Poetics and Ruminations

Seventeen Haiku

After Matsuo Basho

 

Arise! Arise! I

want you with me on my road,

sleeping butterfly!

 

Spring calls beginnings,

yet in solitary thought

lies the fall gloaming.

 

Is it for spring’s sake

that this small, nameless mountain

hides in morning haze?

 

From what tree’s blossoms

does it waft? I wish I knew —

this phantom perfume!

 

Moon of the pond’s sky,

I meander about you,

and night is over.

 

Sometimes the clouds come

to arrest our eyes, give rest

from this moon-gazing.

 

Where the starling flies

till sight loses its wings,

there lies one island.

 

The island adrift

in a wild sea; overhead

flows heaven’s river.

 

The day is so still

their voices drill into stone —

the locusts calling.

 

Did it shrill until

it became only echo?

— this cicada shell.

 

In the deep prairie

sunken in its solitude

the lark sings and sings.

 

Waving summer grass:

the dead weave dreams of it,

the warriors sleeping.

 

In the same house slept

the women of the evening,

bush-clover, the moon.

 

The blossoms have gone,

and the moon; he drinks the wine

of his solitude.

 

Butterfly and bird,

there is your hidden flower —

the sky of autumn.

 

The snow that we watched

falling then — has it fallen

again with the year?

 

Upon an ill road,

old among withered fields; dreams

will go wandering still.

 

Lewis Turco

from The Cream City Review, ix:1-2, 1984, and The Cream City Review 20th Anniversary Anthology, xx:1-2, 1995-96.

A Blessing on Munster

God's blessing be invoked upon Munster now,

Upon its men and boys, its womenfolk;

Blessings be upon the land, peak and down,

That boons the flock fruit, root, stem and stalk.

 

A blessing upon all kinds of fruitfulness

That shall be borne upon this meadowland,

No neighbor going in want of helpfulness.

God place over Munster his healing hand!

 

A blessing be upon the high ridge,

Upon their cottages' bare flagstones;

A blessing upon heather, sedge, the sheer cliff edge;

A blessing upon lea and ledge, their gloaming glens!

 

Like sands of ocean under vessels

Be the numbers of their dwellings' hearthstones

Upon their downlands and their sloping hills,

Upon their crags and fells, their misty mountains!

 

                                             — Attr. St. Patrick

from The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, copyright 2004 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved. www.starcloudpress.com/CollectedLyrics.html  

 

 

REMARKS

 

Lovely poem, Lew,

such good use of repetition! It feels like a ritual chant. That Wesli's not half bad, you know.

Rhina Espaillat

Lovely.

Miriam Kotzin 

 

And a blessing upon you, O'Court.  That's a truly warm-hearted and lovely poem.

Ruth Harrison

 

I loved your lovely Irish poem ... while it was in recognition of today's celebration, it certainly would be wonderful to read any time of the year.

Ann Badach

The Wanderer

Alone I am driven each day by dawn
To wake and wander, to cry my cares.
Now there are none among the quick
To whom I dare to bare my heart,
Tell my thought. Too truly I ken [know]
That in a man it is no vice
To keep his counsel chest-locked,
Hold close his mind-hoard.
No weary wit may scorn weird, [fate]
Nor wrecked will work hope;
Wherefore, belike [likely], fame-chasers
Fasten darkness in deep moods.

Therefore I must curb my mind —
Cut off from kindred, cast from country,
Care-overborne — bind it in fetters,
For long ago the ground's grip
Took my weal-lord. Wretched, I went,
Winter-dreary, over the wave.
I sought the hall of a gold-giver
Where, far or near, I might find
Him whose meadhall would host the castaway,
Grant comfort to one cursed,
Hail me heartily.

