Riding the Now

[Today’s image is of the literal-minded “Now Watch,” widely believed to be the most accurate timepiece ever. Found it at Wired’s Gadget Lab blog.]

From whiskey river:

And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.

(Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls)

Not from whiskey river:

If on earth there be
a Paradise of Bliss,
It is this,
It is this,
It is this.

(Firdausi)

This brings me to one of my favorite E.E. Cummings poems.

Looking around the Web, it seems that this one is subject to easy co-optation by advocates of one particular god- (and world-)view or another but I think it’s broader-gauged than that. Cummings’s upbringing was in the liberal Unitarian church, and I don’t believe he himself ever (at least publicly) espoused Christianity more than, say, Zen Buddhism (or vice-versa, for that matter).

(Another — to me — strange trend is its adoption as lyrics by composers of choral music. The versions I’ve listened to on the Web while preparing this post are either weirdly bombastic or, at the very least, like hymns sung by crowds of people. I think this poem lends itself to a quieter, more personal interpretation — the Self speaking to the Infinite, to get all fancily worded — but haven’t heard such a piece.)

Anyway… Cummings didn’t entitle this poem nor most others, but you’ll usually see it cited by its first line:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of allnothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

(E.E. Cummings)

Finally, a tiny gem from Billy Collins. (You’ll find this video embedded many places around the Web but the poem’s text, eh, not so much — at least as a poem (vs. a paragraph of prose); indeed, it’s quite possible this is Collins’s preferred presentation of the poem. The text which appears below the video is my own guess at the line breaks; if anyone knows differently, please drop a note in the comments!)

Now and Then

This poet of the Song*dynasty is so miserable.
The wind sighs, a single swan passes over head
and he is alone on the water in his skiff.
If only he appreciated life in eleventh century China
as much as I do.
No loud cartoons on television,
No music from the ice cream truck.
Just the calls of many birds
and the steady flow of the water clock

(Billy Collins)

_____________

* Original text reads “Tsong,” but reliable friend froog (see comments, below) informs me from his insider’s perspective that it should be “Song.” Who am I to doubt? Nobody, that’s who. “Song” it is.