Yuletide

Some people complain about the "commercialization" of Christmas.  Others complain that the season has been appropriated by the tackiest tendencies of "popular culture."  These complainers take themselves, and the World, far too seriously.

This is not surprising, for we live in the Age of Mewling.  A great number of people are aggrieved or offended by . . . well, nearly everything.  "Trigger warnings" and all that.  What a sad way to live.

The World is what it is.  On a daily basis, we have to pick and choose. Gratitude, not complaint, ought to be the basis for making our choices.

And there is always a larger context.

          Christmas Poem

We are folded all
In a green fable
And we fare
From early
Plough-and-daffodil sun
Through a revel
Of wind-tossed oats and barley
Past sickle and flail
To harvest home,
The circles of bread and ale
At the long table.
It is told, the story --
We and earth and sun and corn are one.

Now kings and shepherds have come.
A wintered hovel
Hides a glory
Whiter than snowflake or silver or star.

George Mackay Brown, The Wreck of the Archangel (John Murray 1989).

Ben Nicholson, "1930 (Christmas Night)" (1930)

Nothing about Christmas offends me.  In fact, most everything about the season delights me.  I'm happy to hear Bing Crosby sing "White Christmas" for the ten-thousandth time.  Likewise Perry Como and "Home for the Holidays" and Andy Williams and "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year."

I love the fact that people string lights on their houses. What could be more wonderful than walking at night through a neighborhood that is full of colorful lights?  It makes me feel that all is right with the World -- like the sound of lawn mowers in the distance on a sunny Spring afternoon.  There is a great deal of truth and beauty in these simple human impulses.  Why not festively light up the night at the darkest time of the year?

                      Blind Noel

Christmas; the themes are exhausted.
Yet there is always room
on the heart for another
snowflake to reveal a pattern.

Love knocks with such frosted fingers.
I look out.  In the shadow
of so vast a God I shiver, unable
to detect the child for the whiteness.

R. S. Thomas, No Truce with the Furies (Bloodaxe Books 1995).

Harold Bush, "The Christmas Tree" (1933)

Yes, there is always a larger context.  "We are folded all in a green fable." There is absolutely nothing to complain about.

          Maeshowe:  Midwinter

Equinox to Hallowmas, darkness
     falls like the leaves.  The
     tree of the sun is stark.

On the loom of winter, shadows
     gather in a web; then the
     shuttle of St Lucy makes a
     pause; a dark weave
     fills the loom.

The blackness is solid as a
     stone that locks a tomb.
     No star shines there.

Then begins the true ceremony of
     the sun, when the one
     last fleeting solstice flame
     is caught up by a
     midnight candle.

Children sing under a street
     lamp, their voices like
     leaves of light.

George Mackay Brown, Following a Lark (John Murray 1996).

Maeshowe  (also known as "Maes Howe") is a chambered tomb located on the island of Mainland in the Orkney Islands.  It was constructed in 2800 B. C. (or thereabouts).  In the twelfth century, it was broken into by Vikings, who left behind runic inscriptions.

The entrance passage to the structure is aligned so that, at the time near and after the winter solstice, the rays of the setting sun shine against the rear wall of the tomb.  Yuletide.

"A merry Christmas, friend!"

Robin Tanner, "Christmas" (1929)

Dwelling

First and foremost, autumn awakens an impulse to run out into the World before it is too late.  Time is passing.  And the duration of autumn's beauty is numbered by the leaves on the trees.

But autumn also awakens a contrary impulse:  an urge to settle in, to turn inward.  Consider the endearing activity of the squirrels at this time of year: when I see them intently scurrying about among the fallen leaves, I think of the long nights that await both them and us. Yes, it is time to make ready a burrow, a nest, a refuge.

This little house
No smaller than the world
Nor I lonely
Dwelling in all that is.

Kathleen Raine, from "Short Poems," The Oracle in the Heart (Dolmen Press 1980).

But, whether our movement be outward or inward, I suspect that for most of us the emotional tenor of either movement is the same:  that pensive, wistful, and bittersweet autumnal feeling that we have come to know so well.  It only deepens with the years.  But this is not a bad thing.  Far from it.  Many of us live for autumn.

"They seek retirements in the country, on the sea-coasts, or mountains: you too used to be fond of such things.  But this is all from ignorance.  A man may any hour he pleases retire into himself; and nowhere will he find a place of more quiet and leisure than in his own soul:  especially if he has that furniture within, the view of which immediately gives him the fullest tranquillity.  By tranquillity, I mean the most graceful order.  Allow yourself continually this retirement, and refresh and renew your self."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV, Section 3 (translated by Francis Hutcheson and James Moor), in Francis Hutcheson and James Moor, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (1742).

Paul Drury, "September" (1928)

As I have noted here on more than one occasion, I see nothing wrong with sentimentality.  The default modern posture is irony.  The essence of modern irony is self-regarding knowingness and distance from life.  Who needs that?  I will take sentimentality over irony any day.  It is a matter of choosing warmth over coldness.

"The unspeakable blessedness of having a home!  Much as my imagination has dwelt upon it for thirty years, I never knew how deep and exquisite a joy could lie in the assurance that one is at home for ever.  Again and again I come back upon this thought; nothing but Death can oust me from my abiding place.  And Death I would fain learn to regard as a friend, who will but intensify the peace I now relish."

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), page 112.

