Small Things

One afternoon last week, as I walked along the edge of a grove of pines and maples, I heard a bird's voice up ahead, high in a pine.  Not a song or a warble, but two firm, quick calls of the same note, with the sequence repeated three or four times.  Then silence.  A minute or so later, the two calls were again repeated three or four times, but from another pine, closer this time.  The message seemed to be something along the lines of: "I'm here. I'm here."  Not an alarm or a warning.  Rather, an announcement of sorts (perhaps a greeting?) to any nearby listeners.

I kept walking -- waiting for further calls, and looking up into the trees to see if I could find the source.  Then, as I passed beneath the overarching branches of a group of tall bushes, a pileated woodpecker flew down from the left, just ahead of me, and landed on the branch of a bush on my right, at eye level a few yards away.  (Please note that I am no expert when it comes to the identification of birds.  I knew the name of the bird because I have long had a reliable source: Birds of Discovery Park (prepared by the Seattle Audubon Society and the Seattle parks department), a two-page list of the more than 200 species of birds that inhabit the place where I take most of my walks.)

What a wonderful sight he or she was: a bright red pointed crest on the top of its head, two thin white stripes on its black face, with the stripes continuing down its neck, and a black-feathered body.  I see the woodpeckers a few times a year, but nearly always at a distance: tapping away up in a tree, my eyes drawn to them by the hollow drumming.  Seldom do I see them close at hand.  After pausing a moment on the branch, it flew away into the sunlight and shadow of the grove.  

I have recently been revisiting the poetry of Saigyō.  A day or so after my encounter with the woodpecker, I came upon a poem (a waka) I hadn't read in quite some time:

Were we sure of seeing

a moon like this

in existences to come,

who would be sorry

to leave this life?

Saigyō (1118-1190) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), Saigyō: Poems of a Mountain Home (Columbia University Press 1991), page 158.

These poems we read and love: we carry them within us.  They wait patiently.  When the time is right, we find them again, or they return to us.  Often serendipitously.  Saigyō's poem arrived in such a fashion. 

A small thing, my encounter with the woodpecker, but of inestimable value.  A value best left unspoken, unarticulated.  But not to be forgotten.  One of those gifts which -- suddenly, unaccountably -- are bestowed upon us by the World.

Christopher Sanders (1905-1991)

"Sunlight Through a Willow Tree at Kew" (c. 1958)

Small things, never to be forgotten.  Seven years ago in May, a hundred or so feet away from the spot where I spent a moment with the woodpecker, I came across a dead mole lying on its back beside the same path.  In my post of May 23, 2018, I wrote this about the mole: "He or she was a small, dark-brown thing, about eight inches long, its pinkish-white, fleshy front paws open to the sky.  It was those tiny, outspread paws that particularly touched me."

I closed the brief post with this poem, which has appeared here on more than one occasion:

               A Dead Mole

Strong-shouldered mole,

That so much lived below the ground,

Dug, fought and loved, hunted and fed,

For you to raise a mound 

Was as for us to make a hole;

What wonder now that being dead

Your body lies here stout and square

Buried within the blue vault of the air?

Andrew Young, in Edward Lowbury and Alison Young (editors), The Poetical Works of Andrew Young (Secker & Warburg 1985), page 63.  The poem was originally published in Speak to the Earth (Jonathan Cape 1939).

I find it hard to believe that it has already been seven years since I shared that short time with the mole.  As the saying goes (repeated at more frequent intervals as one ages, in my experience): "It seems like only yesterday . . ."  Should I let go of my memory of the mole?  Am I being "sentimental"?  A fair number of moderns (wise, undeceived, and ironic) are wont to scoff at "sentimentality."  This is sufficient to convince me to embrace it further.

                  What?

What dost thou surely know?

What will the truth remain,

When from the world of men thou go

To the unknown again?

What science -- of what hope?

What heart-loved certitude won

From thought shall then for scope

Be thine -- thy thinking done?

Tis said, that even the wise,

When plucking at the sheet,

Have smiled with swift-darkening eyes,

As if in vision fleet

Of some mere flower, or bird,

Seen in dream, or in childhood's play;

And then, without sign or word,

Have turned from the world away.

Walter de la Mare, The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare (Faber and Faber 1969), page 290.  The poem was originally published in The Fleeting and Other Poems (Constable 1933).

Patrick Symons (1925-1993), "Oak Arch Grey" (1981)

Exchanging glances with a pileated woodpecker.  Leaning down to look at a lifeless mole lying open to the huge blue sky.  These small things were fated never to be forgotten.  But, when it comes to the gifts the World bestows upon us -- its beautiful particulars -- there is no hierarchy.  Nothing is quotidian or commonplace if we are attentive and grateful.

                         The Escape

I believe in the increasing of life; whatever

Leads to the seeing of small trifles . . . . . 

Real, beautiful, is good, and an act never

Is worthier than in freeing spirit that stifles

Under ingratitude's weight; nor is anything done

Wiselier than the moving or breaking to sight

Of a thing hidden under by custom; revealed

Fulfilled, used, (sound-fashioned) any way out to delight.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Trefoil . . . . hedge sparrow . . . . the stars on the edge of night.

Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), in Ivor Gurney, Selected Poetry (edited by George Walter) (J. M. Dent 1996), page 46.  The punctuation, and the ellipses (in lines 2 and 9, and between lines 8 and 9), are as they appear in the original typescript.  The poem was not published during Gurney's lifetime.

"Hedge sparrow."  Yes, I understand.  My afternoon walk takes me along a path that passes through the center of a large meadow of tall wild grass.  Nearly every day, sparrows suddenly appear out of the grass ahead of me, and hop and skip away down the path.  I've come to think of them as companions, but I suspect they don't regard me as such.  Still, I harbor the fancy that they are starting to tolerate my presence.  Small things, of inestimable value.

      Compare and Contrast

The great thinker died

after forty years of poking about

with his little torch

in the dark forest of ideas,

in the bright glare of perception,

leaving a legacy of fourteen books

to the world

where a hen disappeared

into six acres of tall oats

and sauntered unerringly

to the nest with five eggs in it.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2005), page 432.

