From whiskey river:
On Angels
All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.The voice — no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightning.I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:day draws near
another one
do what you can.
(Czeslaw Milosz)
Not from whiskey river:
Last Sunday morning at eleven forty-five I astonished my music teacher. It can’t possibly happen again for another six months. But I began to play the third movement of a Kuhnau sonata and it went. I felt the angels protecting me from all the pitfalls, which I had investigated so thoroughly, in any case, that they were like old friends. I tell you this, not from lack of modesty, but from the certainty that you will rejoice with me and for me, and know that today the angels are not there, and the thumping is better kept behind closed doors.
(Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Element of Lavishness)
…and:
Dawn with her rose-red fingers might have shone
upon their tears, if with her glinting eyes
Athena had not thought of one more thing.
She held back the night, and night lingered long
at the western edge of the earth, while in the east
she reined in Dawn of the golden throne at Ocean’s banks,
commanding her not to yoke the windswift team that brings men light,
Blaze and Aurora, the young colts that race the morning on.
(Homer, The Odyssey, XXIII.273-280, translated by Robert Fagles)
Finally, a morning imperative of another sort (lyrics below):
(As always with this little audio-player thing: click the Play button
to start; the volume control — visible once the song begins —
is at the left, in a little row of vertical bars.)
Lyrics:
Meet Me In The Morning
music, lyrics, and performance by Bob DylanMeet me in the morning, 56th and Wabasha
Meet me in the morning, 56th and Wabasha
Honey, we could be in Kansas
By time the snow begins to thaw.They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn
They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn
But you wouldn’t know it by me
Every day’s been darkness since you been gone.Little rooster crowin’, there must be something on his mind
Little rooster crowin’, there must be something on his mind
Well, I feel just like that rooster
Honey, ya treat me so unkind.The birds are flyin’ low babe, honey I feel so exposed
Well, the birds are flyin’ low babe, honey I feel so exposed
Well now, I ain’t got any matches
And the station doors are closed.Well, I struggled through barbed wire, felt the hail fall from above
Well, I struggled through barbed wire, felt the hail fall from above
Well, you know I even outran the hound dogs
Honey, you know I’ve earned your love.Look at the sun sinkin’ like a ship
Look at the sun sinkin’ like a ship
Ain’t that just like my heart, babe
When you kissed my lips?
Jules says
What a gorgeous poem that opener is…. And the perfect way to start a day. Thank you.
froog says
Do you know this one by the British poet Brian Patten?
Dylan’s line about the sun sinking like a ship reminded me of one of my favourite phrases from Classical Greek, Callimachus’ lament for his friend Heraclitus:
(I spent ages trying to find the Greek script online, but….. Greek script is fiddly!!!
Anyway, it means literally “we sank the sun in talk”. The Victorian poet Walter Savage Landor did a famous translation of this which, while much more verbose, did capture the feeling that well. His version, however, is more than twice as long as Callimachus’. Greek can be a very compact language. Landor rendered this phrase as:
froog says
Oops, sorry, botched my HTML tags there!
John says
Jules: So glad you liked!
froog: Was unfamiliar with Patten’s poem but feel enriched for having read it now. In Milosz’s, the reference to wings “taken away from you” struck me from the start as a mysterious (albeit enjoyable) little touch — angels without wings? Your recalling “Angel Wings”: how perfect an association.
(By the way, straightened up the HTML for you. And then some — compulsive fiddler.)
froog says
Oh, sorry, another brainfade there. The famously long-winded but rather sweet Victorian rendition of Callimachus was by William Johnson Cory rather than Walter Savage Landor.
Why do I confuse those two names? Is it just that they scan the same??
froog says
Aha! I finally got the Greek sorted.
Callimachus XXXIV
???? ???, ?????????, ???? ????? ?? ?? ?? ?????
?????? ???????? ?? ??????? ?????????
?????? ????? ???????????. ???? ?? ??? ???,
????? ???????????, ?????????? ??????,
?? ?? ???? ??????? ???????, ???? ? ??????
???????? ????? ??? ??? ????? ?????.
And Cory’s version:
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed;
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
(“Heraclitus”,
by William Johnson Cory, 1823-92)
Ironically enough, I believe Heraclitus’ work has been lost, so it’s not known if he’d written a book called ‘Nightingales’ or (more likely, I think) this is just a charming metaphor for poetry.
John says
froog: While you no doubt had the Greek sorted, good ol’ WordPress (which drives this blog) promptly scrambled it. I think this is the only way to do it — with an image (and I’m not even sure that will work, in a comment):
I do admire your perseverance. And I thought I was obsessive about such stuff!
About Landor-vs.-Cory: I’d love to have either the luck or the slippery wit to be able to ascribe memory lapses to scansion. :)