"A Quiet Normal Life."  Isn't this what most of us want?  "Here in his house and in his room,/In his chair, the most tranquil thought grew peaked . . ."

                    Her Room

At first, not breathed on,
Not a leaf or a flower knew you were gone,
Then, one by one,

The little things put away,
The glass tray
Of medicines empty,

The poems still loved
Long after sight failed
With other closed books shelved,

And from your cabinet
Remembrances to one and another friend
Who will forget

How the little owl, the rose-bowl,
The Brig-o' Doone paperweight,
The Japanese tea-set

Lived on their shelf, just here,
So long, and there,
Binding memories together,

Binding your love,
Husband and daughter in an old photograph,
Your woven texture of life

A torn cobweb dusted down,
Swept from the silent room
That was home.

Kathleen Raine, The Oval Portrait and Other Poems (Enitharmon Press 1977).

Robin Tanner, "The Gamekeeper's Cottage" (1928)

The outward and inward movements of autumn take place within a larger context, of course.  The seasonal round feels as if it will go on for ever.  The wistfulness of autumn is, we know, a prelude to "the bleak mid-winter," which has its own charms, but which will in turn awaken in us thoughts of "the cherry hung with snow."  And so it beautifully goes.

There is, though, a deeper theme at work beneath it all.

                       Words in the Air

The clear air said:  'I was your home once
but other guests have taken your place;
where will you go who liked it here so much?
You looked at me through the thick dust
of the earth, and your eyes were known to me.
You sang sometimes, you even whispered low
to someone else who was often asleep,
you told her the light of the earth
was too pure not to point a direction
which somehow avoided death.  You imagined
yourself advancing in that direction;
but now I no longer hear you.  What have you done?
Above all, what is your lover going to think?'

And she, his friend, replied through tears of happiness:
'He has changed into the shade that pleased him best.'

Philippe Jaccottet (translated by Derek Mahon), in Derek Mahon, Words in the Air: A Selection of Poems by Philippe Jaccottet (The Gallery Press 1998).

Paul Drury, "March Morning" (1933)

Inhabitants of the air?  Yes.  There's no getting around that.  But, in the meantime, here we are.

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy grows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun shines and I mend my robe;
When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report, my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.

Ryōkan (1758-1831) (translated by John Stevens), in John Stevens, One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan (Weatherhill 1977), page 43.

Robin Tanner, "Martin's Hovel" (1927)

Christmastide

In childhood, Christmas is a time of expectation and anticipation.  At some point -- ah, when? -- it becomes a time of reminiscence and reflection.  But I suppose that sounds a great deal like Life in general, doesn't it?

But one thing has not changed:  the lights.  Indoors, the lights on the tree, reflected in the ornaments.  Outdoors, the brightly-lit houses in the neighborhood.  The four white candles of the Swedish angel chimes.  A string of bubble lights.  Sentimentality?  Nostalgia?  Yes, of course.

          Yuletide in a Younger World

     We believed in highdays then,
          And could glimpse at night
               On Christmas Eve
Imminent oncomings of radiant revel --
          Doings of delight: --
          Now we have no such sight.

     We had eyes for phantoms then,
          And at bridge or stile
               On Christmas Eve
Clear beheld those countless ones who had crossed it
          Cross again in file: --
          Such has ceased longwhile!

     We liked divination then,
          And, as they homeward wound
               On Christmas Eve,
We could read men's dreams within them spinning
          Even as wheels spin round: --
          Now we are blinker-bound.

     We heard still small voices then,
          And, in the dim serene
               Of Christmas Eve,
Caught the far-time tones of fire-filled prophets
          Long on earth unseen. . . .
          -- Can such ever have been?

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).

Ben Nicholson, "1930 (Christmas Night)" (1930)

Back in October, I wrote about Thomas Hardy's humanity, honesty, and sincerity.  As fond as we moderns are of irony, we should put it aside when we read the following poem.

I take Hardy at his word.  And, with respect to the poem's last two lines, I would do exactly as Hardy says he would do.

                       The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
     "Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
     By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
     They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
     To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
     In these years!  Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
     "Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
     Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
     Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917).

Harold Bush, "The Christmas Tree" (1933)

Hardy never condescends.  He may satirize and skewer the pretensions of those who think too well of themselves.  And, although he was acutely sensitive to criticism, both personal and literary, his humility was remarked upon by nearly everyone who met him in person.  That and his soft-spokenness.  Of course he was ambitious, but I think that in his heart of hearts he always thought of himself as a Dorset countryman.

               Christmastide

The rain-shafts splintered on me
     As despondently I strode;
The twilight gloomed upon me
     And bleared the blank high-road.
Each bush gave forth, when blown on
     By gusts in shower and shower,
A sigh, as it were sown on
     In handfuls by a sower.

A cheerful voice called, nigh me,
     "A merry Christmas, friend!" --
There rose a figure by me,
     Walking with townward trend,
A sodden tramp's, who, breaking
     Into thin song, bore straight
Ahead, direction taking
     Toward the Casuals' gate.

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).  "The Casuals' gate" refers to a gate of the Union House in Dorchester.  J. O. Bailey, The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: A Handbook and Commentary (University of North Carolina Press 1970), page 581.  "In Hardy's time any 'casual' (pauper or tramp) could apply to the police for a ticket, with which he would be admitted for supper, a bed, and breakfast."  Ibid.

A merry Christmas, friends!

