A Thought In Passing

The neighborhood dogs are quite pleased with the current state of affairs.  People are working at home.  The schools are closed.  The weather has been lovely.  What better thing for a family to do than take a walk, or frolic in the park?  I have been doing so nearly every afternoon for many years, and I always return home in a state of contentment.

Look at the dogs walking with their families, or chasing a ball in the park:  they seem a bit perplexed by this sudden turn of events; but, dwellers in the moment that they are, they couldn't be happier -- more time with the people they love!  We humans are alone with our thoughts, as ever.  Well, thinking about the plague isn't going to change anything.  Why not go for a walk?  You never know what you may come across as you fare through the World.

               The Mayo Tao

I have abandoned the dream kitchens for a low fire
     and a prescriptive
          literature of the spirit.
A storm snores on the desolate sea.

The nearest shop is four miles away.
     When I walk there
          through the shambles of the morning
for tea and firelighters,
     the mountain paces me
          in a snow-lit silence.

My days are spent in conversation
     with stags and blackbirds;
          at night fox and badger
               gather at my door.

I have stood for hours watching
     a salmon doze
          in the tea-gold dark,
for weeks watching a spider weave
     in a pale light, for months
listening to the sob-story
     of a stone on the road --
          the best, most monotonous
sob-story I have ever heard.

I am an expert on frost crystals
     and the silence of crickets,
a confidant of the stinking shore,
     the stars in the mud.

(There is an immanence in these things
     which drives me, despite
          my scepticism, almost
     to the point of speech --
          like sunlight cleaving
     the lake mist at morning
or when tepid water runs cold at last from the tap.)

I have been working for years
     on a four-line poem
          about the life of a leaf.
I think it may come out right this winter.

Derek Mahon, Poems 1962-1978 (Oxford University Press 1979).

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Springtime in Eskdale" (1935)

Wind. Leaves.

I am of two minds about the wind of autumn.  On the one hand, I long for a windless world in which the brilliant leaves remain where they are, free of change.  On the other hand, the autumn wind has its own evocative beauty: the boughs sway as in spring and summer, but the latticework of light and shadow on the ground is different, as is the rustling overhead.  Then, in time, come the fallen leaves, rattling along the ground, leading us forward or dogging our steps.

I have no choice in the matter, of course.  These thoughts are merely human wishful thinking.  The story of our lives.  The wind does as it pleases.

This week, however, was the best of both worlds:  four days of blue skies, with a steady breeze that cleared the clouds, but which was not strong enough to bring down the leaves, most of which are not yet ready to let go. One might imagine that this could go on for ever.

          Swift Beauty

Wind that is in orchards
     Playing with apple-trees
Soon will be leagues away
     In the old rookeries.

Vaguely it arises,
     Swiftly it hurries hence: --
Like sudden beauty
     Blown over sense:

Like all unheeded
     Beautiful things that pass
Under the leaves of life,
     Just touching the grass.

F. W. Harvey, September and Other Poems (Sidgwick and Jackson 1925).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Autumn, Kinnordy" (1936)

Passing through sublimity, autumn brings us to simplicity.

The wind has brought
     enough fallen leaves
To make a fire.

Ryōkan (translated by John Stevens), in John Stevens, One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan (Weatherhill 1977), page 67.

There is a message in this simplicity, but I shan't be dogmatic about it.  I will only say that the messengers from the non-natural world try their best to complicate life, when it is actually very simple. "Everything passes and vanishes;/Everything leaves its trace."

     Blowing from the west,
Fallen leaves gather
     In the east.

Buson (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 362.

Is it a matter of "what to make of a diminished thing"?  (Robert Frost, "The Oven Bird.")  Perhaps.  But here is another way of looking at it:  "Now I can see certain simplicities/In the darkening rust and tarnish of the time,/And say over the certain simplicities."  (Howard Nemerov, "A Spell before Winter.")

James McIntosh Patrick, "Wellbank, Rossie Priory"

On the road to simplicity, one departs from the Land of Know-It-Alls and the Kingdom of Opinions.  Ah, what a relief that is!  No more explanations, no more agendas, no more hectoring.  No more "news."  A wondrously unknowable world.

               Nobody Knows

Often I've heard the Wind sigh
     By the ivied orchard wall,
Over the leaves in the dark night,
     Breathe a sighing call,
And faint away in the silence,
     While I, in my bed,
Wondered, 'twixt dreaming and waking,
     What it said.

Nobody knows what the Wind is,
     Under the height of the sky,
Where the hosts of the stars keep far away house
     And its wave sweeps by --
Just a great wave of the air,
     Tossing the leaves in its sea,
And foaming under the eaves of the roof
     That covers me.

And so we live under deep water,
     All of us, beasts and men,
And our bodies are buried down under the sand,
     When we go again;
And leave, like the fishes, our shells,
     And float on the Wind and away,
To where, o'er the marvellous tides of the air,
     Burns day.

Walter de la Mare, Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes (1913).

"Nobody Knows" appears in one of Walter de la Mare's collections of "children's verse."  But de la Mare's poems for children are like Christina Rossetti's "nursery rhymes":  they are ostensibly directed at an audience of children, but the wisdom of the poems belies this seeming limitation.

Who has seen the wind?
     Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling
     The wind is passing thro'.

