Gallipoli

From: The War Correspondent 

                  by Ciaran Carson

1. Gallipoli

Take sheds and stalls from Billingsgate,
all glittering with scaling-knives and gutted fish,
and the tumbledown outhouses of English farmers’ yards
smelling of dung and straw and horses
cantering through the back lanes of Dublin;

take an Irish landlord’s ruinous estate,
elaborate pagodas from a Chinese Delftware dish
on which the fishes fly through shrouds and yards
of leaking ballast-laden junks bound for Benares
in search of bucket-loads of tea as black as tin;

take a dirty gutter from a back street in Boulogne,
where houses teeter so their pitched roofs meet,
chimneys tall as those in Sheffield
or Irish round towers,
smoking like a fleet of British ironclad destroyers;

take the oregano-scented arcades of Bologna,
spaghetti-twists of souks and smells of rotten meat,
labyrinthine as the rifle-factories of Springfield,
or the tenements deployed by bad employers
who sit in parlours doing business drinking Power’s;

then populate this slum with Cypriot and Turk,
Armenians and Arabs, British riflemen
and French Zouaves, camel-drivers, officers and sailors,
sappers, miners, Nubian slaves, Greek money-changers,
and interpreters who do not know the lingo;

dress them in turbans, shawls of fancy needlework,
fezzes, knickerbockers, sashes, shirts of fine Valenciennes,
boleros, pantaloons designed by jobbing tailors,
feathers of the ostrich and the pink flamingo,
and outfits even stranger;

set up some slaughterhouses for the troops,
and stalls with sherbert, lemonade and rancid lard for sale,
a temporary hospital or two, a jail,
a stagnant harbour redolent with cholera,
and open sewers running down the streets;

let the staple diet be green cantaloupes
swarming with flies, washed down with sour wine,
accompanied by the Byzantine
jangly music of the cithara
and the multi-lingual squawks of parakeets –

O landscape riddled with the diamond mines of Kimberley,
and all the oubliettes of Trebizond,
where opium-smokers doze among the Persian rugs,
and spies and whores in dim-lit snugs
discuss the failing prowess of the superpowers,

where prowling dogs sniff for the offal beyond
the melon stench of pulped plums and apricots,
from which is distilled the brandy they call “grape-shot”,
and soldiers lie dead or drunk among the crushed flowers –
I have not even begun to describe Gallipoli.

Pearl

                  

(14th century English)

Translated by Jane Draycott

                       I

One thing I know for certain: that she

was peerless, pearl who would have added

light to any prince's life

however bright with gold. None

could touch the way she shone

in any light, so smooth, so small --

she was a jewel above all others.

So pity me the day I lost her

in this garden where she fell

beneath the grass into the earth.

I stand bereft, struck to the heart

with love and loss. My spotless pearl.

I've gazed a hudred times at the place

she left me, grieving for that gift

which swept away all shadow, that face

which was the antidote to sorrow.

And though this watching sears my heart

and wrings the wires of sadness tighter,

still the song this silence sings me

is the sweetest I have heard --

the countless quiet hours in which

her pale face floats before me, mired

in mud and soil, a perfect jewel

spoiled, my spotless pearl.

In the place where such riches lie rotting

a cfarpet of spices will spring up and spread,

blossoms of blue and white and red

which fire in the full light facing the sun.

Where a pearl is planted deep in the dark

no fruit or flower could ever fade'

all grasscorn grows from dying grain

so new wheat can be carried home.

From goodness other goodness grows:

so beautiful a seed can't fail

to fruit or spices fail to flower

fed by a precious, spotless pear.

So I cam to this very same spot

in the green of an August garden, height

and heart of summer, at Lammas time

when corn is cut with curving scythes.

And I saw that the little hill where she fell

was a shaded place showered with spices:

pink gillyflower, ginger and purple gromwell,

powdered with peonies scattered like stars.

But more than their loveliness to the eye,

the sweetest fragrance seemed to float

in the air there also -- I knew beyond doubt

that's where she lay, my spotless pearl.

Caught in the chill grasp of grief I stood

in that place clasping my hands, seized

by the grip on my heart of longing and loss.

Though reason told me to be still

I mourned for my poor imprisoned pearl

with all the fury and force of a quarrel.