In the year before his death, Walter de la Mare said to a friend who came to visit him: "My days are getting shorter.  But there is more and more magic.  More than in all poetry.  Everything is increasingly wonderful and beautiful."  (Theresa Whistler, Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare (Duckworth 1993), page 443.)

     The world of dew

is the world of dew. 

     And yet, and yet --

Issa (1763-1827) (translated by Robert Hass), in Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa (The Ecco Press 1994), page 191.  R. H. Blyth provides background to Issa's haiku: "This verse has the prescript, 'Losing a beloved child.' . . . He had already lost two or three children when this baby girl died."  (R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 433.)

Robert Ball (1918-2009), "Mrs. Barclay's Pond, Harborne" (1949)

Current Events

On a recent afternoon walk, I heard an unseen owl call from somewhere off in the forest: "Hoo-hoo . . . hoo-hoo."  This seemed to be a gentle inquiry, a tentative "How do you do?"  After about ten seconds of silence, a crow -- also unseen, but from another part of the forest -- replied  emphatically: "Caw-caw-caw."  The meaning of this response seemed less clear.  Was it a warning, a threat?  But this is unfair to the crow: perhaps it was merely a corvine way of saying "Pleased to meet you."

The conversation repeated itself in the same fashion as I walked on. "Hoo-hoo . . . hoo-hoo."  Brief silence.  "Caw-caw-caw."  Quite civilized, I concluded.  The exchange had not come to an end as I passed out of earshot.  I had developed a fondness for both of them. For their part, they were likely unaware of my existence.  I take no offense at this.  The three of us were just passing through the World on an afternoon near the end of winter.  We crossed paths and continued on our separate ways.  But I now think of the title of a poem by Robert Frost: "For Once, Then, Something."

            Crofter

Last thing at night

he steps outside to breathe

the smell of winter.

The stars, so shy in summer,

glare down

from a huge emptiness.

In a huge silence he listens

for small sounds.  His eyes

are filled with friendliness.

What's history to him?

He's an emblem of it

in its pure state.

And proves it.  He goes inside.

The door closes and the light

dies in the window.

Norman MacCaig, The Poems of Norman MacCaig (edited by Ewen McCaig) (Polygon 2005), page 452.

MacCaig's "Crofter" always brings to mind this:

           The Shepherd's Hut

Now when I could not find the road

Unless beside it also flowed

This cobbled beck that through the night,

Breaking on stones, makes its own light,

Where blackness in the starlit sky

Is all I know a mountain by,

A shepherd little thinks how far

His lamp is shining like a star.

Andrew Young, The Poetical Works of Andrew Young (edited by Edward Lowbury and Alison Young) (Secker & Warburg 1985), page 65.

John Nash (1893-1977), "Dorset Landscape" (c. 1930)

My daily walk takes me through the grounds of what was once a post of the United States Army, an important embarkation point for troops bound for the Pacific during the Second World War.  The post has long since been converted into a city park.  But a number of large wooden buildings constructed early in the last century have been preserved.  They have been painted a pleasing pale yellow, with white trim on the windows, doors, and eaves.  They stand here and there amidst the meadows and trees, beside the wide concrete paths that wind through the grounds of the former post.

On a sunny day this week, as I walked through a budding grove of trees, a distant yet clear solo saxophone rendition of "The Girl from Ipanema" wafted through the air.  I knew the source: over the past few months, a lone saxophonist has been practicing on the front porch of one of the buildings, which is set back on a lawn, surrounded by big-leaf maple trees.  This was the first time I had heard him play a song all the way through.

                                   The Just

A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished.

He who is grateful for the existence of music.

He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology.

Two workmen playing, in a café in the South, a silent game of chess.

The potter, contemplating a color and a form.

The typographer who sets this page well, though it may not please him.

A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.

He who strokes a sleeping animal.

He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.

He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.

He who prefers others to be right.

These people, unaware, are saving the world.

Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Alastair Reid), in Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems (edited by Alexander Coleman) (Viking 1999), page 449.

"The Girl from Ipanema."  A fine choice of music by the saxophonist. I was alive when the song became a hit in this country in 1964.  Sixty years ago.  Imagine that.  At this point, as a member of the Baby Boom Generation, I feel compelled to observe that, when it comes to music, I lived through a charmed time.  Or am I being "sentimental"? (A state of being which some sophisticated moderns find unacceptable.  I've often wondered why this is so.)

But I did not engage in this internal back-and-forth as "The Girl from Ipanema" arrived unexpectedly on the breeze, passing through the warm sunlight and the boughs of the trees on its way, a few days before the beginning of Spring.  I simply received a wonderful gift.

               Shinto

When sorrow lays us low

for a second we are saved 

by humble windfalls

of mindfulness or memory:

the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,

that face given back to us by a dream,

the first jasmine of November,

the endless yearning of the compass,

a book we thought was lost,

the throb of a hexameter,

the slight key that opens a house to us,

the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,

the former name of a street,

the colors of a map,

an unforeseen etymology,

the smoothness of a filed fingernail,

the date we were looking for, 

the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,

a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities

travel secretly throughout the earth.

Those modest gods touch us --

touch us and move on.

Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Hoyt Rogers), Ibid, page 451.

John Nash, "The Lake, Little Horkesley Hall" (c. 1958)

A conversation between an owl and a crow.  A song from sixty years ago, borne on the wind.  As I have often said here in the past: in this World in which our time is short, we should pay attention and, above all, be grateful.

         Message Taken

On a day of almost no wind,

today,

I saw two leaves falling almost, not quite,

perpendicularly -- which

seemed natural.

When I got closer, I saw

the leaves on the tree were

slanted by that wind, were pointing

towards those that had fallen.

When I got closer than that, I saw

the leaves on the tree

were trembling.

And that seemed natural too.

Norman MacCaig, The Poems of Norman MacCaig, page 245.

John Nash, "The Barn, Wormingford" (1954)

How To Live, Part Twenty-Nine: Some Things Never Change

I am easy to please.  Each summer, I take delight in watching the tree tunnels I love further deepen, further interlace, as the boughs extend themselves outwards and upwards.  I notice the empty spaces that remain high up in the green and restless canopy, the sky that remains open, and I wonder how many years will pass before new bridges of leaves arch overhead.  Will I be here to see it happen?  Perhaps not. After all, I am merely an onlooker, passing through.  This is neither a lament nor a complaint.  To be aware that one is part of an ever-changing yet timeless World is a source of serenity.