Who has seen the wind?
     Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
     The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Stobo Kirk, Peeblesshire" (1936)

And, yes, what is autumn without a visit to mortality?  We all know what lies at the heart of the season's sublimity, what gives the wind and the leaves their wistful and bittersweet beauty.  Autumn is, after all, life itself, presented to us for a few breathtaking days that rush away as we try to hold on to them.

"Undertake each action as one aware he may next moment depart out of life."

Marcus Aurelius (translated by Francis Hutcheson and James Moor), Meditations, Book II, Section 11, in Francis Hutcheson and James Moor, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (1742).

Here is an alternative, perhaps more piquant, translation:

"Manage all your actions and thoughts in such a manner as if you were just going to step into the grave."

Marcus Aurelius (translated by Jeremy Collier), Ibid, in Jeremy Collier, The Emperor Marcus Antoninus, His Conversation with Himself (1702).

What is autumn saying?  The same thing that the World is saying:  Pay attention.  Live.

     The autumn wind is blowing;
We are alive and can see each other,
     You and I.

Masaoka Shiki (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 413.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Byroad near Kingoodie" (1962)

Becoming A Poem

Those who have departed often return unexpectedly.  One then feels ashamed for having failed to properly attend to one's memories of them. This is not a matter of ghosts or of spirits, but of full-bodied presences in the mind's-eye:  when they return, they are right there in front of us.  Silent.

          Last Poem

Stand at the grave's head
Of any common
Man or woman,
Thomas Hardy said,
And in the silence
What they were,
Their life, becomes a poem.

And so with my dead,
As I know them
Now, in his
And her
Long silences;
And wait for, yet a while hence,
My own silence.

F. T. Prince, Collected Poems: 1935-1992 (The Sheep Meadow Press 1993).

Here is the lovely inspiration for Prince's poem:

"The most prosaic man becomes a poem when you stand by his grave at his funeral and think of him."

Thomas Hardy, notebook entry for May 29, 1872, in Richard Taylor (editor), The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy (Macmillan 1978).

I'm surprised that Prince uses "common" rather than Hardy's "prosaic": the transition from "prosaic" to "poem" is wonderful.  I'd wager that Hardy would have described himself as prosaic.  Aren't we all?  And "common" as well.  Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't faced the facts.

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Midsummer, East Fife" (1936)

The following passage perhaps provides a roundabout instance of what Hardy has in mind.

Thus did he speak.  "I see around me here
Things which you cannot see:  we die, my Friend,
Nor we alone, but that which each man loved
And prized in his peculiar nook of earth
Dies with him, or is changed; and very soon
Even of the good is no memorial left."

William Wordsworth, "Book First: The Wanderer," lines 469-474, The Excursion, in Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire (editors), The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Volume V (Oxford University Press 1949), page 24.

The lines are spoken by "the Wanderer."  "The Author" has found him drowsing in the sun, "the shadows of the breezy elms above/Dappling his face."  Ibid, lines 440-441.  The Excursion is a diffuse poem, with a tendency towards the long-winded, but one of the things that Wordsworth may be getting at is that we all have it in us to live, like the Wanderer, in our own "peculiar nook of earth."  But does that nook indeed die with us?  Is there "no memorial left" of how we have lived?

Hardy suggests that each of us ("prosaic" though we are), together with our peculiar nook, becomes a poem.  It certainly seems that way when the departed return to visit us.  A sentimental notion, I concede.  But I have no quarrel with sentimentality.

James McIntosh Patrick, "A Castle in Scotland"

I suspect that the subject matter of this post may be traceable to the fact that I have been visiting Thomas Hardy's poetry over the past few weeks.  As I have noted in the past, communings with the departed are a matter-of-fact occurrence in Hardy's poetry.  Things are seen out of the corner of one's eye.  There are tappings on windows and whispers in the boughs of trees. But these signals are never a cause for alarm.  Hardy -- sunk in the past as he was -- treats them as commonplaces.  Who does not think of the dead? And who's to say they are not thinking of us?

Hardy admired the poetry of Charlotte Mew, and he, along with others, helped procure a Civil List Pension for her when she was in financial straits.  The departed are plentiful in her poetry as well.

                              Here Lies a Prisoner

               Leave him:  he's quiet enough:  and what matter
               Out of his body or in, you can scatter
The frozen breath of his silenced soul, of his outraged soul to the winds
          that rave:
Quieter now than he used to be, but listening still to the magpie chatter
                                   Over his grave.

Charlotte Mew, Complete Poems (edited by John Newton) (Penguin 2000).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Downie Mill" (1962)

In the end, we all return to silence, don't we?

       The Best Thing to Say

The best thing to say is nothing
And that I do not say,
But I will say it, when I lie
In silence all the day.

C. H. Sisson, Collected Poems (Carcanet 1998).

"The Best Thing to Say" is one of Sisson's harrowing final poems, a selection of which appeared here five years ago.  He doesn't present a pretty picture.  Thus, it falls upon Thomas Hardy -- the purported "pessimist" -- to provide us with hope.  Yes, each of us returns to silence.  But we each become a poem.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Braes o' Lundie"

From A Window

I am always skeptical of people who display a high degree of certainty about how the World works.  Such certainty is often grounded in politics, science, or theology.  Or narcissism.  Or madness.

How can they be so certain?  Part of me (a very small part) on occasion envies them:  such certainty makes things seem simpler.  It appears to provide an explanation for what confounds us.  (Seem and appears are the operative words.)  The World is beyond peradventure a confounding place, so I understand certainty's attraction.

