Credences of Summer

[AdamSmith]

Here in New England, at least, summer hardly gets underway before it surprises you how far spent it is. Like the hour, evening, week with a beautiful other; like so much else. Heaving on through middle age, I get more and more solace, of a sort, from what follows. Perhaps it could also stand as elegy for escorts we knew who left the world too soon. If this is too little, too much, or out of place here, pass over it.

Credences of Summer

Wallace Stevens

I

Now in midsummer come and all fools slaughtered

And spring’s infuriations over and a long way

To the first autumnal inhalations, young broods

Are in the grass, the roses are heavy with a weight

Of fragrance and the mind lays by its trouble.

Now the mind lays by its trouble and considers.

The fidgets of remembrance come to this.

This is the last day of a certain year

Beyond which there is nothing left of time.

It comes to this and the imagination’s life.

There is nothing more inscribed nor thought nor felt

And this must comfort the heart’s core against

Its false disasters—these fathers standing round,

These mothers touching, speaking, being near,

These lovers waiting in the soft dry grass.

[AdamSmith]

II

Postpone the anatomy of summer, as

The physical pine, the metaphysical pine.

Let’s see the very thing and nothing else.

Let’s see it with the hottest fire of sight.

Burn everything not part of it to ash.

Trace the gold sun about the whitened sky

Without evasion by a single metaphor.

Look at it in its essential barrenness

And say this, this is the centre that I seek.

Fix it in an eternal foliage

And fill the foliage with arrested peace,

Joy of such permanence, right ignorance

Of change still possible. Exile desire

For what is not. This is the barrenness

Of the fertile thing that can attain no more.

[Guest StuCotts]

Adam, those verses breathe elegiac melancholy. The AIDS epidemic obliged me to live through too many elegiac moments in agitation. I have no yen to recall them in tranquility.

Having been much too serious a young man, I will be a dedicatedly frivolous old one. I have fully embraced escapism. To illustrate:

What do I think about men?

Men are dreamy. Men are sweet.

They simply knock me off my feet.

They're so enchanting, so much fun.

And I just can't wait until I marry one.

That's what I think about men.

What do I think about men?

Men are only naughty boys.

And we to them are merely toys.

They're always up to some new prank.

And I know of one that Mama'd love to spank.

That's what I think about men.

What do I think about men?

Men are just a pair of pants.

They're always after fresh romance.

In search of fun they run about,

And they don't come home until they're all run out.

That's what I think about men.

We are absolutely certain as to what we think of men.

But when night doth draw her curtain and the hour approacheth ten,

When the moon is o'er the mountain and there's mischief in the glen,

No matter what we think about men, we think about men.

Men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men.

We think about men!

Anybody who can identify that, keep it quiet or risk dating yourself seriously.

[Guest StuCotts]

Adam, if I didn't make it clear before, I will now: none of the above is intended to trivialize anything but my own attitudes, or to offend in any way.

[AdamSmith]

Adam, if I didn't make it clear before, I will now: none of the above is intended to trivialize anything but my own attitudes, or to offend in any way.

Stu, dinna worry. No offense taken. Except that I date myself by recognizing what you posted!

Here, drink this. You'll feel better...

There is something about a Martini,

A tingle remarkably pleasant,

A yellow, a mellow Martini --

I wish that I had one at present.

There is something about a Martini,

Ere the dining and dancing begin,

And to tell you the truth,

It is not the vermouth--

I think that perhaps it's the gin.

Ogden Nash

[AdamSmith]

III

It is the natural tower of all the world,

The point of survey, green’s green apogee,

But a tower more precious than the view beyond,

A point of survey squatting like a throne,

Axis of everything, green’s apogee

And happiest folk-land, mostly marriage-hymns.

It is the mountain on which the tower stands,

It is the final mountain. Here the sun,

Sleepless, inhales his proper air, and rests.

This is the refuge that the end creates.

