Wolf

  Piere Vidal

               by W. S. Merwin

 

I saw the wolf in winter watching on the raw hill
I stood at night on top of the black tower and sang
I saw my mouth in spring float away on the river
I was a child in rooms where the furs were climbing
and each was alone and they had no eyes no faces
nothing inside them any more but the stories
they never breathed as they waved in their dreams of grass
and I sang the best songs that were sung in the world
as long as a song lasts they came by themselves to me
and I loved blades and boasting and shouting as I rode
as though I was the bright day flashing from everything
I loved being with woman and their breath and their skin
and the thought of them carried me like a wind
I uttered terrible things about other men
in a time when tongues were cut out to pay for kissing
but I set my sail for the island of Venus
and a niece of the Emperor in Constantinople
and I could have become the Emperor myself

I won and I won and all the women in the world
were in love with me and they wanted what I wanted
so I thought and every one of them deceived me
I was the greatest fool in the world I was the world’s fool
I have been forgiven and came home as I dreamed
and have seen them all dancing and singing as the ship came in
and I have watched friends die and have worn black and cut off
the tails and ears of all my horses in mourning
and have shaved my head and the heads of my followers
I have been a poor man living in a rich man’s house
and I have gone back to the mountains and for one woman
I have worn the fur of a wolf and the shepherd’s dogs
have run me to earth and I have been left for dead
and have come back hearing them laughing and the furs
were hanging in the same places and I have seen
what is not there I have sung its song I have breathed
its day and it was nothing to you where were you.

Piere Vidal Old

 

                   by Ezra Pound

When I but think upon the great dead days
And turn my mind upon that splendid madness,
Lo! I do curse my strength
And blame the sun his gladness;
For that the one is dead
And the red sun mocks my sadness.

Behold me, Vidal, that was fool of fools!
Swift as the king wolf was I and as strong
When tall stags fled me through the alder brakes,
And every jongleur knew me in his song,
And the hounds fled and the deer fled
And none fled over long.

Even the grey pack knew me and knew fear.
God! how the swiftest hind's blood spurted hot
Over the sharpened teeth and purpling lips!
Hot was that hind's blood yet it scorched me not
As did first scorn, then lips of the Penautier!
Aye ye are fools, if ye think time can blot

From Piere Vidal’s remembrance that blue night.
God! but the purple of the sky was deep!
Clear, deep, translucent, so the stars me seemed
Set deep in crystal; and because my sleep
Rare visitor came not, the Saints I guerdon
For that restlessness Piere set to keep

One more fool's vigil with the hollyhocks.
Swift came the Loba, as a branch that's caught,
Torn, green and silent in the swollen Rhone,
Green was her mantle, close, and wrought
Of some thin silk stuff that's scarce stuff at all,
But like a mist where through her white form fought,

And conquered! Ah God! conquered!
Silent my mate came as the night was still.
Speech? Words? Faugh! Who talks of words and love?!
Hot is such love and silent,
Silent as fate is, and as strong until
It faints in taking and in giving all.

Stark, keen, triumphant, till it plays at death.
God! she was white then, splendid as some tomb
High wrought of marble, and the panting breath
Ceased utterly. Well, then I waited, drew,
Half-sheathed, then naked from its saffron sheath
Drew full this dagger that doth tremble here.

Just then she woke and mocked the less keen blade.
Ah God, the Loba! and my only mate!
Was there such flesh made ever and unmade!
God curse the years that turn such women grey!
Behold here Vidal, that was hunted, flayed,
Shamed and yet bowed not and that won at last.

And yet I curse the sun for his red gladness,
I that have known strath, garth, brake, dale,
And every run-away of the wood through that great
     madness,
Behold me shrivelled as an old oak's trunk
And made men's mock'ry in my rotten sadness!

No man hath heard the glory of my days:
No man hath dared and won his dare as I:
One night, one body and one welding flame!
What do ye own, ye niggards! that can buy
Such glory of the earth? Or who will win
Such battle-guerdon with his 'prowesse high' ?

O age gone lax! O stunted followers,
That mask at passions and desire desires,
Behold me shrivelled, and your mock of mocks;
And yet I mock you by the mighty fires
That burnt me to this ash.