Alas, my sole certainty is this:  the World shall for ever remain a mystery to me.  Take a look out the window.   Everything before you is a beautiful enigma.

                              From My Window

Now when the University students have abandoned
their game of bowls in the garden, with their cries of "Two" or "Six"
and the evening sky goes soured milk,

There are left the brightening windows of the rich owners of flats;
their meaningless finny gestures, dumb departures and entries;
a deaf man's theatre twenty times.

And quite indifferent towards the students or the rich
there are left the children of the poor, playing tag on a sandy waste,
and miles off southward ring the trams.

Alone on a building site a watchdog stalks by the fire,
wooed and repulsed by the jump-away flames, or raises its head
at a barking that chips a hole in distance.

Bernard Spencer, With Luck Lasting (Hodder and Stoughton 1963).

Carlo Pedreschi, "View from Duncan of Jordanstone College" (1976)

The quotidian (I use "quotidian" in an entirely affirmative, non-pejorative sense) is suffused with ineffable mystery.  Each of us, for instance: quotidian souls, each with infinite value.

               From My Window

An old man leaning on a gate
Over a London mews -- to contemplate --
Is it the sky above -- the stones below?
     Is it remembrance of the years gone by,
     Or thinking forward to futurity
That holds him so?

Day after day he stands,
Quietly folded are the quiet hands,
Rarely he speaks.
     Hath he so near the hour when Time shall end,
     So much to spend?
What is it he seeks?

Whate'er he be,
He is become to me
A form of rest.
     I think his heart is tranquil, from it springs
     A dreamy watchfulness of tranquil things,
And not unblest.

Mary Coleridge, in Theresa Whistler (editor), The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge (Rupert Hart-Davis 1954).

I admire Coleridge's deference and discretion.  She speculates, but she does not attempt to caricature or pigeon-hole the man.  And her speculations are gentle and lovely:  "I think his heart is tranquil, from it springs/A dreamy watchfulness of tranquil things,/And not unblest."

Cedric Morris, "From a Window at 45 Brook Street, London" (1926)

Do we ever truly know ourselves?  How, then, can we presume to know others?  The worst sort of certainty is that certainty which makes assumptions about the soul of another.

                    Neighbours

From the bay windows
Of the mouldering hotel across the road from us
Mysterious, one-night itinerants emerge
On to their balconies
To breathe the cool night air.

We let them stare
In at our quiet lives.
They let us wonder what's become of them.

Ian Hamilton, Fifty Poems (Faber and Faber 1988).

James McIntosh Patrick, "The Tay Bridge from My Studio Window" (1948)

"A single grain of rice falling -- into the Great Barn."  So writes Po Chu-i. Such a realization is a source of freedom, not a sentence of doom.

                                               At the Window

But then I drew up the curtain and looked out of the window.  Yes, there it still was, the old External World,  still apparently quite unaware of its own non-existence.  I felt helpless, small-boyish before it:  I couldn't pooh-pooh it away.

Logan Pearsall Smith, All Trivia (1934).

There it is.  Out into the World you go.

                          The Window

Looking through a narrow window day by day
They behold the world go by on holiday;
Maid to man repeating "Love me while you may,"
All go by them, none returns to them:  they stay.

They behold love pass, and life passing away,
And each day puts on the face of yesterday,
And their hearts are sighing "Love me while you may,
Love is lovely, life is passing:  'tis to-day."

All shall be to-morrow, still the elders say;
Many lenten morrows come and pass away,
And the world goes by, and as of old time they
Looking through a narrow window watch the way.

Arthur Symons, Love's Cruelty (1923).

Anthony Eyton, "Open Window, Spitalfields" (1981)

Tranquillity

A week or so ago, I read this haiku:

     The blossoms have fallen:
Our minds are now
     Tranquil.

Koyu-ni (18th century) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 365.

The lines in Japanese which Blyth renders as "our minds are now tranquil" contain the words hito-gokoro (which may be translated as "human mind, heart, soul, or core") and shizuka (which may be translated as "calm, quiet, peaceful, or still").  The kanji (Chinese characters) used for these words convey all of these different senses at once.  Choosing a single English word for each kanji is a compromise that had to be made by Blyth, and I am not in a position to second-guess him.

Blyth suggests that Koyu-ni's poem may have its source in a waka written nearly a century earlier:

Were there no cherry blossoms
     In this world of ours,
The hearts of men in spring
     Might know serenity.

Ariwara no Narihira (825-880) (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 365.

However, this does not mean that Koyu-ni simply recast Ariwara no Narihira's poem into a haiku:  her poem is the product of a moment of awareness, and her memory of the earlier poem was part of that moment of awareness.  This is something akin to writing a poem about a loved one who has passed away and having Wordsworth's "A slumber did my spirit seal" come to mind at the same time.

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

The cherry trees and plum trees have been in full blossom here for the past few weeks, and their petals are now beginning to fall.  Hence, I have been mulling over Koyu-ni's haiku quite a bit, while being mindful that one mustn't think too much about haiku:  they speak for themselves.

There is nothing lovelier than walking through a shower of cherry or plum petals, is there?  Just as there is nothing lovelier than walking through a shower of falling leaves in autumn.  These passing wonders are beautiful in large part because of our knowledge of their transience, and we do our best to wring all that we can from their beauty, to try to hold on to what we know is departing before our eyes.  A great deal of emotion is involved.