........................He who struggles
Knows how cruel a companion is care
To him who has few shield-friends.
The path presses him, no purse of gold;
Not Midgard's [Earth's] glory, but heart's cavern.
He recalls hall-men, treasure-sharing;
In youth-yore his loaf-lord
Sat him to feast. This joy is fallen.
He who is forced to forgo the word
Of his liege-lord learns this lore:
How sleep and sorrow, twined together,

Bind in a bight [knot] the bitter outcast.
Dwelling in dream, he and his lord
Clasp and kiss, lay on knee
Hand and head, as betimes
In days dwindled, upon the gift-stool.

Then he wakens, the forsaken man,
And spies before him bleak spume;
Seamews swimming, stroking feathers;
Swirling hail; hoarsnow falling.
His heart's wounds hurt anew
For his loved lord. Grief blossoms.
The wraiths of kinsmen gather in thought;
He cries out gladly, scans eagerly
The throngs of his hearth — they scud away.
Long-boatmen's ghosts bring not many
Old lays there. Care freshens
In him who sends forward too oft
His warm heart over weary tides.

In Midgard I wit not why
My mind is not mired
When it roves the lives of earls,

How in a stroke they forswore their halls,
Those mood-proud theigns. Thus does Midgard,
Each day and all, age and fall.

No man is wise who has not won
His winters-lore. The wise man bides,
Not hot-hearted, nor speech-hasty,
Nor weak in war, nor wanting in reckoning,
Nor too goods-grasping, too glad, too mild,
Nor boast-breasted, before he kens.

The sage forbears folly-boasting
Till fierce wit fully wots [knows]
Which wind will take his spleen.

A wise man grasps how grim
This world shall be when its wealth wastes,
Even as now, in numberless places,
Earth's walls fall, wind-riven,
Rimed with hoar-ruined houses.
The wine-halls moulder; their wrights lie
In wolfbane, their bandsmen slain
Under the tower. The sword took some

In its course; a bird carried
One over Ocean; one the werewolf
Dealt to death; one stretched
His dreary-eyed earl in an earthen trench.
The Man-Maker [God] has marred this hearth
So men's laughter has sunk to stillness:

That wight [man] who looked on these walls wisely,
Who sounded deeply this dark life,
Would hark back to the blood spilled,
Weigh it well. His word would be,
"Where is the steed that served these men?
Where is the horde and the hoard-sharer?
Where is the fastness, the feast, the fanfare?"

Bright Cup! Burnished knight!
Eager earl! Your age tarnished
In night's helm, torn out of time!

There stands, instead of staunch theigns,
A louring wall wrought with worm-wrines;
The earls eat dust beneath the ash-spear —
Thirsty biter! Their weird is proud.

Storms stutter on the stone hill,
The ground battered by bitter hail,
Weather-wrath. Bleakness breaks
And night-shade spreads, sends from the North
The hobnail sleet to harry man.

In Midgard all is crossed and melled;
Weird's-will wrenches the world.
Wealth is our loan, friends our lending;
Mankind is lent, kinsmen lent:
Earth's frame shall stand forsaken.

Anonymous Old English

From “Ancient Music” in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale: Star Cloud Press, copyright © 2004 by Lewis Turco. All rights reserved.

Lament for the Poets

By William Dunbar, 1460 (?) – 1520 (?)

I who was in health and gladness
Am troubled now with great sickness,
Enfeebled with infirmity;
Fear of death disturbeth me.

Our pleasance here is all vainglory,
This false world is but transitory,
The flesh is fragile, the Fiend is sly;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

The state of man does change and vary
Now sound, now sick; now blithe, now sorry,
Now dancing merry, now like to die;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

No state on earth here stands staunch.
As with the wind waves the branch,
So waves this world's vanity;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Unto Death go all estates,
Princes, prelates, and potentates,
Both rich and poor, of each degree;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

He takes the knight in the field
Armed under helm and shield —
He is victor of the melee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

That merciless and tyrant king
Takes, on the mother's breast suckling,
The babe full of benignity;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

He takes the champion of power,
The captain sheltered in his tower,
The embowered lady in her beauty;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

