Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Three Poems for Memorial Day
The Bivouac of the Dead
The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on Life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.
Theodore O'Hara
Not for a Nation
Not for the flag
Of any land because myself was born there
Will I give up my life.
But I will love that land where man is free,
And that I will defend.
Edna St Vincent Millay
War Song
Soldier in a curious land
All across a swaying sea,
Take her smile and lift her hand—
Have no guilt of me.
Soldier, when were soldiers true?
If she’s kind and sweet and gay,
Use the wish I send to you—
Lie not lone til day!
Only, for the nights that were,
Soldier, and the dawns that came,
When in sleep you turn to her
Call her by my name.
Dorothy Parker
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Love Your Neighbor Part 2
Interval of Joy
just as I was saying I would stop writing about love and lust
and write something instead about the unhappiness of my neighbor
I met you and fell into complete confusion
and all my resolutions went up in air
now see where I sit and write songs again
burning for your somewhat green eyes
thirsting for your saliva
recollecting our one love-walk in the country
when the mosquitoes bit us in confused bewilderment
at this incomparable devotion of ours
and the thorns pierced into our bodies
astonished at the extent of our indifference
it was an interval of joy
may the unhappy forgive me for it
I have not yet suffered enough
for the pain of my neighbor to touch me
Dinos Christianopoulos
just as I was saying I would stop writing about love and lust
and write something instead about the unhappiness of my neighbor
I met you and fell into complete confusion
and all my resolutions went up in air
now see where I sit and write songs again
burning for your somewhat green eyes
thirsting for your saliva
recollecting our one love-walk in the country
when the mosquitoes bit us in confused bewilderment
at this incomparable devotion of ours
and the thorns pierced into our bodies
astonished at the extent of our indifference
it was an interval of joy
may the unhappy forgive me for it
I have not yet suffered enough
for the pain of my neighbor to touch me
Dinos Christianopoulos
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Love Your Neighbor
We are to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves. If you don’t know who your neighbor is, I refer you to the parable of the Good Samaritan. I refer you to my parents.
If you needed help, my parents would give you help – not always money, which wasn’t plentiful – but certainly a bed to lie in and a place at the table.
When I was quite young a woman and her two children came to stay with us for a couple of weeks while she was getting a divorce. My father worked with her husband, which made it kind of awkward for him, but “He was abusing them”, my mother said, and that was enough.
A young woman living next to us had two illegitimate children. The oldest, a boy about two, was taken away from her for neglect about the time the baby was born. My mother thought she was neglecting the baby, too, so she told her, “If you don’t want to take care of that baby, give it to me.” The baby came home with her. She got the crib and bottles out of the attic, and the baby stayed for about three months before the woman went to court, got both the children back, and moved away.
Foreign students stayed with us, sometimes for only a few days while they were touring America. One, a college student from Zanzibar stayed a year. He was a dark skinned Muslim, rather quiet and modest. He was afraid of the family dog. My mother, never one to turn down an opportunity to learn something, studied the Koran with him.
We lived near the state fairgrounds, so in August we sometimes had workers or entertainers stay with us during Fair Week. I remember one summer a group of acrobats stayed. I don’t think my parents even charged them room and board. My mother said they had a hard life.
My sister broke up with a guy one time and when he lost his apartment, my mother gave him a room until he could find another. My sister was pissed, to tell the truth.
Then, after I left home and got married, my folks gave shelter to a family of Laotian refugees and their blind baby. They gave my mother parasites.
A Vietnamese high school student stayed for two years.
A Chinese college student stayed for about six years. My parents loaned her money to start law school so she wouldn’t have to go back to China. She is still close to the family. My father gave her away at her wedding.
This all in addition to various family members who stayed for varying lengths of time, Democratic campaign workers who stayed during the Iowa caucuses, and people they invited home from the soup kitchen they cooked at on Thursday nights.
My parents knew who their neighbors were.
If you needed help, my parents would give you help – not always money, which wasn’t plentiful – but certainly a bed to lie in and a place at the table.