Robin Tanner, "Christmas" (1929)

How To Live, Part Twenty-Two: "A Quiet Normal Life"

I am not qualified to render any opinions on the subject of How to Live. The little that I have learned during my time on Earth can be reduced to a few phrases.  "Here today, gone tomorrow."  "Pull down thy vanity."  "We should be careful/Of each other, we should be kind/While there is still time."  Things like that.  Things we all ought to know.  But I have to re-learn them time and time again.

 As a practical matter, one should find what one loves, and pursue it with purity of heart.  All mysteries are then resolved (but not solved).  "The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem." Ludwig Wittgenstein, Proposition 6.521, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Pears/McGuinness translation) (1921).

Robin Tanner, "June" (1946)

                                   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 cafe 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 Selected Poems (edited by Alexander Coleman) (Viking 1999).  Regarding "Stevenson" (line 10): Borges was a great admirer of the work of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Robin Tanner, "Still Is The Land" (1983)

When I read Borges's poem, I think of tranquility and repose, peace and quiet.

                 A Quiet Normal Life

His place, as he sat and as he thought, was not
In anything that he constructed, so frail,
So barely lit, so shadowed over and naught,

As, for example, a world in which, like snow,
He became an inhabitant, obedient
To gallant notions on the part of cold.

It was here.  This was the setting and the time
Of year.  Here in his house and in his room,
In his chair, the most tranquil thought grew peaked

And the oldest and the warmest heart was cut
By gallant notions on the part of night --
Both late and alone, above the crickets' chords,

Babbling, each one, the uniqueness of its sound.
There was no fury in transcendent forms.
But his actual candle blazed with artifice.

Wallace Stevens, The Rock (1954), in Collected Poetry and Prose (The Library of America 1997).

The repetition in "gallant notions on the part of cold" and "gallant notions on the part of night" is lovely.  In the modern era, "gallant" is usually used in the sense of "chivalrously brave, full of noble daring."  OED.  But earlier senses included "gorgeous or showy in appearance" and "splendid, fine, grand."  Ibid.  All of these senses seem to work together here, I think.

Lines 3 through 6 ("a world in which, like snow . . .") bring to mind Stevens's "The Snow Man."  "A Quiet Normal Life" was written within the last two years of Stevens's life.  As I have noted before, this was a time when he had softened his view of the primacy of the Imagination in life, and had begun to accept the "First Warmth" of the World around him.  Not that he hadn't noticed the World, and written of it beautifully, of course -- but perhaps he began to doubt (just a bit) his long-held belief that Imagination trumped Reality.  Thus, the lines may be an intentional evocation of "The Snow Man," which he wrote more than 30 years earlier.

Robin Tanner, "The Wicket Gate" (1977)

Perspective, Part Fourteen: Artful Dodges

It is impossible for us to be objective about ourselves.  How could it be otherwise?  We have been pent up in our cocoon of body, mind, and soul since we first emerged, bawling, into the world.  The most that we can hope for is a smidgen of self-awareness.  If we are attentive, and try our hardest, this smidgen of self-awareness may be accompanied by humility about ourselves and kindness towards others.

Joseph Conrad, that wise man, offers us this:

"If one looks at life in its true aspect then everything loses much of its unpleasant importance and the atmosphere becomes cleared of what are only unimportant mists that drift past in imposing shapes.  When once the truth is grasped that one's own personality is only a ridiculous and aimless masquerade of something hopelessly unknown the attainment of serenity is not very far off."

Joseph Conrad, Letter to Edward Garnett (March 23, 1896), in Edward Garnett, Letters from Joseph Conrad, 1895-1924 (1928), page 46.

And this:

"No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge."

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900), page 84.

Yes, recognition of our own follies and self-deceptions is a necessary precursor to any serenity we may be able to arrive at in life.  And it is wonderful that Conrad speaks of attaining "serenity," not "happiness."

Robin Tanner, "The Gamekeeper's Cottage" (1928)

The above thoughts were prompted by coming across the following poem:

               'Incomprehensible'

Engrossed in the day's 'news', I read
Of all in man that's vile and base;
Horrors confounding heart and head --
Massacre, murder, filth, disgrace:
Then paused.  And thought did inward tend --
On my own past, and self, to dwell.

Whereat some inmate muttered, 'Friend,
If you and I plain truth must tell,
Everything human we comprehend,
     Only too well, too well!'

Walter de la Mare, Inward Companion: Poems (1950).

Each and every day we encounter the "incomprehensible" via the media and incorrectly conclude, as the saying goes, "Now I've seen it all!"  No, we have not seen it all, and we never will see it all, given the by turns lovely and nasty inventiveness of human beings.

De la Mare's neat trick is the movement from "incomprehensible" in the title to "comprehend" in line 9:  from "beyond the reach of intellect or research; unfathomable" (OED) (i.e., the daily horrors of the news)  to "to take in, comprise, include, contain" (OED) (i.e., us).  And, once the movement is made, one is in turn compelled to revisit "incomprehensible," which now turns out to refer not just to the contents of the daily news, but to each of us individually -- body, mind, and soul.

Robin Tanner, "Wiltshire Woodman" (1929)

All of this merits a return to the lovely three-sentence prose statement by Czeslaw Milosz.

                                                  Learning

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

Czeslaw Milosz (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass), Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998), page 60.

Robin Tanner, "Martin's Hovel" (1927)

Christmas, Part Eight: "A Merry Christmas, Friend!"

