Sunday 31 January 2010

Thomas Hardy: The Dead Drummer

The Dead Drummer

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined - just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew -
Fresh from his Wessex home -
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)

Thursday 28 January 2010

The Roman Coin


The Roman Coin

hail Caesar!

the emperor's image

unexpectedly turned up
by the plough

and the mud washed off,

before very long
the small silver coin will be found
a place
in a suitable cabinet
in an appropriate museum

for us all to view,

but yet today
as every yesterday
in the night sky
the visaged disc -

white
silver
blue
red
yellow
orange
black
or veiled
according to the season,

what coin?
what emperor?

what strange coincidence?

______
gw2010

Yet another batch of Busta translated

The following Christine Busta poems, just now translated, are from the same book as the two in the post below this. Please enjoy!


VERSED NOTE

The most beautiful thing
that space exploration gave to us
was the Earth as a blue star.
It is habitable. But vulnerable.


WORDS

Every word means itself
and at the same time something else.
Anemone - the flower.
Anemone - the child.
All words are ciphers.

One who says stone, or crystal,
speaks of the world's history.


THE CROWS WRITE IN BLACK
and in white the seagulls
in the grey winter skies.

I will never decode their messages.
But they fill me year after year
with the greatest secrets of life.


AT THE BORDER

If you must go through a minefield
take a handful of seeds with you -
poppy or marigold -
for your resurrection.


IN THE AEROPLANE

One time all lands and seas
were No Man's Lands
and No Man's Seas
of course.

But piece by piece
we've cut them up
into mine
and yours.

Now is the time to carefully
bring them back
together
to our single star.

______
gw2010

More Christine Busta translated

Ten of the Austrian poet Christine Busta's poems (Poet-in-Residence translations) appeared on these pages during 2009. These ten poems can be easily found by typing 'Christine Busta' into the blog search box and going through the 3-page index which will appear.

Additionally, another two PiR translations of Busta's poems appeared on the Ink, Sweat & Tears website (A-Z Links >>>) in February 2009.

It is now time for those two IS&T poems to join the other ten. The poems appeared in the collection Wenn du das Wappen der Liebe malst (Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg 1981). Christine Busta died in 1987.

The Dream of the Bread Angel

He brought them the sun.
He held it pressed to his breast.
The sun was crusty and dark.

They didn't
even have a knife
to divide it.

They have
torn the sun to pieces -
like wolves.

Migrating Birds

How many birds will
never reach the warmer land?

To escape the cold
will others now fly
to the abandoned nests?

Where is home, if one waits to be recalled?
Is it the place where one learnt to fly?

______
gw2009

Wednesday 27 January 2010

Haircut

Haircut comes from the collection Genteel Messages. It has also been published at Pulsar. The poem is dedicated to my barber, Gordon, in whose barber shop in the annex to the front room of his terraced house, I along with hundreds of others spent many an interesting and illuminating ten or twelve minutes. He cut hair and chatted bravely, nineteen-to-the-dozen, almost until his last breath. God bless him and those other gentlemen of his ilk.

These days clients prefer to go to by appointment to the friseur, the hair-stylist, the uni-sex coiffure or the hair salon. Men like Gordon with his flying instruments operating under the striped pole may all too soon be an institution of the past.
Whenever I read the following poem I see the shop, the man, the hair on the linoleum floor, hear the rustle of a newspaper, feel the change of light on my face from the door swinging open and shut. It's all still there, at least it is in my mind. I'm glad I wrote Haircut.

Haircut

Gordon spoke in soft low tones
over the rapid clip-clip and snip-snip
of his flying instruments.

I went for ten minutes every month;
my gaze would meet his on silver surface
that was bruised and chipped; I'd catch
the steel gleam in his grey eyes and
note the eloquent lift of his right
eyebrow.

The place smelled of lavender
and bay rum over exhalations of linoleum.