When the petals vanish, the beauty vanishes, but a reminder of transience (ours, the world's) vanishes as well.  (Although transience never vanishes; it only changes form.)  Thus:  "Our minds are now tranquil."

On the other hand, she may simply have been thinking of the joy that accompanies the sight of the blossoming trees:  the beauty makes it hard to keep one's wits.  Tranquillity follows excitement.

But I do not intend to bind Koyu-ni to this single moment of awareness captured in a haiku.  I will presume to say on her behalf that this moment was, for her, part of all that is passing, and that this was a fact she was well aware of.  There is a larger context to the falling petals and the falling leaves.

     What a strange thing,
To be thus alive
     Beneath the cherry blossoms!

Issa (1763-1828) (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 350.

Here is another way of looking at it:

     To wake, alive, in this world,
What happiness!
     Winter rain.

Shoha (1727-1771) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 217.

Or consider this:

     The autumn wind is blowing;
We are alive and can see each other,
     You and I.

Shiki (1867-1902) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 413.

Wonder and gratitude are at the heart of all haiku.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Springtime in Eskdale" (1935)

The larger context includes, of course, mortality.  "There will be dying, there will be dying,/but there is no need to go into that."  (Derek Mahon, "Everything Is Going To Be All Right.")  If we wish to be dramatic (but nonetheless accurate), we can say that the petals and the leaves are whispering "Death" as they spin to earth.  Albeit beautifully.

Here, again, is that larger context.

     The cherry flowers bloom;
We gaze at them;
     They fall, and . . .

Onitsura (1660-1738) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring, page 361.

     Simply trust:
Do not also the petals flutter down,
     Just like that?

Issa (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 363.  Note the use of "also" in the second line.

If we are lucky -- very lucky -- we may one day, for a moment, experience the tranquillity of which Koyu-ni speaks.

     Calm days,
The swift years
     Forgotten.

Taigi (1709-1771) (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 42.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Glamis Village" (1939)

How To Live, Part Twenty-Four: "Quiet Sympathies With Things That Hold An Inarticulate Language"

I recently came across the following remarkable lines by William Wordsworth:

                                          Not useless do I deem
These quiet sympathies with things that hold
An inarticulate language; for the man
Once taught to love such objects as excite
No morbid passions, no disquietude,
No vengeance, and no hatred needs must feel
The joy of that pure principle of love
So deeply that, unsatisfied with aught
Less pure and exquisite, he cannot choose
But seek for objects of a kindred love
In fellow-natures and a kindred joy.
Accordingly he by degrees perceives
His feelings of aversion softened down,
A holy tenderness pervade his frame,
His sanity of reason not impaired,
Say rather all his thoughts now flowing clear,
From a clear fountain flowing, he looks round,
He seeks for good and finds the good he seeks
Till execration and contempt are things
He only knows by name and if he hears
From other mouths the language which they speak
He is compassionate and has no thought
No feeling which can overcome his love.

William Wordsworth, excerpt from manuscript of "The Ruined Cottage," in Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire (editors), The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Volume Five (Oxford University Press 1949), pages 400-401.  The lines were later incorporated, with revisions, into Book IV ("Despondency Corrected") of The Excursion (1814).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Springtime in Eskdale" (1935)

Over the years, I have made only desultory, occasional forays into Wordsworth's lengthy philosophical/narrative poems (e.g., The Prelude, The Excursion, The Recluse).  I confess that their prolixity and their often high-flown rhetoric have been a barrier.  However, a passage such as this makes me feel that I have been remiss, and inexcusably lazy.  Yes, there is some prolixity and rhetoric in these lines, but they are outweighed by the simple truth of what Wordsworth says -- and the beautiful way in which he says it.

Wordsworth wrote this passage at a time when his friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge was at its strongest.  Thus, it is not surprising that, in a letter to his brother written in March or April of 1798, Coleridge quotes the first 18 lines of the passage (indicating that Wordsworth had shared the manuscript with him).  Immediately prior to quoting the lines, Coleridge writes:

"I love fields and woods and mountains with almost a visionary fondness. And because I have found benevolence and quietness growing within me as that fondness has increased, therefore I should wish to be the means of implanting it in others, and to destroy the bad passions not by combating them but by keeping them in inaction."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Letter to George Coleridge, in Ernest Hartley Coleridge (editor), Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume I (1895), pages 243-244.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Glamis Village" (1939)

For some reason, two poems by R. S. Thomas came to mind as I was mulling over Wordsworth's lines.  I do not consider them to be reiterations of what Wordsworth has to say.  Rather, I think of them as being instances of how Wordsworth's thoughts may play out in our lives.

                    Arrival

Not conscious
         that you have been seeking
                 suddenly
         you come upon it

the village in the Welsh hills
                 dust free
         with no road out
but the one you came in by.

                 A bird chimes
         from a green tree
the hour that is no hour
         you know.  The river dawdles
to hold a mirror for you
where you may see yourself
         as you are, a traveller
                 with the moon's halo
         above him, who has arrived
         after long journeying where he
                 began, catching this
         one truth by surprise
that there is everything to look forward to.

