Gerard Manley Hopkins

It's my turn. The poet for August is Gerard Manley Hopkins--one of my favorites!! I will be posting some poems starting this week. I am not very good at getting around the yahoo group, but I will try my hand at that too.

Please jump in here with anything that you have to add to the discussion on this great and unique Victorian poet.

Margaret Mead and Amy Lowell

Margaret Mead was a prolific letter-writer, posting from all over the world to her friends, family, colleagues, and lovers. According to the introduction to a new collection of her letters, To Cherish the Life of the World:

Mead adapted metaphors from the Amy Lowell poem, "A Decade," to describe her intimate relationships. There were people who were exciting, sparkling wine and there were those who were nurturing bread... In her life, she needed both bread and wine."

I wonder - which poems (or art, or music) would describe my relationships?

Decade - by Amy Lowell

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

adios

Well that is all for me this month. I hope you all have enjoyed, or at least come to see something new, these past two weeks. Borges has also written short stories, literary reviews and translations. In fact one of his short story collections, The Aleph and Other Stories, is part of my Summer Reading Challenge :)

santih

For a Version of I Ching

The imminent is immutable

As rigid yeserday. There is no matter

That rates more than a single, silent letter

In the eternal and inscrutable

Writing whose book is time. He who believes

He's left his home already has come back.

Life is a future and well-travelled track.

Nothing dismisses us. Nothing leaves.

Do not give up. The prison is bereft

Of light, its fabric is incessant iron,

But in some corner of your mean environs

You might discover a mistake, a cleft.

The road is fatal as an arrow's flight

But God is watching in the narrowest light.

(1976)

***

El porvenir es tan irrevocable

Como el rigido ayer. No hay una cosa

Que no sea una letra silenciosa

De la eterna escritura indescrifrable

Cuyo libro es el tiempo. Quien se aleja

De su casa ys ha vuelto. Nuestra vida

Es la senda futura y recorrida.

Nada nos dice adios. Nada nos deja.

No te rindas. la ergastula es oscura,

la firme trama es da incesante hierro

puede haber un descuido, una hendidura,

El camino es fatal como la flecha

Pero en las grietas esta Dios, que acecha.

(1976)

You Are Not the Others/ No eres los otros

The writings left behind by those your dread

Implores won't have to save you. You are not

The others, and you see your feet have brought

You to the center of a maze their tread

Has plotted. Jesus' pain will afford no pardon,

Nor Socrates' suffering, nor the inviolate

Golden Siddhartha, who within the twilit

Final hour of evening, in a garden,

Accepted death. These too are dust: the soundless

Verb spoken by your lips, and the word written

By your hand. In Fate there is no pity

And the enduring night of God is boundless.

Your matter is time, its unchecked and unreckoned

Passing. You are each solitary second.

***

No te habra salvar lo que dejaron

Escrito aquellos que tu miedo implora;

No eres los ortos y te ves ahora

Centro del laberinto que tramaron

Tus pasos. No te salva la agonia

De Jesus o de ocrates ni el fuerte

Siddhartha de oro que acepto la muerte

En un jardin, al delinar el dia.

Polvo tambien es la palabra escrita

Por tu mano o el verbo pronunciado

Por tu boca. no hay lastima en el hado

Y la noche de Dios es infinita.

Tu materia es el tiempo, el incesante

Tiempo. Eres cada solitario instante.

A Blind Man/ Un Ciego

I do not know what face is looking back

whenever I look at the face in the mirror;

I do not know what old face seeks its image

in silent and already weary anger.

Slow in my blindness, with my hand I feel

the contours of my face. A flash of light

gets through to me. I have made out your hair,

colour of ash and at the same time, gold.

I say again that I have lost no more

than the inconsequential skin of things.

These wise words come from Milton, and are noble,

but then I think of letters, and of roses.

I think, too, that if I could see my features,

I would know who I am, this precious afternoon.

(1975)

***

No se cual es la cara que me mira

Cuando miro la cara del espejo;

No se que anciano acecha en su reflejo

Con silencio soy ya cansada ira.

Lento en mi sombra, con la mano exploro

Mis invisiables rasagos. Un destello

Me alcanza. He vislumbrado tu cabello

Que es de ceniza o es aun de oro.

Repito que he perdido solamente

La vana superficie de los cosas.

El consuelo es de Milton y es valiente,

Pero pienso en las letras y en las rosas.

