A.E. Housman on the Central Line

For The War Dead

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

-A.E.Housman (1859-1936)

Spotted on The Central Line at 0945, 10-Nov-2010; part of the Poems on The Underground series

'Sand is like sand, but you are of the blue'

"Sand is like sand, but you are of the blue"

Nasiri Hajjaj’s movie “As The Poet Said” about the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish starts with this line and wanders across half the world before coming home. On the last day of The London Palestine Film Festival at The Barbican Centre, we were granted a languorous film filled with the powerful poetry of Darwish read by people he knew, filmed in places that he had visited.... Tunis, Paris, Ramallah, Spain, Haifa – all illuminated brilliantly with only the starkness of his words.

The Director In the discussion after the movie, Hajjaj called this film his letter of love to Darwish; he spoke about how he had met the poet when he was young and wanted to make a movie about one of his Darwish’s epic poems (much to the consternation of the poet, apparently!) but never had the money to get it started.

The Title The title of the movie “As The Poet Said”, is supposed to be a phrase that’s culturally loaded with meaning in Arabic. Explaining the origin of this phrase, the director spoke about how Darwish would often use this particular phrase with reference to the 9th century poet Al-Muttanabbi, someone he considered THE most famous poet of all time in the Arab world. Hajjaj explained that “Al-Muttanabbi : Darwish, Darwish : Hajjaj” and voila, the title.

The Poet of The World The director also spoke about how he went out of his way to cast Darwish as a poet of the world rather than a poet of Palestine. He deliberately ignored the poet’s early nationalistic works and did not use the usual Palestinian collaborators of Darwish in the movie at all (“there are still people in Ramallah who are very angry with me”, he says, “Darwish was Palestine’s gift to the world and I want him to be remembered like that”). He also spoke about how he forced himself to use emptiness throughout the movie, saying that only the poetry should speak about Darwish and nothing else should detract from the experience.

The Readers Wole Soyinka and Jose Saramago, who read in the movie, had actually visited Darwish in Ramallah during the 2nd Intifada; Dominique De Villepin, the former French Prime Minister and poet, who also reads in the movie, had attended the poet’s funeral and wrote a moving elegy in the French press for him. Other readers include American, Israeli and several Middle –Eastern poets as also a dumb boy who shares in sign language, a Darwish poem that he knew.

The Democratic Flourish In explaining how the poems were selected (especially the ones read out by other poets), the director spoke about his democratic approach – he asked the reading poet to choose a Darwish poem and Najjaj himself would choose another one. The poet would read both poems for the filming but in his film, Najjaj finally used only the poems he chose. “Perfectly democratic”, he informed us.

The Poetry As an old, steady voice read the poem below, the frame panned across the landscape with old men, women, poets, Palestinian school-kids... reciting, reading, remembering these lines... I thought to myself, how better can a man be remembered, than for the force of his words and the fires that they light.

WE HAVE ON THIS EARTH WHAT MAKES LIFE WORTH LIVING

Mahmoud Darwish, 1986

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April’s
hesitation, the aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman’s point of view about men, the works of
Aeschylus, the beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute’s sigh and
the invaders’ fear of memories.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the
final days of September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in
prison, a cloud reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples’ applause for those who face death
with a smile, a tyrant’s fear of songs.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this
earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called
Palestine. Her name later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.

(Image used was sourced from here)

The Mad Women of Gabriela Mistral

Just found my unread copy of Poetry News, Winter 2009 and in it, a lovely Latin American poem. Randall Couch's translation of "Locas Mujeres" by Gabriela Mistral won the 2009 Corneliu M Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation - here's a brief excerpt that I copied from Poetry News:

GABRIELA MISTRAL
from THE ABANDONED WOMAN

for Emma Godoy

(...)

I have sat down in the middle of the Earth,
my love, in the middle of my life,
to open my veins and my chest,
to peel my skin like a pomegranate,
and to break the red mahogany
of these bones that loved you.