Ah! Cabaret! Ah Cabaret, thy hills again!

Take your hands off me! . . . [Sniffing the air.
Ha! this scent is hot!

Olympics: For Theron of Akragas

For Theron of Akragas,
Winner in the Olympic chariot-race, 476 BC

                                    by Cameron Hawke Smith

                                     Herakles in pursuit of the doe
                                     with the golden antler
                                     came to the land
                                     beyond the north wind's home

                                     and wondered
                                     at the forest of dark green
(for which there is no word in Greek)
and the round eye of the moon
gazed at him

a sweet urge came upon him
to fetch that primal greenness
and make shade for the racetrack

where the garden
with the consecrated altars of Zeus
was naked of trees and exposed
to the sun's caustic rays

and now athletes
hot from the chase
and crowned
by the Arbiter of Games
carry that forest on their victors' heads

For Theron of Akragas,
Winner in the Olympic chariot-race, 476 BC

Olympian 3

                                  by Pindar 

 1. I aim to please the guest-loving tydarids,

     golden-haired Helen, too,

while I pay honor to famous Akragas and

rouse up for Theron the hymn of Olympic victory owed to the tireless

hooves of his team! Once more the Muse

     stands at my side as I search out a

new-fashioned mix of Dorian dance with

voices that celebrate triumph.  Crowns

    fixed in my hair mark a

ritual duty of joining the elegant

tones of the lyre with a shout from the pipe and a pattern of

   words in due praise of

Hagedisamos' brave son, and

   Pisa commands me as well.  Songs

travel from there, god-sent and destined for

ep. him on whose brow the strict Elian judge,

following Harakles' ancient rule,

   places a wreath of gray olive to

bind in his hair -- leaves from the tree

   brought long ago by Amphitryon's

son from the shadowy sources of

   Ister to serve as best

emblem of games at Olympia, once his

2. words had persuaded the men of Apollo who

   live beyond VZoreas.

He made his plea in good faith, wanting a

tree for the famed grove of Zeus, as shade to be shared by the

   crowd, and as a badge of 

valiant success. His father's altars once

   hallowed, the eye of the midmonth

moon had shone full upon him from her golden

car as on Alpheos' banks he established a sacred

   judging of games and a

festival, every four years, but no splendid

trees as yet grew in that field by the Kronian Hill --

   Pelops' domain.  To him the

precinct seemed naked, enslaved to the sharp

   rays of the sun, and in that

moment his heart had urged him to go

ep. back to the Istrian land where Orthosia,

horse-driving daughter of Leto, had

   earlier met him, come from Arkadia's

ridges and glens, forced by Eurystheus

   (and by the oath of his father) to

bring back the hind whose horns were of 

   gold, the gift that Taygeta 

offered to Artemis with her inscription.

3. Chasing that doe, he'd glimpsed the land that lies

   back of the chill winds of 

Boreas and he had stood there in silence,

stunned by the trees.  A sweet longing to plant just such

   trees at the turn of his twelve-lap

course later seized him, and now he is

   glad as he visits that Elean

festival, joining the twin sons of Leda!

To them, when he went to Olympos, he left the 

   care of his glorious

contests of muscle and chariot skills.

My heart commands me say that these same horse-loving

   Tyndarids now bring

glory to Theron and to the Emmenid tribe,

   who, of all men, have most frequently

welcomed these heroes at their friendly feasts,

ep. piously keeping the rites of the Blessed.  If

water is best, gold the most honored of

   all man's possessions, so it is

Theron who reaches the outermost

   edge of success, moving from home to

Herakles' pillars! No wise man goes

   further, nor even the 

unwise.  I'll not attempt it -- I'd be a fool

Cameron Hawke Smith, from Modern Poetry in Translation 3/17: Parnassus (£9.95).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/27/theron-akragas-olympic-race-poem?INTCMP=SRCH

Pindar from  Anne Pippin Burnett, Pindar: Odes for Victorious Athletes, (JHUP, Baltimore, 2010).

That I did first kiss a Queen: Found Poetry

Being demanded what he thought of God,

             he answers that he was a good old man; 

and what of Christ,

             that he was a towardly young youth;

and of his soul,

            that it was a great bone in his body;

and what should become of his soul after he was dead,

           that if he had done well he should be put into a pleasant green meadow.