                      The Truisms

His father gave him a box of truisms

Shaped like a coffin, then his father died;

The truisms remained on the mantelpiece

As wooden as the playbox they had been packed in

Or that other his father skulked inside.

Then he left home, left the truisms behind him

Still on the mantelpiece, met love, met war,

Sordor, disappointment, defeat, betrayal,

Till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house

He could not remember seeing before.

And he walked straight in; it was where he had come from

And something told him the way to behave.

He raised his hand and blessed his home;

The truisms flew and perched on his shoulders

And a tall tree sprouted from his father's grave.

Louis MacNeice, Solstices (Faber and Faber 1961).

As is often the case with MacNeice, there is an undertone of ironic knowingness present in "The Truisms," but I am willing to take the poem at face value.  As I have noted here before, I am quite content to live my life in accordance with certain truisms because, well, they are true.

Joshua Anderson Hague (1850-1916), "Landscape in North Wales"

Given the clamor of catastrophe and crisis we human beings are so fond of (2020 is no different than any other year in the history of humanity in this regard), an awareness of the World's continuity is not a bad thing.  It's not as if the World hasn't seen it all before.  Each of us has seen it all before as well, unless we haven't been awake.  

"Whoever lives two or three generations feels like the spectator who, during the fair, sees the performances of all kinds of jugglers and, if he remains seated in the booth, sees them repeated two or three times.  As the tricks were meant only for one performance, they no longer make any impression after the illusion and novelty have vanished."

Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by E. F. J. Payne), "Additional Remarks on the Doctrine of the Suffering of the World," in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, Volume 2 (1851; Oxford University Press 1974), page 299.

            Crofter

Last thing at night

he steps outside to breathe

the smell of winter.

The stars, so shy in summer,

glare down

from a huge emptiness.

In a huge silence he listens

for small sounds.  His eyes

are filled with friendliness.

What's history to him?

He's an emblem of it

in its pure state.

And proves it.  He goes inside.

The door closes and the light

dies in the window.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2005).

Joshua Anderson Hague, "Late Autumn"

In January of 2019, I wrote here about the falling of a nearby big-leaf maple in a winter storm.  Yesterday afternoon, I walked past the space it once occupied.  I still feel the loss.  But its companions remain, and I know that in time the emptiness of the air will be filled.

                 Thoughts on T'ien-chin Bridge

The countless great lords and statesmen of past regimes --

later ages know them merely as a list of names.

Only the water under T'ien-chin Bridge

goes on year after year,  making the same sound.

Shao Yung (1011-1077) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (Columbia University Press 1984), page 336.

Joshua Anderson Hague, "Haymaking"

Philosophy

In his poems, Norman MacCaig occasionally takes good-natured digs at modern philosophers and academics, digs that serve as reminders and cautions to the rest of us as well.

    Woodcocks and Philosophers

The woodcock I startled yesterday
clattered off through the birch trees
without starting to philosophise
and write a book about it.

That's his way.
And that's how he survives.
It amazes me that loafing philosophers
Don't all die young.

Unless, of course, when reality
saunters by, they crash off
through book after book, without reading
one blessed word.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2005).

A side-note:  like a great deal else, philosophy isn't what it used to be, is it?  One longs for those passionate, not-suffering-fools-gladly, intemperate, entertaining, exasperating, eccentric characters of yore: Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Leopardi (a poet-philosopher or a philosopher-poet, as you wish), and Wittgenstein come to mind.  Or, to go back even further:  Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Heraclitus.

When it comes to sensibilities such as these, one has the feeling that philosophy is a matter of life and death, that it has something vital to do with how we live and how we die.  Now, we have academic philosophy.  Shot through with politics, social "science," and semantics, as one would expect.  Posturing and word-play.  No wonder MacCaig was skeptical, in his kindly way.

John Noble Barlow (1861-1917), "Autumn at Lamorna, Cornwall"

Here is MacCaig again:

    Compare and Contrast

The great thinker died
after forty years of poking about
with his little torch
in the dark forest of ideas,
in the bright glare of perception,
leaving a legacy of fourteen books
to the world
where a hen disappeared
into six acres of tall oats
and sauntered unerringly
to the nest with five eggs in it.

Norman MacCaig, Ibid.

He is exaggerating for effect, of course.  We are not woodcocks or hens:  we are not as at home in ourselves, or as elegant, as they are. He is not calling for an Edenic "return to nature."  His poems are full of human beings -- their joys and sorrows, their goodness and badness, and everything in between.  "The great thinker" and the "loafing philosophers" are us.  As are his crofters, shepherds, postmen, bus drivers, old men in pubs.  Still, nature is ever-present in his poetry:  mountains, lochs, trees, the sea, flowers, rain and snow, the moon, the stars, and the planets -- and the birds, always the birds.  There is a back-and-forth, a balance.  Human beings and nature are, by turns, the foreground and the background.

John Noble Barlow, "Marazion Marshes, Cornwall"

In an interview, MacCaig said something wonderful:  "I'm bombarded with things that are loveable."  (Ibid, "Quotations from MacCaig," page xlviii.)  This is a capacious and beautiful view of the World, of existence.  "When reality saunters by . . ."   When reality saunters by, as it does each day, we should be receptive and attentive. And grateful.

Onto the rain porch
     from somewhere outside it comes --
a fallen petal.

Takahama Kyoshi (1874-1959) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991), page 443.

John Noble Barlow, "Dewerstone, Shaugh"

Glimmers

Each week I watch a 30-minute episode of a series titled Document 72 Hours on NHK World.  In each episode, a film crew records the human activity in a particular place in Japan over a 72-hour period. The locations have been various and interesting:  a post office, a restaurant, a bargain shoe store, a wig shop, a Shinto shrine, a butcher shop, a traveling library truck, et cetera.  The emphasis is on the people in these places:  the crew politely draws them out, and they tell their stories.  The episodes are always moving.

In this week's episode, the crew followed home care nurses on their visits to patients in Higashikurume, a suburb in western Tokyo.  In one segment, a nurse visited a boy with cerebral palsy.  It was his sixth birthday.  She sang him a song, and gave him and his mother a birthday card she had made for him.  She then bathed him (an event he always looks forward to, according to his mother).