A Thomas Hardy ghost story:

"He saw a ghost in Stinsford Churchyard on Christmas Eve, and his sister Kate says it must have been their grandfather upon whose grave T. H. had just placed a sprig of holly -- the first time he had ever done so.  The ghost said:  'A green Christmas' -- T. H. replied 'I like a green Christmas.'  Then the ghost went into the church, and, being full of curiosity, T. followed, to see who this strange man in 18th century dress might be -- and found -- no-one.  That is quite true -- a real Christmas ghost story."

Florence Hardy, letter to Sydney Cockerell, in Michael Millgate (editor), Letters of Emma and Florence Hardy (Oxford University Press 1996).

How like Hardy!  Rather than being frightened out of his wits, he matter-of-factly converses with the spirit as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, blithely responding:  "I like a green Christmas."  Wonderful.  Just like one of his poems.

Harry Bush (1883-1957), "The Christmas Tree" (1933)

The fact that Hardy's ghost conversation took place on Christmas Eve fits well with his Christmas poems, which often have a foggy, gloomy setting, and which are usually marked by the presence of wraiths or wraith-like humans.  This is true of the following two poems, and yet the poems have an oddly cheerful feeling to them -- proving that Hardy is no Scrooge.

     A Nightmare, and the Next Thing

On this decline of Christmas Day
The empty street is fogged and blurred:
The house-fronts all seem backwise turned
As if the outer world were spurned:
Voices and songs within are heard,
Whence red rays gleam when fires are stirred,
Upon this nightmare Christmas Day.

The lamps, just lit, begin to outloom
Like dandelion-globes in the gloom;
The stonework, shop-signs, doors, look bald;
Curious crude details seem installed,
And show themselves in their degrees
As they were personalities
Never discerned when the street was bustling
With vehicles, and farmers hustling.

Three clammy casuals wend their way
To the Union House.  I hear one say:
"Jimmy, this is a treat!  Hay-hay!"

Six laughing mouths, six rows of teeth,
Six radiant pairs of eyes, beneath
Six yellow hats, looking out at the back
Of a waggonette on its slowed-down track
Up the steep street to some gay dance,
Suddenly interrupt my glance.

They do not see a gray nightmare
Astride the day, or anywhere.

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).  A "casual" was either an occasional laborer with no fixed employment or someone who was in need of temporary charitable relief.  The "Union House" was the workhouse in Dorchester, Dorset.

The poem, with its empty, foggy street and its lamps "like dandelion-globes in the gloom" (a lovely description), has a Dickensian "nightmare" feel to it.   But Hardy never states exactly what the "nightmare" is.

Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), "1930 (Christmas Night)" (1930)

The following poem is a variation on the same theme.

               Christmastide

The rain-shafts splintered on me
     As despondently I strode;
The twilight gloomed upon me
     And bleared the blank high-road.
Each bush gave forth, when blown on
     By gusts in shower and shower,
A sigh, as it were sown on
     In handfuls by a sower.

A cheerful voice called, nigh me,
     "A merry Christmas, friend!" --
There rose a figure by me,
     Walking with townward trend,
A sodden tramp's, who, breaking
     Into thin song, bore straight
Ahead, direction taking
     Toward the Casuals' gate.

Thomas Hardy, Ibid.  The "Casuals' gate" was one of the entryways to the Union House mentioned above.

Which in turn leads me to say to all of you whose visits here throughout the year are much-appreciated:  "A merry Christmas, friend!"

Robin Tanner (1904-1988), "Christmas" (1929)

A Lost World, Part Three: "Grave Sweet Ancestral Faces"

The following poem by Kathleen Raine has its source in a painting by Samuel Palmer.  I'm guessing that the painting she has in mind is the one that appears immediately below.  However, any number of paintings and engravings by Palmer (a few of which have appeared here previously) evoke a similar atmosphere.  My sense of Palmer is that he knew he was witnessing the passing of a world, and that he wished to preserve what he could of it before it vanished.

Samuel Palmer

"Coming from Evening Church" (1830)

          Returning from Church

That country spire -- Samuel Palmer knew
What world they entered, who,
Kneeling in English village pew,
Were near those angels whose golden effigies looked down
From Gothic vault or hammer-beam.
Grave sweet ancestral faces
Beheld, Sunday by Sunday, a holy place
Few find, who, pausing now
In empty churches, cannot guess
At those deep simple states of grace.

Kathleen Raine, The Oracle in the Heart (1980).

The poem brings to mind Philip Larkin's "Church Going" and J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country, both of which have a similar elegiac feeling.

Robin Tanner, "Harvest Festival" (1930)

The following poem by Derek Mahon goes well, I think, with Raine's poem.

                 Nostalgias

The chair squeaks in a high wind,
Rain falls from its branches;
The kettle yearns for the mountain,
The soap for the sea.
In a tiny stone church
On a desolate headland
A lost tribe is singing 'Abide With Me'.

Derek Mahon, Selected Poems  (Viking/The Gallery Press 1991).

Nowadays, the word "nostalgia" has acquired a vaguely pejorative sense. As has the word "sentimental," with which it is often paired.  At least that's my perception.  But perhaps I'm being defensive, since I do not find anything inherently wrong with nostalgia or sentimentality, as long as we realize that the past was not "better" in all respects than the world in which we presently live.  I'm pleased that we now have electricity and plumbing. Beyond that . . .