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

For me, the most profound, and the loveliest, statement in Wordsworth's passage is this:  "Not useless do I deem/These quiet sympathies with things that hold/An inarticulate language."  I think this statement sets forth a principle (to use Wordsworth's word) that provides the link between Thomas's poems and Wordsworth's meditation.  That principle, as expressed by both Wordsworth and Thomas, requires openness, receptiveness, repose, and contemplation.  Not easy qualities to attain.  A lifetime in the making, and then, if one is lucky, one may finally touch them.  In the meantime, we can only strive.

               The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it.  But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it.  I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it.  Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past.  It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R. S. Thomas, Laboratories of the Spirit (1975).

Thomas's phrase "the eternity that awaits you" prompts me to think of a statement by Ludwig Wittgenstein that I have posted here on more than one occasion: "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Proposition 6.4311 (translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Boreland Mill, Kirkmichael" (1950)

Everything is right there in front of us, if only we pay attention, if only we look.

     To wake, alive, in this world,
What happiness!
     Winter rain.

Shoha (1727-1771) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 217.

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

"Nine Leaves A Minute"

October has long been my favorite month.  However, the astonishing beauty of this past week is prompting me to equivocate.  What, then, of September?

Yesterday afternoon, beneath a cloudless sky, I walked west down an avenue of trees beside a marina.  A pleasant breeze -- without the underlying chill that often accompanies late summer breezes -- caused the rigging of the sailboats on my left to whistle and whirr, while the tackle tinkled like cowbells in a distant Alpine meadow.

A hundred or so yards in front of me, the waters of Puget Sound glittered silver and blue, stretching to the green-blue islands and mountains on the opposite shore.  Out on the Sound, about a quarter of a mile away, a large white cruise ship headed north to Canada and Alaska.

And the leaves, what of the leaves?  The leaves are still mostly green, although a few yellow precursors spun down around me as I walked.  A few others followed me down the path toward the water.  Gentle reminders.

As I walked, a thought occurred to me:  "What if eternity is like this?"

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Byroad near Kingoodie" (1962)

Thomas Hardy dated the following poem "November 8, 1923."  Yet I think the poem has a September feel to it.

          The Best She Could

        Nine leaves a minute
        Swim down shakily;
        Each one fain would spin it
        Straight to earth; but, see,
        How the sharp airs win it
Slantwise away! -- Hear it say,
"Now we have finished our summer show
Of what we knew the way to do:
Alas, not much!  But, as things go,
As fair as any.  And night-time calls,
        And the curtain falls!"

        Sunlight goes on shining
        As if no frost were here,
        Blackbirds seem designing
        Where to build next year;
        Yet is warmth declining:
And still the day seems to say,
"Saw you how Dame Summer drest?
Of all God taught her she bethought her!
Alas, not much!  And yet the best
She could, within the too short time
        Granted her prime."

Thomas Hardy, Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs, and Trifles (1925).

"Nine leaves a minute/Swim down shakily" brings to mind a lovely line by Edward Thomas:  "The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow."

James McIntosh Patrick, "Road to Craigowl"

For me, September has two opposing poles.  First:  "Before us lies eternity; our souls/Are love, and a continual farewell."  The prelude to which is this:

The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path --
Autumn was over him.

W. B. Yeats, "Ephemera," The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889).

Here is the other pole.

                      This Solitude of Cataracts

He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing

Through many places, as if it stood still in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered,

Ruffling its common reflections, thought-like Monadnocks.
There seemed to be an apostrophe that was not spoken.

There was so much that was real that was not real at all.
He wanted to feel the same way over and over.

He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,
To keep on flowing.  He wanted to walk beside it,

Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.
He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest

In a permanent realization, without any wild ducks
Or mountains that were not mountains, just to know how it would be,

Just to know how it would feel, released from destruction,
To be a bronze man breathing under archaic lapis,

Without the oscillations of planetary pass-pass,
Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time.

Wallace Stevens, The Auroras of Autumn (1950).

The poem begins with a restated version of Heraclitus's famous dictum, which has often been visited by poets.  (For instance, Derek Mahon in "Heraclitus on Rivers" and Louis MacNeice in "Variation on Heraclitus.") But Stevens is not content with Heraclitus's axiom.  Thus, the heart of the poem begins with:  "He wanted to feel the same way over and over./He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,/To keep on flowing." Which leads, ultimately, to the wish to be "released from destruction."

But Stevens, Yeats, and the rest of us know that release from destruction is not in the cards.

And yet, and yet . . . as I walked down the path yesterday under the trees, toward the glittering water, I wanted the moment never to end.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Autumn Afternoon"

A Thrush In Spring: "It Strikes Like Lightnings To Hear Him Sing"

If one goes in search of a poem about a thrush in Spring, it is not likely that one will turn first to the poetry of Philip Larkin.  Edward Thomas, John Clare, or Andrew Young, yes, but not Larkin.  But beware:  as I have noted before, we mustn't be taken in by the popular caricature of Larkin (a caricature he helped to create as a trap for lazy journalists and critics).

Here, then, is Philip Larkin's thrush in near-Spring.  Of course, that other Larkin (the one we know and love) makes an appearance as well.

          Coming

On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon --
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.

Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived (1955).

This poem encapsulates the genius of Larkin:  beauty and human truth side-by-side.  First, a lovely lyrical passage (which sounds vaguely like something a poet of the Nineties (e.g., Arthur Symons or Ernest Dowson) might have written).  Next, a beautiful turning point:  "It will be spring soon,/It will be bring soon."  A "nature poet" would stop there.  But not Larkin, because what makes him unique is his interest in human beings, and how they make their way through the world.  This statement goes against the commonly-accepted caricature of Larkin, I know.  But it is true.

