Jan Vermeer to his Model
(Girl with Pearl Earring, ca. 1665)

All the light at my command is in this brush:
I bid a skyful crowd into a pip
and place, with painter's hand and lover's touch,
reflections in your eyes and on your lip.

I pour the day like water from the side,
and caught between the woman and the girl,
as where a twilight and the sea collide,
I find these careful shadows for your pearl.

I have no words for this, I cannot name
the strange sense of a flower in your face;
but I can paint the way it waits to bloom,
and stop time on this cusp of quiet grace.

We just watched Girl With A Pearl Earring, the movie based on Tracy Chevalier's debut novel (which now I think I'd like to read). The movie is very pretty -- too pretty at times for its less glamorous subject matter, but beautifully evocative of Golden Age Dutch art in the scenes where it matters. It builds a fine, slow suspense, and if the eponymous painting has ever held you in its famous spell you will enjoy the way the film treats it.

I dug this verse out and decided it wasn't completely worthless -- mainly for the third stanza. It's not known who the model really was; when I wrote this I had in mind the most popular theory, that she was Vermeer's eldest daughter, and my own idea (which Chevalier apparently shares) that the painting has too much of a sexual undertone for that to make complete sense. Let me know what you think.

It's Poem On Your Blog Day, to mark the end of National Poetry Month. The original idea was to post about your favourite poem and link to a bio and/or other work by the same poet. I don't have a favourite poem, and for the rest I'm pressed for time as always so I'll just point to this post about AE Stallings, my favourite contemporary poet.

But I feel bad not posting any verse at all, so here's one I've been meaning to put up:




The Love-Song of Vice-Chancellor Prufrock; or, Prufrock Among The Students

Not the least of T.S. Eliot's
contributions to literature is
the opportunity for gratuitious
parody afforded by 'Prufrock'.
Senza tema d'infamia...

Let us go, then, you and I,
When the campus is spread out beneath the sky
Like a student stupefied by a timetable;
Let us pass by certain half-deserted rooms
Wherein, one just assumes,
Some course on T.S. Eliot drones on;
Pass by the roses, ornaments and ponds,
The fountains, gardens and the sculptured hedges
(Where, along the edges,
Poorer students have been known to make their homes)—
The grounds this time of year are just exquisite;
Let us go and make our visit.

Through the windows student faces peer,
Desperate for passing-grades and beer.

The greasy smog that drips from eaves
And eats away the drains...
The greasy smog that settles down and leaves
My Beemer stained...

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that oozes from the labs,
Etching black streaks down the sandstone walls,
For all the corpses on the med-school slabs
And all the corpses in the Admin. halls;
Time for Law, and Arts, and time
Especially for Engineering
(A million dollar grant this year,
From MIM and Hastings-Deering);
Time to put on gowns and meet the press,
Then let some junior Dean assume the mess—
(Pause here; observe the humble stance
Of department heads who overspent their grants)—
In a minute there is time
For conclusions and exclusions which my secretary signs.

Through the windows student faces peer,
Desperate for passing-grades and beer.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder whence the funds next year will come;
Time yet to rouse the dragon from its slumbers,
To further raise the numbers
Of full-fee-paying students from overseas—
(They will say: "He doesn't care about our own!")
It is impossible to please!
I'd like to do more, Heaven knows,
But how could I let the Staff Club close?

For I have known them all already, known them all,
Known every meeting and the people in it,
I have measured out my life with transcribed Minutes;
I know Departments dying with a quiet moan,
So how can I go on?

And how should I begin?
With wild demands and waving hands,
Like students sitting-in?
Or shall I make requests through all the proper channels?
Approach each Government Department mandarin
With humble mien and careful creases in my flannels?
Do I dare to make a speech?
I shall turn the voice-mail on, and take off for the beach!

I should have been four furry little paws,
Scuttling across the floors of silent refectories.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After all the heads brought in on platters,
After graduations and initiations,
And the gossip, and the post-exam-week chatter?
Would it, after all, have been worth while
To have brought the Student Union to its knees,
Assured each valued colleague of their tenure,
To sit, proud puppet-king, among these
Trophies—and smile as janitors smile?
Is any thing worth while?

I grow old... I grow tired...
How long before the Trustees have me fired?

I have been feathering my own nest all along,
Without regard or pause for right or wrong.
I have heard the students laughing, singing songs;

I suspect what they were laughing at, was me.

We have lingered in our chambers, half-asleep
On pillows made of crumpled formal gowns;
What student's voice would dare to wake us now?

Still can't stick to Fridays, but I'm trying to post some verse every week.

