By James Dufresne
All forms of the expression I have read
make mention of not getting life from something dead,
Not being able to tax or borrow from emptied accounts,
or are flowery words from a heart that's been pained.
But to have the thing happen as forces of gravity and physics collide
and a stone 'neath the stone picked up, with fingers twixt the divide
Provides a moment of expletives, rue, and hurt in goodly amounts
as upon the wanted boulder, the sanguine fluid drained.
You can get blood from a stone.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
24 March 2013
21 April 2011
Shakespeare's Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This sonnet has so often been used to describe romantic love that it's something of a meme. In my time at UConn, in Professor Manning's Shakespeare I course, he said that this sonnet was written for a patron and dedicated, most likely to a man named Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton. The first publication of the sonnets, by Thomas Thorpe, included a dedication to the "onlie begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr W.H." [sic] --- W.H. being an inverse of Wriothesley's initials. Adherents to this attribution say that the patron's identity was concealed because of the earl's subsequent part in a conspiracy against Elizabeth I, for which he was spared death for life imprisonment. Prof. Manning's lecture posited that some one of the Wriothesley family, perhaps even Henry himself, had paid a sum of money to host Shakespeare in 1597. And it was there that he wrote a series of sonnets about a "Fair Youth" --- ostensibly encouraging the earl-in-waiting, who was reportedly homosexual, to have children so his beauty would be passed down to future generations. Evidently, it worked and Southampton was married the next year and produced several children --- though it did not put an end to the earl's... how shall we say... extracurricular activities.
And indeed, this call to a living soul is a perfectly befitting reading of Sonnet 18 and that sonnet series. It is a wistful reminder that our lives are short and the lifespan follows a pattern much like the seasons. Like a flower must produce a seed in order for the original flower's beauty to continue, so must we have children to pass down our DNA. The sonnet reflects that as long as the sire's lineage continues, a part of his fairness --- in this case, specifically, the blond hair of the "Fair Youth" will always remain on the earth. And yet, Shakespeare acknowledges that sometimes features like blond hair are lost --- "every fair from fair sometime declines." Of course, we know now that the genes for blond hair are recessive and are masked in the presence of genes for darker hair in a recombination in offspring. In lieu of hard science, the poet's eye has a remarkable perception of nature given his time. Recombinant genetics combined with Darwin's theories really hit home the truth in "chance or nature's changing course."
But Shakespeare didn't just show up empty-handed at the Wriothesley estate. These lines were at least sketched beforehand. And in them, I can clearly see a father reminiscing about his departed son, his grasps at a deeper meaning, and a resolve to preserve his memory in the year since Hamnet's death. Some of the other sonnets in the series dwell on the word "sun" --- a homonym for "son" --- in a way that, to borrow a phrase from the Bard himself, "doth protest too much" for a man who was a master of double-meanings. While the sun is not directly worded here, it is described as "the eye of heaven" as a common descriptor.
Surely, the Elizabethan people were much more used to this situation of child mortality, but that doesn't mean it was easier to bear. Doubtless, even then, it caused degrees of depression, marital strain, questioning of religion and God, et cetera. Shakespeare was away in London during the illness, death and burial, and I suppose that may have both saved him some particular griefs in having to witness the details of passing, but also inspired others in the vein he wasn't there to see Hamnet or have a final word of parting with his son. With the line "... and often is his gold complexion dimmed," one can see a kind of struggle --- that, in an age where there were no photographs and portraiture was relatively rare, and with the passing of time, Hamnet's face and blond hair were becoming harder to accurately picture. The human brain is a kind of computer that does frequent massive memory dumps so we aren't overwhelmed by information, and it is true that the harder one tries to visualize the face of someone we know well, even, the details often escape us, leaving instead a dimmed impression.
