Archana Kapoor Nagpal & Jayashree Maniyil:Wednesday Haiku, #193

Photo by Brian Vogelgesand 

new moon --
my wishing lamp
on the holy river

Archana Kapoor Nagpal

 

Artwork by Ba Jin

anchored boat –
the weight of the moon
in her belly

Jayashree Maniyil

The Ba Jin art, pictured above is after the famed Li Po poem, Drinking Alone by Midnight. Never one to be able to resist Li Po, the poem follows:


Drinking Alone by Midnight

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.

Li Po 
trans. by Arthur Waley  

Art by Francesco Clemente

(from 'Cathay: Poems after Li Po' by Ezra Pound)

------------------------------------------------

The Lark (page down a tad)

ripples on water--
mingling with the larks
a fishing boat

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku.

Leonard J. Cirino: 1943-2012

I'm sorry to report, another fine small press poet has died: Leonard J. Cirino.  Over the years, I've published a few pieces by Leonard in Lilliput Review.  He was unique; what appealed to me about his work was a lyrical quality that displayed a fine mix of detail and philosophy, with a faintly Eastern sensibility.  Indeed, he loved the classic Eastern poets, as in the following:



The Road Going Nowhere after So Chongju

The road going somewhere always leads to an end.
Sadness, like a red blossom, also comes to an end.
The limbs of a willow bend to the stream, the moon
descends. Sorrow, an ache laced with opium, and joy
that never ends. The floating worlds go on in a dream.
What of the taste and stiff scent of blood?
Its stain? The road long coming home?

                Leonard J. Cirino   
                Lilliput Review, #176

The poet and friend of Leonard, RD Armstrong, has done a fine tribute over at the Lummox Writers' Press Club.  Check it out if you get a chance, it's a fine modern elegy.  In addition, listen to Leonard  being interviewed by RD over at Blog Talk Radio on The Jane Crown Show or via the following widget:

A couple of Leonard's poems, the first from his last book and the second, originally published in America back in 2007.


Forty Years of Nightmares
   Here the clouds are great churches – Deborah Diggs
 
Judged harshly by my enemies, I say,
Let them cast the first stone. I’ll know
the last judgement when my time comes;
with the clouds and seas as my proper
form of worship, along with the streams,
mountains, the trees and stones.
I never had to stay in the dark of my room
or stand in a corner. Life never punished me
until madness ran amok with my body,
my brain. i could have been Frida
struck by a bus, or Deborah falling,
jumping from the stadium’s heights.
Let them cast lots among the shadows like ghosts.
I know my place in the dark and the light.

    from Leonard's last book The Instrument of Others
   Pygmy Forest Press





Accept the Gift A Letter to James Wright, Deceased

Like snow, the poem breaks into petals
and crystals, sharp things like stilettos.
It is just now April, or mid-May,
the shadows of flowers lie neglected
in the garden while cedar and fir hang
lovely in the long-gone frost of March.

Why does it take some happiness
and a loneliness one can only cry for
to make these poems? I’m sorry you had
the gift. It makes for a miserable life.

How Ohio lived in you, your verse freed
and standing on its own, like a colt,
or an orphan removed from the nest
only to have its illusions shattered
in the world wide enough that you can’t
know yourself, or any part but Ohio,
and all things west, north, south, the distance
from home one calls a map of the earth.

Published in America Magazine April 30, 2007

Leonard reading "I Dream Your Voice":





-------------------------

And these 3 are for Leonard.  I believe he would like them very much ... rest in peace.


Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.  
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moons young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.

James Wright

Saying Good bye to MenHao-jan
at Yellow Crane Pavilion

You said goodbye at Yellow Crane Pavilion
and sailed west, down into the valley
through the flowers and the mist of spring
until your lonely sail vanished
in the blue sky's horizon.

and I was left watching the river
flowing gently into heaven

Li Po
translated by Sam Hamill

nightingale
you're growing old...
but what a voice!

                    Issa
                    translated by David G. Lanoue




best,
Don

Wednesday Haiku will return next week.

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Chinese Love Lyrics: Moon, Bird, & River

Continuing the exploration of my poetry shelves, the next book I come to is Chinese Love Lyrics, one of those slim verse volumes produced by Peter Pauper Press back in the day. Books from this press were inexpensive ("prices even a pauper could afford") yet at once decorative and, most importantly, often full of classic and unique translations of Asian literature, frequently from Japan and Asia.

Chinese Love Lyrics is subtitled "From Most Ancient To Modern Times," concentrating mostly on the older poems from the time of the Tang Dynasty. The very first in the book is probably the very best:

Spring

If I were a tree or a plant
I would feel the soft influence of spring.
Since I'm a man ...
Do not be astonished at my joy.

