How Forever Works by C.L. O'Dell
On the Beach at Night by Walt Whitman
The Eye by William Heyen
I have never thought about "forever" as an entity that "works", like the Deists thinking of
time as a clock set in motion... What is "forever" -- how do we use it in language?
The poem starts off with "The soft tick of snow"-- as if snow makes the sound of a second hand,
an active tick of what we consider cold and white... but it also reminds me of the soft inner ticking
of a lining... a shrouding of sorts. The poem is in the past tense, except for the final enjambed final
line. To whom is "love me" addressed? And how many ways are there to read. "anyway"?
(Love me in any way possible; love me in spite of whatever might have made me unloveable...)
Is the "us" in the 3rd stanza a personal entity, perhaps a couple, a family, or a country, a general collectivity? Not that these questions need suggestions for answer, as the poem hints at much
in an aura of mystery... as if to suggest "running out of time" however it means -- days left to live
as someone with an illness, or days left for survival of our earth, is part of the fact that nothing
is forever. Not even memory. To quote Hamlet, "who shall escape weeping".
The next poem comes from —- from Breathturns ( 1967)published in 1968 and translated here by Pierre Joris in 2005, was the second collection from Paul Celan's late period, when the poet had turned to highly obscure allusions and polysemy.
He plays with compound nouns to invent new ideas-- a single thread + plural suns. tree-high thought, where high describes both tree and thought; (baum-hofer is used as an adjective in German) and "light tone". For those knowing German, I show how beautifully the translation works.
Fadensonnen has an element of "fathoms" the shafts of sun reaching deep into the ocean.
Threadsuns
above the grayblack wastes. thinks of ocean…
A tree-
high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are
still songs to sing beyond
mankind.
—- from Breathturns ( 1967)
Fadensonnen
über der grauschwarzen Ödnis. wasteland…
Ein baum-
hofer Gedanke
grieft sich den Lichtton: es sind
noch Lieder zu singen jenseits
der Menschen
Comments: a different kind of Holocaust poem.. one which allows a sense of re-awakening,
transcending the weight of gray black wasteland through ascending thought, ribbons of light...
beyond the destruction man wields...
One says a translator is one soul stretching his hand out to another soul. This is a remarkable
collaboration of poet/translator.
The Whitman:
a note on pronunciation:
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
think ravenous, pronounced with a short "a", as in starving,
as well as black-winged;
likewise "lower" from the etymology "lour"--This verb initially meant “to frown, scowl; to look angry or sullen,”
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower* victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
the inner rhyme: lower/devour... the ou of cloud; the interruption of the syntax,
"the child watching, silently weeps"... the tone of tenderness as the father chides the child
for considering only the burial of the stars... or considering the burial of the stars, alone,
not knowing that something there is... which reminds us we are not alone...
The Eye. by William Heyen-- beautiful capture of a moment and a loaded title.
I love how Heyen goes from the physicality of the title (one thinks of an eye, not seeing)
to the metaphor of the gold eye of the sun, which allows us to imagine, understand beyond
perception. But what clinches the poem for me is the desire in the poem--
not desire of the poet for something concerning the poet, but the compassionate empathy
to embrace the "just in case" darkness.
Is it for just one person? A specific belovèd? Any reader who comes along? Regardless,
Heyen gives us a gift of writing down words... you can read "the sun turns on the page",
like turning on a light, allows the page to provide the eager space to receive what the
imagination provides.
No comments:
Post a Comment