I suspect that most of us have come upon the type of scene described by Larkin in the second half of the poem.  We know exactly how that experience feels, even if we cannot put it into words.  Larkin's poetry is full of shared human experiences that we often find difficult to put into words.

But here is where Larkin's genius lies:  he takes this shared human feeling and links it to the feeling of hearing the first thrush of Spring.  In the yellow light of evening.  In a still-bare garden.  From that link, the poem folds inward and unfolds outward, and the two scenes -- and the emotions associated with each -- play off each other endlessly.  This movement occurs time and time again in Larkin's poetry.

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

Now, seemingly a world away from Larkin (but not really), here is Gerard Manley Hopkins.

                                   Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring --
     When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
     Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
     The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
     The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
     A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,

     Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
     Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, in W. H. Gardner and N. H. MacKenzie (editors), The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford University Press, Fourth Edition, 1967).

It has been suggested that Ivor Gurney was influenced by Hopkins's poetry. On the evidence of this sonnet, I would agree:  the onrush of words and images and the slightly odd syntax are very similar in both poets.  For just one example, compare "Spring" with Gurney's "The Cloud."

James McIntosh Patrick, "Springtime in Eskdale" (1935)

"Thrush's eggs look little low heavens" is beautiful.  Andrew Young makes a strikingly similar comparison in a lovely poem which has appeared here previously.

                       The Nest

Four blue stones in this thrush's nest
I leave, content to make the best
Of turquoise, lapis lazuli
Or for that matter of the whole blue sky.

Andrew Young, Collected Poems (Rupert Hart-Davis 1960).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Glamis Village" (1939)

"For 'Tis November"

It is time, dear readers, to pay our annual visit to "The Region November." This is the fourth time ("Time's winged chariot hurrying near!") the poem has appeared here, for which I beg your indulgence.  But it is my way of greeting the arrival of winter.  I have long felt that, as a matter of emotion, winter begins sometime in the latter half of November, regardless of what the calendar may say.

"The Region November" is coupled in my mind with a poem which I visit in May of each year:  Philip Larkin's "The Trees."  "Swaying, swaying, swaying" (see below) and "afresh, afresh, afresh" provide guideposts for the turnings of the year (two of them, at least).  So please bear with me.

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Autumn Afternoon"

            The Region November

It is hard to hear the north wind again,
And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,
So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say
On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

A revelation not yet intended.
It is like a critic of God, the world

And human nature, pensively seated
On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,
The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying.

Wallace Stevens, "Late Poems," Collected Poetry and Prose (The Library of America 1997).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Byroad near Kingoodie" (1962)

This idea of autumn-into-winter trees "saying and saying" and "swaying, swaying, swaying" brings to mind a poem by Thomas Hardy.  I seldom think of Hardy and Stevens in connection with one another:  they seem to inhabit different worlds, Hardy's being more human and less abstract than Stevens's.  But in these two poems they circle around a similar thought. (And not simply because the word "sway" occurs in both poems.)

  The Upper Birch-Leaves

Warm yellowy-green
In the blue serene,
How they skip and sway
On this autumn day!
They cannot know
What has happened below, --
That their boughs down there
Are already quite bare,
That their own will be
When a week has passed, --
For they jig as in glee
To this very last.

But no; there lies
At times in their tune
A note that cries
What at first I fear
I did not hear:
"O we remember
At each wind's hollo --
Though life holds yet --
We go hence soon,
For 'tis November;
-- But that you follow
You may forget!"

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

Hardy has a Dorset countryman's view of things, of course.  Which, to my mind, is a good thing.  However, some might argue that he is not as "sophisticated" as Stevens.  I disagree.  As much as I love "The Region November" (and many other poems by Stevens), no poet has looked as closely at -- and as deeply into -- the World and its denizens as Hardy has.

But enough of these quibbles.  All that matters is this:  Hardy and Stevens both know what November means.  And trees do talk.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Wellbank, Rossie Priory"

"Who Has Seen The Wind?"

In terms of reading poetry, I've barely scratched the surface.  I'd guess I've read about 1% of the poetry that I would have liked to have read by this point in my life.  But I'm not concerned.  I'm not preparing for an examination.  I'm not in a contest.  In fact, I'm reluctant to read more than one or two poems a day.  A poem deserves attention.  It also needs to sit a while.  It is not a text message.  It is not a sound bite.

Many of us have experienced sensory overload when visiting an art museum:  in time, you lose your ability to see.  I've concluded that I'm better off spending a great deal of time in front of a few paintings rather than trying to look at them all.  The same principle applies, I think, to the reading of poetry:  less is better.  But perhaps I'm simply trying to rationalize my slow pace (and my slow-wittedness).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Braes o' Lundie"

One advantage of my snail's pace is that it allows me to mull things over. Other possibilities may present themselves if you let a poem percolate. Some of these possibilities may lie outside of the poem. For instance, I recently read the following poem for the first time.

             Till I Went Out

Till I went out of doors to prove
What through my window I saw move;
To see if grass was brighter yet,
And if the stones were dark and wet;

Till I went out to see a sign --
That slanted rain, so light and fine,
Had almost settled in my mind
That I at last could see the wind.