Pienso que si pudiera ver mi cara

Sabriaquien soy esta tarde rara.

(1975)

The Streets

My soul is in the streets

of Buenos Aires.

Not the greedy streets

jostling with crowds and traffic,

but the neighborhood streets where nothing is happening,

almost invisible by force of habit,

rendered etrenal in the dim light of sunset,

and the ones even farther out,

empty of comforting trees,

where austere little houses scarcely venture,

overwhelmed by deathless distances,

losing themselves in the deep expanse

of sky and plains.

For the solitary one they are a promise

because thousands of singular souls inhabit them,

unique before God and in time

and no doubt precious.

To the West, the North, and the South

unfold the streets-and they too are my country:

within these lines I trace

may their flags fly.

(1923)

***

Las calles de Buenos Aires

ya mi son entrana.

No las avidas calles,

incomodas de turba y de ajetreo,

sino lasa calles desganandas del barrio,

casi invisibles de habituales,

enternecides de penumbra y de ocaso

y aquellas mas afuera

ajenas de arboles piadosos

donde austeras casitas apenas se aventuran,

abrumadas por immortales distancias,

a perderse en la honda vision

de cielo y de Banura.

Son para el solitario una promesa

porque millares de almas singulares las pueblan,

unicas ante Dios y e el tiempo

y sin duda preciosas.

Hacia el Oeste, el Norte y el Sur

se han desplegado-y son tambien la patria-las calles:

ojala en los versos que trazo

esten esas banderas.

The Moon

for Maria Kodama

There is such loneliness in that gold.

The moon of the nights is not the moon

Whom the first Adam saw. The long centuries

Of human vigil have filled her

With ancient lament. Look at her. She is your mirror.

(1976)

***

Hay tanta soledad en ese oro.

La luna de las noches no es la luna

Que vio el primer Adan. ls largos siglos

De la vigilia humana la han colmado

De antiguo llanto. Mirala. Es tu espejo.

(1976)

June, 1968

In the golden afternoon, or in

a serenity the gold of afternoon

might symbolize,

a man arranges books

on waiting shelves

and feels the parchment, the leather, the cloth,

and the pleasure bestowed

by looking forward to a habit

and establishing an order.

Here Stevenson and Andrew Lang, the other Scot,

will magically resume

their slow discussion

which seas and death cut short,

and surely Reyes will not be displeased

by the closeness of Virgil.

(In a modest, silent way,

by arranging books on shelves

we ply the critics art.)

The man is blind, and knows

he won't be able to decode

the handsome volumes he is handling,

and that they will never help him write

the book that will justify his life in others' eyes;

but in the afternoon that might be gold

he smiles at his curious fate

and feels the peculiar happiness

which comes from loved old things.

(1969)

***

En la tarde de oro

o en una serenidad cuyo simbolo

podria ser la tarde de oro,

el hombre disponce los libros

en los anaqueles que aguardan

y siente el pergamino, el cuero, la tela

y el agrado que dan

la prevision de un habito

y el establecimiento de un orden.

Stevenson y el otro escoce, Andrew Lang,

reanduaran aqui, de manera magica,

la lenta discusion que interrumpieron

las mares y la muerte

y a Reyes no la desagradara ciertamente

la cercania de Viriglio.

(Ordenar bibliotecas es ejercer,

de un modo silencioso y modesto,

el arte de la critica.)

El hombre, que estaciego,

sabe que ya no podra decifrar

los hermosos volumenes que maneja

y que no le aydaran a escribir

el libro que lo justificara ante los otros,

pero en la tarde que es acaso de oro

sonrie ante el curioso destino

y siente esa felicidad peculiar

de las viejas cosas qieridas.

(1969)

morpheus

The Dream

While the clocks of the midnight hours are squandering

an abundance of time,

I shall go, farther than the shipmates of Ulysses,

to the territory of dream, beyond the reach

of human memory.

From that underwater world I save some fragments,

inexhaustible to my understanding:

grasses from some primitive botany,

animals of all kinds,

conversations with the dead,

faces which all the time are masks,

words out of very ancient languages,

and at times, horror, unlike anything

the day can offer us.

I shall be all or no one. I shall be the other

I am without knowing it, he who has looked on

the other dream, my waking state. He weighs it up,

resigned and smiling.

(1975)

***

Cuando los relojes de la media noche prodiguen

Un tiempo generoso,

Ire mas lejos que los bogavantes se Ulises

A la region del sueno, inaccesible

A la memoria humana.

