Neruda Double Stuff

Oh Earth, Wait for Me by Pablo Neruda
Turn me oh sun
towards my native destiny,
rain from the ancient forest,
return to me the fragrance and the swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of field and rock,
the moisture at the margins of the river,
the scent of the larch,
the wind, alive like a heart
beating among the remote flock
of the great araucaria.

Earth, return to me your pure gifts
the towers of silence that rose
from the solemnity of their roots:
I want to return to being what I have not been,
learn to return from such depths
that amongst all the things of nature
I could live or not live: no matter
to be one more stone, the dark stone,
the pure stone that is carried by the river.

O Tierra, Espérame
Vuélmeme oh sol
a mi destino agreste,
lluvia del viejo bosque,
devuélveme el aroma y las espadas
que caían del cielo,
la solitaria paz de pasto y piedra,
la humedad de las márgenes del río,
el olor del alerce,
el viento vivo como un corazón
latiendo entre la huraña muchedumbre
de la gran araucaria.

Tierra, devuélveme tus dones puros,
las torres del silencio que subieron
de la solemnidad de sus raíces:
quiero volver a ser lo que no he sido,
aprender a volver desde tan hondo
que entre todas las cosas naturales
pueda vivir o no vivir: no importa
ser una piedra más, la piedra oscura,
la piedra pura que se lleva el río.

 

Not growing up in a tradition that made a big deal about Lent, I didn't learn about the "Sundays off" rule until I was an adult and one of my Catholic friends tore open a package of Oreos one Sunday afternoon.  Ah the blessings of Sabbath.  Rest, recreation, and Oreos. 

 

I decided to "take Sundays off" from this blog.  I'll still post a poem on Sundays, one to be read  and enjoyed rather than written aboout and reflected upon. 

 

So here's a little yummy Neruda for your Sunday afternoon.  And since I'm a fan of the Double Stuff Oreos, I offer it in English and its original Spanish.  Enjoy it with a glass of ice cold milk or simply savour it on its own. 

A Poem for the End of the Day

The Inner History of a Day by John O'Donohue

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

 

Since I'm posting today's poem just under the wire, I decided to offer a poem for the end of the day.  I love the phrase "the eucharist of the ordinary," those everyday moments brimming with presence that we may overlook when they occur but notice later.  Something to ponder before falling asleep . . .

Breadmaking

Breadmaking by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams from Hummadrumz (Seren)
Forgive the flour under my fingernails
the dabs of dough clinging to my skin:
I have been busy, breadmaking.
So easy, the flakes falling feathery
into the warm bowl, as I dip and measure
and pour the foaming treasured brown
yeast down to the ground grain.
O as the barm breaks and scatters
under my working fingers like a scrum
of tides on shifting sands, the secret cells
swell, you can smell their life
feeding and beating like blood
in my bunched palms
while I lift the lump and slap it back again.

It moves, like a morning mushroom,
a breathing side, stirring, uncurling
animal nudged from sleep; so I pummel
and thump and knuckle it into shape
to see it unwind like a spring
soft as a boneless baby on the table.
I have covered it now:  let it grow
quietly, save for the least rustle
of multiplication in the damp bundle
telling of motion in the fattening seeds.
It's body's an uproar as I open the burning door --
it gives one final heave, and it blossoms out
to the brown loaf I have spread for you.
Taste the butter touching its heart like snow.

Once upon a time I spent my Saturday mornings making bread.  It was when I was living in an apartment in Glover Park.  My roommate worked an odd schedule, afternoons and evenings during the week, bright and early on weekends, so I often had the place to myself.  I'd get up, make a cup of tea, clear the clutter off the table in our tiny dining room, then start measuring and kneading. 

When I first started baking bread I used Nick Maglieri's How to Bake as my bible.  I chose recipes at random and tried out several before I found one that regularly worked well for me.  Eventually I got to the point where I didn't need the book.  I knew the recipe by heart and could adapt the ingredients depending upon my mood or what I had at hand-- tossing in a handful of chopped kalamata olives, some fresh rosemary from the pot of herbs I planted outside, dusting the crust with parmesan and cracked black pepper or sesame seeds and sea salt.  Since our oven was in keeping with our diminutive dining room, one loaf was the most I could bake at a time but it was usually enough for the week.

It struck me as I read today's poem how much meditation is like breadmaking.  You find a method you want to try, assemble the ingredients-- perhaps a special location or posture, maybe a mantra or image on which to focus-- and then you begin to put it all together.  It can be exhilirting at first as your soul feeds on the silence.  Sometimes what bubbles up feels like agitation, at other times, fermentation.  But if you've found your perfect recipe, you sense something is happening.