Of course, there are those who choose to believe that we have "advanced" beyond those lost times and that human history is an unbroken narrative of "progress," as measured in scientific and political terms.  How quaint and beguiling a notion.

"Men have judged that a king can make rain; we say this contradicts all experience.  Today they judge that aeroplanes and the radio etc. are means for the closer contact of peoples and the spread of culture."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Paragraph 132 (translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe) (Basil Blackwell 1969).

Samuel Palmer, "A Hilly Scene" (c. 1826)

            New World

New world, I see you dazzle,
Like the sun on a door-knocker
In a straight street inhabited
By people I do not know.

C. H. Sisson, Exactions (Carcanet 1980).

Robin Tanner, "Christmas" (1929)

Filling In The Blanks

Over the past month or so, I have been running into poetic epitaphs by happenstance.  In a recent post, I quoted Edward Thomas:  "all poetry is in a sense love-poetry."  I agree.  But I also think that an argument can be made that all poetry is an elegy.

Hence (it now occurs to me):  "First known when lost."  (Again, courtesy of Edward Thomas.)  As William Allingham writes:  "Everything passes and vanishes;/Everything leaves its trace."  A truism, yes.  But true.

Elegies need not be sorrowful or mournful.  They are simply another form of love-poetry.

Robin Tanner, "The Gamekeeper's Cottage" (1928)

                       In the Month of Athyr

I can just read the inscription on this ancient stone.
"Lo[r]d Jesus Christ."  I make out a "So[u]l."
"In the mon[th] of Athyr"  "Lefkio[s] went to sleep."
Where his age is mentioned -- "lived to the age of" --
the Kappa Zeta shows that he went to sleep a young man.
In the corroded part I see "Hi[m] . . . Alexandrian."
Then there are three badly mutilated lines --
though I can pick out a few words, like "our tea[r]s," "grief,"
then "tears" again, and "sorrow to [us] his [f]riends."
I think Lefkios must have been greatly loved.
In the month of Athyr Lefkios went to sleep.

C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) (Princeton University Press 1975).

The brackets and ellipses appear in the original.  Athyr (also known as "Hathor") was an ancient Egyptian goddess.  "The month of Athyr/Hathor" corresponds to the period from November 10 through December 9 in our modern calendar.  "Kappa" (line 5) is "twenty" in Greek; "Zeta" is "seven."

Robin Tanner, "Martin's Hovel" (1927)

The following poem has appeared here before.  However, because it goes so well with Cavafy's poem, it is worth revisiting.

                    A Form of Epitaph

Name in block letters     None that signified
Purpose of visit     Barely ascertained
Reasons for persevering     Hope -- or pride
Status before admission here     Regained
Previous experience     Nil, or records lost
Requirements     Few in fact, not all unmet
Knowledge accumulated     At a cost
Plans     Vague     Sworn declaration     Not in debt

Evidence of departure     Orthodox
Country of origin     Stateless then, as now
Securities where held     In one wood box
Address for future reference     Below

Is further time desired?     Not the clock's
Was permit of return petitioned?     No

Laurence Whistler, Audible Silence (1961).

The novelty and humor of the fill-in-the-blanks structure used by Whistler tends to mask the fact that the poem is a well-wrought sonnet.

Robin Tanner, "Wren and Primroses" (1935)

Christmas, Part Seven: "Out In The Dark"

Edward Thomas wrote the following poem on December 24, 1916:  his last Christmas Eve in England; his last Christmas Eve.  He was killed at the Battle of Arras less than four months later.

Given these circumstances, there is a temptation to, in retrospect, read things into the poem that are perhaps not there.  In fact, the subject and the emotional tenor of the poem are characteristic of the Edward Thomas that one comes to know from all of his poems.  His personality is evident throughout the poem.  In this regard, I refer you in particular to a phrase in the final line that is quintessential (and lovely) Thomas:  "if you love it not."  The entire poem turns upon those words.

                                    Samuel Palmer, "The Bellman" (1879)

       Out in the Dark

Out in the dark over the snow
The fallow fawns invisible go
With the fallow doe;
And the winds blow
Fast as the stars are slow.

Stealthily the dark haunts round
And, when a lamp goes, without sound
At a swifter bound
Than the swiftest hound,
Arrives, and all else is drowned;

And star and I and wind and deer
Are in the dark together, -- near,
Yet far, -- and fear
Drums on my ear
In that sage company drear.

How weak and little is the light,
All the universe of sight,
Love and delight,
Before the might,
If you love it not, of night.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2008).

               Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), "Snow Falling on a Town"

After Thomas's death, his wife Helen sent a volume of his posthumously-published poetry to Thomas Hardy.  Hardy wrote a letter to her thanking her for the gift, and praising the poetry.  Later, Hardy wrote the following poem.

 The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

One without looks in to-night
        Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
        As we sit and think
        By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
        Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
        Wondering, aglow,
        Fourfooted, tiptoe.

Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922).

It is nice to think that Hardy may have written the poem with "Out in the Dark" in mind.  However, to my knowledge, there is no direct evidence that this is the case.

                                          Robin Tanner, "Christmas" (1929)

"Interval"

"Fair after foul weather" -- the subject of my previous post -- got me to thinking about one of my favorite poems by Edward Thomas.  Thomas started writing poetry in December of 1914, and he wrote the following poem during that month.

