Stop

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." Mohandas Gandhi

Check this out. Please.

'Animals' - Ketch Harbour Wolves

Final Poetry Post

National Poetry Month comes to an end today, and I thought I'd close with a poem from the poet I began with. Also, read more poetry!

'Sonnet XV' William Shakespeare

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth naught but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheer'd and check'd even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory:

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night;

       And all in war with Time for love of you,

       As he takes from you, I ingraft you new.

'Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)' - Saul Williams

Favourites

While looking for a clip from Spartacus online (does anyone else remember Spartacus saying "I'm not your God!"), I stumbled upon a YouTube list of the 90 best movies ever made, which was a response to this list. While many good (and yes, great) films can be found on both, I took exception to several inclusions (The Crow? Forrest Gump? Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett?!). Which led me to create my own. Except it isn't, by any means, an authoritative list of the greatest films of all time. Unfortunately, I haven't seen as many of the world's cinematic masterpieces as I ought to have. They're simply my favourite flicks (of course, any exercise of this nature is subjective). It's skewed somewhat to recent releases (there are more American movies, too, than I expected), and some of my own choices are likely indefensible, but I love them regardless of aesthetic considerations. Also, I thought 100 would be sufficient, but found I couldn't limit myself to fewer than 125 (a Bems' dozen, as I told my wife).

The Age of Innocence

Amélie

American Beauty

Annie Hall

The Apartment

Away from Her

Babe

Ball of Fire

The Barbarian Invasions

Beautiful Girls

Bed and Board

Being John Malkovich

Best in Show

The Bicycle Thief

Blood Diamond

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Bringing Up Baby

Bubba Ho-Tep

A Bug's Life

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Casablanca

Catch Me If You Can

Childstar

Clueless

The Corporation

Corpse Bride

Curse of the Golden Flower

Dangerous Liaisons

Dead Man Walking

Decline of the American Empire

Dr. Strangelove

Double Indemnity

Dumbo

Drugstore Cowboy

The Elephant Man

The Empire Strikes Back

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Everyone Says I Love You

Fargo

A Fish Called Wanda

Four Weddings and a Funeral

From Russia with Love

Genevieve

Glory

The Godfather

The Godfather Part II

Gone With the Wind

Groundhog Day

Happiness

Harold and Maude

Heat and Dust

Highway 61

The House of Mirth

Hud

The Incredibles

In the Mood for Love

In the Name of the Father

Juno

The Lady Eve

The Last Emperor

The Last King of Scotland

Laura

Lawrence of Arabia

Leningrad Cowboys

Life of Brian

Limbo

The Lion in Winter (Peter O'Toole)

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Lost in Translation

The Maltese Falcon

Memento

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Monsters, Inc.

My Man Godfrey

Naked

Open Your Eyes

The Opposite of Sex

Pan's Labyrinth

The Player

Psycho

Pulp Fiction

The Purple Rose of Cairo

Raise the Red Lantern

Ran

Rebecca

Reservoir Dogs

Richard III

Rocket Science

Roman Holiday

The Savages

Say Anything...

Shakespeare in Love

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shop Around the Corner

Shrek

Slacker

Sleeper

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

Spartacus

The Squid and the Whale

Stage Beauty

The Station Agent

The Sugarland Express

Sweet and Lowdown

Talk to Her

Thank You for Smoking

The Thin Man

The Thin Red Line

To Catch a Thief

Topkapi

Trainspotting

Triplets of Belleville

Trois Couleurs Trilogy

Trust

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Unforgiven

A Very Long Engagement

Waitress

Wall-E

Washington Square

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

The Wings of the Dove

The Wizard of Oz

Wristcutters: A Love Story

'Movie Romance' - Love Is All

Addendum: May 9, 2009 - I just watched The Ice Storm and Stranger than Fiction (more on this film later) and had to add them to the list.

Tempests

'Rain' Edward Thomas (woefully underappreciated)

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain

On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me

Remembering again that I shall die

And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks

For washing me cleaner than I have been

Since I was born into this solitude.

Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:

But here I pray that none whom once I loved

Is dying to-night or lying still awake

Solitary, listening to the rain,

Either in pain or thus in sympathy

Helpless among the living and the dead,

Like a cold water among broken reeds,

Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,

Like me who have no love which this wild rain

Has not dissolved except the love of death,

If love it be towards what is perfect and

Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

'Here Comes the Rain Again (Freemasons Remix)' - Eurythmics

'Rain' - Ugress

Nearing the End

April 24 

'Petit Mort pour rire' - Tristan Cobière

Va vite, léger peigneur de comètes!