He touched on important subjects;
women, football, cars, condoms,
the latest gas leak and
how every creature on earth was preyed
upon by some other creature.

He was a fount of wisdom and insight
and when he paused to catch a thought
he made half-masticated noises
with his loose teeth. There was a vein
to his chat if you followed it. Words
gushed from him.

Customers came and went
swift as swallows;
restless, shifting,
fugacious as time itself.

______
gw2008

Monday 25 January 2010

Merry Robbie Burns' Night to all!

Robert Burns was born on this day 1759. Poet-in-Residence will partake of the customary wee dram later today. Meanwhile here's a Burns' poem followed by a Poet-in-Residence attempted translation.

John Anderson My Jo

John Anderson my jo, John,
When we were first acquent;
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bony brow was brent;
But now your brow is bald, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson my Jo.

John Anderson my jo, John,
We clamb the hill the gither;
And mony a canty day, John,
We've had wi' ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
And hand in hand we'll go;
And sleep the gither at the foot,
John Anderson my Jo.

. . . . .

John Anderson My Dear

John Anderson my dear, John,
When we were first acquainted,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your handsome brow was high;
But now your brow is bald, John,
Your locks are like the snow;
But blessings on your frosty head,
John Anderson my Dear.

John Anderson my dear, John,
We climbed the hill together;
And many a merry day, John,
We've had with one another:
Now we must totter down, John,
And hand in hand we'll go;
And sleep together at the foot,
John Anderson, my Dear.

______
Robert Burns (25 January 1759 - 21 July 1796)
Burns died of rheumatic heart disease at the age of 37. More than 10,000 people followed his coffin to the grave.

Thomas Bernhard's Gesammelte Gedichte

Thomas Bernhard, novelist, playwright, biographer and poet, born 1931 in Heerlen (Holland), died in February 1989 in Upper Austria.

Two or three days ago Poet-in-Residence, the low-budget bard and banana-box book bargain burgher snapped-up Bernhard's 350-page Gesammelte Gedichte (Collected Poems); a surhrkamp taschenbuch highly praised by the Frankfurter Allgemine's Peter von Matt and originally priced at 19.80DM, there and then available for €5, with almost indecent reptile swiftness when he slithered upon it on the 50% off in the back corner shelf at the old-AKH university campus bookshop, making the there-and-back diversion purely for the purpose of book bargain research when he was, for the second time, on his merry way to the Bernhard Exhibition at the Vienna Theatre Museum, where Beethoven's 9th Symphony with its famous Ode to Joy, now the European Anthem, was premiered (the original Beethoven premier that is) going via the Gösser Bier Klinik (or was it the Tirolerhof?) to betake of a much needed thirst-quenching mineral and vitamin enriched mid-afternoon litre of stout and deal with his daily battle to elevate his basal metabolism by means of a rustical Bauerntoast and an hour later an espresso in a plastic cup dispensed by the museum's hot drinks machine in return for a 50c coin, as a matter of fact. Poet-in-Residence will shortly translate some of Bernhard's gedichte into passable English. Hopefully!

Saturday 23 January 2010

misquoting Thomas Bernhard

misquoting Thomas Bernhard

to say you don't exaggerate
is in itself exaggeration
we live and die in a world of demi-gods
and black-comedians
hitler
el duce
franco
(enter stage right)
and beautiful women
eva peron
elizabeth taylor
(centre stage)
standard bearers
the pope in his white costume
ronald reagan
breshnev
helmut schmidt
(marching in the background)
it is no exaggeration to say
that we are all part of the cabaret
and that the stage is as big and as round and as flat as the globe
on which we perform
_______
gw2010

Avant-Stevens (2)

Poem in a **Hotel

In a corner of my ** hotel room
On top of the convenient mini-bar

There sits an old and tragic poem.

You too have memorised the well-worn catchwords
And wallowed in the well-worn phrases.

For us, today, the text is writ in crimson
And the words to follow repeat themselves backwards.

The right becomes left.
The left becomes right.