Anonymous (1005 A.D.)
translated by Gertrude L. Joerissen

In this surprising little four-line lyric, how far we have become removed from nature is simply and powerful captured. The first three lines imply that people are not affected by "the soft influence of spring," but line 4 quickly pirouettes, revealing undifferentiated joy as just such an affect. Here is another four-line lyric, a poem that in one essential image captures love in all its beauty and transformative power:

Watching the Moon

My beloved knows
that I watch thee, O moon,
And when thy beams caress her,
Our separation is less cruel.

Chiang Che-Kin
translated by Gertrude L. Joerissen

In Chinese poetry, as well as Japanese that was so heavily influenced by it, the moon was a ubiquitous presence, often shining down on lovers separated by great distances, as in this poem. That ubiquitousness is an important spiritual element, grounding humans in the very transitoriness of life and directly connecting us to nature. That it is used in love poetry as a lyrical, romantic facet adds a depth that is is at once essential and resonant.

In fact, this connectedness can be further illustrated by two more of my favorite poems from this particular collection, one using bird song and the other a river as the moon is used in Chiang Che-Kin's poem.

Birds Singing at Dusk

The cool wind of evening
Blows bird-song to the window
Where a maiden sits.
She is embrodiering bright flowers
On a piece of silk.

Her head is raised;
Her work falls through her fingers;
Her thoughts have flown to him
Who is away.

"A bird can easily find its mate
Among the leaves,
But all a maiden's tears,
Falling like rain from Heaven,
Will not bring back
Her distant lover."

She bends again to her embroidery:
"I will weave a little verse
Among these flowers of his robe ...
Perhaps he will read it
And come back again."

Li Po
translated by Peter Rudolph

A River of Love

I live at the upper end of the River,
And at the lower end live you;
Every day I long to see you but cannot ...
Though from the same River we drink.

When will the River go dry?
When can my sorrow come to an end?
Only may your heart be like mine ...
My love for you will not be in vain.

Li Chih-Yi translated by Ch'u Ta Kao

Li Po's poem has the young woman hearing bird song and, with it, her thoughts take flight to her distant lover. Embroidering a little verse, perhaps this very one into her lover's robe is a nice touch by the poet (and his persona), giving one pause over our parochial use of the term post-modern in recent times, as if "modern" culture was the first and only culture to reflect upon itself and its own creations with artistic distance, be it ironic or no.

As the moon's light and the bird in flight connect the lovers in the two previous poems, so the river connects a separated pair. I love the fact that they take life from the same source, as life has always centered around the sources of water. The juxtaposition of the questions of when the River will dry and when will the lover's sorrow end is particularly poignant, equating as it does death with the end of love. Simple a lyric as it is, it returns us to the source of all things, a touching reminder of our implicit involvement with nature which today we push so far from whom we are and what we do.

Finally, one last poem from this lovely collection that may remind you of something a bit more modern than classic Chinese poetry, if a tad short of a ramble in the field of post-modernism.

The Separation

Daylight! And I must leave.
Beloved friend, do not rise!
Give me the little lamp
That I may look at thee again,
That I may pull all of thee into my heart
And into my soul ...

Now, thy lips! I hear the gong
Of the night watchman sounding.
Work leads to evening, and
Each evening brings me to
Thy arms, which are my recompense.

Look! The leaves are covered with pearls.
Of dew....A blackbird is whistling.
Until this evening, adiew

Ma Huang-Chung
translated by Gertrude L. Joerissen

Here we have the lovers, a morning bird, a coming separation, one of the lovers holding back the other ... of course, I'm thinking of one of Shakespeare's greatest scenes:

Act 3, Scene 5

JULIET
Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO
It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JULIET
Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhal'd,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua.
Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone.

ROMEO
Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.
I have more care to stay than will to go:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is't, my soul? let's talk; it is not day.

JULIET
It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us.
Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes,
O, now I would they had changed voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day.
O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.

ROMEO
More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!

This delightful little volume can be found on Amazon, which I don't link to, and there are some slightly more reasonable (and descriptively more reliable) copies at abebooks. Chances are that if you head off to a local used bookstore, if you are lucky enough to have one, and are patient and persistent, a reasonably priced copy will come your way.

And you'll have gone outside! There's a bunch of nature out there, for sure, and more than a few potential poems, both literal and figurative, awaiting your particular attention.



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A couple of quick items: the November/December Small Press Review has selected issue #170 as a featured "Mag Pick" for that issue - as always, back issues are available for a measly $1 or, if it's a tight month, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope and I'll send a copy so you can see what they are on about. For those with a subscription to SPR, you can see their Nov/Dec issue here in pdf form.