Les herbes au vent seront tes cheveux;

De ton œil béant jailliront les feux

Follets, prisonniers dans les pauvres têtes…

Les fleurs de tombeau qu'on nomme Amourettes

Foisonneront plein ton rire terreux...

Et les myosotis, ces fleurs d'oubliettes...

Ne fais pas le lourd: cercueils de poètes

Pour les croques-morts sont de simples jeux,

Boîtes à violon qui sonnent le creux...

Ils te croiront mort! - Les bourgeois sont bêtes - 

Va vite, léger peigneur de comètes!

April 25 

'The House of Life (Nuptial Sleep)' Dante Gabriel Rossetti

At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:

   And as the last slow sudden drops are shed

   From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,

So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.

Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start

   Of married flowers to either side outspread

   From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,

Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,

   And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.

Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams

   Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;

Till from some wonder of new woods and streams

      He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.

April 26

'The Human Abstract' William Blake

Pity would be no more,

If we did not make somebody Poor:

And Mercy no more could be,

If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;

Till the selfish loves increase.

Then Cruelty knits a snare,

And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,

And waters the ground with tears:

Then Humility takes its root

Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade

Of Mystery over his head;

And the Caterpillar and Fly,

Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,

Ruddy and sweet to eat;

And the Raven his nest has made

In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea

Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree,

But their search was all in vain:

There grows one in the Human Brain.

April 27

'Monna Innominata (14)' Christina Rossetti

Youth gone, and beauty gone if ever there

   Dwelt beauty in so poor a face as this;

   Youth gone and beauty, what remains of bliss?

I will not bind fresh roses in my hair,

To shame a cheek at best but little fair,–

   Leave youth his roses, who can bear a thorn,–

I will not seek for blossoms anywhere,

   Except such common flowers as blow with corn.

Youth gone and beauty, what doth remain?

The longing of a heart pent up forlorn,

   A silent heart whose silence loves and longs;

   The silence of a heart which sang its songs

 While youth and beauty made a summer morn,

Silence of love that cannot sing again.

April 28

'Complainte de Nostalgies préhistoriques' Jules Laforgue

la nuit bruine sur les villes.

Mal repu des gains machinals,

On dîne; et gonflé d'idéal,

Chacun sirote son idylle,

     Ou furtive, ou facile.

Echos des grands soirs primitifs!

Couchants aux flambantes usines,

Rude paix des sols en gésine,

Cri jailli là-bas d'un massif,

     Violuptés à vif!

Dégringolant une vallée,

Heurter, dans des coquelicots,

Une enfant bestiale et brûlée,

Qui suce, en blaguant les échos,

     De juteux abricots.

Livrer aux langueurs des soirées

Sa toison où du cristal luit,

Pourlécher ses lèvres sucrées,

Nous barbouiller le corps de fruits

     Et lutter comme essui!

Un moment, béer, sans rien dire,

Inquiets d'une étoile là-haut;

Puis, sans but, bien gentils satyres,

Nour prendre aux premiers sanglots

     Fraternels des crapauds.

Et, nous délèvrant de l'extase,

Oh! devant la lune en son plein,

Là-bas, comme un bloc de topaze,

Fous, nous renverser sur les reins,

     Riant, battant des mains!

La nuit bruine sur les villes:

Se raser le masque, s'orner

D'un frac deuil, avec art dîner,

Puis, parmi des vierges débiles,

     Prendre un air imbécile.

'Love Like Blood' - Killing Joke

'Windmill Wedding' - Air France

'Verses from the Abstract' - A Tribe Called Quest

'Testament to Youth in Verse' - The New Pornographers

'Nostalgia' - The Long Blondes

Erstwhile Pleasures

'The Welcome to Sack' Robert Herrick

So soft streams meet, so springs with gladder smiles

Meet after long divorcement by the Iles:

When Love (the child of likenesse) urgeth on

Their Christal natures to an union.

So meet stolne kisses, when the Moonie nights

Call forth fierce Lovers to their wisht Delights:

So Kings & Queens meet, when Desire convinces

All thoughts, but such as aime at getting Princes,

As I meet thee. Soule of my life, and fame!

Eternall Lamp of Love! whose radiant flame

Out-glares the Heav'ns Osiris; and thy gleams

Out-shine the splendour of his mid-day beams.

Welcome, O welcome my illustrious Spouse;

Welcome as are the ends unto my Vowes:

I! far more welcome than the happy soile,

The Sea-scourg'd Merchant, after all his toile,

Salutes with tears of joy; when fires betray

The smoakie chimneys of his Ithaca.

Where hast thou been so long from my embraces,

Poore pittyed Exile? Tell me, did thy Graces

Flie discontented hence, and for a time

Did rather choose to blesse another clime?

