Lists, Part Seven: As The Year Comes To A Close

As the year comes to a close, we are encouraged to come up with resolutions that will help us to straighten up and fly right in the new year.  I'm afraid that my resolutions are the usual prosaic suspects:  fewer words are better (i.e., don't add to the cacophony); simpler is better; kindness is better.  All of which will be broken within the next 15 minutes or so.

But here is one that I hope might have a longer duration:  pay closer attention.  The following poem by Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006) provides a good start.

   Green Waters

Green Waters
Blue Spray
Grayfish

Anna T
Karen B
Netta Croan

Constant Star
Daystar
Starwood

Starlit Waters
Moonlit Waters
Drift

Ian Hamilton Finlay, in The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry (Edna Longley, editor) (2000).

                                 Richard Eurich, "Dorset Cove" (1939)

   Some Preliminary Definitions

Your life:
A collection of facts;
A succession of desires;
A whirl of thoughts.

Your death:
Abiding;
Unfathomable.

The world around you:
An intractable paradise.

sip

               Richard Eurich, "Coast Scene with Rainbow" (1952-1953)

How to Live, Part Fourteen: "Compare And Contrast"

I am writing this in the oak-dotted and, sometimes, vineyard-covered hills of the Central Coast of California.  In the afternoon, quail visit a bird feeder out on a lawn.  Skittish but purposeful, they scurry and stop, scurry and stop, a perfectly choreographed head-bobbing group. 

The following poem by Norman MacCaig seems apt.  I would perhaps be open to charges of simple-mindedness if I were to suggest that the poem provides a wholly practical piece of advice on How to Live.  Yet, there is a truth circling about, in a good-humored way.

      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.

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

                     Frances Hodgkins, "Wings over Water" (1931-1932)

A poem by Michael Longley may be apt as well.

              Out There

Do they ever meet out there,
The dolphins I counted,
The otter I wait for?
I should have spent my life
Listening to the waves.

Michael Longley, The Ghost Orchid (1995).

                                      Frances Hodgkins, "The Weir"

"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)

R. S. Thomas On Christmas, Part Two

I have decided that R. S. Thomas's Christmas poetry deserves a second visit.  A side-note:  I find it interesting that most of his Christmas poems (at least the ones that I have been able to find) are in the two-stanza, eight-line form found in the following poems and in the three poems that appeared in my previous post.  It is probably merely a matter of coincidence, and may simply be a reflection of his laconic personality.

            Carol

What is Christmas without
snow?  We need it
as bread of a cold
climate, ermine to trim

our sins with, a brief
sleeve for charity's
scarecrow to wear its heart
on, bold as a robin.

R. S. Thomas, Later Poems (1983).

                       James Fletcher Watson, "Winter in Norfolk" (1956)

        Christmas Eve

Erect capital's arch;
decorate it with the gilt edge
of the moon.  Pave the way to it
with cheques and with credit --

it is still not high enough
for the child to pass under
who comes to us this midnight
invisible as radiation.

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

                  William Ratcliffe, "Beehives in the Snow, Sweden" (1913)

          Nativity

The moon is born
and a child is born,
lying among white clothes
as the moon among clouds.

They both shine, but
the light from the one
is abroad in the universe
as among broken glass.

R. S. Thomas, Experimenting with an Amen (1986).

               Winifred Nicholson, "Rooks, Hyacinth and Snow" (c. 1935)

R. S. Thomas On Christmas

The word that comes to mind when I think of R. S. Thomas is fierce. However, having said that, I feel that I have fallen into the stereotypical view of Thomas as The World's Grumpiest Poet.  To wit, the man who was peremptory when not silent, living in an unheated stone cottage on the coast of Wales.   To my mind, this makes him, well, a human being.  And, of course, there's this:  his poetry is often graceful and beautiful.