W. H. Davies, Forty New Poems (1918).

I am not going to suggest that this is the sort of revelatory poem by which one can steer the course of one's life.  But it shouldn't be passed over quickly.  Consider, for example, the final line, with its implication that this is not the first occasion on which the speaker has sought to see the wind. Some may consider this madness.  Not I.

After reading the poem, I felt that this notion of seeing the wind was something that I had encountered before.  But I couldn't put my finger on it. Then, the next morning, I remembered this.

Who has seen the wind?
     Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling
     The wind is passing thro'.

Who has seen the wind?
     Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
     The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872).

Again, this is not a life-changing poem.  But the movement from "Till I Went Out" is a pleasant one.

James McIntosh Patrick

"Rum and Eigg from Ardtoe, Acharacle, Argyllshire" (1959)

Next, Rossetti's poem prompted me to recall this untitled poem by Michael Longley.

When all the reeds are swaying in the wind
How can you tell which reeds the otters bend?

Michael Longley, Selected Poems (Jonathan Cape 1998).

I find this emergence of connections to be rewarding.  These things happen in their own easy-going fashion.  It is not a matter of study or of explication.  Each poem we read stands on its own.  Yet each poem also has a place in the ever-changing kaleidoscope of every poem we have ever read.  And there is no hurry.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Autumn, Kinnordy" (1936)

"Like Something Almost Being Said"

As some long-time readers may recall, I make it a habit to visit two particular poems in May and November of each year.  My November poem is Wallace Stevens's "The Region November."  My May poem is "The Trees" by Philip Larkin.

Why revisit a poem that we know quite well?

At the outset, let's be clear:  poetry is not life.  (Likewise, art is not life and books are not life.)  We do not read poems in order to live.

But, at the risk of sounding highfalutin', I will go out on a limb and suggest that a good poem can do two things.  First, it can help us to understand what it means to be a human being amidst other human beings.  Second, it can give us an inkling of how we, as human beings, fit into the World -- the earthly paradise that surrounds us.  A good poem puts us in our place. Thus, it makes sense to pay it a visit now and then.

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Ashley Burn, Spring"

                 The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old?  No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin, High Windows (Faber and Faber 1974).

I have no doubt that "The Trees" is well-loved by many people.  But those of us who love it do so for reasons that are peculiar to each of us.  Many of us may find the same phrases in the poem beautiful and moving:  "Like something almost being said" or "Their greenness is a kind of grief" or "Yet still the unresting castles thresh" or (of course) "Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."  But how we feel about those words arises out of our own separate lives.

Hence, any attempt to articulate the reasons for our love of the poem is doomed to failure.  Our love is inextricably bound up with our life.  Should you be so lucky as to cross the path of someone who tells you that they love "The Trees," it is best to say "Yes, I know what you mean" and leave it at that.

Besides, as I have often said, explanation and explication are the death of poetry.  If someone attempted to explain to me that the beauty of "The Trees" lies in this-or-that aspect of its meter or in this-or-that aspect of its rhyme, I would regard them as the Grim Reaper of poetry.

I would instruct them to step outside, in May, and have a look at the trees.

James McIntosh Patrick, "City Garden" (1979)

Grass

I am easy to please.  All seems right with the world when, on a sunny spring day, I can hear the hum of lawnmowers from various points in the distance, and the scent of freshly-cut grass arrives on a soft breeze.  Who says that there is no such thing as Paradise on Earth?

Here is John Ruskin (in one of those extravagant, wide-ranging apostrophes of his that make reading his books such a delight):

"The Greek, we have seen, delighted in the grass for its usefulness; the medieval, as also we moderns, for its colour and beauty.  But both dwell on it as the first element of the lovely landscape; we saw its use in Homer, we see also that Dante thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen enough comforted in Hades by having even the image of green grass put beneath their feet; the happy resting-place in Purgatory has no other delight than its grass and flowers; and, finally, in the terrestrial paradise, the feet of Matilda pause where the Lethe stream first bends the blades of grass.

Consider a little what a depth there is in this great instinct of the human race.  Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green.  Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty.  A very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point, -- not a perfect point either, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently much cared-for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots.  And yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air,  and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes or good for food, -- stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine, -- there be any by man so deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green."

John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume III (1856), Part IV, Chapter XIV, Section 51 (italics in original).

Stanley Spencer, "Landscape, Cookham Dean" (c. 1939)

Wordsworth considers the subject in the following untitled poem.

This Lawn, a carpet all alive
With shadows flung from leaves -- to strive
     In dance, amid a press
Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields
Of Worldlings revelling in the fields
     Of strenuous idleness;

Less quick the stir when tide and breeze
Encounter, and to narrow seas
     Forbid a moment's rest;
The medley less when boreal Lights
Glance to and fro, like aery Sprites
     To feats of arms addrest!

Yet, spite of all this eager strife,
This ceaseless play, the genuine life
     That serves the stedfast hours,
Is in the grass beneath, that grows
Unheeded, and the mute repose
     Of sweetly-breathing flowers.

William Wordsworth, Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems (1835).