Or went'st thou to this end, the more to move me,

By thy short absence, to desire and love thee?

Why frowns my Sweet? Why won't my Saint confer

Favours on me, her fierce Idolater?

Why are Those Looks, Those Looks the which have been

Time-past so fragrant, sickly now drawn in 

Like a dull Twi-light? Tell me; and the fault

Ile expiate with Sulphur, Haire, and Salt:

And with the Christal humour of the spring,

Purge hence the guilt, and kill this quarrelling.

Wo't thou not smile, or tell me what's amisse?

Have I been cold to hug thee, too remisse,

Too temp'rate in embracing? Tell me, ha's desire

To thee-ward dy'd i'the'embers, and no fire

Left in this rak't-up Ash-heap, as a mark

To testifie the glowing of a spark?

Have I divorc't thee onely to combine

In hot Adult'ry with another Wine?

True, I confesse I left thee, and appeale

'Twas done by me, more to confirme my zeale,

And double my affection on thee; as doe those, 

Whose love growes more enflam'd, by being Foes.

But to forsake thee ever, co'd there be

A thought of such like possibilitie?

When thou thy selfe dar'st say, thy Iles shall lack

Grapes, before Herrick leaves Canarie Sack.

Thou mak'st me ayrie, active to be born,

Like Iphyclus, upon the tops of corn.

Thou mak'st me nimble, as the winged howers,

To dance and caper on the heads of flowers,

And ride the Sun-beams. Can there be a thing

Under the heavenly Isis, that can bring

More love unto my life, or can present

My Genius with a fuller blandishment?

Illustrious Idoll! co'd th'Ægyptians seek

Help from the Garlick, Onyon, and the Leek,

And pay no vowes to thee? who wast their best

God, and far more transcendent than the rest?

Had Cassius, that weak Water-drinker, known

Thee in thy Vine, or had but tasted one

Small Chalice of the frantick liquor; He

As the wise Cato had approv'd of thee.

Had not Joves son, that brave Tyrinthian Swain,

(Invited to the Thesbian banquet) ta'ne

Full goblets of thy gen'rous blood; his spright

Ne'r had kept heat for fifty Maids that night.

Come, come and kisse me; Love and lust commends

Thee, and thy beautie; kisse, we will be friends

Too strong for Fate to break us: Look upon

Me, with that full pride of complexion,

As Queenes, meet Queenes; or come thou unto me,

As Cleopatra came to Anthonie;

When her high carriage did at once present

To the Triumvir, Love and Wonderment.

Swell up my nerves with spirit; let my blood

Run through my veines, like to a hasty flood.

Fill each part full of fire, active to doe

What thy commanding soule shall put it to.

And till I turne Apostate to thy love,

Which here I vow to serve, doe not remove

Thy Fiers from me; but Apollo's curse

Blast these-like actions, or a thing that's worse;

When these Circumstants shall but live to see

That I prevaricate from thee.

Call me The sonne of Beere, and then confine

Me to the Tap, the Tost, the Turfe; Let Wine

Ne'er shine upon me; May my Numbers all

Run to a sudden Death, and Funerall.

And last, when thee (deare Spouse) I disavow,

Ne'er may Prophetique Daphne crown my Brow.

'The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism' - The New Pornographers

Earth Day Shenanigans

The defendants: Competitive Enterprise Institute, Coca-Cola, and innumerable corporate greenwashing wankers. 

'Planet Earth' -  Duran Duran 

'World Spins Madly On' - The Weepies

'Perfect World' - Cranes

Earth Day is all well and good. But try this for some real change. Musical change. Also, here's a fantastic video exposing the dirty truth about Clean Coal (directed by the Coen Brothers!). Plus, some wisdom from Grist's fabulous Girl Guru, Umbra.

Beebalm (and joy and bliss)

I wasn't able to find a poem suitably earthy to celebrate today, so here's my compromise. I'm a little loopy about bees.

'The Humble-Bee' Ralph Waldo Emerson

Burly, dozing, humble-bee,

Where thou art is clime for me.

Let them sail for Porto Rique,

Far-off hearts through seas to seek;

I will follow thee alone,

Thou animated torrid-zone!

Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,

Let me chase thy waving lines;

Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,

Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun,

Joy of the dominion!

Sailor of the atmosphere;

Swimmer through the waves of air;

Voyager of light and noon;

Epicurean of June;

Wait, I prithee, till I come

Within earshot of thy hum, –

All without is martyrdom.

When the south wind, in May days,

With a net of shining haze

Silvers the horizon wall,

And, with softness touching all,

Tints the human countenance

With a color of romance,

And, infusing subtle heats,

Turns the sod to violets,

Thou, in sunny solitudes,

Rover of the underwoods,

The green silence dost displace

With thy mellow, breezt bass.