De esa region immersa rescato restos

Que no acabo de comprender:

Hierbas de sencilla botanica,

Animales algos diversos,

Dialogos con los muertos,

Rostros que realmente son mascaras,

Palabras de lenguajes muy antiguos

Y a veces un horror incomparable

Al que nos puede dar el dia.

Sere todos o nadie. Sere el otro

Que sin saberlo soy, el que ha mirado

Ese otro sueno, mi vigilia. La juzga,

Resignado y sonriente.

(1975)

boast of quietness

Boast of Quietness

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigous then meteors.

The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.

Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to

understand them.

Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.

Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.

They speak of humanity.

My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.

They speak of homeland.

My homeland in the rythym of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,

the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls.

Time is living me.

More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.

They are indispensible, singular, worthy of tomorrow.

My name is someone and anyone.

I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to

arrive.

(1925)

***

Escrituras de luz embisten la sombra, mas prodigiosas que meteoros.

La alta ciudad inconocible arrecia sobre el campo.

Seguro de mi vida y de mi muerte, miro los ambiciosos y quisiera

entenderlos.

Su dia es avido como el lazo en el aire.

Su noche es tregua de la ira en el hierro, pronto en acometer.

Hablan de humanidad.

Mi humanidad esta en sentir que somos voces de una misma penuria.

Hablan de patria.

Mi patria es un latido de guitarra, unos retratos y una vieja espada,

la oracion evidente del asauzal en los atardeceres.

El tiempo esta viviendome.

Mas silencioso que mi sombra, cruzo el tropel de su leventada codicia.

Ellos son imprescindibles, unicos, mercedores del manana.

Mi nombre es alguien y cualquiera.

Paso con lentitud, como quien viene de tan lejos que no espera llegar.

(1925)

the south or the southside

The South

To have watched from one of your patios

the ancient stars,

from the bench of shadow to have watched

those scattered lights

that my ignorance has learned no names for

nor their places in constellations,

to have heard the note of water

in the cistern,

known the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle,

the silence of the sleeping bird,

the arch of the entrance, the damp

--these things perhaps are the poem.

(1923)

***

El sur

Desde uno de tus patios haber mirado

las antiguas estrellas,

desde el banco de

la sombra haber mirado

esas luces dispersas

que mi ignorancia no ha aprendido a nombrar

ni a ordenar en constelaciones,

haber sentido el circulo del agua

en el secreto alijibe,

el olor del jazmin y la madreselva,

el silencio del pajaro dormido,

el arco del zanguan, la humedad

--esas cosas, acaso, son el poema.

(1923)

(re) collections

On Aquiring an Encyclopedia

Here's the huge Brockhaus encyclopedia,

with those many crammed volumes and an atlas,

here is Germanic dedication,

here are neo-Plationists and Gnostics,

the first Adam is here and Adam of Bremen,

the tiger and the tartar,

painstaking typography and the blue of oceans,

here are time's memory and time's labyrinths,

here are error and the truth,

here are the protracted miscellany more learned than any man,

here the sum total of all late hours kept.

Here too are the eyes of no use, hands that lose their way,

pages unreadable,

the dim semishade of blindness, walls that recede.

But also there is a habit new

to that long-standing habit, the house,

a drawing card and a prescence,

the mysterious love of things ---

things unaware of themselves and of us.

(1981)

***

Aqui la vasta enciclopedia de Brockhaus,

aui los muchos y cargados volumenes y el volumen del atlas,

aqui la devocion de Alemania,

aqui lose neoplatonicos y los gnosticos,

aqui el primer Adan y Adan de Bremen,

aqui el tigre y tartaro,

aqui la escrupulosa tipografia y el azul de los mares,

aqui la memoria del tiempo y los laberintos del tiempo,

aqui el error y la verdad,

aqui la dilatda miscelanea que sabe mas que cualquier hombre,

aqui la suma de la larga vigilia.

Aqui tambien les ojos que no sirven, las manos que no aciertan, las ilegibles paginas,

la dudosa penumbra de la ceguera, los muros que se alejan.

Pero tambien aqui una costumbre nueva,

de esta costumbre vieja, la casa,

una gravitacion y una presencia,

el misterioso amor de las cosas

que nos ignoran y se ignoran.