The comfort of Christ called out to me

but still I wrestled in wilful sorrow.

Then the power and perfume of those flowers

filled up my head and felled me, slipped me

into sudden sleep in the place

where she lay beneath me. My girl.

Eros and Psyche

by Jehanne Dubrow

after Antonio Canova’s sculpture (1787)

From a certain vantage point they

could be lovers—the man

with his arms encircling my

mother, and both of them gone

marble. He has woken her with

the sound of broken wings. Her

blanket is polished rock, cold

and weighted to the bed. From

this angle the knife is hidden,

although it’s there, the way

an arrow is always shooting through

this story, desire a dart that

finds the tender spot. Bodies

make a space for gods to

intervene. Tonight if there are

souls like butterflies, then they

have stilled. If beauty could be

bolted in a box, if a deity could

say, Don’t open this, then my

mother might stay asleep

forever, unbothered by the

monument of those hands.

Alive Together

                        by Lisel Mueller

Speaking of marvels, I am alive

together with you, when I might have been

alive with anyone under the sun,

when I might have been Abélard’s woman

or the whore of a Renaissance pope

or a peasant wife with not enough food

and not enough love, with my children

dead of the plague. I might have slept

in a alcove next to the man

with the golden nose, who poked it

into the business of stars,

or sewn a starry flag

for a general with wooden teeth.

I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas

or a woman without a name

weeping in Master’s bed

for my husband, exchanged for a mule,

my daughter, lost in a drunken et.

I might have been stretched on a totem pole

to appease a vindictive god

or left, a useless girl-child,

to die on a cliff. I like to think

I might have been Marry Shelley

in love with a wrongheaded angel,

or Mary’s friend. I might ahve been you.

This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,

our chances of being alive together

statistically nonexistent;

still we have made it, alive in a time

when rationalists in square hats

and hatless Jehovah’s Witnesses

agree it is almost over,

alive with our lively children

who -- but for endless ifs --

might have missed out on being alive

together with marvels and follies

and longings and lies and wishes

and error and humor and mercy

and journeys and voices and faces

and colors and summers and mornings

and knowledge and tears and chance.

From Lisel Mueller, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, 1996. 

 

