Re: National Poetry Month, April 2, 2005 - Cusp
Karla
>Yesterday, Robert Creeley died; today, the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
>Juxtaposed as they are in the news, we can readily describe ways in which each
>man was dissimilar from the other: the Pope, cloaked with thousands of years of
>tradition; Robert Creeley, post-war literay avant-gard. But in what ways, if
>any, were they similar? (This is not a challenge for the weak-minded!)
Catholic
The saints are dying now. Their words
hang upon the willows sleeping
and their guitars are blowing in the wind.
The everything door swings
on unoiled hinges.
The saints are dying now. No longer
more popular than God, Peter, Paul
and Mary weep by the rivers
of Babylon. They tear their vestments,
decline the host, saying
"How can we sing of revolution
when all the apostles have fled?"
And the passersby forget to genuflect
on their way to the market. Microsoft
is trading at 25.
The saints are dying now. The state
buries them with black armbands and
rubber soul, except the free radicals
who burn like old patchouli on their
stairway to heaven. Riffs
thunder down on grounded ears,
the world plays out on reality t.v.
It is too safe for saints now. Let us
print their image on Kodak paper, press
dead idols to our breasts,
latex scapulars to raise a rash:
one day we turned our backs on popes,
on thirty-something hollow men. Mea culpa,
John, with you gone we can not
imagine for ourselves.
In the garden, we shovel up the comma,
and the capital "G", old runes
like rosary beads to finger in the dark.
Freedom is just another word, it hits us,
the saints are dying now.
Karla
Barbara's Cat
Karla <kar...@sbcglobal.net> said:
*Poem from a Three-Year-Old*
And will the flowers die?
And will the people die?
And every day do you grow old, do I
grow old, no I'm not old, do
flowers grow old?
Old things -- do you throw them out?
Do you throw old people out?
And how you know a flower that's old?
The petals fall, the petals fall from flowers,
and do the petals fall from people too?
Every day more petals fall until the
floor where I would like to play I
want to play is covered with old
flowers and people all the same
together lying there with the petals fallen
on the dirty floor I want to play
the floor you come and sweep
with the huge broom.
The dirt you sweep, what happens that,
what happens all the dirt you sweep
from flowers and people, what
happens all the dirt? Is all the
dirt what's left of flowers and
people, all the dirt there in a
heap under the huge broom that
sweeps everything away?
Why you work so hard, why brush
and sweep to make a heap of dirt?
And who will bring new flowers?
And who will bring new people? Who will
bring new petals to put in the water
where no petals fall on to the
floor where I would like to
play? Who will bring new flowers
that will not hang their heads
the tired old people wanting sleep?
Who will bring new flowers that
do not split and shrivel every
day? And if we have new flowers,
will we have new people too to
keep the flowers alive and give
them water?
And will the new young flowers die?
And will the new young people die?
And why?
-- Brendan Kennelly (1936-)
"As regards poetry, egotism is both a cage and a freedom-way. Sometimes,
to achieve freedom, it is necessary to slip out of the cage of self into
something else, occupying another person, state, feeling objective
phenomenon of one kind or another. Use the 'I', the self-label, to let the
voice of the external other utter itself. Surrender and collaborate; this
is a bridge-poem, an otherstructure based on disruption and transference.
It's fun, and something of a shock, to face one's spiritual and
imaginative poverty. Feathers and worms measure the soul. I got the notion
from old Irish poem, 'The Song of Amergin', a few sentences in a letter by
Keats, a long reading aloud one day of poems by Fernando Pessoa, and a few
freedom-dreams of my own. Bridges. Thank you, whoever and whatever you
are." -- Brendan Kennelly, Author's Note from "The Singing Tree" (1998)
--
Cm~
Karla
"...And if we have new flowers, / will we have new people too[?]"
Thanks, BC.
Karla