Another Birthday

I turned 70 today.  A day like any other day.  Showers in the morning. In the afternoon, the rain stopped and the sky brightened, so I went out for a walk.  It was one of those spring walks during which one is accompanied by birdsong the entire time, with the choristers unseen.

At about 10 o’clock last night this thought occurred to me: “When I wake up tomorrow morning, I will be 70 years old.”  I confess that this realization, as it hit home, did provoke a bit of . . . alarm? wonderment? dread?  But I evaded any attempt to sort out exactly what response the occasion called for.  Instead, I began to bring to mind poems that I hoped might help me to put the situation into perspective.  Of course, this was no doubt another attempt at evasion. But it is what I am accustomed to do.  What follows herein is a journey through the poems that came to mind, as one of them led to another.  (All of them have appeared here before, on various occasions.)

This poem floated up first:

                    On the Road on a Spring Day

There is no coming, there is no going.

From what quarter departed?  Toward what quarter bound?

Pity him! in the midst of his journey, journeying --

Flowers and willows in spring profusion, everywhere fragrance.

Ryūsen Reisai (d. 1365) (translated by Marian Ury), in Marian Ury (editor), Poems of the Five Mountains: An Introduction to the Literature of the Zen Monasteries (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan 1992), page 33.  Ury includes this note to the poem: “The poem begins with a Zen truism, which is expanded into a personal statement.”  Ibid, page 33.

Stanley Spencer (1891-1959)

"The Ferry Hotel Lawn, Cookham" (1936)

Given that Walter de la Mare’s poems are often on my mind, it was not surprising that this appeared next:

               Now

The longed-for summer goes;

Dwindles away

To its last rose,

Its narrowest day.

No heaven-sweet air but must die;

Softlier float,

Breathe lingeringly

Its final note.

Oh, what dull truths to tell!

Now is the all-sufficing all

Wherein to love the lovely well,

Whate’er befall.

Walter de la Mare, The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare (Faber and Faber 1969), page 605.  The italics appear in the original text. The poem was first published in de la Mare's O Lovely England and Other Poems (Faber and Faber 1953), his final volume of poems.  As long-time (and much-appreciated) visitors here may recall, “Now” has appeared here on several occasions.

Stanley Spencer

"Bluebells, Cornflowers and Rhododendrons" (1945)

Perhaps it is the month which led me from “Now" to the next poem, which I have identified in the past as my favorite April poem:

                    Wet Evening in April

The birds sang in the wet trees

And as I listened to them it was a hundred years from now

And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.

But I was glad I had recorded for him the melancholy.

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems (edited by Antoinette Quinn) (Penguin Books 2004), page 187.  The poem was first published in Kavanagh’s Weekly on April 19, 1952.  Ibid, page 280.

As always happens, “Wet Evening in April” inevitably sent me to the next poem (the two poems have, for some reason, been linked together in my mind for quite some time):

          Consider the Grass Growing

Consider the grass growing

As it grew last year and the year before,

Cool about the ankles like summer rivers,

When we walked on a May evening through the meadows

To watch the mare that was going to foal.

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems, page 112.  The poem was first published in The Irish Press on May 21, 1943.  Ibid, page 271.

Stanley Spencer, "Rock Gardens, Cookham Dene" (1947)

What came to mind after Kavanagh’s two poems is a poem I have been fond of for years, but which, in its lovely and quiet way, may have been waiting for just this occasion, and whatever may follow.

            From My Window

An old man leaning on a gate

Over a London mews -- to contemplate --

Is it the sky above -- the stones below?

     Is it remembrance of the years gone by,

     Or thinking forward to futurity

That holds him so?

Day after day he stands,

Quietly folded are the quiet hands,

Rarely he speaks.

     Hath he so near the hour when Time shall end,

     So much to spend?

What is it he seeks?

Whate’er he be,

He is become to me

A form of rest.

     I think his heart is tranquil, from it springs

     A dreamy watchfulness of tranquil things,

And not unblest. 

Mary Coleridge (1861-1907), in Theresa Whistler (editor), The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge (Rupert Hart-Davis 1954), page 251.  The poem was written in 1907, the year in which Coleridge died. 

Stanley Spencer, "Garden at Whitehouse, Northern Ireland" (1952)

This past week I have been visiting one of my favorite books: Burton Watson’s Kanshi: The Poetry of Ishikawa Jōzan and Other Edo-Period Poets.  Mary Coleridge’s “From My Window” took me to one of my favorite poems in Watson’s book:

                    Aboard a Boat, Listening to Insects

As though delighting, as though grieving, each with its own song --

an idler, listening, finds his ears washed completely clean.