Despite this struggle for visual recollection, Will is determined to remember and to have Hamnet be remembered. He is determined all the more by the dimming, I think. Having been in London and not seeing any stage of the death... in a strange way, the boy isn't terminally dead to Shakespeare. Will never actually saw him so. And so, the Fair Youth retains his fairness --- caught in a kind of mental limbo where he does not give back what he "ow'st," (in that time's sense that every person owes God a death in order to enter heaven), nor does he reside in the "shade" of the underworld. There is a poignant delivery in the last six lines, of the poet swearing that the memory of his son --- trapped forever in an "eternal summer" of age 11 --- will be alive on paper and on the lips of the reader, through the "eternal lines" (the lines of the sonnets) that his father has written. An eternal summer preserved by eternal lines.
18 December 2010
Christmas Trees
By Robert Frost (A Christmas circular letter - 1920)
The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods — the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,
"There aren’t enough to be worth while."
"I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over."
“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”
“A thousand Christmas trees! — at what apiece?”
He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”
Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods — the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,
"There aren’t enough to be worth while."
"I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over."
“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”
“A thousand Christmas trees! — at what apiece?”
He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”
Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.
(image (c) Four Winds Ranch)
06 July 2010
Cutting Hair in the Kitchen
By James Dufresne
The buzzing of the electric clippers
makes me think of my first-generation Dutch
grandmother (we called her Beppa)
cutting the hair of my cousins in the kitchen
at the farm in Western New York.
Far removed from those days. Cousins
now estranged through family feuds,
busy with jobs or school, and
now tending what remains through the ether.
I take out heavy mirrors and try to get my bearings;
In the reflection, left is right, up is down. I can hear
the thick accent say, "Yimmy! Your turn, Yimmy!"
and the saving graces of my father, who stubbornly
explained to this equally stubborn, weighty queen bee
that our hair was cut back in Connecticut.
The times of the home haircut have returned ---
no need to spend $20 for a man's crew. A few up-swipes
with a No. 2, topped with a No. 6. A touch of the
infamous Dutch thrift carries on in me. And
don't cut hair over carpet. That is what I learned there.
The buzzing of the electric clippers
makes me think of my first-generation Dutch
grandmother (we called her Beppa)
cutting the hair of my cousins in the kitchen
at the farm in Western New York.
Far removed from those days. Cousins
now estranged through family feuds,
busy with jobs or school, and
now tending what remains through the ether.
I take out heavy mirrors and try to get my bearings;
In the reflection, left is right, up is down. I can hear
the thick accent say, "Yimmy! Your turn, Yimmy!"
and the saving graces of my father, who stubbornly
explained to this equally stubborn, weighty queen bee
that our hair was cut back in Connecticut.
The times of the home haircut have returned ---
no need to spend $20 for a man's crew. A few up-swipes
with a No. 2, topped with a No. 6. A touch of the
infamous Dutch thrift carries on in me. And
don't cut hair over carpet. That is what I learned there.
20 July 2009
Redemption Center
By James Dufresne
A bright yellow condom lies unrolled and watery
at the bottom of the clear plastic bag of empties
propped up in the shopping cart in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
The hand with a purple latex glove purposely avoids it.
The aluminum cans, plastic soda containers and glass beer bottles
of collegiate provenance were dropped in the first-floor communal bin
and forgotten --- not worth the weighty, shameful process of cashiering
at the U’s co-op. They were transported 20 miles to be redeemed.
It is late winter and the cans that were discarded with residual liquids are heavy
with frozen soda or beer. The machinery crushes or crashes all that is sent down
its conveyor, so long as serial numbers are recognizable amid its spinning frenzy.
The nickels accrue on the small screens, 229 x .05 = $11.45.
Walking out the door toward the main building, with head rolled back on shoulders
in hockey-goalie swift motion left to right, one two three soft cracks unleash
the tension built from a day doing nothing that will not have to be done again tomorrow.
Like the cans, we await whatever the machinery of this world will bring us to next,
dependent on so much happenstance outside of our singular grasp in how we got here
In this place, waiting to be pummeled, melted down and made anew.
The Boston-NYC vapor trails against the dull blue sky disappear quickly from the parched air.