In addition, Longhouse Publishers and Booksellers has selected Ed Markowski's broadside "15 Poems" as one of their "Prime Picks" of the last few months. You may see their fine list of choices at their blog, A Longhouse Birdhouse.

Finally, Norbert Blei has highlighted the Ed Markowski broadside on his excellent blog, Bashō's Road: for a taste of the broadside, click here. The broadside is issue #172 (which is still in the process of shipping to subscribers) - if you'd like a copy, the terms are the same as in the previous paragraph.

And congrats, Ed, for all the much deserved attention


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For those not tuned in last week, the new feature I'll be highlighting in these weekly posts will be the Lilliput broadside issues, which have been published throughout the full 20 year run. Broadsides feature the work of one particular poet; the idea is to let the poet stretch out a bit, so there is no ten-line restriction as in regular issues. They are available for $1 or 3 for $2: here's a full list of those published to date. This week's poem is from Mark Hartenbach's excellent broadside, "Butterfly, Corkboard," which was issue #158, published in August 2007. Hope you like it.

exploitation poem

why do we insist on testing one another
without so much as a single warning shot
an episodic glance, an indifferent shrug

we demand a dent in memory
build or rebuild our ego
with scraps of others

we feign the blues
& forgetting
depend on an element of surprise

we fine tune our desires
knowing when to surrender to surface
& when to sink teeth deep

when to conjure up names
that promise dead flowers
& stale perfume

when to take another
to the edge of the water
& when to pull back at the last moment

when to translate
the firmament
into inevitable embrace

& when
to casually mention
that every star is dying

Mark Hartenbach

And Issa, an old time stargazer with many poems on the topic:






in cold water
sipping the stars...
Milky Way

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Mary Oliver: Evidence

It's been said that every great poet (or artist, or novelist etc.) is simply writing the same great poem over again and again. The poet herself first and foremost understands this deeply, deeply - it runs to the source, the unexplainable essence from which it springs.

Have you not heard the sparrow, singing?

Most critics have written off Mary Oliver a long time ago. They may acknowledge that she has written a number of very good, if not great, poems (& who among them can say the same, eh, William Logan?) but now, they say, she just repeats past glories, retreads the same old tropes.

And the waves, do they not repeat past glories, retread old tropes?

Imagine, in your life as a poet, toiling day in and day out, for a lifetime, how ever long, imagine having written a handful of poems that deeply touched the lives of others, some who have devoted their lives to the word, others who have not.

Imagine.

Mary Oliver has touched the lives of many and she has done it by tapping deep into the well-spring not only of what makes us human, but also into what it is to live. She shares the great subjects and themes of no less than Whitman and Emerson and Snyder and Berry and Wordsworth and Thoreau. She is formidable, in her way.

If you are a Mary Oliver fan, as I am, you will enjoy very much her new book, Evidence. If you are not, perhaps there is nothing here that will win you over. But there are a handful of poems in this collection which revisit that well and it is pure and it is cold and it is deep.

You will find no workshop Evian here, friends.

And who among us can say the same, a handful of poems, pure and cold and deep?

Yes, there are poems that are working through the same images, the same thoughts, the same themes. Some are light, very light, indeed. But they are true: true to her vision, true to her thought, true to herself. True to the world.

When she gifts another with a cherished possession (a bone from the ear of a whale, found deposited on the beach at the edge of the Atlantic) the significance of which she has written about previously, I felt, in fact, she was gifting her heart.

Imagine giving away the object that inspired a poem that tens of thousands of people read and loved. And the gift she receives in return is even more beautiful, one that Yeats and Lawrence would have admired, indeed.

Here are 3 poems from Evidence that work for me; the are distinctly the Mary Oliver of my mind, not all pretty nature and beautiful this and lovely that. They are the Mary Oliver that senses death, right here, right now, all the time, and its power and its strength are its beauty, the beauty of life.

The beauty of death.




Li Po and the Moon

There is the story of the old Chinese poet:
at night in his boat he went drinking and dreaming
--and singing

then drowned as he reached for the moon's reflection.
Well, probably each of us, at some time, has been
--as desperate.

Not the moon, though.

Mary Oliver

Thinking of Swirler

One day I went out
--into a wonderful
----ongoing afternoon,
------it was fall,

the pine trees were brushing themselves
--against the sky
---as though they were painting it,
----and Swirler,

who was alive then,
--was walking slowly
---through the green bog,
----his neck

as thick as an ox,
--his antlers
----brushing against the trees,
-- -- his three good feet tapping

the softness beneath him
--and the fourth, from an old wound,
----swirling,
------I know he saw me

for he gave me a long look
--which was as precious as a few
----good words,
------since his eyes

were without terror.
--What do the creatures know?
----What in this world can we be certain about?
------How did he know I was nothing

but a harmless mumbler of words,
--some of which would be about him
----and this wind-whipped day?
------In a week he would be dead,

arrowed down by a man I like,
--though with some difficulty.
----In my house there are a hundred half-done poems.
------Each of us leaves an unfinished life.

