welcome

This week I’ve learned He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, another poem by W.B. Yeats. This was suggested to me by someone in the lab because he wanted to learn it, so I challenged him to a poetry learning duel!
Friday is the showdown, but it’s already in the bag.

Had I the Heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night, and light and the half-light
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

There is too much happening. Too much real life. Too much.

Here are two poems, once again sent to me by the venerable Dr. Thanos. These are by Kiki Dimoula. At this point I think I have learned an equal number of greek and english poems!

The Plural

Love:
noun, substantive,
extremely substantive,
singular in number;
gender not feminine, not masculine, gender defenseless.
Plural the number
of defenseless loves.

Fear:
substantive,
singular to start with plural afterward:
fears.
Fears of
everything from now on.

Memory:
noun, proper name for sorrows, singular in number,
singular only,
and indeclinable.
Memory, memory, memory.

Night: substantive, gender feminine,

number singular.
Plural in number
the nights.

The nights from now on.

—-

Not one excepted

Dreams are so antisocial.
No friendships or bonds
they sooner see us than vanish
a spark exposed to a squall.

Anthropophobia?
Perhaps injured vanity
since they work down in the mines
of chances lost.

They too had other
dreams, you see

My love is bursting through my heart,
My skin is splitting, hulk-like, the muscles pouring forth.
My love,
A greedy child with sticky hands
Clutching to his mother’s skirt,
Begging to be seen, to be heard.
My love did that once, you know.
I need them all to know;
To approve and acknowledge my luck -
For that is all that it is -
How easily it could vanish!
We cling, sticky and petulant,
and pray for the wheel to stop turning.

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’ve slipped. 

In the limited time I allotted myself in the past two weeks, I didn’t find a poem I wanted to learn. I considered this one, and this one, but felt that the translations must somehow be lacking. I didn’t quite feel that magical something something. Words, here and there, seemed misplaced.  I googled around, and the gurus of the internet suggested I try Stephen Mitchell’s translations - which I have - and I still haven’t managed to pin one down. 

Instead I have stumbled upon the work of Sara Teasdale. Although she receives mixed reviews by modern critics, Teasdale was highly praised in her day (about the same time as Robert Frost, at the turn of the last century) for her lyrical poems about life, love and death. To me, her words are simple and true, and they conjure feelings and images, of memories lost and found. 

Here are two:

Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild. 

Only in sleep Time is forgotten - 
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago, 
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.

The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces, 
I met their eyes and found them mild - 
Do they, too dream of me, I wonder, 
And for them am I too a child?

——

I would live in our love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;
I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me, 
I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads.