Please ask me not to write for you,

whether by poem or by tune.

Dare me not to write ten rhymes,

or lay them out in some design.

-

Please beg me not to draw some rune,

or recite a poem, which once I knew,

Implore me not to find a pen,

to mark upon eight lines again.

-

For poets are a lonely sort,

and words are ever love’s last resort,

But there are words, we cannot say,

which are lived once, and then away:

-

A smile, a touch, — a glance of free,

a resting of the head to sleep,

a breath drawn in, while others move,

in stillness, where, true love is proved,

-

the touching of two lovers’ hands,

the rhyming of their wedding bands.

-

As fingers rhyme when they are clasped,

so poems, when they all began,

were meant to be much more like that.

]]> http://noprose.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/the-poets-weight/feed/ 0 Luke http://noprose.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/religion/ http://noprose.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/religion/#comments Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:08:21 +0000 Luke http://noprose.wordpress.com/?p=412 ]]> Here I am with my memories.

the only religion I do need,

save your letters as a holy book,

and your tears spilled as an ink.

I see our church as the world…

the mountain pass – our steeple, tall,

a fallen oak – our lectern board.

the rolling grass – our pews and stalls.

The ocean calm – our choir book,

our seven sacraments are stars,

our benediction is a loving look,

sealed with the crossing of your arms.

Our whispers are our orisons,

your warm embrace, my confession booth,

a sermon is a long paean

sung with love from me – to you.

And so, I’ll send these words away,

as missionaries, so all the world can know,

the beauty of the love You made,

and the religion that I know.

———————————–

The people had gathered for some time,

when she passed by on her daily chore,

a water girl, of eight or nine.

of eight or nine, this water girl.
-

And seeing Him, just hanging there,

and blood dripping from the wood,

with voices stirring the hillish air,

pregnant with dark dust and soot,

-

she starred.

-

She starred at Him so long

that she placed her bucket on the ground,

and after a short moment she began,

crying tears without a sound.

-

The Man looked down, and saw her face.

and the ache within her eyes.

and a smile — which though bathed in pain,

was pure compassion in disguise.

-

He then stared off, where the hills led,

and at the nearby city gate,

and within a minute, he was dead –

and the little girl soon went her way.

-

And though some may say I lie,

or that I too strongly do implore,

there never was a smile,

which has ever meant more.

Did I not name those far, old trees,
and the saplings which line the lanes,
and serenade stars in their routines,
with the most glorious of names?

Did I not grant each beast their term -
the fish, the birds, and insect throngs,
and call to the waters as they churned,
by the babble of their saccharine songs?

Did I not give five hundred names,
to mark the sun’s path upon the sky,
and sing to the moon as it waned,
five hundred words to bid it bye?

And did I not speak with Wind at night
in ten thousand angel tongues,
each with their myriad aural signs -
and in all of them a word for love?

Ten million words I have known,
Ten million feelings I have felt,
I’ve soared with birds up to their home,
and in the oceans I have knelt.

And I’ve heard songs, I’ve heard tones,
some of beauty, while others, gain.

And of all the words which I have known,
Not one of them for pain.

—————————————–

As someone who studies languages a great deal, I am always struck about the richness of many languages. For example, the Arabs have 100 words for camel – the Hebrews, 100 words for God. Essentially, the more a culture and language group dwells on an object or idea, the more words they will have associated with this object. Conversely, the less a people group associates with an object, idea, or feeling, the fewer words their language will have. It can be very well said that languages are a function of their larger environment.

The other day I was driving home and thinking to myself of the Garden, and I began to think of the language of Adam and Eve in their greater context, their relationship with God. I began to realize their language must have been very rich in the vocabulary of love. And I realized, in a fit of whimsy and romanticism, that Adam and Eve had (and I settled on a number) 10,000 more words for love – words so beautiful as to be beyond words we have now — words which we will never know. Words fusing warmth and love. Words which fell in between the coolness of water and a kind thought.

And with this in mind, while waiting for the light on Baymeadows to change, I began to think on the other side of things. Namely, with little or no exposure to sadness, hate, pain, or any negative emotion, Adam and Eve would have been completely powerless to describe them after the Fall.

In short, that’s what this poem is about.

After recounting all the words he has known, Adam realizes in despair that he has entered into a new world which requires the loss of old words, and the adoption of new.

———————————

It was the king of the East, they say, who bought
A slave girl in the market of Baghdad.
The merchants brought her thither, traveling
A long way southward, from the wrinkled hills,
Of Georgia and sold her for a price.
It was the king who saw her, as he passed
At midday through the hot and narrow streets,
And asked what sum they set on her. They told him.
He bade his purse-bearer count out the coins
And bring her home. But when he saw her first
Among the fountains and the misty leaves
In the cool garden of his golden house,
He loved her.

She would dance for his delight
And when she entertained him thus, he stared,
Stupid with pleasure. She was young and nimble,
With subtly moving wrists of ivory
And ankles finer and stronger than graven steel.
She was the blossoming bough that stirs in spring,
The pearl white clouds that drift across blue heaven,
The rainbowed wave that dies in colour on

Hardly descried against a dusky wood,
The arrow darting fish in quiet brooks;
All the earths myriad movements lay in her.
The king sat in his jeweled seat and saw
With deep, fixed eyes her motions flash and bend
In convolutions of the astounding dance,
And ever when she paused he signed her on,
Silently staring.

She danced all through the night,
Now in slow measure mimed the rising moon,
And now in a frenzy of light and hurrying steps
The scattered and stricken clouds that fly in shreds
Across the face of the moon and are lost in night
And die in bitter space for love of the moon.
Still with his grave deep eyes the king applauded,
Silently nodding, and when she paused for rest,
He raised his great arm up and with hairy fingers
Urged her to dancing. Dark lines beneath her eyes
And sharp lines at the corners of her mouth
Grew as night grew and weariness invaded
Even her limbs of pearl and steel. She wept
Small and infrequent tears of pain, hard wrung
From a brave heart and body. Still she danced
And when dawn shot his blood-red flames across
The shimmering foundations and drowned the garden in gold,
She sank in a last, triumphant attitude,
Her bosom open to the rising sun.

And there at night he came to visit her,
Without his retinue. Two Nubian soldiers
Alone attended him to ward away
The attempts of the wicked and remained on guard
While he was in. So when his pleasure bade,
He came to her and watched her maddening dance
Or took her on his knees and fondled her
And praised her lovely body of pearl and steel
With silent glances and silent straying hands,
Her body that was, so often as she danced,
A flickering flame, an insubstantial wreath
Of linked movements.

But he came one night
Through the black shadows of the mighty trees,
Black and immense beneath the risen moon,
Unseen, unheard. The negroes crept behind,
Blotted in shade. He picked his way to the gate
And through the filigree of coiled gold,
He saw her little garden full of light,
Wherein she danced alone, and not for him.

But with her moonwhite arms to the risen moon,
She offered her beauty and her sacred steps.
An hour he stood unmoving; an hour she moved,
In measures of unbelievable loveliness,
A phantasy of night, the essential wraith,
Of the moon, as though the light that filled the place
Were thicker at the centre and there took
A bodily shape and grew to be a woman,

But when the light was gone, he turned away
And saw his negroes in the deeper shadow.
They came to him, darkness in darkness disguised;
He drew them close and spoke in a low still voice,
And, pointing with his hand to the pavilion,
Commanded:

let the woman’s ankles be broken.

or a steeple at a church,

two curves drawn in long ballets,

landing gently as a bird.

a laugh ringing late at night,

a pillow by my head,

thoughts of God, and thoughts finite,

and of children soon ahead.

and so I saw her standing there -

as beauty in beauty disguised.

her face was soft and fair,

and faith shone in her eyes.

and press myself into its leaves,

to travel up its twisting trunk,

to the top, where wind blows free.

Oh, to hang until I’m gold!

and then wane until I’m red!

and to drift down here – old -

just as science teachers said…

But oh the flight! and the ascent!

and the fall through colors deep!

and all the smell of autumn’s scent,

where science never creeped.

———————————————–

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bellwether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bellwethers always do.

And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made,
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ’twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed — do not laugh —
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet.
The road became a village street,
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare,
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed that zigzag calf about,
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They follow still his crooked way,
And lose one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.

Did he dance when he smelled the salt -
did it speed his quickened pace?
and how long did he stay sprawled,
on that sandy far white space?

Did he hide his eyes from sunlight -
or stare at the horizon set,
like the children from the village site,
at the stars the moon beget?

And how long did he choose to wait,
to build his boat by trees and cord?
And did he sail just by the coast, or straight -
into waters deep and warm?

I care not if you pray on knees,
whether you sit, or are proud –
speak English, or Cantonese,
or read this poem now.

For we are blood, and we are kin,
and inside of you and me,
will always be a part of him,
who first went out to sea.

————————————-

The origin of this poem was spawned when I was flying from Istanbul to Tel Aviv this past May. As the landscape of the Mediterranean was passing under me, I began to realize just how beautiful the sea is.

There came a point when Cyprus was in the left of my window, and Turkey was receding to the right, when I realized this small distance was still far – far enough so that Cyprus could not be seen from Anatolia.

I began to think in a dreamlike state of the first person to stand on that shore, and how he couldn’t have seen the beauty I was seeing now.

I rewound time even more and began to think of the first person to ever come to a shore.

Can you imagine seeing a sand dune for the first time? Or hearing the roar of an ocean wave?

Well, let me tell you, it was amazing.

And then I thought, the first thought I would have had was to build a boat to see what was on the other side of that horizon.

I’m sure this was what he thought too.

And then I thought the fear the man must have had. After all, he had no idea he would find land.

With this in mind, I looked at the sea once more. By this time Cyprus, too, had faded from my window and I was left to view the Lebanese and Israeli coastline.

And I realized the truth was, the man didn’t care. The beauty and freedom were worth the risk.

We haven’t changed much.

I’ve begged the moonlit glow,
to paint her sound upon the earth,
just as I, twenty years ago,
searched for beauty in short verse.

Now, I am old and much do know -
and many lines I have amassed,
But how could one describe a rose,
to a rose, if ever it should ask?

There are no words, just a soft deed -
to show the rose itself.

For even roses could not find the words,
to describe the words they felt.