Montreal on 28 January 2013

 

Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral 
Marie, reine de la monde

Windsor Station, once the head office
of the Canadian Pacific Railroad

St. George's Anglican church, across the street
from Windsor Station

St. George's Anglican Church

A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, as is
typical today the statue was attacked,
splattered with paint, decapitated several times,
toppled from where it stood, and finally removed

Sir John A. Macdonald

"Epithalamium" by Leo Kennedy

 

This body of my mother, pierced by me,
In grim fulfilment of our destiny,
Now dry and quiet as her fallow womb
Is laid beside the shell of that bridegroom
My father, who with eyes towards the wall
Sleeps evenly; his dust stirs not at all,
No syllable of greeting curls his lips,
As to that shrunken side his leman slips.

Lo! these are two of unabated worth
Who in the shallow bridal bed of earth
Find youth's fecundity, and of their swift
Comminglement of bone and sinew, lift
— A lover's seasonable gift to blood
Made bitter by a parched widowhood —
This bloom of tansy from the fertile ground:
My sister, heralded by no moan, no sound.

Late January 2018

 

"Mississippi" by Bob Dylan

 

2016

Every step of the way we walk the line Your days are numbered, so are mine Time is piling’ up, we struggle and we scrape We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape City’s just a jungle; more games to play Trapped in the heart of it, trying' to get away I was raised in the country, I been working’ in the town I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down Got nothing' for you, I had nothing' before Don’t even have anything for myself anymore Sky full of fire, pain pouring’ down Nothing you can sell me, I’ll see you around All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long [ Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all I was thinking’ 'bout the things that Rosie said I was dreaming I was sleeping' in Rosie’s bed [Verse 6] Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees Feeling like a stranger nobody sees So many things that we never will undo I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t I need something strong to distract my mind I’m gonna look at you ’til my eyes go blind

Well I got here following' the southern star I crossed that river just to be where you are Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinking' fast I’m drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me Everybody moving if they ain’t already there Everybody got to move somewhere Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow Things should start to get interesting' right about now My clothes are wet, tight on my skin Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in I know that fortune is waiting’ to be kind So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

"The Railway Station" by Archibald Lampman

Montreal West train station, 1950s

 

The darkness brings no quiet here, the light

    No waking: ever on my blinded brain

    The flare of lights, the rush, and cry, and strain,

The engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite:

I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight,

    Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain:

    I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train

Move labouring out into the bourneless night.

So many souls within its dim recesses,

    So many bright, so many mournful eyes:

Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses;

    What threads of life, what hidden histories,

What sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses,

    What unknown thoughts, what various agonies!

"What is it that a Poet Knows" by Louis Dudek

 

Louis Dudek

What is it that a poet knows

                that tells him ­­ 'this is real?'
Some revelation, a gift of sight,
granted through an effort of the mind ­­
                                    of infinite delight.

All the time I have been writing on the very edge of knowledge,

heard the real world whispering
                    with an indistinct and liquid rustling­­
as if to free, at last, an inextricable meaning!
Sought for words simpler, smoother, more clean than any,
                            only to clear the air
of an unnecessary obstruction
Not because I wanted to meddle with the unknown
        (I do not believe for a moment that it can be done),
but because the visible world seemed to be waiting,
                            as it always is,
somehow, to be revealed

Kathleen Raine on poetry and life

Kathleen Raine

                                                     

Kathleen Raine's Autobiographies (1991) is made up of her three earlier autobiographical books published in the mid-1970s. I always underline passages in books that I am reading and I underlined passages--single words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs--in Raine's book; later, it occurred to me to compile some of these passages on this blog, these are passages that deal with poetry and being a poet. But typing out these passages today I was surprised at Raine's prescient references to the dark age in which we now live. This is even more pertinent today when the world of order and stability seems to be unraveling; the old order is passing away and the new order seems barbaric and chaotic, anarchic in its worst sense, and everywhere we see the disintegration of values, order, and stability. The barbarians are entering the city and we, the inhabitants, know they have no good intentions for us, they want to destroy us and everything we represent. At least, that is how it seems in the days post October 7th when terrorists invaded Israel intent on killing, mutilating, and raping women, and then celebrating and advertising their violence. But I digress from Kathleen Raine’s Autobiographies; it is a beautifully written book and it should be of interest to those who want to know more about Raine's life, poetry, and ideas about life.

                                      29 December 2023

Kathleen Raine on poetry and life:

My mother did not send me to school until I was six years old; and if I have been a poet I owe it to my mother's protection of my sanctuary of solitude in those years of early childhood when three small fields between the advancing fringe of London's East-End suburbs, and the wooden fence of Dr. Bernardo's Homes was space enough for earthly Paradise. (p. 50)

Conversely, in order to escape the silent demands of dignified and beautiful proportions, barbarians must desecrate and violate, smash the stained glass and deface the statues and paint defiant slogans on walls that tell us too clearly, in their beauty and harmony of proportion, that we might be better than we are. (p, 120)

Strange (so it seems to me, writing in 1974 of my youth nearly fifty years ago) that the very premises of civilization should stand in need of defense. (p. 123)

