the hum of bees

.さすが花ちるにみれんはなかりけり
sasuga hana chiru ni miren wa nakari keri


when cherry blossoms
scatter...
no regrets

Issa begins the haiku with the word sasuga: "truly" or "as one might have expected." Here, the first meaning seems to fit. He proposes that, "truly," the cherry blossoms fall to death without regret.

This undated haiku resembles one that Issa wrote in 1821:

miren naku chiru mo sakura wa sakura kana

without regret
they fall and scatter...
cherry blossoms

In a related haiku (1809), he urges the blossoms to trust in Amida Buddha's
saving grace:


tada tanome hana wa hara-hara ano tôri

simply trust!
cherry blossoms flitting
down

"Blossoms" (hana) can denote cherry blossoms
in the shorthand of haiku.1

my yoshino cherry tree outside my bedroom window goes so quickly from blossoms to leaves. when it's newly fully flowered it fills so with bees that the sound of them comes in through my bedroom window, and fills the garden. and as quickly gone, on to other pollen, other trees.

a movie i just saw a bit of, cherry blossoms, says that the cherry blossom festivals, gathered in groups under the landscapes of yoshino cherry trees, are the perfect reminder to all of us of impermanence.

at 60,
it's something one has learned a bit of;
i wonder how much i will have learned
when i am 80.

historical find

we now have startling new evidence
that our understanding of japanese art
has been a bit off, by about 100,000,000 years!

we have always attributed china with being
the progenitor of the japanese style,
but now we see that even they are preceded
by an earlier european style.

we have it all: the darker outlines,
the asymmetrical arrangement,
the blocks of color; we even see what
will later trend to hokusai's manja.

most surprising, though, has to be
the amazing foresight of the artist
in anticipating 'nude descending a staircase.'

the nest of rapture

RHAPSODY

No one says
it anymore,
my darling,
not to the green leaves
in March, not to the stars
backing up each night, certainly

not in the nest
of rapture, who
in the beginning was
an owl, rustling
just after silence, whose

very presence drew
a mob of birds--flickers,
finches, chickadees, five cardinals
to a tree--the way a word
excites its meanings. Who

cooks for you, it calls, Who looks
for you? Sheaf of feathers, chief
of bone, the owl stands
upon the branch, but does he
understand it, think my revel,
my banquet, my tumult,

delight? The Irish have a word
for what can't be
replaced: mavourneen, my
darling, second cousin once
removed of memory, what is not
forgotten, as truth was
defined by the Greeks.

It's the names
on the stones in the cemetery
that ring out like rungs
on a ladder or the past
tense of bells: Nathaniel Joy,
Elizabeth Joy, Amos
Joy and Wilder Joy,

and it all comes down
to the conclusion
of the cardinal: pretty, pretty, pretty
pretty--but pretty what?
In her strip search
of scripture, St. Teresa
was seized, my darling, rapt
amid the chatter
and flutter of well-coiffed

words, the owl
in the shagbark hickory,
and all the attending dangers
like physicians
of the heard.

Angie Estes


From Voice-Over by Angie Estes. Copyright © 2002 by Angie Estes.

so many love the bullfinch! a cross-cultural item of adoration. looks more like the grosbeak we have around here than any of our local finches, but still, who knew? this sweet little offering is dedicated to gerrie at his blog the linosaurus. his blog is the source for the top left image of this post, just part of the ongoing introductions to gerrie's finds in his tireless searches.

the fire & the rose

what are we then to do?
knowing that the world has seen holocaust,
war, genocide, and, yet, come this far...
were you there, now, what would you do? swim?,
or stand tremulously, waiting, at the water's edge?

from LITTLE GIDDING

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.




We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known,
because not looked for
But heard, half-heard,
in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames
are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T. S. Eliot
from Four Quartets

after-flood

FLOOD

This had happened before: rain that began
as mist — thick and windless, slow to fall.
In the bottomland, bloated spiders
caught fog and bound it; the webs sagged,
white and wet.

The second day, the creek
argued with the rain, grew bolder before
losing itself, overcoming the banks
that had defined it. Its current cut,
the water grew still, intent on rising.
This changed everything.

The third day, skeletal
corn-balk was lost. The trees waded in, waist-deep.
Boundaries drowned — the wire dead. I had
moved the cows to higher ground, and, puzzled,
they looked down on that placid other
that was not lake or pond.

The rain abated
midday, and I knew the next morning
I would see the field reappear as if rising.
I would see the fenceline discovered,
and, more, some ancestral bone, white now
as a root, would appear in the storm-gore
that would gag the creek, sagging in its bed.
I would find crows, those disbelievers, drowned
in their sleep, feathers strewn in the cattails,
their mouths filled with mud.

But long before
dawn, I would be there as before, at the edge
of what could not be sailed or sounded, watching
moonlight move over the body of that
black depthlessness — and I would be lost
as if I were in some distant place.