Hot midsummer's petted crone,

Sweet to me thy drowsy tone

Tells of countless sunny hours,

Long days, and solid banks of flowers;

Of gulfs of sweetness without bound

In Indian wildernesses found;

Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,

Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.

Aught unsavoury or unclean

Hath my insect never seen;

But violets and bilberry bells,

Maple-sap, and daffodels,

Grass with green flag half-mast high,

Succory to match the sky,

Columbine with horn of honey,

Scented fern, and agrimony,

Clover, catchfly, adder's tongue,

And brier roses, dwelt among;

All beside was unknown waste,

All was picture as he passed.

Wiser far than human seer,

Yellow-breeched philosopher!

Seeing only what is fair,

Sipping only what is sweet,

Thou dost mock at fate and care,

Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.

When the fierce north-western blast

Cools sea and land so far and fast,

Thou already slumberest deep;

Woe and want thou canst outsleep;

Want and woe, which torture us,

Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

'Bees' - Caribou

'Bumblebees' - Kelly de Martino

'Bees' - Laura Cantrell

Stars

'Bright Star' John Keats

Bright star, would I were as steadfast as thou art!

    Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

    Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

    Of pure ablution round earth's human shores

Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

    Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:

No–yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

    Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

    Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

    And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

Speech! Speech! - Geoffrey Hill

'Stars' - Au Revoir Simone

Une autre poème français

'Bêtise de la guerre' Victor Hugo

Ouvrière sans yeux, Pénélope imbécile,

Berceuse de chaos où le néant oscille,

Guerre, ô guerre occupée au choc des escadrons,

Toute pleine de bruit furieux des clairons,

O buveuse de sang, qui, farouche, flétrie,

Hideuse, entraînes l'homme en cette ivrognerie,

Nuée où le destin  se déforme, où Dieu fuit,

Où flotte un clarté plus noir que la nuit,

Folle immense, de vent et de foudres armée,

A quoi sers-tu, géante, à quoi sers-tu, fumée,

Si tes écroulements reconstruisent le mal,

Si pour le bestial tu chasses l'animal,

Si tu ne sais, dans l'ombre où ton hasard se vautre,

Défaire un empereur que pour en faire un autre?

'Adam Dying', 'Colloquy': The Visible Man - Henri Cole

'War' - Outkast

'Penelope' - Of Montreal

Amour Haiku III

Water's slake and blue

lures a squirrel to our roof:

the cat lurks unseen.

'Cat on the Wall' - PJ Harvey

Theft

'Le Cœur Volé' Arthur Rimbaud

Mon triste cœur bave à la poupe,

Mon cœur couvert de caporal:

Ils y lancent des jets de soupe;

Mon triste cœur bave à la poupe:

Sous les quolibets de la troupe

Qui pousse un rire général,

Mon triste cœur bave à la poupe,

Mon cœur couvert de caporal!

Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques,

Leurs quolibets l'ont dépravé!

Au gouvernail on voit des fresques

Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques.

O flots abracadabrantesques,

Prenez mon cœur, qu'il soit lavé!

Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques,

Leurs quolibets l'ont depravé!

Quand ils auront tari leurs chiques,

Comment agir, ô cœur volé?

Ce seront des hoquets bachiques:

Quand ils quront tari leurs chiques:

J'aurai des sursauts stomachiques,

Moi, si mon cœur est ravalé:

Quands ils auront tari leurs chiques

Comment agir, ô cœur volé?

'The Fate of Persephone', 'Pumpkin Picking': Subterranean - Jill Bialosky

'Since You Stole My Heart' - Saturday Looks Good to Me

Ludwig

'To Beethoven' Sidney Lanier

In o'er-strict calyx lingering,

     Lay music's bud too long unblown,

Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring:

     Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone.

O Psalmist of the weak, the strong,

     O Troubadour of love and strife,

Co-Litanist of right and wrong,

     Sole Hymner of the whole of life,

I know not how, I care not why,–

     Thy music sets my world at ease,

And melts my passion's mortal cry

     In satisfying symphonies.