Let me say here, since I use the term the 'soul' very often, that I am perfectly aware of the possible alternatives, such as psyche, brain, drive, complex, ego, and the behaviousistic terms . . . I believed in the soul as that specifically human life in us of which the body is the vehicle. It seemed then self-evident that this represents our 'higher' nature, and no less self-evident that what passes in that living consciousness--that being in us which we immediately feel to be our 'I am"--is of greater import than our physical functions. The experiences of the soul, for good or ill, I still supposed made up the matter of poetry; and indeed of all the arts, these being the expression and the record of the soul's knowledge. (p. 138-139)

But I have been able to speak from my heart only in my poems. (p. 325)

...--and I do not enjoy that dropping of barriers of the world where 'poets' (usually very minor ones, for any serious artist must live a life in some sense disciplined) move to a kind of promiscuous gregariousness. ... The poet must protect his wildness as best he may, with whatever, camouflage he can create; a principle inherited from the shy animal world from a millennial past. And for a poet whose theme was the city, the city, also must be his protective disguise. (p. 329)

Art is the city of the soul. (p. 339)

I can now myself say that I have learned nothing from experience, from my mistakes, from trial and error, or from the mere passage of time: only through rifts in these clouds, as if from another order of knowledge altogether. Tragedies, after all, however nobly enacted and grandly endured, are, as seen by wisdom, the storms of illusion, the webs woven in ignorance and passion by those who 'do but slenderly know themselves'. In tragedy we can finally admire only the grandeur of humanity's never abandoned struggle to attain the moment of transcendence; without which there can be no catharsis, no liberation. (p. 344)

Of all the teachers of my generation I am perhaps most indebted to Jung. ... for Jung points the way to a living access to the originals of which myths and symbols of religion are formulations. (p. 351)

In the generation before my own, T.S. Eliot remained within the tradition he would have wished to see continue; he, and David Jones, were perhaps the last poets of that tradition. Yeats saw the darkness approaching, the tide rising; but his hope lay not in any turning or stemming of the tide, but in that which lies beyond civilization, the mystery of the gyres, the Indian Brahman whose outbreathings create worlds and whose inbreathings withdraw them from existence. But Yeats too was still among the artificers of Byzantium, the Graeco-Christian civilization, preserved in Ireland beyond its time elsewhere. It is my generation which has seen the end. (p. 356)

The great tree is at this time showering down its leaves in a process of death which cannot be arrested, and whose record is everywhere to be read in the nihilism of the arts, of social life, in a thousand images of disintegration, in the reversion of civilized society, it may be, to a state of barbarism. (p. 356)

But since it has been above all poetic truth I have followed, tried to discover always that good, that best Socrates never ceased to speak of, poetic justice it must have been (the only kind I have ever acknowledged) that brought me at last to stand my judgement in Greece itself. (p. 357)

The poets are always blamed, more or less, for the same thing: they are ruthless, or that which drives them is. (p. 363)

Raine, Kathleen. Autobiographies. San Rafael, Coracle Press, 1991.

"A January Morning" by Archibald Lampman

 

Archibald Lampman

The glittering roofs are still with frost; each worn

Black chimney builds into the quiet sky

Its curling pile to crumble silently,

Far out to westward, on the edge of morn,

Glimmer faint rose against the pallid blue;

And yonder, those northern hills, the hue

Of amethyst, hang fleeces dull as horn,

And here behind me come the woodman's sleighs

With shouts and clamorous squeakings; might and main

Up the steep slope the horses stamp and strain,

Urged on by hoarse-tongued drivers--cheeks ablaze,

Iced beards and frozen eyelids--team by team,

With frost-fringed flanks, and nostrils jetting steam.

Fog at Gilbert Layton Park, December 2023

 It was 6C and rainy; fog settled over the soccer field.                   

Garden on New Year’s Day

 Morning, 1 January 2024.

"The Ship and Her Makers" by John Masefield

John Masefield, 1878-1967

                                 THE ORE

 

Before Man’s labouring wisdom gave me birth

I had not even seen the light of day;

Down in the central darkness of the earth,

Crushed by the weight of continents I lay,

Ground by the weight to heat, not knowing then

The air, the light, the noise, the world of men.

 

                                  THE TREES

We grew on mountains where the glaciers cry,

Infinite sombre armies of us stood

Below the snow-peaks which defy the sky;

A song like the gods moaning filled our wood;

We knew no men—our life was to stand staunch,

Singing our song, against the avalanche.

 

                         THE HEMP AND FLAX

 

We were a million grasses on the hill,

A million herbs which bowed as the wind blew,

Trembling in every fibre, never still;

Out of the summer earth sweet life we drew.

Little blue-flowered grasses up the glen,

Glad of the sun, what did we know of men?

 

                               THE WORKERS

 

We tore the iron from the mountain’s hold,

By blasting fires we smithied it to steel;

Out of the shapeless stone we learned to mould

The sweeping bow, the rectilinear keel;

We hewed the pine to plank, we split the fir,

We pulled the myriad flax to fashion her.

 

Out of a million lives our knowledge came,

A million subtle craftsmen forged the means;

Steam was our handmaid and our servant flame,

Water our strength, all bowed to our machines.

