poetry dispatch: exiting a holiday
The world is made of pictures of the world, And the pictures change the world into another world Howard Nemerov, Witnessing the Launch of the Shuttle Atlantis
I exit most holidays in a fog - brain and heart. Family is a kind of collision isn’t it? A collision between the person you believe yourself to be and the person who your family remembers you to be. A contest of individual and collective memory as old as time. Happiness to be had of course, but an experience that also tends to dredge up those darker parts of ourselves that we might be able to forget or feel that we’ve solved when we are living in a different relational context, apart from our beginnings.
I started today reading poetry by fire. I did so to center myself in the fog. I’ve always loved fog to be honest. Wonder to be found in disorientation.
As the holiday weekend hours dwindle, I’m sharing a few of the poems that resonated with me. If you’d like to share a poem, I hope you’ll do so in the comments.
Waiting Both A star looks down at me, And says: “Here I and you Stand each in our degree: What do you mean to do,— Mean to do?” I say: “For all I know, Wait, and let Time go by, Till my change come.”—”Just so,” The star says: “So mean I:— So mean I.” Thomas Hardy For My Great-Great Grandson The Space Pioneer You, What's-your-name, who down the byways of my blood are hurtling toward the future, tell me if you've packed the thousand flavors of the wind, the river's voice, the tongues of moss and fern singing the earth. And where have you left the rain? Careful: don't lose it, nor the moan of the seagull in her blue desert, nor those stars warm as caresses you will not find again in your nights of steel. Watch that you don't run short of butterflies; learn the colors of the hours; and here, in this little case of bones I've left you the perfume of the sea. Tú, Fulanito, que por los caminos de mi sangre te lanzas al futuro, dime si te llevas los mil sabores del viento, la voz del río, las lenguas de musgo y helecho que cantan la tierra. Y dónde dejaste la lluvia? Que no se te pierda, ni el gemir de la gaviota en su desierto azul, ni esas estrellas tibias como caricias que no encontrarás en tus noches de acero. Fíjate que no te falten mariposas; apréndete el color de las horas; y toma, que en esta cajita de huesos te dejo el perfume de los mares. Rhina P. Espaillat Witnessing the Launch of the Shuttle Atlantis So much of life in the world is waiting, that This day was no exception, so we waited All morning long and into the afternoon. I spent some of the time remembering Dante, who did the voyage in the mind Alone, with no more nor heavier machinery Than the ghost of a girl giving him guidance; And wondered if much was lost to gain all this New world of engine and energy, where dream Translates into deed. But when the thing went up It was indeed impressive, as if hell Itself opened to send its emissary In search of heaven or 'the unpeopled world' (thus Dante of doomed Ulysses) 'behind the sun.' So much of life in the world is memory That the moment of the happening itself— So much with noise and smoke and rising clear To vanish at the limit of our vision Into the light blue light of afternoon— Appeared no more, against the void in aim, Than the flare of a match in sunlight, quickly snuffed. What yet may come of this? We cannot know. Great things are promised, as the promised land Promised to Moses that he would not see But a distant sight of, though the children would. The world is made of pictures of the world, And the pictures change the world into another world We cannot know, as we knew not this one. Howard Nemerov