Ours

Ours

by Jonathan Galassi

This house these walls were ours

and everything inside them the

lawns the trees the flower beds

the stone walls not the fern

walk that is Alison's but it's the

way the first light filters

through the thinned-out branch-

es part of us the ancient

apple orchard the hydrangeas

yellowed lily leaves the old

barn the new studio that you and

Chris created for me and the ice-

house and the light is ours the

angled brilliance and the funk of

fall the weather's turned the
snow the stairs the stars out on

the lawn the cold coyotes' calls

are ours the view from the mar-

tini bench the copper beech the

thyme terrace and the new one

and the girls are ours the young

shad and the lilacs and our

square bed and the birch room

and the teahouse sunset apple

smoke the flame azaleas that

didn't take the peonies the si-

lences and evening unraveling

the immense white pine and fuel

oil smell were ours these rooms

are ours the pictures sofas car-

pets my grandmother's bud vase

the coin silver spoons and Eloise

is ours and Pheobe was this room

is ours the square bed and the

threshing here was ours the si-

lences the Paris bedspread and

the dressers and my red desk in

the alcove and your bathroom tub

the inky tentacles e-mail was ours

and phone calls and what makes

you think you're you was always

ours

           pretend you're with me as

you read this all the empty

hours were ours the rattling down

the hall the perfect view across

the road the hills the walls the

white fence fallen branches bit-

tersweet the stairs the girls are

ours the love the friends the

silences your voice your eyes your

hair your neck the beauty all are

ours the empty mornings and the

silences were ours the staring at

the fire before it died the grappa

and the whiskey in etched glasses

and the bellows the black marble

fireplace and Chris's gavel Mol-

lie's picture Christopher's two

drawings dinner by the fire was

ours the sausages the peppermint

foot rub your cowhide slipeprs

endless books too many you kept

saying in the halfway house hu-

midity and hummingbirds all ours

all ours the afternoons the misty

mornings looking up the lawn the

copper beech the peegees turning

purple Haystack and the deep

sleeps the Bald mountain treks

the fern walk and the two chairs

by the stream we never sat in

and the little living room and

Libby's paths the Alfords' rugs the

girls my parents' nesting tables

Pete Street's hidden staircase

all the evenings the talk the

laughter all the music all the

friends the silences the girls and

everything that was and wasn't

ours

           and hours were ours the

walks the silent drives the si-

lences unspoken love the lacks

the guilt the missing the alone-

ness what we couldn't do the

what we didn't say the things I

couldn't do the one I couldn't

be and wanted to and didn't is

ours too and rage is ours and

loss and hours alone are our

the silences the hall the girls

and the unknown was ours the fu-

ture that we couldn't share the

fear the falling leaves and fail-

ing ruining the fault lines and

the love lines and incomprehen-

sion and the need to know and to

be known and broken faith deri-

sion denigration power was ours

and powerlessness and struggle

and my twisted heart that got un-

twisted and your face your voice

your neck your back the tears

the girls the life I left the lost

life all of it was ours is ours

was ours is ours was

From Jonathan  Galassi, Left-handed: Poems (2012).

Wisława Szymborska

Two poems by Wisława Szymborska


                          Psalm

 

Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!

How many clouds float past them with impunity;

how many desert sand shifts from one land to another;

how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil

in provocative hops!

Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers

or alights on the roadblock at the border?

A humble robin -- still, its tail resides abroad

while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop

       bobbing!

Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos

prevailing on every continent!

Isn't that a privet on the far bank

smuggling its hundred-thousandth leave across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,

would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?

And how can we talk of order overall

when the very placement of the stars

leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?

Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!

And dust blowing all over the steppes

as if they hadn't been partitioned!

And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!

Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.

                

                         Lot's Wife

They say I looked back out of curiosity.

But I could have had other reasons.

I looked back mourning my silver bowl.

Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.

So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape

of my husband Lot's neck.

From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead

he wouldn't so much as hesitate.

From the disobedience of the meek.

Checking for pursuers.

Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.

Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.

I felt age within me. Distance.

The futility of wandering. Torpor.

I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.

Serpents appeared on my path,

spiders, field mice, baby vultures.

They were neither good nor evil now -- every living thing

was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.

I looked back in desolation.

In shame because we had stolen away.

Wanting to cry out, to go home.

Or only when a sudden gust of wind

unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.

It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom

and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.

I looked back in anger.

To savor their terrible fate.

I looked back for all the reasons given above.

I looked back involuntarily.

It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.

It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.

A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.

It was then we both glanced back.

No, no. I ran on,

I crept, I flew upward

until darkness fell from the heavens

and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.

I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.

Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.

It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.

It's possible I fell facing the city.

              

These poems come from Wisława Szymborska, Poems: New and Collected (1998).

Wisława Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

Dog to Pain

Dog to Pain

                by D. Nurkse

In the slow-swift years, pain would lock me

long days in a narrow room with a fly and a water

                                                                              bowl,

re-emerge in a jangle of keys, and walk me down

                                                           those dim blocks

where small dead things in the gutter smell so

                                                                     fascinating --

free from pain. My leash was short, my collar tight,

but they could have been shorter and tighter. In the

                                                                brief moment

before dark, pain ruffled my hair. Then we slept. Or

                                                                            I slept.

Pain does not exist, except in the mind, but who does?

The cat stared at the wall, the goldfish swam in circles.

On weekends, pain took me to the park and tossed

                                                                          a red ball

and I retrieved it, with what joy I found it, gummed

                                                                                it,

brought it back in many lunges and side-scampers.

I would fetch it now if I were not healed.  

From the TLS, November 1, 2012.

Grauballe Man

Grauballe Man

 by Seamus Heaney

As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep

the black river of himself.
The grain of his wrists
is like bog oak,
the ball of his heel

like a basalt egg.
His instep has shrunk
cold as a swan’s foot
or a wet swamp root.

His hips are the ridge
and purse of a mussel,
his spine an eel arrested
under a glisten of mud.

The head lifts,
the chin is a visor
raised above the vent
of his slashed throat

that has tanned and toughened.
The cured wound
opens inwards to a dark
elderberry place.

Who will say ‘corpse’

to his vivid cast?
Who will say ‘body'
to his opaque repose?