After the visit, while driving her car to the home of her next patient, she said this (as translated into English subtitles):  "Since starting this job, I've often thought about the true meaning of happiness. Everybody is completely different.  Nurses try to help each patient find small moments of joy.  I always try to ask myself what would make my patients happy.  I hope to continue helping them that way."

Ah, these human stories.  These glimmers all around us.

Earlier in the week, I had read this poem:

                              Sitting Up at Night

Spinners' lights from house to house brighten the deep night;
here and there new fields have been plowed after rain.
Always I feel ashamed to be so old and idle.
Sitting close by the stove, I hear the sound of the wind.

Lu Yu (1125-1210) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases: Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Lu Yu (Columbia University Press 1973), page 67.  Lu Yu wrote the poem at the age of 83.

[For anyone who may be interested, the episode of Document 72 Hours mentioned above is available until December 17 in the On Demand section of the NHK World website.  The title of the episode is:  "Nurse Visits: Home Is Where the Heart Is."]

Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935)

"Winter Night in the Mountains" (1914)

Lights that "brighten the deep night."  Please bear with me, dear readers, as I return to lines that have appeared here on several occasions in the past:  "we should be careful//Of each other, we should be kind/While there is still time."  (Philip Larkin, "The Mower.")  It really is as simple as that.

There is a great deal to complain of in our age, isn't there?  Yet, each successive "modern" age seems clamorous, base, and hollow to a large number of its inhabitants.  For instance, the politicized world that surrounds us is paltry and mean.  How could it be otherwise?  It has always been thus, and it will always be thus.  It is one manifestation of human nature, and it will never change.

But none of this is cause for despair.  And so, as I return to Philip Larkin, I must also return to John Keats:  we are in "the vale of Soul-making."  Which leads to this:  "There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,/A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry."  (W. B. Yeats, "Paudeen.")

            Crofter

Last thing at night
he steps outside to breathe
the smell of winter.

The stars, so shy in summer,
glare down
from a huge emptiness.

In a huge silence he listens
for small sounds.  His eyes
are filled with friendliness.

What's history to him?
He's an emblem of it
in its pure state.

And proves it.  He goes inside.
The door closes and the light
dies in the window.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2005).

"Crofter" is paired in my mind with this:

             The Shepherd's Hut

Now when I could not find the road
Unless beside it also flowed
This cobbled beck that through the night,
Breaking on stones, makes its own light,

Where blackness in the starlit sky
Is all I know a mountain by,
A shepherd little thinks how far
His lamp is shining like a star.

Andrew Young, Speak to the Earth (Jonathan Cape 1939).

Harald Sohlberg, "Winter Night in the Mountains" (1901)

This afternoon, while out on my walk, a thought occurred to me: "The greyest of grey days."  As I walked on, similar thoughts arose.  "A day of a thousand greys."  "The greyest day imaginable."  Such was my mood.

I continued to walk.  Lifting my eyes, I noticed a thin strip of pale yellow light far off, just above the northwestern horizon, below the unbroken ceiling of grey, darkening cloud.  Somewhere out on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, near the border of Canada, the World was aglow.

I was walking in that direction.  Moments later, a few of the robins who stay here for the winter began to chatter from within a grove of pine trees.  A dove flew across the path in front of me, and disappeared into the dim woods.  (I wonder: was it the same dove I saw a few weeks ago, and mentioned in my previous post?)

Yes, a grey day, but . . .

     The long night;
A light passes along
     Outside the shōji.

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 356.

Shiki wrote several haiku that feature solitary gleams of light. Another:

     Farther and farther away it goes, --
The lantern:
     The voice of the hototogisu.

Shiki (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 168.  The hototogisu is the Japanese cuckoo.

The lantern vanishes.  The call of the cuckoo arrives.  As I have noted here before, the World tends to provide us with compensations, doesn't it?

And, finally, there is this:

     The light in the next room also
Goes out;
     The night is chill.

Shiki (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 328.

Harald Sohlberg, "Winter Night in the Mountains" (1924)

Quiet

We live in a puritanical time.  The current version of puritanism, like all that have come before it, is a matter of faith.  The faith in this case is entirely secular and political in character.  The world of the modern puritan is not a numinous world.

As is the case with puritans in all times and in all places, the new puritans know what is best for the unenlightened (in other words, the rest of us).  They believe that they have attained access to certain truths that must be acknowledged and accepted by all unbelievers. (The new puritanism is a religion of sorts, albeit one without gods.) To believe otherwise is to be a heretic.

In today's version of puritanism, everything is the opposite of what it seems.  Our puritans think of themselves as being "tolerant" and "open-minded."  In fact, they are the most intolerant and closed-minded set of people you will ever come across.  The new puritans are fond of describing themselves as "progressives."  Beware:  within the heart of every self-styled "progressive" lies a totalitarian.

The following poem first appeared here back in January of 2015. Since then, things have only gotten worse.

               Smuggler

Watch him when he opens
his bulging words -- justice,
fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace,
peace, peace.  Make it your custom
to pay no heed
to his frank look, his visas, his stamps
and signatures.  Make it
your duty to spread out their contents
in a clear light.

Nobody with such luggage
has nothing to declare.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

The poem was written in June of 1964.  Fifty-odd years later, the "bulging words" are the same or similar.  The smugglers have changed.

Albert Woods (1871-1944), "A Peaceful Valley, Whitewell"

Ah, well, we each make our own way in "the vale of Soul-making," don't we?  The allure of puritanism is understandable:  it offers simplicity, certainty, and a sense of superiority.  All false, but hard to resist.  Puritans find it difficult to sit still and be silent.

     The quietness;
A chestnut leaf sinks
     Through the clear water.

Shōhaku (1649-1722) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 231.

But the false assurances of simplicity, certainty, and superiority come at a grievous cost:  puritanism leaves out of account both the individual human being and the World itself.  The world of the puritan is without truth and beauty, without poetry.  It is a joyless world.

"Quiet stream, with all its eddies, and the moonlight playing on them, quiet as if they were Ideas in the divine mind anterior to the Creation."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, notebook entry (March or April, 1802), in Kathleen Coburn (editor), The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1: 1794-1804 (Pantheon Books 1957), Entry 1154.

