwish published his first book of poetry, Leaves of Olives, in 1964, at the age of 22. Since then, he has published more than twenty poetry books, including The Adam of Two Edens, Mural, Why Have you Left the Horse Alone, and Eleven Planets. The University of California Press has published his prose work, Memory For Forgetfulness. In 2000, Gallimard published the latest French anthology of his work and, in 2002, a new English translation of Mr. Darwish’s Selected Poems will be published in the United States.Among his accomplishments is the 1969 Lotus Prize and 30 compilations of poetry and prose.
The following article was published in BBC NEWS on August 13, 2008:
From a formal honour guard in the presidential compound to a jostling crowd around a hillside gravesite, Mahmoud Darwish's final journey reflected his place in the emotions of Palestinians.His poetry on the Palestinian identity earned him a Palestinian Authority-sponsored funeral with a fanfare second only to late leader Yasser Arafat's.But with youths in jeans and sunglasses and security guards sharing emotional hugs, among the thousands who turned out to pay their respects, the massive popular following of his simple, evocative writing was evident."I have cried four times - after my father died, after Arafat died, after the fall of Baghdad, and when Darwish died," said Assad Salim Kayyal, 50, a construction worker from near Acre (Akko in Arabic) in northern Israel.He and his family had travelled from Jdeideh, the Israeli-Arab village where Darwish lived as a child, a few kilometres away from his birthplace Birweh, which was razed in the wake of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.Refugee poetMany mourners from the area expressed sadness that Darwish was buried in the West Bank city of Ramallah, rather than the home area he had been exiled from for much of his life.Stripped of his Israeli-Arab citizenship after being active in the Israeli Communist Party and then joining the Palestine Liberation Organisation, he moved to Cairo and then Beirut in the early 1970s.Assad Salim Kayyal says he wept at Darwish's funeralHe later moved on to Paris and the US, returning to his Palestinian roots when Israel gave him permission in the late 1990s - but even then only to the occupied West Bank and Gaza.Exile was a major theme in his life and his poetry, as Leila Jammal - also from the Acre area originally but long resident in the US - recalled as she walked behind the coffin clutching a single white lily.After two high-profile speaking engagements in American universities, the man who once wrote "my homeland is not a suitcase" had asked to go with her to "eat fish and remember Akko"."We are refugees. Wherever we go, deep inside, we feel like refugees," she said.Some also shared the sadness Darwish expressed in his later years over the fighting between Palestinian political factions and the decline of a unified Palestinian voice."Now we have lost everyone. There are very few to speak for us now," said one mourner who preferred not to be named.Israeli reactionSince the poet's death after open-heart surgery in Texas on Saturday, candle-lit vigils have been held in Ramallah, while radio stations have broadcast Darwish's recitals and the widely-loved songs written from his best-known poems.Arab writers and commentators described him as "an epoch-making poet", a "symbolic figure" whose death had left Palestinians "orphaned", and as the "essential breath" of the Palestinian people.Leila Jammal also originally came from Acre, like DarwishBut in Israel there has been mixed feeling. Many respected his abilities as a writer, but others saw some of his writing as anti-Semitic and even racist - in one poem he urged Israelis to "leave our land / Our shore, our sea / Our wheat, our salt, our wound" and "take with you your dead".However, acclaimed Israeli writer Avraham B Yehoshua said he was deeply saddened by Darwish's death."Of course there were poems that were very much aggressive," he said, "but it's important that we know what they are thinking - you have to know your enemy because your enemy is your neighbour and future friend."Haunting soundWaiting at the Palestinian Authority's presidential compound to meet the helicopter from Jordan bearing Darwish's wreath-topped coffin were some of the PA's biggest names, clad in dark suits and ties.Peace negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo wept as the poet's body was carried along a red carpet stretched across the tarmac, and long-time legislator and academic Hanan Ashrawi gave an interview in soft, emotional tones.Darwish won many international prizes for his workAfter a private ceremony for dignitaries and family members, including Darwish's octogenarian mother, mourners from across the West Bank and Arab-populated areas of Israel lined the coffin's route to the burial site at the Cultural Palace.Mona al-Zuhairi, 24, stood tearfully near the graveside after failing to push her way through the tight scrum that formed around the coffin.But she felt Darwish would have liked the emotional, jostling crowd, where bystanders squeezed up against sobbing relatives and only a cordon of a few security officers holding hands kept the mourners back from the coffin itself."He loved life, and all the contradictions between death and living," she said.Wreath after wreath was passed over the heads of the crowd and placed on the coffin.But even those struggling for photos were momentarily stilled as the haunting sound of Lebanese singer Marcel Khalifa, singing Darwish's words, echoed over the Palestinian hillside where the late poet was laid to rest - in the soil of his homeland, if not the village of his birth.On the author's website---------------------------Mahmoud Darwish has quietly left us on Saturday 9 August 2008 after 67 years of a life jumping from one peak to another, rising higher every time, transcending his own successes. He was a beautiful human being, able to see what no one else can see: in life, politics, and even people, expressing his visions in a language that seems to be made only for him to write with. When he decided to take on this difficult surgery we thought that he can beat death, like he did several times before… but he, it seems, with his prophetic insight, could clearly see his “ghost coming from afar”. He wanted to surprise death rather than wait for the “time bomb” that was his artery to explode unannounced… he went prepared, as he always is, leaving us behind to “nurture hope”.