Out of the rock, the tree, the springing herb

We built this wandering beauty so superb.

  

                                 THE SAILORS

 

We, who were born on earth and live by air,

Make this thing pass across the fatal floor,

The speechless sea; alone we commune there

Jesting with death, that ever open door.

Sun, moon and stars are signs by which we drive

This wind-blown iron like a thing alive.

 

                                      THE SHIP

 

I march across great waters like a queen,

I whom so many wisdoms helped to make;

Over the uncruddled billows of seas green

I blanch the bubbled highway of my wake.

By me my wandering tenants clasp the hands,

And know the thoughts of men in other lands.

"The Wood by the Sea" by Duncan Campbell Scott

 

In Ottawa

I dwell in the wood that is dark and kind
  But afar off tolls the main,
Afar, far off I hear the wind,
  And the roving of the rain.

The shade is dark as a palmer's hood,
  The air with balm is bland:
But I wish the trees that breathe in the wood
  Were ashes in God's hand.

The pines are weary of holding nests,
  Are aweary of casting shade;
Wearily smoulder the resin crests
  In the pungent gloom of the glade.

Weary are all the birds of sleep,
  The nests are weary of wings,
The whole wood yearns to the swaying deep,
  The mother of restful things.

The wood is very old and still,
  So still when the dead cones fall,
Near in the vale or away on the hill,
  You can hear them one and all.

And their falling wearies me;
  If mine were the will of God,–oh, then
The wood should tramp to the sounding sea,
  Like a marching army of men!

But I dwell in the wood that is dark and kind,
  Afar off tolls the main;
Afar, far off I hear the wind
  And the roving of the rain.

With music in the background

 

July 1974; Sally McKenzie and Pat McCarty walking to
the tent where Krishnamurti gave his talks in Saanen, Switzerland

From left: Pat McCarty, Sally McKenzie,
and Stephen Morrissey: our last day at Saanen, 5 August 1974

Just after arriving in Saanen, Switzerland, where Krishnamurti gave yearly talks, I met Patrick McCarty and Sally McKenzie; it was July 1974. That first evening at the hostel we walked to the Saanen Church to hear a concert; only recently I learned that we had attended an event of the Yehudi Menuhin Festival. Pat McCarty became a good friend. Two years later, in April 1976, we drove from Eureka, where he lived, to Baha California in Mexico; I met his brother and his wife and stayed with them in Oakland; I also met his parents, in Bakersfield. We visited San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles, we stayed at Yosemite National Park; we attended Krishnamurti's Talks at Ojai. Pat visited me in Montreal several times, including when I married in August 1976.  Then life intervened and we lost touch and then, just a few years ago, I learned Pat had died in 2008. 

As well, recently, I learned that Pat's birthday was January 21, 1947, the same birthday as my second wife. I have a theory regarding dates, probably not original to me, it is the synchronicity of dates, the meaningful coincidence of dates, especially births and deaths; dates can be a recognition of the importance of certain events or people important to us. When I met my second wife at Dorval Airport, in 1991, I felt that I had always known her and, looking back, I felt the same way about Pat McCarty; both born on January 21. The meaningful coincidence is their birthdate and that both of these people have helped fulfill my life; these are people who give more than they take.

Lucy Worsley is one of my favourite television personalities, she recently presented the life of  Agatha Christie over three evenings. I've read all of Agatha Christie's novels, out loud to my wife, this was a daily time of togetherness made even more enjoyable by what we were reading; unfortunately, when our basement was flooded last summer all of our Agatha Christie novels were destroyed and had to be thrown out, they were all water damaged. Lucy Worsley mentioned that in her old age, when Christie was planning her funeral, she considered having Edward Elgar's Nimrod performed. Nimrod is a deeply moving memorial for Elgar's friend Augustus Jaegar, you can feel Elgar’s grief in this music and feeling his grief we feel our own grief; this music is a deepening of the soul. As well, Nimrod, a city of antiquity in Iraq, was excavated by Christie's husband, the archaeologist Max Malloran, so this music would have a deeper meaning for Christie, she accompanied her husband on this archaeological dig. Nimrod is also a biblical character and it is possible that Nimrod is another name for Gilgamesh, the central character in The Epic of Gilgamesh. I like to tie things together, to see what is significant and what gives meaning to life; The Epic of Gilgamesh deals specifically with the grief of losing a close friend, as Gilgamesh lost Enkidu, as Elgar lost Jaegar, as Max would lose Agatha upon her death, as Agatha would lose Max.

Finally, in addition to Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, and Sherlock Holmes, one of my favourite detective characters is Colin Dexter's Morse; all of the episodes of this television series with John Thaw are excellent, and the subsequent shows, after Thaws's death, Lewis and Endeavour, are also excellent.  An episode of Morse entitled "Dead on Time" features Schubert's String Quintet in C major; like Elgar's Nimrod this is a deeply moving piece of music, it is an entrance way to the soul, to memory and the past, to the ancestors, and to our very existence and history. In the long run it is the soul that concerns us, for we are visitors to this life and our work is the soul’s work, which is to become conscious human beings.