So you start adding more ingredients, more time, more silence.  There comes a point, however, when you may start to feel stiff and unyielding.  And then it happens:  your soul starts to feel like it's being pummeled.  Of course, there are those lovely times when meditation leaves you feeling as soft as a boneless baby but those moments are fleeting.  Just as dough needs to be worked in order to form the gluten that gives the bread strength so it doesn't fall apart when baked, so does your soul need to be kneaded sometimes in order to give you the strength you need to face the heat of daily life . . . and to nourish others. 

The question to consider today is where are you in the process?  Are you fermenting?  Baking? Being kneaded or needed?  Or maybe just resting?

A little Sweetness, Always for Valentine's Day

Sweetness, Always by Pablo Neruda trans. by Alastair Reid from Extravagaria
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Why such harsh machinery?
Why, to write down the stuff
and people of every day,
must poems be dressed up in gold,
or in old and fearful stone?

I want verses of felt or feather
which scarcely weigh, mild verses
with the intimacy of beds
where people have loved and dreamed.
I want poems stained
by hands and everydayness.

Verses of pastry which melt
into milk and sugar in the mouth,
air and water to drink,
the bites and kisses of love.
I long for eatable sonnets,
poems of honey and flour.

Vanity keeps prodding us
to lift ourselves skyward
or to make deep and useless
tunnels underground.
So we forget the joyous
love-needs of our bodies.
We forget about pastries.
We are not feeding the world.

In Madras a long time since,
I saw a sugary pyramid,
a tower of confectionery -
one level after another,
and in the construction, rubies,
and other blushing delights,
medieval and yellow.

Someone dirtied his hands
to cook up so much sweetness.

Brother poets from here
and there, from earth and sky,
from Medellin, from Veracruz,
Abyssinia, Antofagasta,
do you know the recipe for honeycombs?

Let’s forget about all that stone.

Let your poetry fill up
the equinoctial pastry shop
our mouths long to devour -
all the children’s mouths
and the poor adults’ also.
Don’t go on without seeing,
relishing, understanding
all these hearts of sugar.

Don’t be afraid of sweetness.

With or without us,
sweetness will go on living
and is infinitely alive,
forever being revived,
for it’s in a man’s mouth,
whether he’s eating or singing,
that sweetness has its place.


When I sat down to post this morning I imagined it would be an impossible task to find a poem that would suit for Valentine's Day and Lent.  And then I came across this poem by Pablo Neruda. 

It may seem like an indulgent poem for Lent with all this luscious imagery. . . melt-in-your-mouth verses and honeyed poems, the desire for sweetness always.  But Neruda reminds us that we are all fragile, mortal.  Hearts of sugar may break and inevitably will melt away but the sweetness, "with or without us/sweetness will go on living/and is infinitely alive/forever being revived." 


So the questions I'm thinking about today is where am I finding this sweetness in my life right now?  And how can I give some sweetness back in return?

The Journey Begins Again . . .

A Northern Morning by Alistair Elliot from My Country:  Collected Poems (Carcanet Press)
It rained from dawn. The fire died in the night.
I poured hot water on some foreign leaves;
I brought the fire to life. Comfort
spread from the kitchen like a taste of chocolate
through the head-waters of a body,
accompanied by that little-water-music.
The knotted veins of the old house tremble and carry
a louder burden: the audience joining in.

People are peaceful in a world so lavish
with the ingredients of life:
the world of breakfast easy as Tahiti.
But we must leave. Head down in my new coat
I dodge to the High Street conscious of my fellows
damp and sad in their vegetable fibres.
But by the bus-stop I look up: the spring trees
exult in the downpour, radiant, clean for hours:
This is the life! This is the only life!

For those who mark the dates on the western church calendar, today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten journey.  Last year I posted a poem a day for Lent on this blog and offered a brief reflection and/or question.  This year I hope to continue that practice.   

Although Ash Wednesday is my favorite day on the Christian calendar, I chose not to attend a service or get ashes this year.  That doesn't mean that I didn't reflect on my mortality and brokenness.  Quite the opposite.  I discovered having a massage on Ash Wednesday is a great opportunity to be made aware of the fragility of this life and this body.  Every kink my massage therapist attempted to knead into some semblance of order served as a reminder.  I became keenly aware that one day the hamstrings that propel me on my walks through the park and the gluts that cushion me as I sit at my desk writing will one day return to dust. 

