Creation and Completion

From whiskey river:

Making Poetry

“You have to inhabit poetry
if you want to make it.”

And what’s “to inhabit?”

To be in the habit of, to wear
words, sitting in the plainest light,
in the silk of morning, in the shoe of night;
a feeling bare and frondish in surprising air;
familiar . . . rare.

And what’s “to make?”

To be and to become words’ passing
weather; to serve a girl on terrible terms,
embark on voyages over voices,
evade the ego-hill, the misery-well,
the siren hiss of publish, success, publish,
success, success, success.

And why inhabit, make, inherit poetry?

Oh, it’s the shared comedy of the worst
blessed; the sound leading the hand;
a wordlife running from mind to mind
through the washed rooms of the simple senses;
one of those haunted, undefendable, unpoetic
crosses we have to find.

(Anne Stevenson, Collected Poems, p. 101)

…and:

I keep coming back to the statement because it gets at the truth. It’s another way of accounting for the fact that, if a poem is any good, you can repeat it to yourself as if it were written by somebody else. The completedness frees you from it and it from you. You can read and reread it without feeling self-indulgent: whatever it was in you that started the writing has got beyond you. The unwritten poem is always going to be entangled with your own business, part of your accident and incoherence — which is what drives you to write. But once the poem gets written, it is, in a manner of speaking, none of your business.

(Seamus Heaney)

Not from whiskey river:

It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.

(Teilhard de Chardin )

…and:

And God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
“I’m lonely —
I’ll make me a world.”

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said, “That’s good!”

…

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked at His sun,
And He looked at His moon,
And He looked at His little stars;
He looked on His world
With all its living things,
And God said, “I’m lonely still.”

Then God sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, “I’ll make me a man!”

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of  His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;

Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

(James Wheldon Johnson, from “The Creation”)

Finally, when I think of things wrapping up successfully, it’s hard for me not to think of this song (lyrics below):

Lyrics:

Into The West

Lay down
your sweet and weary head.
Night is falling.
You have come to journey’s end.

Sleep now, and dream
of the ones who came before.
They are calling
from across a distant shore.

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see.
All of your fears will pass away.
Safe in my arms,
you’re only sleeping.

What can you see
on the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
a pale moon rises.
The ships have come
to carry you home.

And all will turn
to silver glass.
A light on the water.
All souls pass.

Hope fades
Into the world of night,
Through shadows falling,
Out of memory and time.

Don’t say
We have come now to the end.
White shores are calling.
You and I will meet again.
And you’ll be here in my arms,
Just sleeping.

What can you see
on the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
a pale moon rises.
The ships have come
to carry you home.

And all will turn
to silver glass.
A light on the water.
Grey ships pass
Into the West.

(written by Fran Walsh, Howard Shore and Annie Lennox;
performed by Annie Lennox)