It is the old man standing on the tower,

Who needs no book. His ruddy ancientness

Absorbs the ruddy summer and is appeased,

By an understanding that fulfils his age,

By a feeling capable of nothing more.

[AdamSmith]

IV

One of the limits of reality

Presents itself in Oley when the hay,

Baked through long days, is piled in mows. It is

A land too ripe for enigmas, too serene.

There the distant fails the clairvoyant eye

And the secondary senses of the ear

Swarm, not with secondary sounds, but choirs,

Not evocations but last choirs, last sounds

With nothing else compounded, carried full,

Pure rhetoric of a language without words.

Things stop in that direction and since they stop

The direction stops and we accept what is

As good. The utmost must be good and is

And is our fortune and honey hived in the trees

And mingling of colors at a festival.

[Guest StuCotts]

Stu, dinna worry. No offense taken. Except that I date myself by recognizing what you posted!

Here, drink this. You'll feel better...

There is something about a Martini,

A tingle remarkably pleasant,

A yellow, a mellow Martini --

I wish that I had one at present.

There is something about a Martini,

Ere the dining and dancing begin,

And to tell you the truth,

It is not the vermouth--

I think that perhaps it's the gin.

Ogden Nash

Why am I not surprised that you'd recognize it?

Anyway, thanks for the Nash. Always bracing.

P.S. I'll nae worry.

[AdamSmith]

P.S. I'll nae worry.

Comfort ye. I promise no posting from Bonnie Bobbie Burns.

[AdamSmith]

V

One day enriches a year. One woman makes

The rest look down. One man becomes a race,

Lofty like him, like him perpetual.

Or do the other days enrich the one?

And is the queen humble as she seems to be,

The charitable majesty of her whole kin?

The bristling soldier, weather-foxed, who looms

In the sunshine is a filial form and one

Of the land’s children, easily born, its flesh,

Not fustian. The more than casual blue

Contains the year and other years and hymns

And people, without souvenir. The day

Enriches the year, not as embellishment.

Stripped of remembrance, it displays its strength—

The youth, the vital son, the heroic power.

[Guest SouthernMan]

As a New Englander, how could you forget Emily Dickinson????? I just love her! Such an emotionally deprived person, longing to come out of her closet, but living in the wrong era! But, she sure did write some of the most beautiful poetry EVER!!!!

SUMMER SHOWER.

A drop fell on the apple tree,

Another on the roof;

A half a dozen kissed the eaves,

And made the gables laugh.

A few went out to help the brook,

That went to help the sea.

Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,

What necklaces could be!

The dust replaced in hoisted roads,

The birds jocoser sung;

The sunshine threw his hat away,

The orchards spangles hung.

The breezes brought dejected lutes,

And bathed them in the glee;

The East put out a single flag,

And signed the fete away.

[AdamSmith]

As a New Englander, how could you forget Emily Dickinson????? I just love her!

Whoops. My sin. No question divine Emily is the best America has produced. To say the least.

Nice selection.

[AdamSmith]

VI

The rock cannot be broken. It is the truth.

It rises from land and sea and covers them.

It is a mountain half way green and then,

The other immeasurable half, such rock

As placid air becomes. But it is not

A hermit’s truth nor symbol in hermitage.

It is the visible rock, the audible,

The brilliant mercy of a sure repose,

On this present ground, the vividest repose,

Things sustaining us in certainty.

It is the rock of summer, the extreme,

A mountain luminous half way in bloom

And then half way in the extremest light

Of sapphires flashing from the central sky,

As if twelve princes sat before a king.

[AdamSmith]

VII

Far in the woods they sang their unreal songs,

Secure. It was difficult to sing in face

Of the object. The singers had to avert themselves

Or else avert the object. Deep in the woods

They sang of summer in the common fields.

They sang desiring an object that was near,

In face of which desire no longer moved,

Nor made of itself that which it could not find. . .