The clerk who aims and shoots the barcodes checks the driver’s license suspiciously, says
You look like you're about 19, then relents in defeat and notes in parting that it’s a good day
when redemption brings in enough so you only have to pay a dollar fourteen for a thirty pack of Pabst.
A bright yellow condom lies unrolled and watery
at the bottom of the clear plastic bag of empties
propped up in the shopping cart in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
The hand with a purple latex glove purposely avoids it.
The aluminum cans, plastic soda containers and glass beer bottles
of collegiate provenance were dropped in the first-floor communal bin
and forgotten --- not worth the weighty, shameful process of cashiering
at the U’s co-op. They were transported 20 miles to be redeemed.
It is late winter and the cans that were discarded with residual liquids are heavy
with frozen soda or beer. The machinery crushes or crashes all that is sent down
its conveyor, so long as serial numbers are recognizable amid its spinning frenzy.
The nickels accrue on the small screens, 229 x .05 = $11.45.
Walking out the door toward the main building, with head rolled back on shoulders
in hockey-goalie swift motion left to right, one two three soft cracks unleash
the tension built from a day doing nothing that will not have to be done again tomorrow.
Like the cans, we await whatever the machinery of this world will bring us to next,
dependent on so much happenstance outside of our singular grasp in how we got here
In this place, waiting to be pummeled, melted down and made anew.
The Boston-NYC vapor trails against the dull blue sky disappear quickly from the parched air.
The clerk who aims and shoots the barcodes checks the driver’s license suspiciously, says
You look like you're about 19, then relents in defeat and notes in parting that it’s a good day
when redemption brings in enough so you only have to pay a dollar fourteen for a thirty pack of Pabst.
28 June 2009
To be of use
by Marge Piercy from “Circles on the Water”
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
18 March 2009
The Underwater Canoe
By James Dufresne
A whitish blob suspended just beneath the blue-brown water in the afternoon sun leads me to reason that it is the same canoe that two days ago loosed from its mooring and was filled by the heavy early spring rains and dipped down, down, down and disembarked.
As the blob continues on its path midway through the islands’ strait, the mind daydreams about the currents being navigated through the underwater, icy cold after a winter in deep freeze. Who are its paddlers? Who provides the strength to complement the steering?
The sunken canoe makes no noise as it glides, even when beaten upon the underwater boulders forming the foot of the island. Fullness muffles the clunks an empty boat on the surface would drum and echo for all the summer cottage owners who rake their pale lawns.
Afloat, occupants would wave to these laborers and slightly judge neighbors by a yard’s appearance. The condition of the lake bed spoke of lazy tenants --- leaves not raked, the soil swathed with freshwater elodea, fishing gear and dog poop left on the ice that sunk as litter and waste.
The canoe slips past all with no destination, no purpose that people contrive for making such a voyage in a thin vessel. It swims past redds that will soon house bass eggs, silent now as a Great White that lake children imagined lurking behind them as they swam, zigzags of Brownian motion in the liquid clear.
As the blob continues on its path midway through the islands’ strait, the mind daydreams about the currents being navigated through the underwater, icy cold after a winter in deep freeze. Who are its paddlers? Who provides the strength to complement the steering?
The sunken canoe makes no noise as it glides, even when beaten upon the underwater boulders forming the foot of the island. Fullness muffles the clunks an empty boat on the surface would drum and echo for all the summer cottage owners who rake their pale lawns.
Afloat, occupants would wave to these laborers and slightly judge neighbors by a yard’s appearance. The condition of the lake bed spoke of lazy tenants --- leaves not raked, the soil swathed with freshwater elodea, fishing gear and dog poop left on the ice that sunk as litter and waste.
The canoe slips past all with no destination, no purpose that people contrive for making such a voyage in a thin vessel. It swims past redds that will soon house bass eggs, silent now as a Great White that lake children imagined lurking behind them as they swam, zigzags of Brownian motion in the liquid clear.
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