As the boat draws away from grassy banks, they grow more distant,

till the many varied voices become one single voice.

Ōkubo Shibutsu (1767-1837) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), Kanshi: The Poetry of Ishikawa Jōzan and Other Edo-Period Poets (North Point Press 1990), page 92).  A kanshi (a Japanese word meaning “Chinese poem”) is a poem written in Chinese by a Japanese poet, following the strict rules of traditional Chinese prosody.

Thus ended last night’s one-poem-leads-to-another excursion, which, as I noted above, was likely an attempt to evade the reality of arriving at the age of 70.  One thing is certain: I have not returned from my (admittedly delightful) excursion with any conclusions, advice, or wisdom.  But I do believe there is a thread or two running through the poems.  Or perhaps, in the end, this turning 70 business is all very straightforward:

     Simply trust:

Do not also the petals flutter down,

     Just like that?

Issa (1763-1827) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 363.

Stanley Spencer, "Scarecrow, Cookham" (1934)

The Wind in the Pines

In this part of the world, the deciduous trees are empty, save for a few leaves fluttering drily on otherwise bare branches.  Gone (at least for now) are the green days of whispering, soughing, and roaring boughs.  Passing through a leafless grove on a windy day, one hears the empty branches clacking and clicking against one another high overhead.  The trunks and large limbs creak and groan, like the masts of a sailing ship in a storm as described in a seafaring tale.

But, ah! -- the wind in the pines is always with us.  

When the wind passes

     in the pines, autumn already

          seems lonely enough --

and then a fulling block echoes

     through Tamakawa Village.  

Minamoto no Toshiyori (1055-1129) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter (editor), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991), page 136.  The poem is a waka (as are the two poems which appear below).  The sound of fulling blocks in the night signifies deep autumn in Japanese poetry (and in turn reflects the influence of Chinese poetry (in which the sound of fulling blocks on an autumn night is often heard) on Japanese poets).  For more on fulling blocks in Japanese and Chinese poetry, please see an earlier post from 2021.

The continuity of Japanese poetry up until the 20th century is a wonderful thing.  A beautiful poem (or an evocative, beautiful image or phrase within a poem) was never forgotten by poets or readers, and its echo might return years or centuries later in a new poem.  The new poem did not identify the source of the echo.  No footnotes were provided.  Nor were they necessary.  Everyone who read the poem, or heard it recited, recognized the echo.  And thus the earlier poem's beauty was preserved, renewed, and brought into a new world.  A long string of resonating echoes developed.  Nothing was lost to Time, or left behind.  Imagine that.

I come so seldom,

and yet how sad in the night

     sounds the wind in the pines.

And she, there beneath the moss --

does she too hear it, endlessly?

Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204) (translated by Steven Carter), Ibid, page 153.  The occasion for the writing of the poem was Fujiwara no Shunzei's visit to the grave of his wife.  He spent the night at a nearby Buddhist temple.  Ibid, page 153.

Saigyō, a friend of Fujiwara no Shunzei, and a reclusive dweller in the countryside for much of his life, wrote this: 

Mountain village

where wind makes sad noises

in the pines --

and adding to the loneliness,

the cry of an evening cicada.

Saigyō (1118-1190) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), Saigyō: Poems of a Mountain Home (Columbia University Press 1991), page 146.  The sound of cicadas (or, alternatively, crickets) in the twilight of late summer or early autumn provides another memorable series of lovely echoes in Japanese poetry.  But that requires a post of its own, at another time.  As does the cry of quail at evening in the deep grass.

Paul Nash (1889-1946), "Berkshire Downs" (1922)

Of course, I am not suggesting that Japanese poets alone are sensitive to the allure (be it melancholic or soothing) of the wind in the pines.  For instance, quite some time ago I discovered this poem in The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, which was compiled in 1912 by the redoubtable Arthur Quiller-Couch:

      Dirge in Woods

A wind sways the pines,

        And below

Not a breath of wild air;

Still as the mosses that glow

On the flooring and over the lines

Of the roots here and there.

The pine-tree drops its dead;

They are quiet, as under the sea.

Overhead, overhead

Rushes life in a race,

As the clouds the clouds chase;

        And we go,

And we drop like the fruits of the tree,

        Even we,

        Even so.

George Meredith, in Arthur Quiller-Couch (editor), The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (Oxford University Press 1912), page 465.  The poem was originally published in Meredith's A Reading of Earth (Macmillan 1888).  One of those poems which, once read, is not forgotten.  (An aside.  I have Quiller-Couch's book beside me as I write this, and I notice that my copy bears a Tokyo bookstore's small decorative paper label on the inner flap of the dust-jacket.  I often visited the bookstore during two extended stays in Tokyo in 1993 and 2000, and I purchased the book during one of those visits.  How time passes.  "Overhead, overhead/Rushes life in a race,/As the clouds the clouds chase.")