A 17th-C man on his deathbed. J. F. C. Harrison, The Common People of Great Britain.

 

Item: one cliff, one dungeon, one hell-mouth, one Dido's tomb.

 Item: eight pits, one ladder for Phaeton to ascend to heaven.
Item: two sponge-cakes and one city of Rome.
Item: one golden fleece, two gibbets, one laurel tree.
Item: one wooden vault of heaven, one head of the prophet Mahomet.
Item: three heads of Cerberus, snakes from Faustus, one lion, two lion's heads, one big horse with legs.
Item: one pair of red gloves, three kings' crowns, one scaffold for the execution of John.
Item: one pot for boiling the Jew.
Item: four sets of vestments for Herod, one green cloak for Mariamne, one jacket for Eve, one costume for the Holy Spirit and three Spanish noble's hats.

Theatrical inventory from 1598 noted by Meyerhold. 

 

It is not the black clothes that are trying to the sight

-- black is the steadiest of all colours to work at;

white and all bright colours makes the eyes water

after looking at 'em for any long time;

but of all colours scarlet,

       such as is used for regimentals, 

is the most blinding.

It seems to burn the eyeballs, and make them ache dreadful

       . . . everything seems all of a twitter

       and to keep changing its tint.

There's more military tailors blind than any others.

H. Mayhew in R. Hughes, The Fatal Shore. 

Cohen said she "took off her dress" backstage
and was about
one Gatorade-bucket slam from a full dugout pout
when somebody said to sequin up because she was about to medal

Seattle PI, Winter Olympics 2006.

I now took them to Westminster Abbey and there did show them the tombs very finely,

having one with us alone . .

and here we did see, by perticular favour,

the body of Queen Katherine of Valois,

and had her upper part of her body in my hands.

And I did kiss her mouth, 

reflecting upon it that I did kiss a Queen,

and that this was my birthday, 36 years old,

that I did first kiss a Queen.

Samuel Pepys

 

The Creation

                      by James Weldon Johnson

And God stepped out on space, 
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely—
I'll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That's good!

Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas—
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again, 
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun, 
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I'm lonely still.

Then God sat down—
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, 
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen.      Amen.

Song of the Unseen Bird

Song of the Unseen Bird

                       H. L. Spelman 


To walk so long with her in so much quiet
Then hear that unseen bird, whose name
I don’t know, wouldn’t know where to find,
Singing somewhere among the leaf sheen,
Was to realize why, when his beloved hero-killer
Resolves at last to die, Homer gives us
Not the laments the sea nymphs wail
But the nonsense song of their limpid names
He makes up: Limnoreia and Doto and Proto
And sometimes there are no words
And Kallianassa and Kymodoke and Maera
And sometimes no words could be sad enough.
Ashwing, Seedquit, Spotted Larmer:
Tee-way tee-wee tee-wooo you sang to us.

As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying *

             William Faulkner

DARL

Pa and Vernon are sitting on the back porch. Pa is tilting snuff from the lid of his snuff-box into his lower lip, holding the lip outdrawn between thumb and finger. They look around as I cross the porch and dip the gourd into the water bucket and drink.

         "Where's Jewel?" pa says. When I was a boy I first learned how much better water tastes whicn it has set a while in a cedar bucket. Warmish-cool, with a faint taste like the hot July wind in cedar trees smells. it has to set a least six hours and be drunk from a gourd. Water should never be drunk from metal.

         And at night it is better still. I used to lie on the pallet in the hall, waiting until I could hear them all asleep, so I could get up and go back to the bucket, It would be black, the shelf black, the still surface of the water a round orifice in nothingness, where before I stirred it awake with the dipper I could see maybe a star or two in the bucket, and maybe in the dipper a star or two before I drank. After than I was bigger, older. Then I would wait until they all went to sleep so I could lie with my shirt-tail up, hearing them asleep, feeling myself without touching myself, feeling the cool silence blowing upon my parts and wondering if Cash was yonder in the darkness doing it too, had been doing it perhaps for the last two years befor I could have wanted to or could have.