It soothes my accusations sour

     'Gainst thoughts that fray the restless soul:

The stain of death; the pain of power;

     The lack of love 'twixt part and whole;

The yea-nay of Freewill and Fate;

     Whereof both cannot be, yet are;

The praise a poet wins too late

     Who starves from earth into a star;

The lies that serve great parties well,

     While truths but give their Christ a cross;

The loves that send warm souls to hell,

     While cold-blood neuters take no loss;

Th' indifferent smile that nature's grace

     On Jesus, Judas, pours alike;

Th' indifferent frown on nature's face

     When luminous lightnings strangely strike

The sailor praying on his knees

     And spare his mate that's cursing God;

How babes and widows starve and freeze,

     Yet nature will not stir a clod;

Why Nature blinds us in each act

     Yet makes no law in mercy bend,

No pitfall from our feet retract,

     No storms cry out Take shelter, friend;

Why snakes that crawl the earth should ply

     Rattles, that whoso hear may shun,

While serpent lightnings in the sky,

     But rattle when the deed is done;

How truth can e'er be good for them

     That have not eyes to bear its strength,

And yet how stern our lights condemn

     Delays that lend the darkness length;

To know all things, save knowingness;

     To grasp, yet loosen, feeling's rein;

To waste no manhood on success;

     To look with pleasure upon pain;

Though teased by small mixt social claims,

     To lose no large simplicity,

And midst of clear-seen crimes and shames

     To move with manly purity;

To hold with keen, yet loving eyes,

     Art's realm from Cleverness apart,

To know the Clever good and wise,

     Yet haunt the lonesome heights of Art;

O Psalmist of the weak, the strong,

     O Troubadour of love and strife,

Co-Litanist of right and wrong,

     Sole Hymner of the whole of life,

I know not how, I care not why,

     Thy music brings this broil at ease,

And melts my passion's mortal cry

     In satisfying symphonies.

Yes, it forgives me all my sins,

     Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme,

And tunes the task each day begins

     By the last trumpet-note of Time.

'Piano Concerto No. 5' - Ludwig van Beethoven

Obama!

Here are a couple of Obama-themed blogs that will delight and thrill my wife: food and dogs (what more can one desire?). And we have a gay dog, too! Bo's awfully young for Mieko, but dogs can dream, too, can't they? 

'This Love Is Fucking Right' - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Amour Haiku II

Critters pondwallow,

croaking nightly symphonies.

Afterwards silence.

'Enjoy the Silence' - Depeche Mode

Worldchanging

'Mutability' William Wordsworth

From low to high doth dissolution climb,

And sink from high to low, along a scale

Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;

A musical but melancholy chime,

Which they can hear who meddle not with crime,

Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care.

Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear

The longest date do melt like frosty rime,

That in the morning whitened hill and plain

And is no more; drop like the tower sublime

Of yesterday, which royally did wear

His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain

Some casual shout that broke the silent air,

Or the unimaginable touch of Time.

'I'm Sorry, Einstein', 'Noch Einmal, an Orpheus': Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - George Bradley

'Change Down' - Bonobo

'Time Flies' Lykke Li

Bamboo awesomeness!

While there are several lovely bamboo-hemp and bamboo-carbon bicycles, this is decidedly the bike for me (but it's also beyond the reach of my pocketbook - they all are, of course). Isn't it gorgeous?

'Bamboo Banga' - M.I.A.

'Bicycle' - Caroline

Amour Haiku

Spring sun licks my bones,

songbirds harmonise with light:

grass grows around me.

'Harmonise' - Herbert

En francais

'Harmonie du soir' Charles Baudelaire

Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige

Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;

Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;

Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!

Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;

Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu'on afflige;

Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!

Le ciel et triste et beau comme un grand repesoir.

Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu'on afflige,

Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir!

Le ciel et triste et beau comme un grand repesoir;

Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.

Un cœur tendre qui hait le néant vaste et noir,

Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!

Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige ...

Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!

Dark Harbor - Mark Strand

'One Evening' - Feist

'The French Song' - Jesse Matheson

Sprung

'Spring' Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring–

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

   Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

   A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden.–Have, get, before it cloy,

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

   Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning. 

'Every Day You Play', 'Tonight I Can Write': Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda

'Cherry Blossom Girl' - Air

More Seventeenth-Century Poetry

'The Definition of Love' Andrew Marvell

My Love is of a birth as rare

As 'tis for object strange and high:

It was begotten by Despair

Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing,

Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown

But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended Soul is fixt,

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds it self betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves; nor lets them close:

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrannic pow'r depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel

Us as the distant poles have placed,

(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embraced.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall,

And Earth some new convulsion tear;

And, us to join, the world should all

Be cramped into a Planisphere.

As lines to Loves oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet:

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite can never meet.

Therefore the Love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the Conjunction of the mind,

And Opposition of the stars.

'For Sun's Portion Is Toil All His Days', 'Desert Town': Plainwater - Anne Carson

'Love Will Tear Us Apart' - Nouvelle Vague

Barbapapa

Barbapapa

While listening to a hey hey honeypop! podcast, I heard a song by Pipas, 'Barbapapa', which transported me to my semi-idyllic youth in the frozen wastes of Canada. A Canadian childhood exposed me to an appalling amount of wonderfully awful (awfully wonderful?) children's television, including several shows that were international in origin (who knew Fables of the Green Forest was anime?), but also some truly dreadful domestic productions. But I loved these shows when I was a boy, and refuse to forsake or disavow them now, and I've been nostalgizing pretty fiercely for the halcyon days of boyhood. 