I'm burning all that we had:
the wide walls, the high beams,
ripping out one by one
the twelve doors you opened
and closing with axe blows
the cistern of happiness.

Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy, the first Latin American to win the Nobel; she knew Neruda (another pseudonym, originally he was Neftali Basoalto) when he was a 16 year old aspiring poet, 3 years before the maddening brilliance of Twenty Poems of Love and A Song of Despair.

I never knew about Mistral until I saw this feature but it looks like she's written some exceptional literature. She says about her poetry:

"I write poetry because I can't disobey the impulse; it would be like blocikng a spring that surges up in my throat... it no longer matters to me who receives what I submit. What I carry out is, in that respect, greater and deeper than I, I am merely the channel".

Wow.

Image sourced from here.

Try to praise...

Adam Zagajewski, whom I have never heard of before I received this mail from the U.Chi poetics list seems to have written an amazing poem here...a grey poem with just a glimmer of light to be served with wild strawberries and wine on what would be an otherwise pointless Monday morning...here's to hearing him read this Wednesday!

Try To Praise The Mutilated World
- Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Today I found out the meaning of...

VADE MECUM
(c) Billy Collins

I want the scissors to be sharp
and the table to be perfectly level
when you cut me out of my lie
and paste me in that book you always carry.

LATE SHOW
(c) Billy Collins

No wonder everyone loved the private dick
whose only badge is a pack of Camels
and who never dies until the movie is over
and nobody can watch him writhe.

He charges a hundred a day plus expenses
and there would be plenty of time to relax
between cases.

The only suffering in the world would be
those blackjackings from the blind side
his nods to mortality,

but then he fades into a soft dissolve
and comes to on a sumptuous couch
a blonde in a nightgown rubbing his temples
and pouring brandies as she reconsiders
the double cross.

What better style of transport
than an open car squealing along
the Coast highway, one hand on the wheel
as you unravel the onion of the murder
so fast she can't even follow.

What better place to think things over
than a swivel chair in a darkened office,
the pulse of the neon hotel sign
illuminating your notorious face

your hat hanging on the rach where you
tossed it on the way in.

PS: Although I almost missed the generation of Mike Hammer,Carter and Travis McGee, I chanced upon about 30 of these novels in some corner at home. For a 14 year old, the charm of a divorced, chain smoking, rugged detective blustering his way through whistling bullets, skimpy blondes and the occassional weak plot was irresistable - later I realized that there have been more who succumbed.

This poem is a kind of a tribute to this genre...by gently smiling at all the impossibilities that the genre was composed of, Collins also seems to be tipping his hat to an old memory, a friend we left behind when we moved from the suburbs to downtown.

PPS: Especially loved the way he has etched...
"nods to mortality"
"reconsiders the doublecross"
"unraveled the onion of a murder so fast she cant even follow"

For those unfamiliar with these characters, a good starting point would be Calvin's Tracer Bullet ;-)

The Death of Allegory (c)

I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.

Truth cantering on a powerful horse,
Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils.
Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat,
Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended,

Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall,
Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm.
They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes.
Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator.

Valor lies in bed listening to the rain.
Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood,
and all their props are locked away in a warehouse,
hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles.

Even if you called them back, there are no places left
for them to go, no Garden of Mirth or Bower of Bliss.
The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums
and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair.

Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies
and next to it black binoculars and a money clip,
exactly the kind of thing we now prefer,
objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case,

themselves and nothing more, a wheelbarrow,
an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray.
As for the others, the great ideas on horseback
and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns,

it looks as though they have traveled down
that road you see on the final page of storybooks,
the one that winds up a green hillside and disappears
into an unseen valley where everyone must be fast asleep.

- Billy Collins

PS: Dont you know exactly what hes talking about when he says "The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair" ;-)

By this and this only...

...blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract,
By this, and this only, we have existed,
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms.

- Thomas Stearns Eliot (The Wasteland)