Thomas's fierceness is reflected in his lifelong battle with God.  This battle consisted of Thomas stubbornly waiting upon God's equally stubborn silence, with Thomas commenting upon this state of affairs in his poems. The battle was made a great deal more piquant by the fact that Thomas served as an Anglican priest for 42 years, ministering to rural parishes in Wales (the subject of another of his love-hate relationships).

All of this leads to a seasonal note:  over the years, Thomas wrote a number of lovely Christmas poems.  How shall I describe the poems?  A bit fierce, yes, but withal lovely.  A selection follows.

                Song

I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one

Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness,
But with a sharp song.

R. S. Thomas, H'm (1972).

                                        John Aldridge, "Winter" (1947)

                  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 (1995).

                                 John Nash, "The Garden in Winter" (1967)

                  Lost Christmas

He is alone, it is Christmas.
Up the hill go three trees, the three kings.
There is a star also
Over the dark manger.  But where is the Child?

Pity him.  He has come far
Like the trees, matching their patience
With his.  But the mind was before
Him on the long road.  The manger is empty.

R. S. Thomas, Young and Old (1972).

                                     Adrian Paul Allinson (1890-1959)
                         "Landscape with Trees, a Lake and a Village"

A Christmas Robin, Out Of Season

Robert Graves is adept at putting a twist on things.  Thus, the Christmas robin in the following poem is, in fact, a February robin.  Still, the out-of-season robin reawakens all that is (to borrow from a well-known song) merry and bright about the holiday.  But it also brings in tow (to borrow from a well-known tale) the spectre of an uncertain future.

                 The Christmas Robin

The snows of February had buried Christmas
Deep in the woods, where grew self-seeded
The fir-trees of a Christmas yet unknown,
Without a candle or a strand of tinsel.

Nevertheless when, hand in hand, plodding
Between the frozen ruts, we lovers paused
And 'Christmas trees!' cried suddenly together,
Christmas was there again, as in December.

We velveted our love with fantasy
Down a long vista-row of Christmas trees,
Whose coloured candles slowly guttered down
As grandchildren came trooping round our knees.

But he knew better, did the Christmas robin --
The murderous robin with his breast aglow
And legs apart, in a spade-handle perched:
He prophesied more snow, and worse than snow.

Robert Graves, Collected Poems (1938).

                            Harald Sohlberg, "A View of Vestfold" (1909)

Hemlocks And Peacocks: "Turning In The Wind, Turning As The Flames Turned In The Fire"

R. S. Thomas's "Winter" reminded me of one of Wallace Stevens's finest poems.  It is a poem that Stevens wrote in his dandyish, rococo earlier years, and it exhibits some of the verbal playfulness of that time.  However, it also has the simplicity of statement that marks his wonderful late poetry (i.e., the poems that he wrote when he was in his seventies).  Which is not to say that the poem is "simple."  Stevens is rarely easy.  But the poem may change the way you think of hemlocks and peacocks.

         Domination of Black

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks.
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923).

Here is something that may be worth considering:  might the peacocks have something to do with A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts?  And how does The Candle a Saint fit in?

           Jan Griffier the Elder, "Dutch Snow Scene with Skaters" (c. 1695)

Winter

I intend to visit R. S. Thomas's Christmas poems next week, but, for now, the following poem by him is a nice companion piece to Norman Nicholson's "December Song," which appeared in my previous post.  (If nothing else, they both contain robins.)

            Winter

Evening.  A fire
in the grate and a fire
outside, where a robin
is burning.  How they both
sing, offering a friendship
unacceptable to the hand
that is as vulnerable to the one
as it is treacherous to the other.

Ah, time, enemy of their music,
reducing fuel to feathers, feathers
to ash, it was, but a moment ago,
spring in this tinder:  flames
in flower that are now embers
on song's hearth.
                                 The leaves fall
from a dark tree, brimming
with shadow, fall on one who,
as Borges suggested,
is no more perhaps than the dream God
in his loneliness is dreaming.