John Anthony Park (1880-1962), "Heart of Exmoor"

The world of the puritan is a clamorous, harsh, and distracting world. Moreover, I imagine that keeping up with the ever-expanding list of perceived injustices in that world, and then fashioning perceived solutions to those injustices, must be exhausting.  I much prefer to remain a heretic.

"The trout leaping in the Sunshine spreads on the bottom of the River concentric Circles of Light."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, notebook entry (May or June 1802), Ibid, Entry 1200.

Over the past week, the sunlight has begun to take on its angled, honey-gold autumn cast.  The first red leaves have appeared. Something is afoot.  As always, there is too much going on in the World for me to pay any mind to the puritans and their preoccupations.

     A trout leaps;
Clouds are moving
     In the bed of the stream.

Onitsura (1660-1738) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn, page 253.

How each of us awakens in -- and to -- the World is a miraculous and ineffable mystery.  A mystery as unique as each of our souls.  This awakening is a matter between our soul, alone, and the World.

"The Whale followed by Waves -- I would glide down the rivulet of quiet Life, a Trout!"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, notebook entry (1795 or 1796), The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1: 1794-1804, Entry 54.

John Downie (1871-1945), "A Perthshire Stream"

Adrift

A few posts ago, I considered Matthew Arnold's use of the "Sea of Life" metaphor in his poetry.  Recently, however, my thoughts have turned to a more homely image of life:  a boat adrift on calm waters.  I have in mind a wooden rowboat.  Or perhaps, even though I am not a sailor, a small wooden sailboat.

Our life in this world --
to what shall I compare it?
It is like a boat
     rowing out at break of day,
leaving not a trace behind.

Sami Mansei (8th century) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991).

I prefer this image to that of a three-masted Ship of Life, under full sail, cleaving the stormy waves of Time, et cetera.  We all know the inevitable end of such a journey:  "As a rule, everyone ultimately reaches port with masts and rigging gone."  (Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by E. F. J. Payne), "Additional Remarks on the Doctrine of the Vanity of Existence," Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 2 (Oxford University Press 1974; originally published in 1851), page 284.)  An oceanic circumnavigation is far too dramatic.  I fancy this instead:  "a boat amid the ripples, drifting, rocking."  (Christina Rossetti, "Pastime.")

Frank Jowett (1879-1943), "In Mevagissey Harbour, Cornwall"

Sami Mansei's boat is "rowing out at break of day," bound for a preordained end.  But it is in no hurry, and the scene is suffused with tranquility.  There is a great deal to be said for idle drifting, with a bit of occasional rowing. We will arrive when we arrive.

"These men you wander around with -- none will give you any good advice. All they have are petty words, the kind that poison a man.  No one understands, no one comprehends -- so who can give any help to anyone else?  The clever man wears himself out, the wise man worries.  But the man of no ability has nothing he seeks.  He eats his fill and wanders idly about.  Drifting like an unmoored boat, emptily and idly he wanders along."

Chuang Tzu (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (Columbia University Press 1968), page 354.

Be assured:  Chuang Tzu is advising us that "the man of no ability" who "emptily and idly . . . wanders along" -- "drifting like an unmoored boat" -- deserves our approbation, not our condemnation.  "The clever man" and "the wise man" have both got it all wrong.

                                     July

Naught moves but clouds, and in the glassy lake
Their doubles and the shadow of my boat.
The boat itself stirs only when I break
This drowse of heat and solitude afloat
To prove if what I see be bird or mote,
Or learn if yet the shore woods be awake.

Long hours since dawn grew, -- spread, -- and passed on high
And deep below, -- I have watched the cool reeds hung
Over images more cool in imaged sky:
Nothing there was worth thinking of so long;
All that the ring-doves say, far leaves among,
Brims my mind with content thus still to lie.

Edward Thomas, in Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2008).  Thomas wrote the poem in May of 1915.  Ibid, page 235.

China in the 4th century B. C., England in 1915, or now:  there is no difference.

Walter Goodin, "Bridlington Harbour, East Riding of Yorkshire" (1951)

Chuang Tzu is correct:  why aspire to be clever or wise?  (Besides, who in their right mind would, or could, claim to be clever or wise?)  If it is serenity and contentment that we seek (I see no reason to grasp after "happiness," whatever that may be), idle drifting seems to be the proper course of action. But one mustn't equate idleness with sloth, disinterest, or ennui:  it is an active state of being that requires attention, patience, receptivity, and humility.  One never knows when a message may arrive.

"Lessons from the world around us:  certain localities, certain moments 'incline' us towards them; there seems to be the pressure of a hand, an invisible hand, urging a change of direction (of the footsteps, the gaze, or the thoughts); the hand could also be a breath, like the breath behind leaves, clouds, sailing boats.  An insinuation, in an undertone like someone whispering 'look,' 'listen,' or merely 'wait'.  But is there still the time, the patience to wait?  And is 'waiting' really the right word?"

Philippe Jaccottet (translated by Mark Treharne), Cherry Tree (Le Cerisier) (The Delos Press 1991), pages 13-14.

Stanhope Forbes, "The Inner Harbour: Abbey Slip" (1921)

Given the distractions of the modern world, Jaccottet asks a valid question: "But is there still the time, the patience to wait?"  Popular culture, the media, and technology all urge us to pursue ephemeral chimeras at ever-increasing speeds.  But each of us has it in us to step into a drifting boat at any moment and to say good-bye to all that (to borrow from Robert Graves). In my experience, this becomes easier as one ages.

                              Evening

When little lights in little ports come out,
Quivering down through water with the stars,
And all the fishing fleet of slender spars
Range at their moorings, veer with tide about;

When race of wind is stilled and sails are furled,
And underneath our single riding-light
The curve of black-ribbed deck gleams palely white,
And slumbrous waters pool a slumbrous world;

-- Then, and then only, have I thought how sweet
Old age might sink upon a windy youth,
Quiet beneath the riding-light of truth,
Weathered through storms, and gracious in retreat.

Vita Sackville-West, Orchard and Vineyard (John Lane 1921).

