Vergissmeinnicht (forget me not)

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that’s hard and good when he’s decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

Keith Douglas (1920-1944)

The lizard approaches; and a poem.

Finishing the lizard tonight. On a break, I went searching for this poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti because a line or two was stuck in my head. Generally he’s a bit overwrought for my taste – this one has all of his usual grace and an unusual restraint.

Insomnia

Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit’s wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll
And still remember and forget,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now and now more clear.
To-night Love claims his full control,
And with desire and with regret
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love’s new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
For ever nearer yet.

Crash

Reinforcements are on the way, but communications will likely be down for the weekend. It’s expected, it’s planned for, I’ll be okay. Damn it all to hell.

*************

This I do, being mad:
Gather baubles about me,
Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time
Death beating the door in.

White jade and an orange pitcher,
Hindu idol, Chinese god, —
Maybe next year, when I’m richer—
Carved beads and a lotus pod. . . .

And all this time
Death beating the door in.

ESVM

To a Friend Estranged from Me

Now goes under, and I watch go under, the sun

That will not rise again.

Today has seen the setting, in your eyes, cold and senseless as the sea,

Of friendship better than bread, and of bright charity

That lifts a man a little above the beasts that run.

 

That this could be!

That I should live to see

Most vulgar Pride, that stale obstreperous clown,

So fitted out with purple robe and crown

To stand among his betters! Face to face

With outraged me in this once holy place,

Where Wisdom was a favoured guest and hunted

Truth was harbored out of danger,

He bulks enthroned, a lewd, an insupportable stranger!

 

I would have sworn, indeed I swore it:

The hills may shift, the waters may decline,

Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it,

But never your love from me, your hand from mine.

 

Now goes under the sun, and I watch it go under.

Farewell, sweet light, great wonder!

You, too, farewell, — but fare not well enough to dream

You have done wisely to invite the night before the darkness came.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

She always says it better than I can.

Cyrano

Roxane: And when that moment comes to you and me—
What words will you …?

Cyrano: All those, all those, all those
That blossom in my heart, I’ll fling to you—
Armfuls of loose bloom! Love, I love beyond
Breath, beyond reason, beyond love’s own power
Of loving! Your name is like a golden bell
Hung in my heart; and when I think of you,
I tremble, and the bell swings and rings—
“Roxane!” …
“Roxane!” … along my veins, “Roxane!” …
I know
All small forgotten things that once meant You—
I remember last year, the First of May,
A little before noon, you had your hair
Drawn low, that one time only. Is that strange?
You know, after looking at the sun,
One sees red suns everywhere—so, for hours
After the flood of sunshine that you are,
My eyes are blinded by your burning hair!

Oh, this hurts in the very best way.

I don’t suppose any Cyrano, no matter how accomplished, could match the one I imagine.

How To Kill

Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.

Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears

And look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.

The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.

Keith Douglas

For my grandfather, whom I’ve been remembering. World War II and his own demons took forty years to kill him; I cannot imagine the courage it took for him to get out of bed every day.

And for TexasGurl, as a thank you, and because she loves economy and precision and singing words as much as I do.

Press release: Euphrosyne departs for beach vacation; sunscreen sales skyrocket

Yep, my chubby pale self, the Hub, the Kid, and the In-Laws are off to a condo in scenic Port Aransas for a four-day vacation – sun (maybe), sand, food not prepared by me, and five other adults not only willing but eager to take care of the Muffin. And ocean, ocean, ocean.

EXILED

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning,
Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles groaning
Under the windy wooden piers,
See once again the bobbing barrels,
And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels
Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,
Hear once again the hungry crying
Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining
Under the turning of the tide,
Fear once again the rising freshet,
Dread the bell in the fog outside,–

I should be happy,–that was happy
All day long on the coast of Maine!
I have a need to hold and handle
Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy, that am happy
Never at all since I came here.
I am too long away from water.
I have a need of water near.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (of course)

Millay from Second April: sonnet for a blue night

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,–farewell!–the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

Sonnet 119

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath though itself so blessed never!
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted
In the distraction of this madding fever!

O benefit of ill! now I find true
That better is by evil still made better;
And ruin’d love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
So I return rebuked to my content
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.

Siren Song by Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard
it is dead, and the others can’t remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.