Barbapapa (I chose the German-language version for my wife)

Doctor Snuggles (Peter Ustinov!)

Fables of the Green Forest 

Colargol  

Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings 

The Friendly Giant  

Polka Dot Door 

Hammy Hamster 

The Mighty Hercules 

Rocket Robin Hood 

Hilarious House of Frightenstein (this was pretty awesome, actually)

Mr. Dressup

Readalong

The Littlest Hobo (The Cay - a Canadian band - did a great cover of the theme song)

The Raccoons (a girl who worked on later episodes of this show broke my heart, but it was all so long ago)

Danger Mouse (also for my wife)

'When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Boy' - The Boy Least Likely To

Spring?

'A Winter and Spring Scene' Henry David Thoreau

The willows droop,

The alders stoop,

The pheasants group

     Beneath the snow;

The fishes glide

From side to side,

In the clear tide,

     The ice below.

The ferret weeps,

The marmot sleeps,

The owlet keeps

     In his snug nook.

The rabbit leaps,

The mouse out-creeps,

The flag out-peeps,

     Beside the brook.

The snow-dust falls,

The otter crawls,

The partridge calls

     Far in the wood;

The traveller dreams,

The tree-ice gleams,

The blue jay screams

     In angry mood.

The apples thaw,

The ravens caw,

The squirrels gnaw

     The frozen fruit;

To their retreat

I track the feet

Of mice that eat

     The apple's root.

The axe resounds,

And bay of hounds,

And tinkling sounds

     Of wintry fame;

The hunter's horn

Awakes the dawn

On field forlorn,

     And frights the game.

The tinkling air

Doth echo bear

To rabbit's lair,

     With dreadful din;

She scents the air,

And far doth fare,

Returning where

     She did begin.

The fox stands still

Upon the hill

Not fearing ill

     From trackless wind.

But to his foes

The still wind shows

In treacherous snows

     His tracks behind.

Now melts the snow

In the warm sun.

The meadows flow,

The streamlets run.

The spring is born,

The wild bees bum,

The insects hum,

And trees drop gum.

And winter's gone,

And summer's come.

The chic-a-dee

Lisps in the tree,

The winter bee

     Not fearing frost;

The small nuthatch

The bark doth scratch

Some worm to catch

     At any cost.

The catkins green

Cast o'er the scene

A summer sheen,

A genial glow.

I melt, I flow,

     And rippling run,

Like melting snow

     In this warm sun.

'Land of Fog', 'Tell Me, Love': In the Storm of Roses - Ingeborg Bachmann

'The Fox in the Snow' - Belle & Sebastian

'Rites of Spring' - The Superfantastics

Easter

'Easter, 1916' W.B. Yeats

I have met them at the close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around a fire at the club

Being certain that they and I

But live where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers

When, young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school

And rode our winged horse;

This other his helper and friend

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,

So sensitive his nature seemed,

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road.

The rider, the birds that range

From cloud to tumbling cloud.

Minute by minute they change;

A shadow of cloud on the stream

Changes minute by minute;

A horse-hoof slides on the brim.

And a horse plashes within it;

The long-legged moor-hens dive,

And hens to moor-cocks call;

Minute by minute they live:

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;

And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse - 

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

'Re-Statement of Romance', 'The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract': The Collected Poems - Wallace Stevens

'Easter Parade' - Emmy the Great

'Jesus' - Page France

Absences

I'm more than a little discombobulated when I'm parted from my wife. Even a relatively short separation (this weekend, for example), has me a bit uneasy. It isn't (I hope) neediness, so much as a recognition that my life would be immeasurably, irretrievably lessened, diminished, emptied without her. We have so little time, realistically, that every second away from her is another irrecoverable moment. Of course, we both need intervals of solitude, time alone to pursue interests dissimilar and unrelated, for professional pursuits, and to commune with the divine, or the muses,  or what have you (or simply to remind ourselves of what it is we desire and need from each other, why we're together in the first place). 

But I miss her dreadfully, and whatever I may be doing, however enjoyably I'm occupied or agreeable my companions are, there's a lurker thought that wonders whether I'll see her again. Morbid, yes. But inescapably true. 

So here's a poem I wrote (ages ago, but revised). I make no great claims for it as poetry, but they're my words, and it's hers, and she's mine. She's my sine qua non. 