"Quiet beneath the riding-light of truth."  Well, I doubt that "old age" in itself leads us to the discovery of "the riding-light of truth" (intimations or glimpses of Truth perhaps -- if we pay attention and are lucky).  But, as for "gracious in retreat":  that is a laudable goal, and one that may be attainable as long as we keep our wits about us.

Frank Jowett, "A Sunlight Harbour"

As one who has no wisdom, and who knows nothing, my musings on being able to idly drift on calm waters are purely aspirational.  There may be moments (mere instants) when such a life seems within reach.  They immediately vanish.

Yet, we wouldn't wish it otherwise, would we?

                 Old Crofter

The gate he built last year
hangs by its elbow from the wall.
The oar he shaped this summer
goes through the water with a swirl, a swivel.

The hammer in his great hand
pecks like fowl in the grain.
His haycocks are lopsided.
His lamp stands on the dresser, unlit.

One day the rope he has tied
will slither down the rock
and the boat drift off idly
dwindling away into the Atlantic.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

Henry Moore, "Catspaws Off the Land" (1885)

Opinion

It is entirely possible -- and perfectly acceptable -- to live one's life without holding opinions on the political issues of the day.  As the years pass, I have been steadily throwing these sorts of opinions overboard, and I feel none the worse for having jettisoned them.

Mind you, I do hold some opinions.  For instance, it is my opinion that we should be kind to one another.  (Long-time readers of this blog have heard me quote Philip Larkin numerous times on this point:  "We should be careful//Of each other, we should be kind/While there is still time.")  I am also of the opinion that it is rude to carry on cell phone conversations in public, particularly while waiting in lines at post offices and banks.  I confess that I favor dogs over cats.  (Although I have known and loved many wonderful cats.)  Further, it is my opinion that those who commit murder in the name of religion (any religion) are evil.  So, there you have it: I am not opinionless.

Granted, most of my opinions are in the nature of truisms.  (With the exception of my preference for dogs over cats, for which I beg the forbearance of those who prefer cats.)  But, as I have noted in the past, I am perfectly content to live my life in accordance with truisms, which are, after all, true.

                 Mute Opinion

                            I
I traversed a dominion
Whose spokesmen spake out strong
Their purpose and opinion
Through pulpit, press, and song.
I scarce had means to note there
A large-eyed few, and dumb,
Who thought not as those thought there
That stirred the heat and hum.

                            II
When, grown a Shade, beholding
That land in lifetime trode,
To learn if its unfolding
Fulfilled its clamoured code,
I saw, in web unbroken,
Its history outwrought
Not as the loud had spoken,
But as the mute had thought.

Thomas Hardy, Poems of the Past and the Present (Macmillan 1901).

Adam Bruce Thomson (1885-1976), "Still Life at a Window" (1944)

I understand the allure of constructing a well-ordered set of opinions.  The world can be a chaotic, horrific, and dispiriting place.  It can be comforting to believe that one's opinions are correct, and that the implementation of those opinions will lead to a better world.

But this is where problems arise.  A great number of people believe that holding the "correct" opinions is de facto evidence of one's personal virtue and morality.  More alarmingly, there is a disturbing totalitarian undercurrent in modern opinion-holding:  We are right.  You are wrong. And you had better adopt the correct opinions.  Or else.  Anyone who believes that totalitarian tendencies are limited to one side or the other of the political spectrum is deluding themselves.

But I mustn't rant.  I wish all opinion holders well, as long as they don't expect me to believe what they believe.  In any case, the end result of political opinion-holding amounts to a hill of beans.

                The Pier

Only a placid sea, and
A pier where no boat comes,
But people stand at the end
And spit into the water,
Dimpling it, and watch a dog
That chins and churns back to land.

I had come here to see
Humbug embark, deported,
Protected from the crowd.
But he has not come today.
And anyway there is no boat
To take him.  And no one cares.
So Humbug still walks our land
On stilts, is still looked up to.

W. R. Rodgers, Awake! and Other Poems (Secker & Warburg 1941).

Yes, Humbug will for ever walk the lands in which you and I dwell, dear reader.  There will never be a dearth of snake oil salesmen, whether of the left, right, or center.

Adam Bruce Thomson, "Melrose Abbey" (1953)

Opinions on political issues are beliefs, not statements of reality.  In the wake of the so-called "Age of Enlightenment," belief in utopian political schemes has in large part replaced religious belief.  Political believers can be every bit as fervent as religious believers.  This is not a criticism of fervency.  Everyone is entitled to hold their own opinions.  But it is important to recognize the critical role that utopian political beliefs play in the lives of a large number of people.

Most political true believers are not aware that their opinions are the tenets of a religion.  Political religions are as rife with controversy as the early Christian church:  doctrinal disputations, denunciations, apostasies, and schisms abound.  Words are paramount, and are worshipped.  The niceties of creedal language are parsed in a fashion that rivals the labors of the Council of Nicaea.

                    Smuggler

Watch him when he opens
his bulging words -- justice,
fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace,
peace, peace.  Make it your custom
to pay no heed
to his frank look, his visas, his stamps
and signatures.  Make it
your duty to spread out their contents
in a clear light.

Nobody with such luggage
has nothing to declare.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig, The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

Adam Bruce Thomson, "St Monance"

Holding opinions is a tiring and tiresome business.  Think of the amount of mental, emotional, and psychic energy that people expend on defending their own opinions and attacking those of others.

As for me, I am one of Hardy's "large-eyed few, and dumb."  And happily so.  I am content to remain mute.  There is a great deal to do.

              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 (edited by Antoinette Quinn) (Penguin 2004).

Adam Bruce Thomson, "Harvesting in Galloway"

Humanity

The recent Brexit referendum and the ongoing presidential election campaign in the United States have got me to thinking about the politicization of daily life, a subject that I have considered here in the past. But let me be clear at the outset:  this is a non-political blog, and you will not hear any opinions from me on either Brexit or the presidential election. I am not a citizen of the United Kingdom, so Brexit is none of my business. As for the presidential election:  I intend to sit it out.

What concerns me is how the politicization of culture and of individual consciousness encourages people to adopt stereotypical, patronizing, and dehumanizing views of those who are on the other side of a political issue. This has been glaringly apparent in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, and it has been an ongoing feature of the presidential campaign.