Claudia Emerson
from Pinion: An Elegy
Louisiana State University Press

•

i wrote about my friend midori -- which means green --
and the experiences of her and her family,
just 37 miles from the fukushima nuclear power plant.
i am providing her email address here so that
any donations you might want to make
can be sent by paypal. though her own house
was severely damaged, she wishes to use any donations
to help her family, but to also help those she knows
who are in even greater need than they are.

somehow to me, giving to midori, or giving to
the japanese red cross: both vitally important, one,
somehow, more personal.

green@baidarka.co.jp

solitaire

TO LUCK

In the cards and at the bend in the road
we never saw you

in the womb and in the crossfire
in the numbers
whatever you had your hand in

which was everything
we were told never to put
our faith in you
to bow to you humbly after all
because in the end there was nothing

else we could do
but not to believe in you

still we might coax you with pebbles
kept warm in the hand

or coins or the relics
of vanished animals
observances rituals
not binding upon you
who make no promises

we might do such things only
not to neglect you
and risk your disfavor
oh you who are never the same
who are secret as the day when it comes

you whom we explain
as often as we can
without understanding

W. S. Merwin

for my green friend

1803

.洪水は去年のけふ也小夜砧
kôzui wa kozo no kyô nari sayo-ginuta

the flood was exactly
a year ago...
pounding cloth at night

issa

1804

.夕月や流残りのきりぎりす
yûzuki ya nagare nokori no kirigirisu

evening moon--
surviving the flood
a katydid

issa

•

floods are not new to the japanese,
but the possibilities for destruction
we're seeing today have been unimaginable.

my friend midori, i learn,
is but 60 kilometers, 37 miles,
from fukushima.

she says, "First, I thought that my house suffered big damage.
However, the people of the seaside
that suffered damage for the tsunami
were more tragedy."

(below is a tiny bit of what you see.
at the link she sent me with that comment.
color codes reflect tsunami incursion
as fully explained in the article.)

"Seven relatives took refuge in my house
from the neighborhood of the shore
and stayed for a few days.
Then, the water service did not function.
We lined up and got water every day.
The aftershock still continues each place of japan.
It's strange, but the epicenter does not seem to be one place.

"And fear of the radioactivity continues."

whoopee we're all gonna die

awash in all they're (still) not telling us
yet bouyed by what they're not reporting.

it's seeming now that only rumi's right.

(above, film of the exact moment i walked through
the destroyed gates at woodstock.)

•

THIS WE HAVE NOW

This we have now
is not imagination.

This is not
grief or joy.

Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.

Those come and go.
This is the presence that doesn't.

Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

•

AT THE BOMB TESTING SITE

At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
as if something might happen.

It was looking for something farther off
than people could see, an important scene
acted in stone for little selves
at the flute end of consequences.

There was just a continent without much on it
under a sky that never cared less.
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.
The hands gripped hard on the desert.

William Stafford

•

SOME PEOPLE

Some people fleeing some other people.
In some country under the sun
and some clouds.

They leave behind some of their everything,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now sees itself reflected.

On their backs are pitchers and bundles,
the emptier, the heavier from one day to the next.

Taking place stealthily is somebody's stopping,
and in the commotion, somebody's bread somebody's snatching
and a dead child somebody's shaking.

In front of them some still not the right way,
nor the bridge that should be
over a river strangely rosy.
Around them, some gunfire, at times closer, at times farther off,
and, above, a plane circling somewhat.

Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or even better, non-being
for a little or a long while.

Something else is yet to happen, only where and what?
Someone will head toward them, only when and who,
in how many shapes and with what intentions?
Given a choice,
maybe he will choose not to be the enemy and
leave them with some kind of life.

Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak

from Miracle Fair by Wislawa Szymborska,
translated by Joanna Trzeciak.
Copyright © 2001 by Joanna Trzeciak.

the great mystical circus

THE BIG MYSTICAL CIRCUS


Frederick Knieps,
Physician of the Bed Chamber,
to the Empress Teresa,
resolved that his son
should be a doctor,
but the youth, having established relations with Agnes,
the tightrope artist,
married her,
and founded the circus dynasty of Knieps
with which the newspapers are so much concerned.

Charlotte, the daughter of Frederick, married the clown,
whence sprang Marie and Otto.
Otto married Lily Braun,
the celebrated contortionist,
who had a saint's image
tattooed on her belly.
The daughter of Lily Braun --
she of the tattooed belly --
wanted to enter a convent,

but Otto Frederick Knieps would not consent,
and Margaret continued the circus dynasty
with which the newspapers
are so much concerned.
Then Margaret had her body tattooed,
suffering greatly for the love of God,
and caused to be engraved on her rosy skin
the Fourteen Stations of Our Lord's Passion.

No tiger ever attacked her;
the lion Nero, who had already eaten two ventriloquists,
when she entered his cage nude,
cried like a newborn babe.

Her husband, the trapeze artist Ludwig, never could love her thereafter,
because the sacred engravings obliterated
both her skin and her desire.
Then the pugilist Rudolph,
who was an atheist
and a cruel man,
attacked Margaret and violated her.
After this, he was converted and died.

Margaret bore two daughters who are the wonder of
the Knieps's Great Circus.
But the greatest of miracles is their virginity
against which bankers and gentlemen with monocles
beat in vain;

their levitations, which the audience thinks a fraud;
their chastity, in which nobody believes;
their magic, which the simple-minded say is the devil's;

yet the children believe in them, are their faithful followers, their friends, their devoted worshipers.
Marie and Helene perform nude;
they dance on the wire and so dislocate their limbs
that their arms and legs
no longer appear their own.

The spectators shout encore to thighs,
encore to breasts,
encore to armpits.

Marie and Helene give themselves wholly,
and are shared by cynical men,
but their souls, which nobody sees,
they keep pure.
And when they display their limbs
in the sight of men,
they display their souls in the sight of God.
With the true history
of Knieps' s Great Circus
the newspapers are very little concerned.

Jorge de Lima

translated by Dudley Poore

(why did this poem appeal to me so strongly at this moment? serendipity. the largest labor demonstration is the country's history. nuclear meltdown. a flood of people, facing potential optimism, in madison, in lansing. a flood of mud, a flood of blue and white cars, people facing certain despair. i think i will kiss a bear and dance with a skeleton.)

things fall apart

THE SECOND COMING


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre
cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction,
while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those
words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands
of the desert
A shape with lion body and the
head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all
about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W. B. Yeats