Smartblog

If I Die Young

2006-03-04T21:29:00.000-08:00

If I die young,
Without ever publishing a book,
Without seeing how my poems look in print,
If someone wants to agitate for my cause,
I hope they don't agitate.
If it happens like that, it happens right.

Even if my poems are never printed,
They have their beauty in them, if they really are beautiful.
But they can't be beautiful and stay unprinted,
Because even though their roots are under the earth
Flowers bloom in the air free and easy to see.
It has to be that way. Nothing can prevent it.

If I die very young, hear this:
I was never anything but a kid playing.
I was a heathen like the sun and the water,
I had the universal religion only people don't have.
I was happy because I didn't ask for anything at all,
Or tried to find anything,
And I didn't find any more explanation
Than the word explanation having no meaning at all.

I didn't want anything but to be in the sun or the rain -
In the sun when there was sun
And in the rain when it was raining
(And never the opposite),
Feeling heat and cold and wind,
And going no farther than that.

One time I fell in love, I thought they would love me,
But I wasn't loved.
I wasn't loved for one main reason -
I didn't have to be.

I consoled myself by going back to the sun and rain,
And sitting at the door of my house again.
When all's said and done, fields aren't as green for people in love
As for those who aren't.
To feel is to be distracted. (Fernando Pessoa, 11/07/1915)

[Picture: "Van Gogh", by T. Lautrec - Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam]

My Favorite Poem

2006-02-08T19:10:00.000-08:00

The Amorous Shepherd

When I wasn't with you
I loved Nature like a monk contemplating Christ . . .
Now I love Nature
Like a monk contemplating the Virgin Mary,
Religiously, in my own way, like before,
But in another way more moving and nearer.
I see the rivers better when I go with you
Through the fields to the bank of the rivers;
Sitting at your side looking at the clouds I look at them better —
You didn't take me from Nature . . .
You changed Nature . . .
You brought Nature to my feet,
Because you exist I see it better, but the same,
Because you love me, I love it the same, but more,
Because you chose me to be with you and love you,
My eyes stare at everything more lingeringly.
I don't regret anything I was before because I still am.
I only regret not having loved you.
Put your hands in mine
And let's be quiet, surrounded by life.

Fernando Pessoa
(7/6/1914)

(Picture: "Figuras à Beira-Mar", by Lasar Segall)

Life

2005-06-12T01:40:00.000-07:00

Vincent van Gogh

Fern Hill
by Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Life and Death

2005-02-13T19:05:00.000-08:00

Go Gentle Do Not into that Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though Wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not so gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

You

2004-12-17T18:08:00.000-08:00

"Birthday", by Marc Chagall

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too near

Your slightest look easily will unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, misteriously) her first rose

Or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

Nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

(e.e. cummings)

If You Really Like Poetry

2004-12-12T08:33:00.000-08:00

The astonishing reality of things
Is my discovery every day.
Each thing is what it is,
And it's hard to explain to someone how much this makes me happy,
How much it's enough for me.
It's enough to exist to be whole.
I've written quite a few poems.
I'll write many more, naturally.
Each poem of mine says this,
And all of my poems are different,
Because each thing there is a way of saying this.
Sometimes I start looking at a stone.
I don't start thinking if it feels.
I don't lose myself and call it my sister.
But I like for it to be a stone,
I like it because it doesn't feel anything.
I like it because it doesn't have any kinship with me.
Other times when I hear the wind blow
I feel that just hearing the wind blow makes it worth being born.
I don't know what other people will think when they read this;
But I think it must be good because I think it without difficulty
Or the idea of people hearing me think;
Because I think it without thoughts;
Because I say it like my words say it.
One time they called me a materialist poet,
And it made me wonder, because I didn't think
I could call myself anything.
I'm not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any worth, it's not me who has it:
The worth is here, in my poems.
All this is absolutely independent of my will.
(Fernando Pessoa, 11/7/1915)

Sunset

2004-12-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

"Love...love is most complex emotion. A human being is unpredictable. No logic to emotions. Where there is no rational thought, there can be much romance...and much
suffering."
(From the movie "Alice", by Woody Allen)

Once in a Lifetime

2004-12-03T21:36:00.000-08:00

Olive Orchard with Mountains and the Disk of the Sun
(by Vincent van Gogh)

Maybe someone who sees well isn't very good at feeling
And isn't nice because he's so far outside manners.
There has to be a way for everything,
And each thing has its way, and so does love.
Whoever has a way of seeing fields through their grass

Shouldn't have the blindness [??]
I loved, and I wasn't loved, that's what I saw when it
was over,
Because you're not loved like being born but like it
happens.
She goes on with her beautiful hair and mouth like
before,
I go on like before, alone in the field.
It's like my head had been lowered,
And if I think this, and raise my head
And the golden sun dries the need to cry I can't stop
having.
How vast the field and interior love...!
I look, and I forget, like dryness where there was
water and trees losing their leaves.

And isn't nice because he's so far outside manners.
There has to be a way for everything,
And each thing has its way, and so does love.
Whoever has a way of seeing fields through their grass

Shouldn't have the blindness [??]
I loved, and I wasn't loved, that's what I saw when it
was over,
Because you're not loved like being born but like it
happens.
She goes on with her beautiful hair and mouth like
before,
I go on like before, alone in the field.
It's like my head had been lowered,
And if I think this, and raise my head
And the golden sun dries the need to cry I can't stop
having.
How vast the field and interior love...!
I look, and I forget, like dryness where there was
water and trees losing their leaves.

(Fernando Pessoa - Portuguese poet)