[ :: breaking ]
[ king news : ]

The night is long ...

Somewhere it's day.

I stretch out my arm,

And reach for Stevens.

_______
gw2010

Thursday 21 January 2010

Avant-Stevens (1)

Today's post and several posts to follow, will owe something to George Szirtes, to whom I am so often indebted. Thank you again, George!

George Szirtes, with one of his recent Briefs, grabbed my attention and as a result I now renew my love of the work of the Bollingen Yale Poetry Prize, National Book Award in Poetry Prize (twíce) and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry winner Wallace Stevens.

Here and now there is regained a sort of path (for we've been in this land before) to the Poet-in-Residence school of the avant-Stevens. The map is Stevens' Collected but I'm well off the page.


To the eyes & the ears of the owls

The words of the bards are illusions
where trees in the moonlight grow tall
and are black as winters in snow.

The words are a scrabble of branches
and the words are the same to the ears
of the owl which hoots like the train.

Some pass in the moonlight. The windows
are gold and the shadows are bold. The
rattle and rumble and clack on the track.

The frown on the brow and the scratch
of the quill. The blinks of the eyes. The dips
of the points. The points of the prey.

_________
gw2010
image: Stevens by Hockney

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Genteel Messages for Art Sparker


The reason for this picture has to do with an Art Sparker (see A-Z Links >>>) book themed post.

Genteel Messages, ISBN 978-1-906357-17-7 consists of 40 of my earlier poems. The 54-page book was published by Poetry Monthly Press (5.25p & pp) in June 2008.

To my surprise and delight it was selected for a 1st place in the Purple Patch Lists: Best Small Press Individual Collection 2008. The book continues, even 2 years on, to keep its place in Poetry Monthly's best-seller list.

Reviews can be found at The Recusant and Pulsar websites (see A-Z Links >>>). The project was a learn-by-doing experience. I was persuaded to undertake it to mark my 60th year.

Would I write another poetry book? At the time I said I wouldn't; but now I think, why not?

I recall that R S Thomas was writing some of his best poems at the age of 80. If I can emulate him there could be two more books to come. Three collections, three decades? Not out of the question.

Reach down with soft words

The world is entering aftershock. The whole tragic episode is almost beyond human comprehension. Many innocent children are included in the death toll; they have been killed, it will be said, by the hand of providence. Perhaps many more children will die as the struggle to save lives goes on. We must believe that there is some rhyme and reason to all these child deaths. This is known as having faith.

The island today known as Cuba was in the Pacific Ocean a long time ago, before Central America even existed. Cuba is slowly moving north-eastwards. Such is the power of Nature.

The children in the photo live in Vienna, Austria. The city of Vienna, on the north side of the Alps, has recently strengthened its inner-city building regulations. There have been two minor earth tremors in the area fairly recently.

Reach down with soft words

Suffer little children
to come unto me.

Thy will be done.

Thy will be heard
over the sea-waves and the aftershock waves.

One brother wants to know
Was there a choice?

And if there was a choice
who chose?

He gives the pink pill
and tells her to sleep.

Reach down with soft words.
______
gw2010

Tuesday 19 January 2010

The ghost ships off Haiti


The airport is a clogged up bottleneck.

So where in heaven's name are the hospital ships°! Poet-in-Residence demands to know.

The answer is that two cruise liners have docked in Haiti at Labadee Beach. The 4,370 berth Independence of the Seas and the 3,100 berth Navigator of the Seas will drop some aid supplies, according to a report at the Guardian website (www.guardian.co.uk) on the 17th. Meanwhile passengers can enjoy jet-ski rides, para-sailing and have rum cocktails brought to their hammocks. One passenger described the whole cynical business as sickening.

The Royal Caribbean Lines private dock at Labadee Beach is on the north coast of Haiti. Find Cap-Haitien on the map. It's just to the west of there.