When I was quite young a woman and her two children came to stay with us for a couple of weeks while she was getting a divorce. My father worked with her husband, which made it kind of awkward for him, but “He was abusing them”, my mother said, and that was enough.
A young woman living next to us had two illegitimate children. The oldest, a boy about two, was taken away from her for neglect about the time the baby was born. My mother thought she was neglecting the baby, too, so she told her, “If you don’t want to take care of that baby, give it to me.” The baby came home with her. She got the crib and bottles out of the attic, and the baby stayed for about three months before the woman went to court, got both the children back, and moved away.
Foreign students stayed with us, sometimes for only a few days while they were touring America. One, a college student from Zanzibar stayed a year. He was a dark skinned Muslim, rather quiet and modest. He was afraid of the family dog. My mother, never one to turn down an opportunity to learn something, studied the Koran with him.
We lived near the state fairgrounds, so in August we sometimes had workers or entertainers stay with us during Fair Week. I remember one summer a group of acrobats stayed. I don’t think my parents even charged them room and board. My mother said they had a hard life.
My sister broke up with a guy one time and when he lost his apartment, my mother gave him a room until he could find another. My sister was pissed, to tell the truth.
Then, after I left home and got married, my folks gave shelter to a family of Laotian refugees and their blind baby. They gave my mother parasites.
A Vietnamese high school student stayed for two years.
A Chinese college student stayed for about six years. My parents loaned her money to start law school so she wouldn’t have to go back to China. She is still close to the family. My father gave her away at her wedding.
This all in addition to various family members who stayed for varying lengths of time, Democratic campaign workers who stayed during the Iowa caucuses, and people they invited home from the soup kitchen they cooked at on Thursday nights.
My parents knew who their neighbors were.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Geranium
Last week I forgot the word "geranium." I plant these flowers every summer in the planter box by the front stoop. The seem happy there, and bloom very nicely all summer long. Last year I put a couple of geraniums in an open-work bronze pot lined in moss. They bloomed so well, I took them inside before the first frost and put them on the counter top in the kitchen. They stopped blooming inside, but I fed and watered them and they stayed healthy looking. This spring I went to move them outside again and I could not remember what they were called.
I've always had trouble remembering names, and I have no musical memory at all. I still forget the names of people I've worked with for years, and I can hear a song 10 times, and still say to my kids, "That's a nice song. What's it called?" But I don't usually just forget a common noun like geranium.
I asked my husband what they were called, but he didn't know. We saw them in hanging pots at the grocery store and both snuck over to look at the label to see what they were: "Hanging Pot". That's a big help. The Safeway doesn't have to label them because everybody knows what they are, except my husband and me.
After about 4 days it suddenly came to me. I was thinking about something else and the word geranium popped into my head. Where had it been? Memory is a strange thing.
I think Billy Collins sums it up nicely.
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of you spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Billy Collins
It's possible I have used the Billy Collins poem before. I can't remember.
I don't think I've shared this one:
Gardener
Under the window, on a dusty ledge,
He peers among the spider webs for seed.
He wonders, groping, if the spiders spun
Beneath that window after all. Perhaps
His eyes are spiders, and new veils are dropped
Each winter and summer morning in the brain.
He sees but silken-dimly, though the ends
Of his white fingers feel more things than are.
More delicate webs, and sundry bags of seed.
That flicker at the window is a wren.
She taps the pane with a neat tail, and scolds.
He knows her there, and hears her – far away,
As if an insect sang in a tree. Whereat
The shelf he fumbles on is distant, too,
And his bent arm is longer than an arm.
Something between his fingers brings him back:
An envelope that rustles, and he reads:
“The coreopsis.” He does not delay.
Down from the rafter where they always hang
He shoulders rake and hoe and shuffles out.
The sun is warm and thick upon the path,
But he goes lightly, under a broad straw
None knows the age of. They are watching him
From upper windows as his slippered feet
Avoid the aster and nasturtium beds
Where he is not allowed to meddle. His preserve
Is further, and no stranger touches it.
Yesterday he was planting larkspur there.
He works the ground and hoes the larkspur out,
Pressing the coreopsis gently in.
