Welcome to the poems for Sept. 23, day 23 of the "30 Poems in 30 Days" fundraiser for the Ithaca Sanctuary Alliance"
DAY 23
Portami il girasole ch’io lo trapianti - Eugenio Montale
(TRANSLATED BELOW BY ROB SCOT)
Portami il girasole ch’io lo trapianti
Nel mio terreno bruciato dal salino,
E mostri tutto il giorno agli azzurri specchianti
Del cielo l’ansieta` del suo volto giallino.
Tendono alla chiarita` le cose oscure,
Si esauriscono I corpi in un fluire
Si tinte: queste in musiche. Svanire
E dunque la ventura delle venture.
Portami tu la pianta che conduce
Dove sorgono bionde trasparenze
E vapora la vita quale essenza;
Portami il girasole impazzito di luce.
Portami il girasole ch’io lo trapianti
Bring Me the Sunflower—a loose translation BY ROB SCOT
Eugenio Montale
Bring me the sunflower and let me transplant it
Here in the ground that is burnt by the sea’s salt spray
And it shall reflect across the mirroring blue of the sky
Its anxious face all day.
Dark things seek the clarity of light
The body’s weary tones fade
Into hues of colors, colors to music.
To vanish is the greatest strength of all.
Bring me the flower that leads us
To where blond transparencies ignite
And vapors pour into their essences
Bring me the sunflower delirious with light.
Gradually, again Carol Whitlow
Gradually they lead us to know-
The first fiery leaves on a maple branch
-It is coming-
Beware
Be prepared.
Tomatoes ripen
Morning glories turn to bulbous seed cases
Gradually hair turns gray then white
Friends leave
The old barn down the road leans more each year
Until it is a pile of boards and wild vines
What will the new order be
As our democracy gradually transforms
Is it dying
Or is it making seeds for the next season?
The Mystery of James Russell Lowell
Double Sonnet:
Thoughts on “A Mystical Ballad”
A maiden with a snowy breast that glowed
Below her golden hair, bright lunar light,
Breathed in, when west wind rose, one quiet night,
Lily-aroma… Memory, a goad,
Try as it might, awoke her not. Instead,
While softest calm inclined into the day,
Glory, an aura, round about her lay:
Her soul had gone, her flower witheréd.
Meanwhile a man, in fair and distant clime,
Was wholly filled with wildest oneness. He,
Brother become to all on land and sea,
Translated by a lore transcending time,
Cried, but arising, now would always know
He was a poet. Edgar Allan Poe
Had found a brother-dreamer, for when James
Lowell depicts the newly mystic bard,
He sounds a darker note, a saying hard
Yet helpful here. Despite the lucent claims
Made of a lightened clay, ethereal,
We learn the lover-heart would “curdle” when
A lily fragrance came too near – and then,
Blood troubled by a bloom, his mind is full
Of dread awareness of the lost Lenore,
Annabel Lee – pure virgin mothers all.
Their lily whiteness wilted, they appall.
The seeming theme of either: Nevermore.
Cras, cras, corvina dixit. Yet again,
Dead Mother leaves deep weariness to men.
Dear Reader JOANNA GREEN
If I wanted you to follow me
Along this path, right here
Among my ferns and burning bushes
Down old abandoned bridle trails
Thick with the scent of pine needles in sun
Where we play horses, still, in dreams...
If I wanted you to follow me
Out there, all the way to where
My stars are mapped
Against the sky, to where
I am foretold
Or down into the catacombs
Where subterranean coals
Still glow, waiting to ignite, or
To be extinguished, ever so gently,
By cool waters
If I did want you to follow me
I would not grab you by the hand
I’d leave a trail of crumbs half hidden
Among the weeds
Like these
Nurture Barbara Regenspan
She transplanted the tree in manure
when it needed lighter soil
flecked with sand—
impatience born of abandonment
of gardening equipment at
the old house--
home to a kind of
depression
born of perceived unwelcome.
Trees can be emancipatory
or burning, crackling the message
that everything’s in flame.
Yet escape can happen
just in time. People can wake up
woke, and rain is often unexpected.
There is sandy soil for sale around the corner,
feeding words that land
and take off in blue sky
that birds fly through.
HOW WE SPENT THE EQUINOX Susan Weitz
We started when the trees were pink,
between coffee and breakfast.
Like demigods, we forged serenity
in the midst of chaos:
three square feet of space in the garage
for a couple of retired air conditioners.
“What’s in this box?”
“THAT’S where the DVDs went!”
“Let’s hose the salt off the rug.”
“Wow, the floor is filthy.”
“Shouldn’t all the gardening tools be in one place?”
“I found the hedge clippers; those bushes need trimming.”
Sweat-soaked and thirty years older,
we limped indoors
for the most pressing chores.
When we sank into the sofa
in the withering light,
Dust motes flew up like stars.
Day of Atonement DAVID REGENSPAN
While at prayer on Yom Kippur
It is the custom
To strike one’s breast upon reading the words
Al cheyt she’chatanu l’fanecha,
For the sin we have sinned against you.
What God thinks of this gesture
I am sure I wouldn’t know.
What the congregant Jessica thinks of it
I know very well.
She says that she refuses to strike her breast
Because she beats herself up enough as it is.
Yom Kippur is a curious thing. It you let it,
It swallows you whole,
While you, in the midst of a fast
Swallow nothing. The words,
Hours and hours of them,
Are like a rain of pebbles on the skin,
Almost, but not quite, painful.
It is said that cheyt, the word for sin,
Really means missing the mark.
If so
My sin arrows litter the ground like fallen leaves,
But if God forgives this or not
I wouldn’t know.
I know very well
That my throat is raw from all that praying
And the knowledge
That not knowing
Must be enough.