Three times the concentred self takes hold, three times

The thrice concentred self, having possessed

The object, grips it in savage scrutiny,

Once to make captive, once to subjugate

Or yield to subjugation, once to proclaim

The meaning of the capture, this hard prize,

Fully made, fully apparent, fully found.

[Guest StuCotts]

Comfort ye. I promise no posting from Bonnie Bobbie Burns.

Any posting from Burns will be fine with me, even if it has to be in the de'il's tongue because the original would leave me at sea. Anybody who can write a poem to a haggis and actually make it work has my attention.

Do I see the beginnings of a poetry corner? More power! I'll have to view it from the standpoint of an envious outsider. Poetry is not really my thing. I incline more toward prose. Any hint at how prosaic that makes my thinking will be very ill received.

[TampaYankee]

You guys keep this poetry shit up and somebody's gonna call you gay!!

[AdamSmith]

Any posting from Burns will be fine with me, even if it has to be in the de'il's tongue because the original would leave me at sea. Anybody who can write a poem to a haggis and actually make it work has my attention.

Let me work on it.

Do I see the beginnings of a poetry corner? More power! I'll have to view it from the standpoint of an envious outsider. Poetry is not really my thing. I incline more toward prose. Any hint at how prosaic that makes my thinking will be very ill received.

OK, prose. Start a thread!

[AdamSmith]

You guys keep this poetry shit up and somebody's gonna call you gay!!

Let 'em try.

http://www.clantongang.com/oldwest/trade.htm

Hmm -- on t'other hand, maybe you have a point.

[AdamSmith]

VIII

The trumpet of morning blows in the clouds and through

The sky. It is the visible announced,

It is the more than visible, the more

Than sharp, illustrious scene. The trumpet cries

This is the successor of the invisible.

This is its substitute in stratagems

Of the spirit. This, in sight and memory,

Must take its place, as what is possible

Replaces what is not. The resounding cry

Is like ten thousand tumblers tumbling down

To share the day. The trumpet supposes that

A mind exists, aware of division, aware

Of its cry as clarion, its diction’s way

As that of a personage in a multitude:

Man’s mind grown venerable in the unreal.

[AdamSmith]

IX

Fly low, cock bright, and stop on a bean pole. Let

Your brown breast redden, while you wait for warmth.

With one eye watch the willow, motionless.

The gardener’s cat is dead, the gardener gone

And last year’s garden grows salacious weeds.

A complex of emotions falls apart

In an abandoned spot. Soft, civil bird,

The decay that you regard: of the arranged

And of the spirit of the arranged, douceurs,

Tristesses, the fund of life and death, suave bush

And polished beast, this complex falls apart.

And on your bean pole, it may be, you detect

Another complex of other emotions, not

So soft, so civil, and you make a sound,

Which is not part of the listener’s own sense.

[AdamSmith]

X

The personae of summer play the characters

Of an inhuman author, who meditates

With the gold bugs, in blue meadows, late at night.

He does not hear his characters talk. He sees

Them mottled, in the moodiest costumes,

Of blue and yellow, sky and sun, belted

And knotted, sashed and seamed, half pales of red,

Half pales of green, appropriate habit for

The huge decorum, the manner of the time,

Part of the mottled mood of summer’s whole,

In which the characters speak because they want

To speak, the fat, the roseate characters,

Free, for a moment, from malice and sudden cry,

Complete in a completed scene, speaking

Their parts as in a youthful happiness.

[AdamSmith]

The end.

[marcanthony]

LOL!

"There once was a man from Nantucket...."

hehe

[AdamSmith]

"There once was a man from Nantucket...."

...Who stuffed his ass

With broken glass

And circumcised the vicar!

Or less permanently...

From a niche in the church of St. Giles

Came a scream that resounded for miles.

"Oh, my goodness gracious!"

Cried Father Ignatius.

"How was I to know the bishop had piles?"

[marcanthony]

I love a versatile poet!