When Thomas was debating with himself whether to begin writing poetry, Robert Frost suggested to him that he should, as a start, turn some of his descriptive prose passages into verse.  "Interval" is not, unlike some of Thomas's poems, traceable to a specific passage in his prose writings. However, one can see that he took Frost's advice to heart: the first six stanzas are wholly descriptive.  Of course, to call them merely "descriptive" is to sell them short: very few poets (or writers in general) are capable of writing with such deceptively simple depth.

Then, in the final two stanzas, the touch that makes Thomas who he is (and, I believe, a great poet) comes to the fore:  the sudden turn into a wider realm that is intensely personal and, at the same time, common to us all. Very few poets are capable of carrying this off on a consistent basis. Thomas is one of those who does so, again and again.

                                   Robin Tanner, "Martin's Hovel" (1927)

      Interval

Gone the wild day:
A wilder night
Coming makes way
For brief twilight.

Where the firm soaked road
Mounts and is lost
In the high beech-wood
It shines almost.

The beeches keep
A stormy rest,
Breathing deep
Of wind from the west.

The wood is black,
With a misty steam.
Above, the cloud pack
Breaks for one gleam.

But the woodman's cot
By the ivied trees
Awakens not
To light or breeze.

It smokes aloft
Unwavering:
It hunches soft
Under storm's wing.

It has no care
For gleam or gloom:
It stays there
While I shall roam,

Die, and forget
The hill of trees,
The gleam, the wet,
This roaring peace.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2008).

Note how each of the first six stanzas is a single sentence.  Each stanza is similar in spirit and in imagery (although not in form) to a haiku.  (I am not suggesting that Thomas modeled the stanzas on the haiku form.  This is simply how they strike me.)  The final two stanzas -- which make the turn into the wider realm -- consist of a single sentence that runs across the stanzas.

As is often the case in Thomas's poetry (and prose), death makes an appearance. But, please note: Thomas is not morbidly obsessed with mortality.  Honesty was always his instinctive governing principle.  If death makes an appearance -- or love or beauty -- so be it.  Whatever is in one of his poems is there because it is true to what Thomas thought and felt.  Remember: "True and not feigning."

                                  Paul Drury, "March Morning" (1933)

"Christmastide"

As we are still in "Christmastide" as traditionally defined, the following poem by Thomas Hardy remains in season.  It is worth a chuckle to see gloomy T. H. greeted with stubborn good will when he least expects it.  

A lesson for us all, some might say.

               Christmastide

The rain-shafts splintered on me
   As despondently I strode;
The twilight gloomed upon me
   And bleared the blank high-road.
Each bush gave forth, when blown on
   By gusts in shower and shower,
A sigh, as it were sown on
   In handfuls by a sower.

A cheerful voice called, nigh me,
   'A merry Christmas, friend!' --
There rose a figure by me,
   Walking with townward trend,
A sodden tramp's, who, breaking
   Into thin song, bore straight
Ahead, direction taking
   Toward the Casuals' gate.

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).

"The Casuals' gate" was an entry to the "Union House" (the workhouse) in Dorchester.  "In Hardy's time any 'casual' (pauper or tramp) could apply to the police for a ticket, with which he would be admitted for supper, a bed, and breakfast." J. O. Bailey, The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: A Handbook and Commentary (1970), page 581.

                                        Robin Tanner, "Christmas" (1929)

"The Star's Impulse Must Wait For Eyes To Claim It Beautiful"

I presume that most of us have had thoughts similar to those expressed by Louis MacNeice in "Star-gazer" (which appeared in my previous post).  I am wilfully ignorant of science, but the idea of starlight travelling through the ages to arrive here before our eyes is of interest to me as a mortal.  The thought that tonight's starlight left its various homes untold years before I was born is wonderful, sad, and somehow comforting.  As is the thought that starlight leaving its homes tonight will arrive here untold years after I am gone.

Likewise, the possibility of some sort of connection between time-travelling starlight and love is of great interest.  Even though it is not scientifically provable.  This, of course, is the business of poetry.

                              Delay

The radiance of that star that leans on me
Was shining years ago.  The light that now
Glitters up there my eye may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent.  The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

Elizabeth Jennings, Poems (1953).

                                     Robin Tanner, "The Plough" (1973)

"A Quality Of Irresponsibility Peculiar To This Century, Known Sometimes As Modernism"

For Philip Larkin, the baleful influence of "modernism" on 20th century culture was embodied in "the three Ps":  Pound, Picasso, and Parker (Charlie).  Of course, we should bear in mind that Larkin was wont to play the role of reactionary Philistine in order to get a rise out of people (particularly interviewers).  But he was entirely serious.  And he was entirely correct.

His best discussion of the subject is found in a somewhat out-of-the-way place:  his introduction to All What Jazz, a collection of the record (yes, record) reviews that he wrote for The Daily Telegraph in the Sixties and early Seventies.  The discussion occurs in the context of Larkin's explanation of his increasing disenchantment with jazz:

"All I am saying is that the term 'modern,' when applied to art, has a more than chronological meaning:  it denotes a quality of irresponsibility peculiar to this century, known sometimes as modernism, and once I had classified modern jazz under this heading I knew where I was.  I am sure there are books in which the genesis of modernism is set out in full.  My own theory is that it is related to an imbalance between the two tensions from which art springs:  these are the tension between the artist and his material, and between the artist and his audience, and that in the last seventy-five years or so the second of these has slackened or even perished.  In consequence the artist has become over-concerned with his material (hence an age of technical experiment), and, in isolation, has busied himself with the two principal themes of modernism, mystification and outrage."