Absolution

Water,

its deft touch

lingering

along the defiant

curve of your throat,

simplifies absence,

separation's essential ardour,

and this evening's 

failing light,

shaped by the furred forest's hush,

and the green rain's taste

on our tongues

and tangled

in your darkening hair,

satisfies this unstilled desire,

amplifies my unspoken delight.

'Come Home Safely' - Let's Go Sailing

Sun

A little sympathetic magic, to help my seeds germinate. 

'The Sunne Rising' John Donne

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?

Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide

Late schoole boyes and sowre prentices,

    Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,

    Call countrey ants to harvest offices;

Love, all alike, no season knowes, nor clyme,

Nor houres, dayes, moneths, which are the rags of time.

Thy beames so reverend, and strong

Why shouldst thou thinke?

I could eclipse and cloude them with a winke,

But that I would not lose her sight so long:

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Looke, and to morrow late, tell mee,

    Whether both the 'India's of spice and Myne

    Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee.

Aske for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

She'is all States, and all Princes, I,

Nothing else is.

Princes doe but play us; compar'd to this,

All honor's mimique; All wealth alchimie.

Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee,

In that the world's contracted thus;

    Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee

    To warme the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art every where;

This bed thy center is, these walls thy spheare.

 'Noon', 'True Night': Preambles and Other Poems - Alvin Feinman

        

Sunshine music:

'The Sun Ain't Shining No More' - The Asteroids Galaxy Tour

'Waiting for the Sun' - The Jayhawks

'Song for Sunshine' - Belle & Sebastian 

'Sun Arise' - The Flaming Lips

'Here Comes the Sun' - Belle & Sebastian

'Sunrise' - Caroline

'Sunrise' - Yeasayer

'Sun in My Morning' - Saint Etienne

'Today the Sun's On Us' - Sophie Ellis Bextor

Poems Again

April 9 

'A Toccata of Galuppi's' Robert Browning

Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; 

But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings,

What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,

Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by. . . what you call

. . . Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:

I was never out of England - it's as if I saw it all.

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?

Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,

When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red, -

On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,

O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

Well, and it was graceful of them - they'd break talk off and afford

- She, to bite her mask's black velvet - he, to finger on his sword,

While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions - "Must we die?"

Those commiserating sevenths - "Life might last! we can but try!"

"Were you happy?" - "Yes." - "And are you still happy?" - "Yes. And you?"

- "Then, more kisses!" - "Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"

Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,

Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,

Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,

While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,

In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:

"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.

The soul, doubtless, is immortal - where a soul can be discerned. 

"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,

Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;

Butterflies may dread extinction, - you'll not die, it cannot be!

"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,

Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too - what's become of all the gold

Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

'Waiting', 'Threshold of Birds': Forbidden Words - Eugénio de Andrade

'Venice' - Beirut

April 10

'Queen Anne's Lace' William Carlos Williams

Her body is not so white as 

anemone petals nor so smooth--nor 

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

the field by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand's span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish. Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a 

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over-- 

or nothing.

'The Lie', 'Drinks with X': New Selected Poems - Howard Moss

'Queen Anne's Lace' - Rose Polenzani

'White Corolla' - Casiotone for the Painfully Alone (one of the best videos I've ever seen)

Poems

April 7

'To Tartar, a Terrier Beauty' Thomas Lovell Beddoes (for Mieko and Lady)

Snow-drop of dogs, with ear of brownest dye,

Like the last orphan leaf of naked tree

Which shudders in bleak autumn; though by thee,

Of hearing careless and untutored eye,

Not understood articulate speech of men,

Nor marked the artificial mind of books -

The mortal's voice eternized by the pen - 

Yet hast thou thought and language all unknown

To Babel's scholars; oft intensest looks, 

Long scrutiny o'er some dark-veined stone

Dost thou bestow, learning dead mysteries

Of the world's birth-day; oft in eager tone

With quick-tailed fellows bandiest prompt replies, 

Solicitudes canine, four-footed amities.

Garbage - A.R. Ammons

'Dogs' - Santa Maria

April 8 

'A Noiseless Patient Spider' Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,

 I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to 

     connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor

     hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my 

     soul.

'The Strike of the Night', 'Upon the Intimations of Love's Mortality': New and Selected Poems - Jean Garrigue

'Spinning Makes Me Dizzy' - The Album Leaf

Billy and the Kid

On a lighter note: Billy and Lilly. 