Darvish's Biography
Darwish is considered to be the most important contemporary Arab poet working today. He was born in 1942 in the village of Barweh in the Galilee, which was razed to the ground by the Israelis in 1948. As a result of his politi-cal activism he faced house arrest and imprisonment. Darwish was the editor of Ittihad Newspaper before leaving in 1971 to study for a year in the USSR. Then he went to Egypt where he worked in Cairo for Al-Ahram Newspaper and in Beirut, Lebanon as an editor of the Journal “Palestinian Issues”. He was also the director of the Palestinian Research Center. Darwish was a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO and lived in exile between Beirut and Paris until his return in 1996 to Palestine. His poems are known throughout the Arab world, and several of them have been put to music. His poetry has gained great sophistication over the years, and has enjoyed international fame for a long time. He has published around 30 poetry and prose collections, which have been translated into 35 languages. He is the editor in chief and founder of the prestigious literary review Al Karmel, which has resumed publication in January 1997 out of the Sakakini Centre offices. He published in 1998 the poetry collection: Sareer el Ghariba (Bed of the Stranger), his first collection of love poems. In 2000 he published Jidariyya (Mural) a book consisting of one poem about his near death experience in 1997. In 1997 a documentary was produced about him by French TV directed by noted French-Israeli director Simone Bitton. He is a commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters. Muhamoud Darwish is the winner of 2001 Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom. The prize recognizes people whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and expression. As defined by the foundation, cultural freedom is the right of individuals and communities to define and protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalization.In the words of poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Mr. Darwish is “the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light into the world’s whole heart. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world – his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered.”Mr. Darwish published his first book of poetry, Leaves of Olives, in 1964, at the age of 22. Since then, he has published more than twenty poetry books, including The Adam of Two Edens, Mural, Why Have you Left the Horse Alone, and Eleven Planets. The University of California Press has published his prose work, Memory For Forgetfulness. In 2000, Gallimard published the latest French anthology of his work and, in 2002, a new English translation of Mr. Darwish’s Selected Poems will be published in the United States.Among his accomplishments is the 1969 Lotus Prize and 30 compilations of poetry and prose.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
"Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country,"the American Democrats' presidential nominee Barack Obama said to applause today. That, indeed is what I would love all my countrymen to do too. All Malaysians regardless of race should love their country for it is the very basis for any nation to grow and mature. A person who belongs to a country but does not love that country is like a fish on land. Sooner or later, he dries up mentally and spiritually.
Poetry
In this site, you will find poetry written by myself and those of my friends as well as the literary greats such as Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou among others. I will also post those interesting literary articles I found on the net. Today I wrote one which I love very much. It is called Mirror inspired by a horror movie I watched.
Mirror
there is the mirror
it holds three dimensions
but can show you only one
there is the man in the mirror
he holds a rainbow of dimensions
but can show you only five
john tiong chunghoo
Mirror
there is the mirror
it holds three dimensions
but can show you only one
there is the man in the mirror
he holds a rainbow of dimensions
but can show you only five
john tiong chunghoo
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