Meredith's poem captures wonderfully how it feels to stand or sit within a grove of pines.  The stillness.  The silence.  The soft ground surrounding the trunks of the trees.  The mull and duff.  I remember "mull and duff" from Howard Nemerov's lovely poem "Again": "the nevergreen/Needles and mull and duff of the forest floor."  (Howard Nemerov, The Western Approaches, Poems 1973-1975 (University of Chicago Press 1975), page 52.  "Nevergreen" is a neologism of Nemerov's invention, it would appear.)

"A wind sways the pines."  Reading Meredith's opening line, I cannot help but think of this:

            The Region November

It is hard to hear the north wind again,

And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,

So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say

On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

A revelation not yet intended.

It is like a critic of God, the world

And human nature, pensively seated

On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,

The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying.

Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose (The Library of America 1997), page 472.  "The Region November" was not published during Stevens' lifetime.  It was likely written in 1954, the year prior to his death.  (Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous (edited by Milton Bates) (Alfred A. Knopf 1989), page 324.)

Pines are not specifically mentioned in "The Region November," but the "swaying, swaying, swaying" brings to mind the look of pines in the wind, at least for me.  And, speaking of echoes of past poems, consider these lines from Stevens' "The Snow Man," published in Harmonium in 1923, thirty years before he wrote "The Region November": "One must have a mind of winter/To regard the frost and the boughs/Of the pine-trees crusted with snow . . . and not to think/Of any misery in the sound of the wind."               

John Nash (1893-1977), "Autumn Berkshire" (1951)

The three waka from 11th and 12th century Japan and the poems by Meredith and Stevens suggest that hearing or seeing or feeling the wind in the pines is an occasion of pensive melancholy, with accompanying intimations of mortality.  I suspect that many of us might agree.  And yet . . .

Last week I came upon a group of busy, chattering sparrows flitting and hopping and pecking in the dry, leaning stalks of wild grass alongside a paved pathway.  As I have noted here in the past, I have come to think of the sparrows (and also the robins) as my winter companions.  I doubt if they regard me in that fashion.  As I came nearer, the entire group flew several yards away onto the lower branches of a tall pine standing alone out in the meadow beside the pathway.  They disappeared into the dark boughs, twittering and clucking.  How warm, dry, and soft it must be within the depths of that pine.  Calm, still, and quiet.  Even when the wind blows.  A place of shelter, refuge, and rest.  Or do those enveloping boughs provide only a brief respite?

The wind in the pines.  Over the centuries, the echoes continue in Japanese poetry. 

     A cool breeze;

The vault of heaven is filled

     With the voices of pine trees.

Onitsura (1660-1738) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, A History of Haiku, Volume One (Hokuseido Press 1963), page 97.

And this:

One learns to bear solitude 

     from the sound of the pine-wind. 

Shōhaku (1443-1527) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter (editor), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology, page 319.  This two-line verse appears as verse 64 in Minase Sangin Hyakuin ("Three Poets at Minase"), a hundred-verse renga written in 1488, with Shōhaku, Sōgi (1421-1502), and Sōchō (1448-1532) as the contributing poets.  Ibid, pages 303-326.

And, finally, this:

Twilight -- the only conversation

     on this hill

Is the wind blowing through the pines.

Ryōkan (1758-1831) (translated by John Stevens), in John Stevens (editor), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan (Weatherhill 1977), page 76.  The poem is a waka.

This small gathering of poems about the wind in the pines is but a limited introduction, the product of my inadequate knowledge and memory.  It also serves as an admonition to my sleepwalking self: Pay attention.  Be grateful.

Christopher Nevinson (1889-1946)

"View of the Sussex Weald" (1927)

Postscript.  The beautiful particulars of the World may lose their color, wither away.  Change or vanish.  But the World bestows compensations, dispensations, gifts.  A sunset in the distant pines.  No wind.

Winter Twilight (Discovery Park, Seattle)

"The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.  Consider living creatures -- none lives so long as man.  The May fly waits not for the evening, the summer cicada knows neither spring nor autumn.  What a wonderfully unhurried feeling it is to live even a single year in perfect serenity!  If that is not enough for you, you might live a thousand years and still feel it was but a single night's dream."  Kenkō (1283-1350), Tsurezuregusa (Chapter 7), in Donald Keene (translator), Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō (Columbia University Press 1967), pages 7-8.