'Lily (My One and Only)' Smashing Pumpkins

Food for Thought

Here's a fascinating piece I found on The Ethicurean. I recently decided to eliminate meat from my diet (my wife is largely responsible for this change, from reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and Farm Sanctuary, although I was a vegetarian for the better part of fifteen years - including a flirtation with veganism). Because of my diet, SCD (or the Specific Carbohydrate Diet), which I follow to help control my ulcerative colitis, this poses some problems, but I'm awfully determined. My wife is adopting a reduced-meat diet, too, but will still eat some local, sustainably and humanely raised (and slaughtered) meat. Which is decidedly more expensive than what industrial ag. offers (and justifiably, for the most part). I've always been more than a little troubled by how the SOLE diet is simply unaffordable for the (vast) majority of the population. Especially meat. I've worked on farms that raised their own animals, for their own consumption as well as the market, and their costs certainly didn't justify the outrageous prices demanded. Until I dabble in animal husbandry myself, however, I suppose I'll have to reserve judgement.

'Vegetables' - The Beach Boys

All Hail Stalinator!

Here's some more communist fun.  Watch the epic trailer.

'Mars Attacks' - Aesop Rock

National Poetry Month

It's National Poetry Month, and I've been reading so much poetry that it's seeping from all of my orifices and enveloping me in a poetry fog, where everyone's iambic or trochaic, villanelles and sestinas abound, and reality's ordered anaphorically. So I'm posting a poem every day to celebrate. I know I'm a little tardy, but I was fasting (physically and spiritually), and took a break from all forms of media. I thought at first I'd choose something from collections I'm currently reading, but copyright considerations won't allow it. Instead, I'll select a poem from the public domain (unfortunately lopsiding the process, and making the bulk of the poetry English-language) that I feel meets Kafka's criterion of being an axe for the frozen sea within us. I'll also note what I've been reading, and recommend a poem or two from each collection.  

April 1 

'Sonnet LXV' William Shakespeare (because who else could I begin with)

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower? 

O how shall summer's honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

        O none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

'Prayer': The Paintings of Our Lives - Grace Schulman

'Time Flies' - Lykke Li

April 2 

'Soleils couchants' Paul Verlaine

Une aube affaiblie

Verse par les champs

La mélancolie

Des soleils couchants.

La mélancolie

Berce de doux chants

Mon cœur qui s'oublie

Aux soleils couchants.

Et d'étranges rêves,

Comme des soleils

Couchants sur les grèves,

Fantômes vermeils,

Défilent sans trêves,

Défilent, pareils

A des grands soleils

Couchants sur les grèves.

'The Search for Lorca's Shadow', 'Clouds Above the Sea': The Mercy - Philip Levine

'Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset' - Modest Mouse

April 3 

'"Blandula, Tenulla, Vagula"' Ezra Pound

What hast thou, O my soul, with paradise?

Will we not rather, when our freedom's won,

Get us to some clear place wherein the sun

Lets drift in on us through the olive leaves

A liquid glory? If at Sirmio,

My soul, I meet thee, when this life's outrun, 

Will we not find some headland consecrated

By aery apostles of terrene delight,

Will not our cult be founded on the waves,

Clear sapphire, cobalt, cyanine,

On triune azures, the impalpable

mirrors unstill of the eternal change? 

Soul, if she meet us there, will any rumour

Of havens more high and courts desirable

Lure us beyond the cloudy peak of Riva?

La pell de brau - Salvador Espriu

'Meet Me Here' - Loveninjas

April 4 

'Archaïscher Torso Apollos' Rainer Maria Rilke

Wir kanten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,

darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber

sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,

in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,

sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug

der Bruch dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen

der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen

zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz

unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz

und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;

und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern

aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,

die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

'Broken Tulips', 'A Below-Par Star': Where Shall  I Wander - John Ashbery

'Statue' - Immaculate Machine

April 5

'I am afraid to own a Body' Emily Dickinson

I am afraid to own a Body - 

I am afraid to own a Soul - 

Profound - precarious Property -

Possession, not optional - 

Double Estate - entailed at pleasure

Upon an unsuspecting Heir -

Duke in a moment of Deathlessness

And God, for a Frontier.

'Yom Kippur in Utah', 'The Holy Storm': Medicine - Amy Gerstler

'My Body Is a Cage' - Sara Lov

April 6 

'Delight in Disorder' Robert Herrick

A sweet disorder in the dresse

Kindles in cloathes a wantonnesse:

A Lawne about the shoulders thrown

Into a fine distraction:

An erring Lace, which here and there

Enthralls the Crimson Stomacher:

A Cuffe neglectfull and thereby

Ribbands to flow confusedly:

A winning wave (deserving Note)

In the tempestuous petticote:

A careless shoe-string, in whose tye

I see a wilde civility:

Doe more bewitch me, than when Art

Is too precise in every part.

'In Phrygia, Birthplace of Embroidery', 'For the Sydney Jewish Museum': Subhuman Redneck Blues - Les Murray

'Disorder' - Joy Division