And his rusted hair,
a mat unlikely
as a foetus’s.
I first saw his twisted face

in a photograph,
a head and shoulder
out of the peat,
bruised like a forceps baby,

but now he lies
perfected in my memory,
down to the red horn
of his nails,

hung in the scales
with beauty and atrocity:
with the Dying Gaul
too strictly compassed

on his shield,
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.

The new education

Petrus Paulus Vergerius, 1400

         The New Education

We call those studies liberal which are worthy of a free man; those studies by which we attain and practice virtue and wisdom; that education which calls forth, trains and develops those highest gifts of body and of mind which ennoble men, and which are rightly judged to rank next in dignity to virtue only. For to a vulgar temper gain and pleasure are the one aim of existence, to a lofty nature, moral worth and fame. It is, then, of the highest importance that even from infancy this aim, this effort, should constantly be kept alive in growing minds. 

For I may affirm with fullest conviction that we shall not have attained wisdom in our later years unless in our earliest we have sincerely entered on its search. Nor may we for a moment admit, with the unthinking crowd, that those who give early promise fail in subsequent fulfillment. This may, partly from physical causes, happen in exceptional cases. But there is no doubt that nature has endowed some children with so keen, so ready an intelligence, that without serious effort they attain to a notable power of reasoning and conversing upon grave and lofty subjects, and by aid of right guidance and sound learning reach in manhood the highest distinction. On the other hand, children of modest powers demand even more attention, that their natural defects may be supplied by art. But all alike must in those early years, Dum faciles animi iuvenum, dum mobilis aetas, whilst the mind is supple, be inured to the toil and effort of learning. Not that education, in the broad sense, is exclusively the concern of youth. Did not Cato think it honorable to learn Greek in later life? Did not Socrates, greatest of philosophers, compel his aged fingers to the lute?

Our youth of to-day, it is to be feared, is backward to learn; studies arc accounted irksome. Boys hardly weaned begin to claim their own way, at a time when every art should be employed to bring them under control and attract them to grave studies. The Master must judge how far he can rely upon emulation, rewards, encouragement; bow far be must have recourse to sterner measures. Too much leniency is objectionable; so also is too great severity, for we must avoid all that terrifies a boy. In certain temperaments-those in which a dark complexion denotes a quiet but strong personality-restraint must be cautiously applied. Boys of this type are mostly highly gifted and can bear a gentle hand.

Not seldom it happens that a finely tempered nature is thwarted by circumstances, such as poverty at home, which compels a promising youth to forsake learning for trade: though, on the other hand, poverty is less dangerous to lofty instincts than great wealth. Or again, parents encourage their sons to follow a career traditional in their family, which may divert them from liberal studies: and the customary pursuits of the city in which we dwell exercise a decided influence on our choice. So that we may say that a perfectly unbiased decision in these matters is seldom possible, except to certain select natures, who by favor of the gods, as the poets have it, are unconsciously brought to choose the right path in life. The myth of Hercules, who, in the solitude of his wanderings, learned to accept the strenuous life and to reject the way of self-indulgence, and so attain the highest, is the significant setting of this profound truth. For us it is the best that can befall, that either the circumstances of our life, or the guidance and exhortations of those in charge of us, should mould our natures whilst they are still plastic.

In your own case, Ubertinus, you had before you the choice of training in Arms or in Letters. Either holds a place of distinction amongst the pursuits which appeal to men of noble spirit; either leads to fame and honor in the world. It would have been natural that you, the scion of a House ennobled by its prowess in arms, should have been content to accept your father's permission to devote yourself wholly to that discipline. But to your great credit you elected to become proficient in both alike: to add to the career of arms traditional in your family, an equal success in that other great discipline of mind and character, the study of Literature.

There was courage in your choice. For we cannot deny that there is still a horde--as I must call them--of people who, like Licinius the Emperor [Roman Emperor, ruled 81-96 CE], denounce learning and the Arts as a danger to the State and hateful in themselves. In reality the very opposite is the truth. However, as we look back upon history we cannot deny that learning by no means expels wickedness, but may be indeed an additional instrument for evil in the hands of the corrupt. To a man of virtuous instincts knowledge is a help and an adornment; to a Claudius or a Nero it was a means of refinement in cruelty or in folly. On the other hand, your grandfather, Jacopo da Carrara, who, though a patron of learning, was not himself versed in Letters, died regretting that opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of higher studies had not been given him in youth; which shows us that, although we may in old age long for it, only in early years can we be sure of attaining that learning which we desire. So that it is no light motive to youthful diligence that we thereby provide ourselves with precious advantages against on-coming age, a spring of interest for a leisured life, a recreation for a busy one.