Philip Larkin, All What Jazz (Faber and Faber 1970; second edition, 1985), page 23.

Larkin then enumerates (entertainingly) some of the typical products of modernism:

"Piqued at being neglected, he has painted portraits with both eyes on the same side of the nose, or smothered a model with paint and rolled her over a blank canvas.  He has designed a dwelling-house to be built underground.  He has written poems resembling the kind of pictures typists make with their machines during the coffee break, or a novel in gibberish, or a play in which the characters sit in dustbins.  He has made a six-hour film of someone asleep.  He has carved human figures with large holes in them.  And parallel to this activity ('every idiom has its idiot,' as an American novelist has written) there has grown up a kind of critical journalism designed to put it over."

Ibid.  The examples given by Larkin (he was writing in 1968) now seem almost quaint given what has passed for "art" and "literature" in the intervening years.   

Larkin closes as follows:

"I dislike such things not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction of human life as we know it.  This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by Parker, Pound or Picasso:  it helps us neither to enjoy nor endure.  It will divert us as long as we are prepared to be mystified or outraged, but maintains its hold only by being more mystifying and more outrageous:  it has no lasting power."

Ibid, page 27.  Larkin adds a footnote to "Parker, Pound or Picasso" in the above passage:  "The reader will have guessed by now that I am using these pleasantly alliterative names to represent not only their rightful owners but every practitioner who might be said to have succeeded them."

Alas, the horses have long been gone from the barn.  But, as I have suggested before, perhaps each generation feels that this is so.  In any case, as "civilization" and "culture" at large go their merry and horrific way, it is always up to someone -- a monk in a dim cell copying manuscripts in the Dark Ages -- to preserve what is of true value.  (Well, that's sorted.  I will now descend from the soapbox.)

                                 Robin Tanner, "Martin's Hovel" (1927) 

"How Sordid Is This Crowded Life"

My previous post about the poetry of Ryokan and Wang Wei brought to mind a poem by W. H. Davies (1871-1940).  Davies's poetry is mostly forgotten now, but his work was praised by the likes of Edward Thomas.  (Thomas provided financial assistance to Davies, even though Thomas's own finances were always precarious.  They became friends, and Davies wrote "Killed in Action (Edward Thomas)" after Thomas's death in 1917.)  Davies's style is perhaps quaint by "modern" standards, but there are gems to be found in his work.          

       How Sordid Is This Crowded Life

How sordid is this crowded life, its spite
And envy, the unkindness brought to light:
It makes me think of those great modest hearts
That spend their quiet lives in lonely parts,
In deserts, hills and woods; and pass away
Judged by a few, or none, from day to day.
And O that I were free enough to dwell
In their great spaces for a while; until
The dream-like life of such a solitude
Has forced my tongue to cry 'Hallo!' aloud --
To make an echo from the silence give
My voice back with the knowledge that I live.

W. H. Davies, Complete Poems (1963).

Davies (who was a sociable fellow) suggests that, in the end, a life of retreat might be too much for him.  In this regard, Ryokan, who lived in his hut for 25 years, is forthright in his depiction of such a life, and faithfully records both the good and the bad.  But his contentment, I think, underlies everything he wrote.

The vicissitudes of this world are like the movements of the clouds.
Fifty years of life are nothing but one long dream.
Sparse rain:  in my desolate hermitage at night,
Quietly I clutch my robe and lean against the empty window.

John Stevens (translator), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (1977).

                    Robin Tanner, "The Gamekeeper's Cottage" (1928)

"One Almost Might": A. S. J. Tessimond

In the following poem, A. S. J. Tessimond (1902-1962) suggests that we should approach things at a different angle from that proposed by Weldon Kees in "To Build a Quiet City in His Mind."  Rather than constructing something new, perhaps the better course is to slow down and consider things more closely -- unravel a tangled skein.  But Kees and Tessimond may, after all, be seeking the same thing:  peace and quiet. 

                            One Almost Might

Wouldn't you say,
Wouldn't you say: one day,
With a little more time or a little more patience, one might
Disentangle for separate, deliberate, slow delight
One of the moment's hundred strands, unfray
Beginnings from endings, this from that, survey
Say a square inch of the ground one stands on, touch
Part of oneself or a leaf or a sound (not clutch
Or cuff or bruise but touch with finger-tip, ear-
Tip, eyetip, creeping near yet not too near);
Might take up life and lay it on one's palm
And, encircling it in closeness, warmth and calm,
Let it lie still, then stir smooth-softly, and
Tendril by tendril unfold, there on one's hand . . .

One might examine eternity's cross-section
For a second, with slightly more patience, more time for reflection?

A. S. J. Tessimond, The Walls of Glass (1934).  The poem looks relaxed and conversational, but note the rhymed couplets.

                             Robin Tanner, "Wren and Primroses" (1935)

"Yuletide In A Younger World"

Thomas Hardy was not always the cheeriest of characters.  (How's that for an understatement?)  However, he did seem to have a bit of (just a bit of) a soft spot in his heart for Christmas.  Still, ghosts and beggars do make appearances in some of his Christmas poems.  The following poem was written by Hardy when he was in his eighties -- it has no frightful ghosts, just fondly-remembered wraiths from Christmases past.