         Pa's feet are badly splayed, his toes cramped and bent and warped, with no toenail at all on his little toes, from working so hard in the wet in homemade shoes when he was a boy. Beside his chair his brogans sit. They look as thought they had been hacked with a blunt aze out of pig iron. Vernon has been to town. I have never seen him go to town in overalls. His wife, they say. She taught school too, once.

         I fling the dipper dregs to the ground and wipe my mouth on my sleeve. it is going to rain before morning. Maybe before dark. "Down to the barn," I say. "Harnessing the team."

Down there fooling with that horse. He will go on through the barn, into the pasture. The horse will not be in sight; he is up there among the pine seedlings, in the cool. Jewel whistles, once and shrill. The horse snorts, then Jewel sees him, glinting for a gaudy instant among the blue shadows. Jewel whistles again; the horse comes dropping down the slope, stiff-legged, his ears cocking and flicking, his mis-matched eyes rolling, and fetches up twenty feet away, broadside on, watching Jewel over his shoulder in an attitude kittenish, and alert.

        "Come here, sir," Jewel says. He moves. Moving that quick his coat, bunching, tongues swirling like so many flames. With tossing mane and tail and rolling eye the horse makes another short curvetting rush and stops again, feet bunched, watching Jewel. Jewel walks steadily toward him, his hands at his sides. Save for Jewel's legs they are like two figures carved for a tableau savage in the sun.

         When Jewel can almost touch him, the horse stands on his hind legs and slashes down at Jewel. then Jewel is enclosed by a glittering maze of hooves as by an illusion of wings among them, beneath the upreared chest, he moves with the flashing limberness of a snake. For an instant before the jerk comes onto his arms he sees his whole body earth-free, horizontal, whipping snake-limber, until he finds the horse's nostrils and touches earth again. Then they are rigid, motionless, terrific, the horse back-thrust on stiffened, quivering legs, with lowered head; Jewel with dug heels, shutting off the horse's wind with one hand, with the other patting the horse's neck in short strokes myriad and caressing, cursing the horse with obscene ferocity.

         They stand in rigid terrific hiatus, the horse trembling and groaning. Then Jewel is on the horse's back. He flows upward in a stooping swirl like the lash of a whip, his body in midair shaped to the horse. For another moment the horse stands spraddled, with lowered head before it bursts into motion. They descend the hill in a series of spine-jolting jumps, Jewel high, leechlike on the withers, to the fence where the horse bunches to a scuttering halt again.

         "Well," Jewel says, "you can quit now, if you got a-plenty."

         Inside the barn Jewel slides running to the ground before the horse stops. The horse enters the stall, Jewel following. Without looking back the horse kicks at him, slamming a single hoof into the wall with a pistol-like report. Jewel kicks him in the stomach; the horse arches his neck back, crop-toothed; Jewel strikes him across the face with his fist and slides on to the trough and mounts upon it. Clinging tot he hay-rack he lowers his head and peers out across the stall tops and through the doorway. The path is empty; from here he cannot even hear Cash sawing. He reaches up and drags down hay in hurried armsful and crams it into the rack.

         "Eat," he says. "Get the goddamn stuff out of sight while you got a chance, you pussel-gutted ** bastard. You sweet son of a bitch," he says.

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying. First published 1930. Vintage Press 1990, from the 1985 corrected edition, 10-13.

* Agamemnon to Odysseus, Odyssey XI: "As I lay dying the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes for me as I descended into Hades."  

** Pussel-gutted = bloated.

The Byelaws

The Byelaws

                       Glyn Maxwell

Never have met me, know me well,

tell all the world there was little to tell,

say I was heavenly, say I was hell,

harry me over the blasted moors

but come my way, go yours.

Never have touched me, take me apart,

trundle me through my town in a cart,

figure me out with the aid of a chart,

finally add to the feeble applause

and come my way, go yours.

Never have read me, look at me now,

get why I'm doing it, don't get how,

other way round, have a rest, have a row,

have skirmishes with me, have wars,

O come my way, go yours.

Never have left me, never come back,

mourn me in miniskirts, date me in black,

undress as I dress, when I unpack pack,

yet pause for eternity on all fours

to come my way, go yours.

Never have met me, never do,

never be mine, never even be you,

approach from a point it's impossible to

at a time you don't have, and by these byelaws,

come my way, go yours.

TLS, April 6, 2012.