Consider the necessity of the literary art to one immersed in reading and speculation: and its importance to one absorbed in affairs. To be able to speak and write with elegance is no slight advantage in negotiation, whether in public or private concerns. Especially in administration of the State, when intervals of rest and privacy are accorded to a prince, how must he value those means of occupying them wisely which the knowledge of literature affords to him! Think of Domitian: son of Vespasian though he was, and brother of Titus, he was driven to occupy his leisure by killing flies! What a warning is here conveyed of the critical judgments which posterity passes upon Princes! They live in a light in which nothing can long remain hid. Contrast with this the saying of Scipio: "Never am I less idle, less solitary, than when to outward seeming I am doing nothing or am alone": evidence of a noble temper, worthy to be placed beside that recorded practice of Cato, who, amid the tedious business of the Senate, could withdraw himself from outward distraction and find himself truly alone in the companionship of his books.

Indeed the power which good books have of diverting our thoughts from unworthy or distressing themes is another support to my argument for the study of letters. Add to this their helpfulness on those occasions when we find ourselves alone, without companions and without preoccupations -what can we do better than gather our books around us? In them we see unfolded before us vast stores of knowledge, for our delight, it may be, or for our inspiration. In them are contained the records of the great achievements of men; the wonders of Nature; the works of Providence in the past, the key to her secrets of the future. And, most important of all, this Knowledge is not liable to decay. With a picture, an inscription, a coin, books share a kind of immortality. In all these memory is, as it were, made permanent; although, in its freedom from accidental risks, Literature surpasses every other form of record.

Literature indeed exhibits not facts alone, but thoughts, and their expression. Provided such thoughts be worthy, and worthily expressed, we feel assured that they will not die: although I do not think that thoughts without style will be likely to attract much notice or secure a sure survival. What greater charm can life offer than this power of making the past, the present, and even the future, our own by means of literature? How bright a household is the family of books! we may cry, with Cicero. In their company is no noise, no greed, no self-will: at a word they speak to you, at a word they are still: to all our requests their response is ever ready and to the point. Books indeed are a higher-a wider, more tenacious-memory, a store-house which is the common property of us all.

I attach great weight to the duty of handing down this priceless treasure to our sons unimpaired by any carelessness on our part. How many are the gaps which the ignorance of past ages has willfully caused in the long and noble roll of writers! Books-in part or in their entirety-have been allowed to perish. What remains of others is often sorely corrupt, mutilated, or imperfect. It is hard that no slight portion of the history of Rome is only to be known through the labors of one writing in the Greek language: it is still worse that this same noble tongue, once well nigh the daily speech of our race, as familiar as the Latin language itself, is on the point of perishing even amongst its own sons, and to us Italians is already utterly lost, unless we except one or two who in our time are tardily endeavoring to rescue something-if it be only a mere echo of it-from oblivion.

We come now to the consideration of the various subjects which may rightly be included under the name of "Liberal Studies." Amongst these I accord the first place to History, on grounds both of its attractiveness and of its utility, qualities which appeal equally to the scholar and to the statesman. Next in importance ranks Moral Philosophy, which indeed is, in a peculiar sense, a "Liberal Art," in that its purpose is to teach men the secret of true freedom. History, then, gives us the concrete examples of the precepts inculcated by philosophy. The one shows what men should do, the other what men have said and done in the past, and what practical lessons we may draw therefrom for the present day. I would indicate as the third main branch of study, Eloquence, which indeed holds a place of distinction amongst the refined Arts. By philosophy we learn the essential truth of things, which by eloquence we so exhibit in orderly adornment as to bring conviction to differing minds. And history provides the light of experienced cumulative wisdom fit to supplement the force of reason and the persuasion of eloquence. For we allow that soundness of judgment, wisdom of speech, integrity of conduct are the marks of a truly liberal temper.

More at http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/source/vergerius.asp