              Yuletide in a Younger World

   We believed in highdays then,
      And could glimpse at night
         On Christmas Eve
Imminent oncomings of radiant revel --
      Doings of delight: --
      Now we have no such sight.

   We had eyes for phantoms then,
      And at bridge or stile
         On Christmas Eve
Clear beheld those countless ones who had crossed it
      Cross again in file: --
      Such has ceased longwhile!

   We liked divination then,
      And, as they homeward wound
         On Christmas Eve,
We could read men's dreams within them spinning
      Even as wheels spin round: --
      Now we are blinker-bound.

   We heard still small voices then,
      And, in the dim serene
         Of Christmas Eve,
Caught the far-time tones of fire-filled prophets
      Long on earth unseen. . . .
      -- Can such ever have been?

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).

                                       Robin Tanner, "Christmas" (1929)

On Remembrance Day

On Remembrance Day, I shall stay with Edward Thomas.  As is so often the case, he accomplishes quietly what others seek to accomplish in high-toned language.

                                A Private

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frosty night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
'At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush,' said he,
'I slept.'  None knew which bush.  Above the town,
Beyond 'The Drover', a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire.  And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France -- that, too, he secret keeps.

Thomas wrote the poem in January of 1915.  He enlisted in July of that year.

                                Robin Tanner, "Still Is The Land" (1983)

"An Infinite Rustling And Sighing": Derek Mahon

I fear that I am wearing out my autumn welcome, but please bear with me as another leaf-tinged offering arrives.  The following poem is by Derek Mahon.

                    Leaves

The prisoners of infinite choice
Have built their house
In a field below the wood
And are at peace.

It is autumn, and dead leaves
On their way to the river
Scratch like birds at the windows
Or tick on the road.

Somewhere there is an afterlife
Of dead leaves,
A stadium filled with an infinite
Rustling and sighing.

Somewhere in the heaven
Of lost futures
The lives we might have lived
Have found their own fulfilment.

Derek Mahon, Selected Poems (The Gallery Press/Viking 1991).

                       Robin Tanner, "The Gamekeeper's Cottage" (1928)

"One Comes Across The Strangest Things In Walks"

Ivor Gurney admired Walt Whitman.  I suspect (and this is pure speculation on my part given my limited knowledge of Gurney) that one of the things that Gurney liked about Whitman was Whitman's  (seemingly) stream-of-consciousness cataloguing of what one stumbles upon in the world.  Here is a wonderful example from Gurney:

                              Encounters

One comes across the strangest things in walks:
Fragments of abbey tithe barns fixed in modern,
With Dutch-sort houses, where the water baulks,
Weired up, and brick-kilns broken among fern;
Old troughs, great stone cisterns priests might have blessed
For mere liking, most worthy mounting-stones;
Black timber in red brick, surprisingly placed
Where hill-stone was looked for; and a manor's bones
Spied in the frame of some wisteria'd house;
And mill-falls and sedge-pools, and Saxon faces;
Stream sources happened upon in unlikely places;
And Roman-looking hills of small degree.
The surprise, the good in dignity of poplars
At a road's end, or the white Cotswold scars --
Sheets spread out spotless against the hazel-tree.

And toothless old men, bubbling over with jokes,
And deadly serious once the speaking finished.
Beauty is less, after all, than strange comical folks,
And the wonder of them never and never can become diminished.

Published in The London Mercury, Volume VI, Number 36 (October, 1922).

I hesitate to call attention to one small piece of the marvelous whole, but I cannot help but observe what a beautiful touch it is for Gurney to write "never and never" in the final line rather than simply "never."

                                           Robin Tanner, "June" (1946)

"Dear Clifford's Seat": A Lost World

From the January 14, 1922, issue of Notes and Queries (Twelfth Series, Volume X, No. 196, contributed by F. C. Morgan):

"Dear Clifford's Seat.  At a village near Stratford-upon-Avon, called in [Michael Drayton's] Polyalbion
     dear Clifford's seat (the place of health and sport)
     Which many a time hath been the Muse's quiet port,
I believe that a record has recently been established, proving that Drayton was correct in calling this picturesque spot 'the place of health.'  In 1887 the church was restored, and when the work was completed a new team of ringers was appointed.  These same men rang many changes on the bells without a change among themselves until 1919, 32 years, when the conductor died, and his brother, not wishing to continue after this loss, resigned.  Their names were George Lynes (conductor), James Lynes, William Lively, John Lively, Enoch Lively, John Bettridge and John Salmon.  John Lively has been clerk since 1887, having then succeeded his father, who had held the office for 27 years.

In the same village the staff of eight men working at the mill in 1919 had lengths of service ranging from 30 years to upwards of 50.

These facts were communicated to me by Mr. John James, churchwarden, who annually at Christmas invites the ringers to a feast, where good fare, song and story fill up a pleasant evening."

A lost world: bell-ringers; their annual Christmas dinner, with "good fare, song and story"; a mill at the end of a green lane -- "dear Clifford's seat."  But I am half a world and a hundred years away.  Did the bell-ringers and the men in the mill indeed feel that Clifford's seat was dear?  Or did they long for somewhere else?  It would depend, of course, upon who you talked to.  Yet still I daydream of "dear Clifford's seat."

                      Robin Tanner (1904-1988), "Christmas" (1929)