Tag Archives: memory

The very proof of me.

beauty, poetry, wildflowers, , , , ,

Walter de la Mare in the poem below does not sound sad for himself, that he should leave this world and go to a place without lamentation and darkness. But when he is removed from this earthly realm and will no longer be around to praise and wonder and delight in its beauties… will someone else take his place in that role? I’m intrigued by the idea he puts forth here, which sounds like “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Beauty is somehow also personified, and passes on the legacy of wonderment from one generation to another.

I don’t believe that when we leave this earth, we will forget its beauties, though He Who is the source of all beauty will certainly consume our attention. But it is surely a sign of his great love, and most natural for him, that De La Mare wants to be sure that those earthly delights have admirers when he is gone.

I wasn’t familiar with the flower that the poet names, Traveler’s Joy, so I looked it up and found that yes, it’s a clematis that is famous in the U.K. for climbing to the tops of hedgerows. Late in the season it takes on the appearance that makes people call it Old Man’s Beard, as in the photo at the bottom.

FARE WELL

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,
May these loved and loving faces
Please other men!
May the rusting harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller’s Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather
Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
In other days.

-Walter de la Mare

Photo by Phil Gates in The Guardian

The image vs. relentless earth.

poetry, , ,

NOSTOS

There was an apple tree in the yard —
this would have been
forty years ago — behind,
only meadows. Drifts
of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor’s yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts —
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

-Louise Glück

Van Gogh, Orchard with Peach Trees in Blossom

 

The moon to the rescue.

poetry, , ,

The last lines of this poem rescue it for me, out of a feeling of chaos and loss. The moon is a real thing, unlike the many insubstantial facts that we might forget. In this case it’s also an experience in the moment, of heartfelt beauty, good for centering the soul.

FORGETFULNESS

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

-Billy Collins

Winslow Homer, Moonlight

 

The house stands vacant.

poetry, time, , , ,

Back in the day when I lived with my family in farm country, in the midst of miles and miles of citrus orchards, my siblings and I would ramble through the groves, ours and our neighbors’, and along the private dirt roads dividing the properties from each another. All the kids did this, and no one ever suggested we were trespassing.

Once we came upon a small and shabby house with its doors and windows open, and obviously abandoned. We dared to go in, and walked through the rooms, which still contained furniture such as a kitchen table with dried up food on plates, other unwashed dishes in the sink, and personal belongings lying about. We didn’t stay long, it was too creepy, but my imagination was stirred from then until now, wondering what story lay behind the disorder. What would prompt the residents to leave without finishing dinner, and never come back? Why had no one bothered to come and clean up the mess, and make the place livable again?

That house didn’t show signs of having been beautiful at any time, but under different circumstances, it might have been. It remains for me a disturbing memory, for all the sad stories it might have been hinting at, but also because of the physical ugliness that stood as a witness to chaos. In all likelihood it has been leveled to the ground long since, and orange trees planted in its spot. I wonder if anyone else remembers it.

The poem below tells of a much richer and more nuanced experience and story. The poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman was stricken when his wife died after the birth of their third child, and felt that as the father of the child he was somewhat guilty. Most of his poems after her death express these feelings of loss, loss of home and of the woman as the center of family life. One commentator suggests that the description of the mother, twice using the word “sat,” indicates her being frozen in time as a memory.

SONNET XVI (“Under the mountain”)

Under the mountain, as when first I knew
Its low black roof, and chimney creeper-twined,
The red house stands; and yet my footsteps find
Vague in the walks, waste balm and feverfew.
But they are gone; no soft-eyed sisters trip
Across the porch or lintels; where, behind,
The mother sat, — sat knitting with pursed lip.
The house stands vacant in its green recess,
Absent of beauty as a broken heart;
The wild rain enters; and the sunset wind
Sighs in the chambers of their loveliness,
Or shakes the pane; and in the silent noons,
The glass falls from the window, part by part,
And ringeth in the grassy stones.

-Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Alfred Sisley, Abandoned House

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Sally Thomas for sharing this poem on her Substack page last month.