James Torrington Bell, "Carnoustie House" (1962)

Wordsworth's poem fits well with some further remarks by Ruskin:

"Observe, the peculiar characters of the grass, which adapt it especially for the service of man, are its apparent humility, and cheerfulness.  Its humility, in that it seems created only for lowest service, -- appointed to be trodden on, and fed upon.  Its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult under all kinds of violence and suffering.  You roll it, and it is stronger the next day; you mow it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if it were grateful; you tread upon it, and it only sends up richer perfume.  Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the earth, -- glowing with variegated flame of flowers, -- waving in soft depth of fruitful strength.  Winter comes, and though it will not mock its fellow plants by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn colourless and leafless as they.  It is always green; and is only the brighter and gayer for the hoar-frost."

John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume III, Part IV, Chapter XIV, Section 52 (italics in original).

A side-note:  given Ruskin's invention of the term "pathetic fallacy," it is interesting to find him describing the "humility" and "cheerfulness" of grass.

James McIntosh Patrick, "City Garden" (1979)

"Stepping Westward"

In my previous post, I mentioned Philip Larkin's self-mocking quip about himself:  "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth."  This got me to thinking, not about deprivation, but about the poetry of William Wordsworth.

In August and September of 1803, Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge went on a tour of Scotland.  Dorothy Wordsworth's journal of the tour contains this entry for September 11 (Coleridge had set off on his own by this point):

The sun had been set for some time, when, being within a quarter of a mile of the ferryman's hut, our path having led us close to the shore of the calm lake, we met two neatly dressed women, without hats, who had probably been taking their Sunday evening's walk.  One of them said to us in a friendly, soft tone of voice, "What! you are stepping westward?"  I cannot describe how affecting this simple expression was in that remote place, with the western sky in front, yet glowing with the departed sun.  William wrote the following poem long after, in remembrance of his feelings and mine.

William Knight (editor), Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Volume II (1897), page 105.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Boreland Mill, Kirkmichael" (1950)

               Stepping Westward

"What, you are stepping westward?" -- "Yea."
-- 'Twould be a wildish destiny,
If we, who thus together roam
In a strange Land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of Chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?

The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind, all gloomy to behold;
And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny:
I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
Of something without place or bound;
And seemed to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake
Was walking by her native lake:
The salutation had to me
The very sound of courtesy:
Its power was felt; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing Sky,
The echo of the voice enwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.

William Wordsworth, Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) (italics in original).

Wordsworth prefaced the poem with an introduction that parallels Dorothy Wordsworth's journal entry:

While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sunset, in our road to a Hut where, in the course of our Tour, we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed Women, one of whom said to us, by way of greeting, "What, you are stepping westward?"

Ibid, Volume II, page 14.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Stobo Kirk, Peeblesshire" (1936)

A poem like "Stepping Westward" reminds us how revolutionary Wordsworth's poetry was in its day, even though it seems very traditional to us now.  The poem is almost conversational, which is what Wordsworth was after: "the real language of men," as he described it in his 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads.  The "poetic diction" that he hoped to "avoid" is nearly absent.

Apart from a few archaisms, I can hear Edward Thomas in "Stepping Westward."  For example:  "In a strange Land, and far from home."  Or: "And stepping westward seemed to be/A kind of heavenly destiny."  And this:  "I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound/Of something without place or bound."  (Robert Frost can be heard in these lines as well, which is no surprise.)  The Thomas echo may also be traceable to Thomas's penchant for writing poems about encountering friendly strangers while walking in the countryside.

I think that Thomas's poetry in many ways brings Wordsworth's best intentions into being.  The last six lines sound like pure Thomas:

                   . . . and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing Sky,
The echo of the voice enwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Castle in Scotland"

"When March Blows"

Ivor Gurney was extremely sensitive to changes in the world around him, be it the weather or the seasons.  Of course, one could argue that any "nature poet" (e.g., Edward Thomas, Andrew Young, John Clare, William Wordsworth) necessarily possesses such a sensitivity.  But in Gurney this sensitivity was particularly acute.

As I have noted before, I am reluctant to attribute Gurney's qualities as a poet to his sometimes precarious mental condition.  It would be unfair to him to suggest that his sensitivity was a product of that condition.  At the risk of sounding romantic, I think that Gurney can be likened to Vincent van Gogh:  the sensuous presence of the world -- everything in it -- was so deeply felt by both of them that they were constantly at risk of being overwhelmed (both physically and mentally).  It would be a disservice to them to describe their sensitivity as a pathology.  Perhaps we are the ones who need to catch up with them.

Enslin Du Plessis, "Cotswold Landscape" (1942)

                        When March Blows

When March blows, and Monday's linen is shown
On the goose berry bushes, and the worried washer alone
Fights at the soaked stuff, meres and the rutted pools
Mirror the wool-pack clouds, and shine clearer than jewels

And the children throw stones in them, spoil mirrors and clouds
The worry of washing over; the worry of foods,
Brings tea-time; March quietens as the trouble dies.
The washing is brought in under wind-swept clear skies.

Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (J. M. Dent 1996).

John Singer Sargent, "La Biancheria" (1910)

The subject of the washing drying in the wind brings to mind a lovely poem by Andrew Young.  The poem has appeared here before, but it is worth revisiting.

           The Shepherd's Hut

The smear of blue peat smoke
That staggered on the wind and broke,
The only sign of life,
Where was the shepherd's wife,
Who left those flapping clothes to dry,
Taking no thought for her family?
For, as they bellied out
And limbs took shape and waved about,
I thought, She little knows
That ghosts are trying on her children's clothes.

Andrew Young, Collected Poems (Rupert Hart-Davis 1960).

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