Mary Oliver

Schubert

He takes such small steps
to express our longings.
Thank you, Schubert.

How many hours
do I sit here
aching to do

what I do not do
when, suddenly,
he throws a single note

higher than the others
so that I feel
the green field of hope,

and then, descending,
all this world's sorrow,
so deadly, so beautiful.

Mary Oliver

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This Sunday, I am going to start a new occasional series, entitled Issa's Sunday Service, which will include a song and a poem.

Because, well, there is just not enough going on around here ...

if my father were here--
dawn colors
over green fields

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

Classical Chinese Anti-War Poetry

Bloomfield Bridge

The sixth anniversary of the beginning of the war with Iraq has passed relatively quietly. It's ho-hum in the States, where the absence of a military draft assures a lack of significant engagement by the general populace (read: us) because we are collectively too busy trying to insert our heads still further up our asses (read: Facebook, Twitter, blogs).

One of the many ways I walk to work is a over a large, beautiful bridge that runs from the Bloomfield neighborhood ("Little Italy") to the Hill and Oakland areas of the city. For many years I've had the opportunity to pass over graffiti right on the walkway that sums it all up:

----------------------------NO WAR
--------------------------BUT CLASS
------------------------------WAR

It's funny when you walk past something everyday and you read it and you think about it and it begins to sink in and it plants a tiny seed that just needs a little water and a little light.

This little seed has gotten plenty of light and water over the years and I think I've begun to see its very far ranging implications. Race is something that has spent a lot of time in the foremost part of many peoples minds over the years here in America.

It's about time class was next.

Which is all the long way round to revisiting the collection I Hear My Gate Slam: Chinese Poets Meeting and Parting, selected and translated by Taylor Stoehr. Why would I ever be thinking about class and war and class war and America on this 6th anniversary of the Iraq conflict while reading a collection of classical Chinese poetry?

One of the sections of this book, generally themed on meeting and parting, is called "Woe to Soldiers." To depoliticize the statements above about our current situation, I'm simply going to allow the poets to speak for themselves, addressing the issue at hand. First up is the 9th century poet, Wei Chuang:

Frontier Soil

Has there ever been a time without war,
----------an emperor without armies?

Soldiers have but one thing on their minds,
----------the lookout for peace.

At the frontier they say the soil now
----------is more bones than earth,

poor farmers dragged from their fields
----------and marched off to death.

Wei Chuang

Next, 8th century poet, Li Po (Li Bai):

Fighting South of the Wall

Last year we fought were the Sang-kan flows,
this year it was Onion River Road.

We've washed our swords in the Eastern Sea,
grazed our horses on T'ien Shan's snowy side.

A thousand miles are not enough for this war,
our armies grow old in their armor.

Husbandman of slaughter, the Huns
have sown the yellow desert with our bones.

Long ago the Ch'in built the Great Wall,
now it's the Han that light the signal beacon.

All night long the flames flicker,
year in year out, the war goes on.

Bright swords flash, brave men fall and die,
riderless horses whinny at the sky.

Kites and crows pluck out the guts,
hand them high on the withered trees.

Soldiers smear their blood on the dry grass
while generals map the next campaign.

Wise men know winning a war
is no better than losing one.

Li Po

Here is Yüan Chen (779-831), lamenting the plight of the land and the farmer:

The Farmer

His water buffalo bellows a complaint.
Soil baked hard and cracked like a broken plate,
the clods explode under its hooves.

Plowing his field for the Emperor,
sixty years he's watched the wagons rolling off
to feed the soldiers God knows where!

Then one day government troops come
to slaughter the buffalo and take away his cart.
They leave him two buffalo horns.

He hammers the ploughshare into a spade,
while his wife hauls his sister threshes
for without grain for taxes he must sell the house.

We pray for victory. Though the farmer will die
he has an heir, and the buffalo a calf.
Supplies for the army must never run short!

Yüan Chen

There are many, many more fine poems in this collection, some on war, most on friendship, loss, and love. I've returned the library copy and purchased my own. Having read it twice through and dipped in many more times, I know I will be returning to it again and again.

I can only hope that, over the years, it will sink in as well as the lesson gleaned going back and forth to work.

The Summer Palace

In the desolate summer palace
-----------the peonies are still red
and white-haired palace ladies say what they please
-----------about the palace dead.

Yüan Chen

best,
Don