(1981)

reality is a word

"It is a general rule that novelists do not present a reality, but rather the memory of one. They may write about true or believable events, but these have been revised and arranged by recollection. (This process needless to say has nothing to do with the verb tenses they use) .... The "pure present" is no more than a psychological ideal - ... " JL Borges

Baltasar Gracian

Labyrinths, symbols, all the tricks of language,
a cold and over intricate nothingness -
that, for this Jesuit, was poetry,
reduced by him to verbal strategem.

He had no music in him, only a vain
herbal of metaphors and sophistries,
a worship of agility, and also
disdain for all things, human and superhuman.

He was not touched by the ancient voice of Homer
nor by the moon-and-silver tones of Virgil;
he did not see doomed Oedipus in exile,
nor Christ, dying on a wooden cross.

The bright stars gathered in the Eastern sky,
losing their brightness in the spread of dawn,
he nicknamed, in a questionable phrase,
"Chickens of the celestial countryside."

As ignorant of love of the divine
as of that other love that burns in bodies,
the Pale One started him one afternoon
as he was reading the poems of El Marino.

His later destiny is not recorded.
The dust that formed him finally delivered
to the corrosive changes of the tomb,
the soul of Gracian entered into glory.

What did he feel coming face to face
with all the Archetypes and Heavenly Hosts?
Perhaps he wept, and told himself "In vain
I fed myself on shadow and on errors."

What happened when at last the inexorable
Sun of God, the Truth, unveiled its fire?
Perhaps the light of Heaven left him blinded
there in the midst of that unending glory.

I have another ending. Lost in his trivia,
Gracian never even noticed Heaven
and keeps reworking in his memory
labyrinths, symbols, all the tricks of language.
(1964)

***
Laberintos, retruecanos, emblemas,
Helada y laboriosa naderia,
Fue para este jesuita la poesia,
Reducida por el a estratgemas.

No Hubo musica en su alma; solo un vano
Herbario de metaphoras y argucias
Y la veneracion de las astucias
Y el desden de lo humano y sobrehumano.

No lo movio la antigua voz de Homero
Ni esa, de plata y luna, deVirgilio:
No vio al fatal Edipo en el exilio
Ni a Christo que se muere en un madero.

A las claras estrellas oriantales
Que palidecenen la vasta aurora,
Apodo con palabra pecadora
Callianas se los campos celestiales.

Tan ignoratnte del amor divino
Como del otro que en las bocas arde,
Lo sorprendio la palida una tarfe
Leyendo las estrofas del Mariano.

Su destion ulterior no esta en la historia;
Librado a las mudanzas de la impura
Tumba el polvo que ayer fue se figura,
El alma de Gracian entro en la gloria.

?Que habra sentido al contemplar de frente
Los Arquitipos y los Esplendores?
Quiza lloro y se dijo: Vanamente
Busque alimento en sombras y en errores.

?Que sucedio cuando el inexorble
Sol de Dios, La verdad, mostro su fuego?
Quiza la luz de Dios lo dejo ciego
En mitad de la gloria interminable.

Se de otra conclusion. Dado a sus temas
Minisculos, Gracian no vio la gloria
Y sigue resolviendo en la memoria
Labirentos, retruecanos y emblemas.
(1964)

hope

In much of Borges poetry there is the sense of eternal prescence. Not prescence with a capital as of some specific or particular entity. The prescence of being present. We know how we came, we know how we will end, what we do not know for certain in how we are from moment to moment. But we can imagine. Or we can know that we do not know.

Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf

At various times I have asked myself what reasons

moved me to study while my night came down,

without particular hope of satisfaction,

the language of the blunt tongued Anglo-Saxons.

Used up by the years my memory

loses its grip on words that I have vainly

repeated and repeated. My life in the same way

weaves and unweaves its weary history.

Then I tell myself: it must be that the soul

has some secret sufficient way of knowing

that it is immortal, that its vast encompassing

circle can take in all, accomplish all.

Beyond my anxiety and beyond this writing

the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.

(1964)

***

A veces me pregunto que razones

Me mueven a estudiar sin esperanza

De precision, mientras mi noche avanza,

La lengua de los asperos sajones.

Gastada por los anos la memoria

Deja caer la en vano repetida

Palabra y es asi como mi vida

Teje y desteje su cansada historia.

Sera (me digo entonces) que de un modo

Secreto y suficiente el alama sabe

Que es immortal y que su vasto y grave

Circulo abarca todo y puede todo.

Mas alla de este afan y de este verso

Me aguarda inagotable el universo.

(1964)