Meanwhile on YouTube the Royal Caribbean Lines CEO Adam Goldstein is talking about making assessments, learning lessons and so on. In practical terms, very little, if anything at all is happening.


Doctors arriving in Haiti find there is no medical equipment available, according to a report from the scene by CNN's Anderson Cooper.

Amputations are being carried out using primitive tools such as hacksaw blades and bottles of vodka. It appears that a United Nations red tape policy - they need to make an assessment! is responsible for the failure to deliver the urgently needed medical supplies and equipment.

Here's my assessment: People are dying. Everything the doctors ask for - get it sent!


But the main point here is this: Where are the hospital ships? Why are they all cruising around the Caribbean with the dance bands playing on in the ballrooms and the croupiers shoveling their chips?

Shame on the UN's pedantic bureaucrats! Shame on the luxury cruise liner bosses!

image: courtesy of free colouring pictures


Song from Labadee Beach

in the dead cities
of our nightmares
the ghosts walk
through the rubble

death and devils
walk hand in hand
in the dead cities

in the dead cities
of our nightmares

in the dead cities

the dead cities

the dead dead dead dead dead ...

and broken cities
______
gw2010

°refers to the post immediately below

Sunday 17 January 2010

A Simple Haiti Aid & Rescue Plan

Haiti.

Poet-in-Residence is very angry.

The lessons of New Orleans were not taken on board and therefore the current aid and relief effort in Haiti is not proceeding as smoothly and as well as it should. Throwing charity money at the problem is not the answer. Now read the answer.

There is one resource that areas like the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Mediterranean have in abundance. That resource is cruise liners. In an emergency a large cruise liner could accommodate 20,000 persons in relative comfort. Ten large cruise liners could accommodate 200,000 persons. The victims of the disaster could be brought to the cruise liners in small boats. The cruise liners are equipped with small boats. These are called lifeboats. They can be used to bring the victims to the ships standing a mile or two offshore.

Cruise liners are equipped like small towns. They have kitchens, water, doctors, lights, electricity, in fact they have everything that is required.

As the victims are being brought on board the cruise liners the emergency services can begin to do their work; dispose of corpses, clear roads, restore electricity, reconnect water supplies, repair hospitals, erect storage facilities, repair and run the airports, the docks and all other essential pieces of infrastructure on land. Whilst this is going on teams of doctors, medical assistants and others can attend to the sick and injured on the cruise liner dedicated to be the hospital ship.

And so there it is. A basic and simple plan. A plan better than the chaos and bottlenecks that are always present at these disaster scenes.

The Poet-in-Residence blog is visited by 50 to 80 readers daily. "It's only a few," as Dylan Thomas said about support for his first poetry pamphlet idea, "but maybe it's the few that matter!"

Poet-in-Residence humbly requests the "few that matter" to promulgate this simple and effective rescue and aid plan in the right direction.

Together we may do some good. It is not yet too late. Today the Doomsday Clock stands at 6 minutes to midnight. Let's turn it back another 2 minutes!

Many thanks.

Saturday 16 January 2010

Mark Padmore's Britten in Vienna

British tenor Mark Padmore, accompanied by Julius Drake on the piano and Stefan Dohr on the horn, performed at the Mozart Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus yesterday evening.

Padmore's atmospheric rendering of Still falls the Rain, Benjamin Britten's Canticle III op. 55 (1954) (text: Edith Sitwell), deserves a special mention. This was a flawless performance of a great poem. In fact it was much more. "This is beyond what we expected!" and "Festival material!" were typical of the enthusiastic remarks to be heard during the interval. Like many others, I was so carried away, that I rushed downstairs to buy a Mark Padmore cd! The one I selected was 'Songs in Time of War', a collection of poems by Vikram Seth, based on ancient Chinese poems by Du Fu (712-770AD), and now set to music by Alec Roth (label: signum classics).