He spares no lord for his puissance,
Nor clerk for his intelligence;
His awful stroke may no man flee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Neither astrologers nor magicians,
Clerics, scholars, or logicians
Find help in their conclusions sly;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Those most learned in medicines —
Leeches, surgeons, and physicians —
May not cure their mortality;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

I see that poets sing their sheaf,
Play their pageant, then go to grief;
Death does not spare their faculty;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

He had to impetuously devour
The noble Chaucer, the poets' flower;
The Monk of Bery, and Gower, all three;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

The good Sir Hugh of Eglinton
And also Heriot and Winton
He has torn from this country;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

That evil scorpion has brought to wreck
Master John Clarke and James Affleck
From ballad-making and tragedy;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Holland and Barbour he has bereft;
Alas! that he could not have left
Sir Mungo Lockert of the Lee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Clark of Tranent, too, he's slain,
Who wrote The Adventures of Gawain;
Sir Gilbert Hay — ended has he;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

He has Blind Harry and Sandy Traill
Slain with his shower of mortal hail,
Which Patrick Johnston could not flee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

He's taken Ralph of Aberdeen
And gentle Ralph of Corstophin —
Two better fellows may no man see;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Now in Dumferlintown he's done
With Master Robert Henryson;
Sir John of Ross has bent his knee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

And he has taken in his maw
Good, gentle Strobo and Quentin Shaw
On whom all creatures have pity;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Good Master Walter Kennedy
In point of deed lies verily —
It were great ruth that such should be;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Since all my brothers thus are gone,
He will not let me live alone;
I may perforce his next prey be;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Since for the dead there is no cure,
We'd best prepare for what is sure
That we may live eternally;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

This modern version is from The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Star Cloud Press, copyright 2004.

Ailment and Age, Grief, Catarrh

Before I was a crook-back
I was honored for word-craft,
Feasted — till I was bereft.

Before I was a crook-back
I was hailed in the meadhalls
Of Wales, toasted in crystal.

Before I was a crook-back
The first to pierce was my spear;
I blazed! — now I creep hunchback.

Oaken crook, come harvest-time:
Ocher bracken, saffron grass —
Fond things are gone in a trice.

Oaken crook, come hoar-frost time:
Men bawling over liquor —
My bed cheerless by the fire.

Oaken crook, come cuckoo-time:
Women flirting at the feasts —
Done are the days of my trysts.

Oaken crook, come heather-time:
Bright weather, green-tendril nights —
I loathe the sight of your knots.

Oaken crook, you good old stave,
Prop the elder and heartsick —
Llywarch the long-tongued, the stiff.

Oaken crook, unbending stick,
Lead me to God's waiting flock —
That's it, my steady fellow!

Oaken crook, do as you're bid:
be proper, make me proper,
I, Llywarch the long-winded.

Age has made me a scarecrow,
Hoar-haired and long in the tooth,
Lance forsworn for the crook's oath.

Age has whispered a poor jest
In my ear through my hoar-hair,
Withered the lance women joust.

White wind frets the foot-hill trees,
The stag stands on the bare hill,
My stick stutters on the trail.

The wind bears away the leaf
Over the hill — God knows where.
It was a new leaf this year.

The lad's love is my loathing:
Lass, stranger, unbroken roan —
These are no longer fitting.

This is the loathsome foursome
Come upon in a corpus:
Ailment and age, grief, catarrh.

Old, alone, misshapen, cold,
Once I had a famous bed;
Grief-bent, I go three-folded.

Old, thrice folded, witless, weak,
Given to the sudden rage —
Those I loved pay no love-wage.

No lasses love me, none come
Nigh me, I may not come near —
Not even death will appear!

Joy shuns me, sleep keeps away
Since kinsman and friend were slain —
My cross carcass and I wane.

Curse the night Llywarch was born
To work this row with his crook,
Walk the road no man may brook!

From the Welsh of Llywarch Hen, modern English version in "Ancient Music" in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, copyright © 2004 by Lewis Turco. All rights reserved.