R. S. Thomas, Mass for Hard Times (Bloodaxe Books 1992).

                  Alfred Munnings, "From My Bedroom Window" (1930)

I have little knowledge of the works of Borges, so I do not know the source of the reference made by Thomas at the end of the poem.  However, I once read something by Borges (I cannot recall if it was a poem, a story, or an essay) in which he referred to Chuang Tzu's parable of the butterfly.  The parable has some affinity, I think, with what Thomas writes about in the final three lines of the poem.  However, I have no idea if this is what Thomas had in mind.

Burton Watson translates Chuang Tzu's parable as follows:

"Once Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased.  He didn't know he was Chuang Tzu.  Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Tzu.  But he didn't know if he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu."

Burton Watson (translator), The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (1968).

                          Eugene Jansson, "Hornsgatan by Night" (1902)

"December Song"

With frost on the roofs in the mornings, it feels like winter has arrived.  It is nice to see the bare, intricate branches of the trees against the sky again. Not to mention the snowmen, reindeer, Santa Clauses, and (occasionally) penguins standing on the porches and lawns, aglow from within.  The world is as it ought to be:  clear and sharp and cheerful.  For a while, for a while.

                 Douglas Percy Bliss, "Urban Garden under Snow" (c. 1946)

             December Song

                      On the eaves
A robin sings, with berry eyes
And breast redder than the dead leaves
Dangling his notes like beads,
A luminous, tinkling string.
A robin sings in the evening,
Under smoky December skies --
            And so would I sing.

                      In the sky
A star shines on the kerb of day.
The waking night from light-bleared eye
With one clear, glowing tear is weeping,
Dipping its lids to mine.
A star shines in the dusk,
Not frosted yet by the Milky Way --
            And so would I shine.

Norman Nicholson, Rock Face (1948).

                                                Douglas Percy Bliss
                      "Winter Landscape, Liberton, Edinburgh" (c. 1925)

Frost, Blossoms, Snow, And Moonlight

I am fond of the following poem by W. H. Davies (1871-1940).  It often comes to mind at this time of year.

                 Nailsworth Hill

The Moon, that peeped as she came up,
   Is clear on top, with all her light;
She rests her chin on Nailsworth Hill,
   And, where she looks, the World is white.

White with her light -- or is it Frost,
   Or is it Snow her eyes have seen;
Or is it Cherry blossom there,
   Where no such trees have ever been?

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

                     Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), "Full Moon at Seba"

Over the past few months, when reading Chinese and Japanese poetry, I have been coming across images of frost and blossoms and snow and moonlight being confused.  From China, here is a poem by Li Po:

          Still Night Thoughts

Moonlight in front of my bed --
I took it for frost on the ground!
I lift my eyes to watch the mountain moon,
lower them and dream of home.

Li Po (translated by Burton Watson), The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (1984).

The following poem is by Po Chu-i:

                            Village Night

Gray gray of frosty grasses, insects chirp-chirping;
south of the village, north of the village, no sign of travelers.
Alone I go out in front of the gate, gazing over the fields;
in the bright moonlight, buckwheat blossoms are like snow.

Po Chu-i (translated by Burton Watson), Ibid.

                                                     Utagawa Hiroshige
                                            "Reflected Moon, Sarashima"

From Japan, here is a poem by Kokan Shiren (1278-1345):

                         Winter Moon

Opening the window at midnight, the night air cold,
Garden and roof a gleaming white,
I go to the verandah, stretch out my hand to scoop up some snow --
Didn't I know that moonlight won't make a ball?

Kokan Shiren (translated by David Pollack), Zen Poems of the Five Mountains (1985).

And, finally, from Ryokan:

Fresh morning snow in front of the shrine.
The trees!  Are they white with peach blossoms
Or white with snow?
The children and I joyfully throw snowballs.

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

                                                     Utagawa Hiroshige
                           "Catching Fish by Moonlight on the Tama River"