Who among us is in a position to adopt such views?  Do those who hold these views realize that they are in fact dehumanizing themselves in the process?  They have become exactly what the politicians, political "activists," and media oversimplifiers and crisis-mongers want them to be:  political animals.

   Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be --
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

Robert Frost, A Further Range (Henry Holt 1936.)

Be careful before you make any quick judgments on what the poem "means."  Depending upon how you read the poem, you may be a misanthrope or you may be a lover of humanity.  Or both.  Or neither.  In his fine study of Frost's poetry, Tim Kendall says this of the poem:  "This is what I can see happening, the poet tells his reader.  Make of it what you will."  Tim Kendall, The Art of Robert Frost (Yale University Press 2012), page 356.  But this much is certain:  you are standing there on the sand, dear reader, as are we all.

Osmund Caine, "Wedding at Twickenham Parish Church" (1948)

Being politicized leads to evaluating and judging the world and other human beings in terms of classes, categories, and clichés.  Never underestimate the allure of a priori conclusions.  For the politicized, everything appears to be simple and subject to explanation.  Us and them. The enlightened versus the benighted.

All of this has nothing whatsoever to do with the individual human being or with the individual human soul.

                    Balances

Because I see the world poisoned
by cant and brutal self-seeking,
must I be silent about
the useless waterlily, the dunnock's nest
in the hedgeback?

Because I am fifty-six years old
must I love, if I love at all,
only ideas -- not people, but only
the idea of people?

Because there is work to do, to steady
a world jarred off balance,
must a man meet only a fellow-worker
and never a man?

There are more meanings than those
in text books of economics
and a part of the worst slum
is the moon rising over it
and eyes weeping and
mouths laughing.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

Gilbert Spencer

"The School on Peggy Hill, Ambleside" (1952)

Each of us has a far better opinion of ourself than we ought to.  That is a given.  A part of human nature.  But, when you add politics to the mix, the opportunities for superciliousness expand exponentially.  Vast territories of grandiosity, oversimplification, and unexamined assumptions lie open for exploration.  And you can be sure that the politicized -- left, right, and center -- will undertake the expedition.

                                                     Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor  for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

W. B. Yeats could be as supercilious as they come.  But every once in a while he experienced a moment of clarity.

                                     Paudeen

Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.

W. B. Yeats, Responsibilities and Other Poems (Macmillan 1916).

"A single soul," yes.  Yet something else comes to mind as well.

                           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, Kanshi: The Poetry of Ishikawa Jōzan and Other Edo-Period Poets (North Point Press 1990).

George Charlton, "Welsh Chapel" (1950)

I am well aware that there may be those among you who find this disquisition (diatribe?) to be supercilious in its own right.  Apathy and quietism as the world goes up in flames.  I see your point.  Ah, well, we are all in "the vale of Soul-making."  We each choose our own path.

                    Politics

You say a thousand things,
Persuasively,
And with strange passion hotly I agree,
And praise your zest,
And then
A blackbird sings
On April lilac, or fieldfaring men,
Ghostlike, with loaded wain,
Come down the twilit lane
To rest,
And what is all your argument to me?

Oh yes -- I know, I know,
It must be so --
You must devise
Your myriad policies,
For we are little wise,
And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep
Too fast a sleep
Far from the central world's realities.
Yes, we must heed --
For surely you reveal
Life's very heart; surely with flaming zeal
You search our folly and our secret need;
And surely it is wrong
To count my blackbird's song,
My cones of lilac, and my wagon team,
More than a world of dream.

But still
A voice calls from the hill --
I must away --
I cannot hear your argument to-day.

John Drinkwater, Tides (Sidgwick and Jackson 1917).

But life is more than a matter of blackbirds singing and lilacs blooming, isn't it?  Thus, please forgive me as I return once again to some of the best advice that I have come across during my time on earth:

               . . . we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Philip Larkin, "The Mower," Collected Poems (Faber and Faber 1988).

James McIntosh Patrick, "A City Garden" (1940)

Some Trees Of Scotland And Japan

Trees are wonderful providers of perspective.  This past week, I have been preoccupied with various mundane errands and chores.  Then, a few days ago, I looked out into the backyard and noticed that the apple tree is now in full white bloom.  I thought to myself:  "When did that happen?  Where was I?"

             Message Taken

On a day of almost no wind,
today,
I saw two leaves falling almost, not quite,
perpendicularly -- which
seemed natural.

When I got closer, I saw
the leaves on the tree were
slanted by that wind, were pointing
towards those that had fallen.

When I got closer than that, I saw
the leaves on the tree
were trembling.

And that seemed natural too.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

As I have noted in the past, I have no objection to anthropomorphism in poetry.  I am completely comfortable with the Pathetic Fallacy as well.  This is especially true when it comes to trees.  We humans need all the resources we can muster in our futile attempts to articulate the beauty of these wondrous beings.  And, thankfully, we will only ever scratch the surface.

Take a good look:
even the blossoms
of the old cherry seem sad --
how many more times
will they see the spring?

Saigyō (1118-1190) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Saigyō: Poems of a Mountain Home (Columbia University Press 1991), page 43.

Patrick Symons, "Oak Arch Grey (Wimbledon Common)" (1981)

Science?  Botany?  They are of no account in this matter of trees.  The poems by Norman MacCaig and Saigyō that appear in this post are all about individual trees, not about "the tree" as a concept.  I understand the human compulsion to "explain" how the natural world works, and to classify everything in it.  But part of me doesn't see the point.

I am more sympathetic with, for instance, the Shinto belief that particular trees are sacred because they are inhabited by, or serve as a portal for, spirits (kami).  Shimenawa (ropes made of rice straw) are wrapped around such trees in order to notify people that they are approaching a sacred space.

               Old Poet

The alder tree
shrivelled by the salt wind
has lived so long
it has carried and sheltered
its own weight
of nests.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig.

I have been acquainted with the apple tree in the backyard for nearly 21 years.  I don't know how old it is, since it was here when I arrived.  Some of its branches are now lichen-covered.  At times I imagine that it is feeling a bit weary.  But year after year, following the dark and soaking winter, its magnificent cloud of white appears.  Perspective.

A seedling pine in the garden
when I saw it long ago --
years have gone by
and now I hear the storm winds
roaring in its topmost branches.