The second half of the concert featured more music from Britten, the most important composer of the 20th century in Poet-in-Residence's humble opinion. Of the 6 Hölderlein Fragments the last, Die Linien des Lebens was especially moving. Several Franz Schubert Lieder followed; including Die Forelle and Auf dem Strom. But the highlight for me was the Hector Berlioz extra - the title of which I, unfortunately, didn't catch.

According to programme notes it was in 1985, almost 25 years ago, that Mark Padmore made his debut and also on the same night last performed at the Vienna Konzerthaus. The Liederabend audience, charmed by Mark Padmore's technical skills; his expressive note-perfect voice, his friendly and easy-going communicative manner, his choice of material, are hoping it won't be too long before he returns to the Mozart Saal to delight them all once more.

from Canticle III - Still falls the rain

Still falls the Rain -
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss -
Blind as the ninteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.
Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the
hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the
human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.
Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross
...

________
Edith Sitwell
(1887-1964)

Thursday 14 January 2010

New Horizons


New Horizons


Black angels read
between the lines
knowing there are gaps

that must be filled

and the poems wait
to be returned or forwarded
- containers of experience

with dubious destinations.


The weight of books
is confined to space
- reflections in a broken mirror

in a Hall of Mirrors.


So, what is art if it's not a light
with sound and fury?
Brushed aluminium behind Plexiglas?

A momentary lapse of willpower?


Broken pots and discordant notes
give meaning to a place
like debris heaped in a corner

or a map of Africa.


The owner dreams
of the black ship's fallen sails
- rubs an eye on waking

and is for the time horizonless.


The poet never sleeps
though his days are filled with endless nights
- the result may be the masterpiece.

Never let the moment pass.


_____
gw2010

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Before now



Before now

Where was I before?

Before?

Yes, before now. Before here.

You mean before birth?

Yes, before birth.

Before birth you were not here.

How do you know?

I don't.

So you make an assumption?

I did. But so do you.

I do? How so?

You pose the question.

_________
gw2010

Sunday 10 January 2010

On reading the Upanishads

I have no convenient Swami staying in my house as Yeats had. I must bat on alone with these Upanishads; but not all 108 of them, or however many there are, and not even the so-called most important 10, or indeed a single one of them - although there is one that they say you can read and then it's enough. To be honest I find nothing new in them, nothing that I don't already instinctively feel.

And so I must return to my own metaphors, my own belief system; where the answers, as ever, are found in Nature.

In the channel

The evening breeze
makes the reeds rustle
and the snakes to swim quickly
through the skin
of the water
and into them.

Another pull of the oars,-

I face away
from a destination
that is always behind me.

_______
gw2010

Friday 8 January 2010

The Tree Circle of Life


The Tree Circle of Life is to be found at the top of the hill known as Himmelstraße in Vienna.

The German word Himmel can mean both sky and heaven. Let Himmelstraße be a road leading to Heaven then. Today it was a pure and heavenly place. And I had it all to myself.

There are 40 trees in the heavenly circle - 36 around the perimeter and 4 in the centre. The various trees represent the passing of time and the 4 seasons of the year. Today the scene was blanketed with snow and when I was there more snow was falling.

I laid a trail of running-shoe footprints around the circle of trees and paused by my own tree - a fir.

Two trees had recently been taken away for their own protection - the olive tree and the fig. These will reappear when the weather improves. And so, in reality, there were just 38 trees to visit in the Tree Circle of Life today.

Thursday 7 January 2010

The poet and the Upanishads

A night at the turn of the year
it was
when a poet had a dream -
a dream
for lack of a word.

The dreamed
and disembodied voice
instructed
the slumbering bard

to seek the truth
in the Upanishads.


And so
on his couch he lay
face to face
with a peering down moon

a moon in a window pane

a moon in a star-studded
bright-belted
sky

a moon above the peaks
of the snowy mountains

even above Orion.

And on the moon
and on the voice
the poet mused.


Had the moon
the voice
as it had seemed to him

to order
then
the sleeping mind?

_____________
gw 2010