With as old hose he plays a quavering stream,
Then shuffles back with the tools and goes to supper.
Over his bowl of mil, wherein he breaks
Five brittle crackers, drifts the question: “Uncle,
What have you planted for the summer coming?”
“Why – hollyhocks,” he murmurs, and they smile.
Martin Van Dorn
I've always had trouble remembering names, and I have no musical memory at all. I still forget the names of people I've worked with for years, and I can hear a song 10 times, and still say to my kids, "That's a nice song. What's it called?" But I don't usually just forget a common noun like geranium.
I asked my husband what they were called, but he didn't know. We saw them in hanging pots at the grocery store and both snuck over to look at the label to see what they were: "Hanging Pot". That's a big help. The Safeway doesn't have to label them because everybody knows what they are, except my husband and me.
After about 4 days it suddenly came to me. I was thinking about something else and the word geranium popped into my head. Where had it been? Memory is a strange thing.
I think Billy Collins sums it up nicely.
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of you spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Billy Collins
It's possible I have used the Billy Collins poem before. I can't remember.
I don't think I've shared this one:
Gardener
Under the window, on a dusty ledge,
He peers among the spider webs for seed.
He wonders, groping, if the spiders spun
Beneath that window after all. Perhaps
His eyes are spiders, and new veils are dropped
Each winter and summer morning in the brain.
He sees but silken-dimly, though the ends
Of his white fingers feel more things than are.
More delicate webs, and sundry bags of seed.
That flicker at the window is a wren.
She taps the pane with a neat tail, and scolds.
He knows her there, and hears her – far away,
As if an insect sang in a tree. Whereat
The shelf he fumbles on is distant, too,
And his bent arm is longer than an arm.
Something between his fingers brings him back:
An envelope that rustles, and he reads:
“The coreopsis.” He does not delay.
Down from the rafter where they always hang
He shoulders rake and hoe and shuffles out.
The sun is warm and thick upon the path,
But he goes lightly, under a broad straw
None knows the age of. They are watching him
From upper windows as his slippered feet
Avoid the aster and nasturtium beds
Where he is not allowed to meddle. His preserve
Is further, and no stranger touches it.
Yesterday he was planting larkspur there.
He works the ground and hoes the larkspur out,
Pressing the coreopsis gently in.
With as old hose he plays a quavering stream,
Then shuffles back with the tools and goes to supper.
Over his bowl of mil, wherein he breaks
Five brittle crackers, drifts the question: “Uncle,
What have you planted for the summer coming?”
“Why – hollyhocks,” he murmurs, and they smile.
Martin Van Dorn
Monday, April 24, 2006
Something There is That Doesn't Love a Wall
Beth's quote reminded me of my neighbor (Kenny, not Tex).
Kenny bought himself a riding lawn mower last summer. He has no need for one, really. His front lawn is small, and his back yard not much bigger. He cut down all the trees in the back yard, and ripped out all the ivy to plant grass. After he went to all that trouble, I guess he felt he needed a riding mower.
At any rate, he parked this mower on his front porch for the winter to keep it out of the snow and rain. Then, this spring, he hired some guys to build brick planters all along his front porch and front walk-way - nice little knee-high brick walls.
That's when he noticed that the front walk way is now narrower than his riding lawn mower.
I'm picturing him and 5 friends lifting the riding mower over the railing on the porch and over the brick planters to reach the front lawn. It should be fun to watch.
Kenny bought himself a riding lawn mower last summer. He has no need for one, really. His front lawn is small, and his back yard not much bigger. He cut down all the trees in the back yard, and ripped out all the ivy to plant grass. After he went to all that trouble, I guess he felt he needed a riding mower.
At any rate, he parked this mower on his front porch for the winter to keep it out of the snow and rain. Then, this spring, he hired some guys to build brick planters all along his front porch and front walk-way - nice little knee-high brick walls.
That's when he noticed that the front walk way is now narrower than his riding lawn mower.
I'm picturing him and 5 friends lifting the riding mower over the railing on the porch and over the brick planters to reach the front lawn. It should be fun to watch.
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