Friday Night Poetry: A Basho Haiku

Shambhala, a not so small press, put out The Essential Basho in 1999. Basho's poems are translated by Sam Hamill, founder of the Copper Canyon Press and a fine poet in his own right.

For those who don't know, Basho was a Buddhist poet who lived from 1644 to 1694.



Lord Yoshitomo's
heart must closely resemble
this cold autumn wind.

—Basho


Hmm, even Buddhist priests can't help thinking about politicians from time to time. We seem to have a few Lord Yoshitomos in our time too. Across centuries and oceans, things often remain the same.

Friday Night Poetry: Classical Poetry

Here's a poem from classical times. I can't find decent information on Lucilius but he lived at least a couple of thousand years ago. His poem sounds like Falstaff or modern slapstick.


The Timid Veteran


Calpurnius, our favorite miles gloriosus,
Strayed into an art gallery, and there
Ran into a mural of the Trojan War.

He goggled, swooned, crying I yield

O comrade Trojans, belov'd of the War-God!

We brought him to.
He asked where he was wounded,
And insisted on paying ransom to the wall.

—Lucilius

Friday NIght Poetry - Du Fu

Du Fu, a classical Chinese poet known forty years ago as Tu Fu, lived from 712 to 770. Like many classical Chinese poets, he spent years far from home.



Spring


1.

Rivers and low mountains
in the broad light of noon.

Cool fragrant winds flowing
through flowers and spice plants.

Swallows building their nests
with pecks of wet mud.

Ducks hunkered down
in the warm sand.

2.

White egrets reflected
in the blue river.

Red flowers flaring
on the green slopes.

I watch
this parade of wealth

thinking, even so,
that it's time to go home.


—Du Fu

Friday Night Poetry: A Communist Revolts

One of the amazing stories of the last 60 years are the writers and artists behind the Iron Curtain who fought for a middle way between communism and right wing ideologies. I don't know much of Laszlo Benjamin's history (1915-??) except that in 1955 he was a communist party member who revolted against the system. After the Russians put down the Hungarians in 1956, it's unlikely Benjamin would have gotten far without recanting or burrowing deep into the system somewhere. But there were many writers and artists all over Eastern Europe who saw the walls come down in 1989, some 33 years later. Was Benjamin one of them? I don't know.

The poem below was translated by Edwin Morgan. I only offer the first four stanzas. The rest can be found in Modern Hungarian Poetry, edited by Miklos Vajda. Many libraries still carry copies.



Poem By an Unknown Poet from the Mid-Twentieth Century


They ranged themselves in facing lines
—switches would soon be thrust in their hands—
and we were braced to run the gauntlet
down through that pure and heartless band.

It is to induce salvation in us
that ethics swishes from both sides;
and if not by fear and humiliation,
we're bent by chronic belly-gripes.

Endless vigilance, the very virtues
thumped into my long-hunted spine
cheated me of my power to act,
that many-splendored only-mine.

Between four-dimensional hell and
two-dimensional heaven, intention
is no more than a scurrying shadow,
reality a fading apparition.

******

—Laszlo Benjamin

Friday Night Poetry - Tao Chien

Like the Romans and other builders of empire, the ancient Chinese would send their soldiers to conquer faraway places. Not a few died along the way. This poem takes place in autumn but it seems as cold as our own winter has been at times.

A reluctant soldier, Tao Chien was more a bureaucrat stuck with a stretch of military duty. Actually, like many others, he was happiest when he was deep in contemplation or taking long walks, writing poetry or drinking wine with friends.

Like many soldiers, he wasn't sure he was coming back home.



Death in the Far Lands


Here, the grass goes on and on.
Below, white poplars go shoo, shoo,
the frost biting in the late fall.
You have sent me off as a bearer
where all around no man lives.
Tall crags close in like ghosts,
horses rear, neighing at the night sky.
From the ravine, the wind comes alone—
death has walked here before.
I will never again see the dawn.
I will never again see the dawn.
Here, the wise can do nothing.
All mourners who have come before
surely return to their home.
Surely faraway relatives will grieve
and others will return to their songs.
But where will the dead go?
This one nestles in a mountain niche.


—Tao Chien (365-427)

Friday Night Poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke

Evening


Slowly, the dusk wraps itself in the cloak
held for it at the dark edge of old trees;
you watch: the surrounding lands part from you,
one heavenward, one absorbed by the fall;

and leave you, belonging to neither realm,
not quite so dim as the empty stone house,
not quite at all invoking the eternal
as the flight of stars that sweep through the night;

and leave you—so unable to give speech—
your life—fearing, so large, ripening—
becomes now bearable, comprehending,
by turns the stone and star present in you.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Friday Night Poetry: Pablo Neruda

It seems most of the poems I post are from the U.S., Europe, China or Japan. Below is a translation of Pablo Neruda, the famous poet from Chile who died in 1971. Neruda's books can be found at Amazon.com; also, here's a bio on Wikipedia and more information from POETS.org.


XII (from Twenty Love Poems)


Your breast is enough for my heart,
and my wings for your freedom.
What was sleeping above your soul will rise
out of my mouth to heaven.

In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horion with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.

I have said that you sang in the wind
like the pines and like the masts.
Like them you are tall and taciturn,
and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.

You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
that had been sleeping in your soul.



The above poem was translated by W. S. Merwin, one of the finest American poets and winner this year of the Pulitzer Prize for his book of poems, The Shadow of Sirius. Merwin is also a first-rate translator.

Friday NIght Poetry: Li Po

I don't know the history behind the following Chinese poem but the image it conjures is extraordinarily evocative. It was translated by Burton Watson. The poem can be found in The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry.



Autumn Cove


At Autumn Cove, so many white monkeys,
bounding, leaping up like snowflakes in flight!
They coax and pull their young ones down from the branches
to drink and frolic with the water-borne moon.

—Li Po (701-762)