One of my friends said last night that the liturgy should be changed to remind us
that, according to recent scientific findings, we are stardust and to stardust we shall return.

 

Returning to stardust is a lovely thought.  Returning to Ziggy Stardust, not so much.
 (With apologies to David Bowie.)

Some people understand Lent to be a time when we are to adopt strict disciplines, deny our bodies.  The message coming to me this Ash Wednesday is to be more aware of and care more for my body.  For as Elliot writes, "This the life!  This is the only life!"  And this is the only body.

So how about you? What messages were you getting as you start your Lenten journey?

Damn the Electric Fence

Well that was painful. 

I was trying to find a poem I wrote in college so I pulled down the faded blue spiral notebook in which I used to carefully transcribe "finished" poems that I'd written.  So I'd know it was my poetry notebook, I cut out and pasted this Far Side cartoon on the front:

The first page contained a poem that was written when I was in high school as an assignment for a Spanish class.  It was written in Spanish, and in Spanish it sounded pretty good.

I should have stopped reading at that point. 

These poems are bad.  Painfully bad.  Painfully, shoulder raising, teeth grimacing, ever-so-slightly nauseatingly bad. 

It's not the teenage angst, trite subject matter,  slavishness to rhyme and meter without any real ear for rhythm or sound, or any of the other hurdles that burgeoning writers must get past that pained me so much. It was that, at the time, I thought they were good.  I thought they were good and showed them to people.  I thought they were good and showed them to people who were boys.  I thought they were good and showed them to the boys for whom they were written. 

To all the previous objects of my youthful affections for whom I wrote and read poetry, I humbly apologize. 

In hindsight, my main problem was that I tried to write poetry without actually reading poetry. Unfortunately, I was NOT familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda . . . or any other modern or contemporary poet.  After my initial revulsion, I re-read some of my early attempts with a kinder eye, thinking about what advice I'd offer the budding writer I was . . . and still am. 

First and foremost, I would have encouraged my young self to read. To learn how to write a love poem I would have pointed her towards Cien Sonetos de Amor (one way to get her to study her Spanish).  I would have given her books by Billy Collins to see how to walk the fine line between humor and profundity, and introduced her to Mary Oliver to learn how to read the world around her with a poet's eye.  I would have told her that you can't write good poetry without reading good poetry.  And to find good poetry, I would have introduced her to Bloodaxe Books. 

In fact, it was a volume by Bloodaxe, Poetry with an Edge, that ended up being my primer in contemporary poetry even without the guidance of my future self.  I can't remember how I stumbled upon it in the first place as even now it's difficult to find the works of this Northumbrian publisher on bookstore shelves in the DMV.  Maybe my future self did give it to me and had to erase the memory of the encounter.  However it happened, I'm glad it did.  From Fleur Adcock to Benjamin Zephaniah, Bloodaxe has published many of the brightest and best poets of the 20th and 21st centuries. In particular, their anthologies are like the crown jewels of contemporary poetry.  Each collection contains individual gems that dazzle when taken as a whole. 

So I would have told my young self, like I'm telling you, check out Bloodaxe books.  In addition to buying their books, it's also worth spending some time playing around on their website.  You can hear poets reading their work in the video section and get recommendations for possible new-to-you poets on their "new to poetry?" page.  If you are an American poet I'd recommend steering clear of the "Want to be published by Bloodaxe?" page (abandon hope all ye who enter here) but the the little photo of a fox vaulting a sheep on their home page is alone worth the click

Carpe Libris, The February Edition

Look into my eyes . . . you are getting the urge to curl up with a good book . . . and maybe a cup of tea.

Since Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring four days ago, I've been busy trying to race through my winter reading list. Like this summer, I've stumbled upon other books that have begged to curl up in bed with me these dark and dreary winter afternoons. And since I'm not one to turn down the offer of a good cuddle, here's what I've been snuggling up with in recent weeks. . .

 

 

The Snowman by Jo Nesbø
Lately I've been reading a lot of books by Nordic authors.  Perhaps it's the Stieg Larsson phenomenon that's making these writers more available in translation now.  Or maybe they've been out there all along and I've just overlooked them as I usually read books set in the UK.  Whatever the reason, I'm coming to enjoy tales set in the cold climes of northern Europe almost as much as those that take place in the British Isles.  

Almost.  

The mysteries, in particular, have been a pleasant surprise, barring the aforementioned Stieg Larsson.  I made it through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but stopped reading the second book in the trilogy when he started inventorying the contents of the desks in the Millennium offices.  I can't handle that much irrelevant detail.  But that's okay because I found Jo Nesbø who is a master of plot and offers the tight, sparse, sharp writing I want in a Nordic writer.    