Saigyō (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Saigyō: Poems of a Mountain Home, page 214.

Leslie Duncan, "Birchwood"

I received yet another gift earlier this week:  stepping outside the back door to open the mailbox, I suddenly smelled lilacs.  In addition to missing the blooming of the apple tree, I had also missed the blooming of the purple lilac tree that stands between two yew trees along the side of the yard.  Too much daydreaming and sleepwalking.

                  In Memoriam

On that stormy night
a top branch broke off
on the biggest tree in my garden.

It's still up there.  Though its leaves
are withered black among the green
the living branches
won't let it fall.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig.

Paying attention seems simple, but it can be difficult to do in a distracting world.  The media and entertainment and political worlds have no interest whatsoever in repose, reflection, or serenity.  Their stock-in-trade is agitation, restlessness, and empty desire:  a grasping that never ends.  All of these trees around us have no part in those worlds.  They gently shake us by the shoulders and say:  Wake up!

In a tree that stands
on the crag
by abandoned paddies,
a dove calling to its companion
in the desolate twilight.

Saigyō (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Saigyō: Poems of a Mountain Home, page 154.

Walter Schofield, "Godolphin Pond in Autumn" (1940)

I harbor no illusions:  "beneath/[My] feet are implacable fate, and panic at night, and the strumble/Of the hungry river of death."  That is not going to change.  But these trees that all of us come to know along the way provide perspective.  There is a certain reassurance in their yearly rise and fall. Constancy within constant change.

                  Rowan Berry

I'm at ease in my crimson cluster.
The tree blazes
with clusters of cousins --
my cluster's the main one and I
am the important berry in it.

Tomorrow, or tomorrow's tomorrow,
a flock of fieldfares
will gobble our whole generation.

I'm not troubled.  My seed
will be shamelessly dropped
somewhere.  And in the next years
after next year, I'll be a tree
swaying and swinging
with a genealogy of berries.  I'll be
that fine thing, an ancestor.
I'll spread out my branches
for the guzzling fieldfares.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig, The Poems of Norman MacCaig.

At some point, the apple tree, the lilac tree, and I will all be gone.  This makes perfect sense.

         On Looking at the Pine
  that Stands in Front of My Hut

Live through the long years,
pine, and pray for me
in my next existence,
I who'll have no one
to visit the places I once was.

Saigyō (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Saigyō: Poems of a Mountain Home, page 184.

W. G. Poole, "Savernake Forest" (1939)

Starlings

In some quarters, starlings are viewed as pests, particularly when they congregate in massive flocks.  And there is no doubt that they can make quite a racket, even in small groups.  But if you watch them as they go about their daily business, they can become quite endearing.

I have no illusions.  As I watch a small flock of starlings flit from place to place in the neighborhood, or in a park, I realize that they are driven by hunger and skittishness.  The constant activity is a matter of survival.  But, as I say, there is something endearing and beguiling about this intensely preoccupied, antic, ever-chattering community.

               Starlings

Can you keep it so,
cool tree, making a blue cage
for an obstreperous population? --
for a congregation of mediaeval scholars
quarrelling in several languages? --
for busybodies marketing
in the bazaar of green leaves? --
for clockwork fossils that can't be still even
when the Spring runs down?

No tree, no blue cage can contain
that restlessness.  They whirr off
and sow themselves in a scattered handful
on the grass -- and are
bustling monks
tilling their green precincts.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

As I mentioned in my previous post, birds are apt candidates for anthropomorphization, and Norman MacCaig does this quite well. "Bustling monks/tilling their green precincts" is wonderful.

Charles Napier Hemy, "Pilchards" (1897)

Thomas Hardy has no reservations whatsoever when it comes to this sort of thing.  Monologues by, and conversations between, non-human creatures are a common occurrence in his poetry.  I suspect that some Modernists may find this to be old-fashioned, quaint, "sentimental," or otherwise objectionable on aesthetic grounds: not "serious" poetry, in other words.

Here's a test.  Which would you prefer?  To read a poem by Thomas Hardy in which birds carry on a casual conversation (or, to cite another example, a poem in which a dog converses with his deceased former owner, recently buried beneath the turf)?  Or would you prefer to read something by James Joyce?  Well, I think you know my answer.  Talking birds win hands down.

                     Winter in Durnover Field

Scene. -- A wide stretch of fallow ground recently
sown with wheat, and frozen to iron hardness.  Three
large birds walking about thereon, and wistfully eyeing
the surface.  Wind keen from north-east: sky a dull grey.

Rook. -- Throughout the field I find no grain;
                 The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!
Starling. -- Aye: patient pecking now is vain
                      Throughout the field, I find . . .
Rook. --                                                              No grain!
Pigeon. -- Nor will be, comrade, till it rain,
                    Or genial thawings loose the lorn land
                    Throughout the field.
Rook. --                                                I find no grain:
                 The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!

Thomas Hardy, Poems of the Past and the Present (1901).

The poem is a triolet.  Thus, the first, fourth, and seventh lines are the same, as are the second line and the last line.  This in turn means that the opening and closing couplets are identical.

Charles Napier Hemy, "Trout in the Eel Reeve" (1890)

The following poem demonstrates that, although Hardy is being playful when it comes to his bird conversations, he is not, in doing so, sacrificing the ability to create an affecting scene.

                 Starlings on the Roof

"No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot,
The people who lived here have left the spot,
And others are coming who knew them not.

"If you listen anon, with an ear intent,
The voices, you'll find, will be different
From the well-known ones of those who went."

"Why did they go?  Their tones so bland
Were quite familiar to our band;
The comers we shall not understand."

"They look for a new life, rich and strange;
They do not know that, let them range
Wherever they may, they will get no change.

"They will drag their house-gear ever so far
In their search for a home no miseries mar;
They will find that as they were they are,

"That every hearth has a ghost, alack,
And can be but the scene of a bivouac
Till they move their last -- no care to pack!"

Thomas Hardy, Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces (1914).

I would suggest that the fact that this conversation is between two starlings -- rather than between two humans standing on the sidewalk -- actually heightens the poem's impact, brings home more deeply the universal human plight that is the subject of the poem.  But I may certainly be wrong.

Charles Napier Hemy, "Evening Gray" (1868)