"I write about being tessellated. Manipulated by a pattern."

Being tessellated is a terrible prison as illustrated by all Escher's work. But we love these perfect patterns, perfect poems, mathematics or art. We love to create these worlds and yet the artist's studio or student's study is frequently a mess. We always stand outside our creations. Like G-d, thank G-d and thank Seedrum for setting me thinking. The final piece of the jigsaw is a relief. We can start again OR "plunge, never to return into the depths."

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

 

By Wislawa Szymborska

Utopia and Melancholia

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

 

By Wislawa Szymborska
From "A large number", 1976
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

© Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

Niyaz - Ishq (Love and the Veil)!

I was the veil that hid the face of my beloved
Once awakened there was no longer a veil
Day and night it is him whom I seek
Him whom none have ever known or witnessed.

Whitman and the Moth

The last 4 verses are so good. Its a poem by Clive James which I first heard him read tonight on the radio. Clive is not well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Van Wyck Brooks tells us Whitman in old age

Sat by a pond in nothing but his hat,

Crowding his final notebooks page by page

With names of trees, birds, bugs and things like that.

-

The war could never break him, though he’d seen

Horrors in hospitals to chill the soul.

But now, preserved, the Union had turned mean:

Evangelizing greed was in control.

-

Good reason to despair, yet grief was purged

By tracing how creation reigned supreme.

A pupa cracked, a butterfly emerged:

America, still unfolding from its dream.

-

Sometimes he rose and waded in the pond,

Soothing his aching feet in the sweet mud.

A moth he knew, of which he had grown fond,

Perched on his hand as if to draw his blood.

-

But they were joined by what each couldn’t do,

The meeting point where great art comes to pass –

Whitman, who danced and sang but never flew,

The moth, which had not written Leaves of Grass,

-

Composed a picture of the interchange

Between the mind and all that it transcends

Yet must stay near. No, there was nothing strange

In how he put his hand out to make friends

-

With such a fragile creature, soft as dust.

Feeling the pond cool as the light grew dim,

He blessed new life, though it had only just

Arrived in time to see the end of him.