Although The Snowman isn't the first in his Harry Hole series, it was the first book I read.  Combine a detective with the requisite brilliant mind and screwed up personal life, a creepy serial killer who builds snowmen in the yards of his victims (note to readers:  if a snowman suddenly appears in your yard and he's looking towards your house rather than the street, it's probably a good time to move), and some plot twists and turns and you get a compelling, well written story.  Part of Jo Nesbø's skill as a writer comes in creating tension in plot as well as characters. I finished the book wanting to get my hands on the earlier books to find out what made Harry Hole the flawed man he is, and then read the later ones to see if he finds redemption somewhere along the line. Unfortunately the first couple books aren't out in English translation yet so I'll have to wait for now.  And while I'm waiting I can always turn to Nesbø's Doctor Proctor series which includes the sure to be classic Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder.

Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child is another story where a person made of snow is the harbinger of an unexpected guest.  Fortunately for Jack and Mabel, the central characters in this tale set in turn-of-the-century rural Alaska, the visitor isn't a sociopath, rather a young girl who appears with the first snow fall of each year and vanishes when spring appears.  As the childless Mabel struggles to figure out whether or not the snow child is real or a creature conjured from the sorrow and pain she has tried to deny, her heart begins to thaw and she comes to accept the girl's presence as a mysterious gift.  If the story sounds familiar, it's because it is based on the Russian fairy tale of the same name.  I won't give away the ending but will say that it's a charming tale that upholds the idea that no matter how difficult it is, the best way to love someone is to let them be who they are meant to be.

I don't read on Sunday evenings between 9 - 10 pm.  Like many I am camped in front of the TV, tuned to my local PBS station, having severe wardrobe envy while watching Downton Abbey.  est assured, there will come a time in my life when I will live in a place where I will dress for dinner.  Granted, it may be when I'm 85, living in a an old age home and show up to the communal dining room decked out in taffeta and a tiara. But I hope I'm with it enough to know what I'm doing because it will be grand.  Until then, I am fortifying myself with the witty words of the Dowager Countess of Gratham and books such as The Uninvited Guests and The St. Zita Society.  

Ruth Rendell's mystery focuses more on the realm of downstairs than up, following a group of servants in contemporary Sloan Square who meet regularly in their local and dub themselves The St. Zita Society after the patron saint of domestic servants. As with all the Ruth Rendell books I've read, and I've read quite a few, this story drew me into the lives of the characters almost immediately.  I was so wrapped up in their ordinary lives that I almost forgot that in order for it to be a mystery, a crime would have to occur.  And when it did, it didn't disappoint. 

The Uninvited Guests could also be described as a mystery although it's more about secrets and deception rather than criminal offenses.  Sadie Jones's story is set a generation after Downton Abbey in a slightly less grand estate with a slightly more middle class family.  Like Downton, the Torrington's home is in peril but the family put on a brave face for their guests as they celebrate eldest daughter Emerald's 21st birthday.  The uninvited guests indicated in the title then arrive, acting as a hammer that chips away at the fragile veneer of civility and good manners the family tries to hide behind.  The characters soon show their true colors, although without the dignity and wit of Lady Violet.  Fortunately there's the delightful character, Smudge, oft-overlooked little sister in the Torrington clan, who not only adds charm to the story but who gets herself into a predicament that redeems the family and guests -- invited and uninvited alike.  Jones's writing is also top notch and I found myself pausing to revel in some of her gorgeous images. 

Finally, I've been slowly working my way through this delicious book.  I admit I've got a major writer's crush on Owen Sheers but that doesn't color this review in any way.  True, he's an adorable Welshman, but more importantly he's a brilliant young poet and an extraordinary collector of poetry.  In this anthology, Sheers has pulled together poems corresponding to six categories of British landscape-- cities, villages & towns, mountains & moorland, islands, woods & forests, and finally, coasts & sea.  Reading the poems in order, you get a sense being taken on a journey. It's like a poetic Britrail pass, although without the crying babies and tepid tea.  I have tried to assemble collections of poems (on a much much smaller scale) that have the same sense of conversation and connection.  It is a tremendous time and labor intensive venture that Sheers makes look effortless.  You can hear him talk more about his intention and process in this video.

 

 

So how about you?  What books are keeping you warm these winter evenings?  Or offering you a bit of refreshment if you're in the sunny southern hemisphere?