Catharanthus roseus

Vinca, myrtle,
periwinkle,
sorcerer's violet,
my mother's favourite

perennial,
hardy-humble
lighteners
of dull corners,

world travellers,
Madagascan
ambassadors
in native dress—

bright little faces
in odd places.

Wrong Number

 

Thalia kissed me where I stood,

Passing thousands by to gird me—

I'd undo it, if I could:

I'd rather she had never heard me!

 

It wasn't she I quested after—

I'd hoped Erato might enlist me—

All my verse occasions laughter,

Since Thalia kissed me!

Someone once asked me if this was a dig at Leigh Hunt. It does look like one, but I honestly meant it only as a dig at myself.

Whose flesh is as my own
takes other blood by choice
and now these two have grown
new flesh, new blood, new voice:

Newborn, this is true,
whatever it may be worth:
the love your parents won
is yours by right of birth.

JD has a thing for poetry, and his friend Jeremy likes Rilke's Der Panther, which is all the excuse I need:

Der Panther
(Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris)

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf —. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille —
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

I know the original by heart, and have even had the temerity to translate it:

The Panther
(In the Paris Botanical Gardens)
(Rainer Maria Rilke, trans.)

The bars it rubs on wear his vision down,
sweep by sweep on every coiled pass,
until he sees a thousand bars surround
him — and no longer any world behind the bars.

The padding heavy steps, the supple gait,
the tightening circles, turn and turn and turn,
are like a dance around a single point
in which a vast Will, hypnotised, stands stunned.

Only sometimes will the pupil’s curtain
silently slide open—. An image passes
in, moves through the taut limbs’ moveless tension,
reaches the heart, — and simply ceases.

There are about a zillion translations of that poem available, so here's another by Rilke that I've never seen in English, followed by my translation:

Irre im Garten
(Dijon)

Noch schließt die aufgegebene Kartause
sich um den Hof, als würde etwas heil.
Auch die sie jetzt bewohnen, haben Pause
und nehmen nicht am Leben draußen teil.

Was irgend kommen könnte, das verlief.
Nun gehn sie gerne mit bekannten Wegen
und trennen sich und kommen sich entgegen,
als ob sie kreisten, willig, primitiv.

Zwar manche pflegen dort die Frühlingsbeete,
demütig, dürftig, hingekniet;
aber sie haben, wenn es keiner sieht,
einer verheimlichte, verdrehte

Gebärde für das zarte frühe Gras,
ein prüfendes, verschüchtertes Liebkosen:
denn das ist freundlich, und das Rot der Rosen
wird vielleicht drohend sein und Übermaß

und wird vielleicht schon wieder übersteigen,
was ihre Seele wiederkennt und wieß.
Dies aber lässt sich noch verschweigen:
wie gut das Gras ist und wie leis.

The Insane in the Garden
(Dijon)
(Rainer Maria Rilke, trans.)

The old Carthusian cloisters still enclose
the yard, as though, within them, something heals.
They too, who live here now, have found repose,
and take no part in life outside the walls.

Possibilities have run like watercolour,
they now prefer a safer way to live;
they move on known paths, part and meet each other
as though they circled, willing, primitive.

Some nurture there the garden-beds of Spring,
humble, comfortless, down on their knees;
but even these have, when nobody sees,
a hidden gesture, a secret, twisted thing,

a gesture for the tender early grass,
a frightened testing, a timid soft caress:
the grass is friendly, but the red of roses
might somehow threaten them, might be excess

and might again be that which overwhelms
the world their souls know and recognise.
This one thing lets them keep it for themselves:
how good, how gentle and quiet is the grass.

And since I've only ever managed one other respectable translation, I figure I might as well add it here. The story goes that Goethe wrote the second poem suddenly and all at once on the wall of a mountain cabin where he was staying.

Wandrer’s Nachtlied I

Der du von dem Himmel bist,
Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest,
Den, der doppelt elend ist,
Doppeld mit Erquickung füllest,
Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!
Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?
Süßer Friede,
Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!

Wandrer’s Nachtlied II

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh;
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Wanderer’s Song at Evening
(JW von Goethe, trans.)

     I

Thou, who great in Heaven art -
Relievest every grief and pain,
To every twice-afflicted heart
Thy twofold Grace restor’st again -
I am grown weary of the strife:
Why doth desire never cease?
O wretched life!
O come into my heart, sweet Peace!

     II

Over every outcrop,
silence lies;
through every treetop
softly plies
the barest breeze;
the birds are quiet in the trees.
Only wait; you too will
soon be still.

Beside the block the butcher stands,
a cleaver in each meaty hand,
who flays away the tender skin,
exposing flesh and blood within,
and with an evil grin, begins
to ply a blood-bespattered trade:
with eager eye and shining blade,
trims off gristle, sinew, fat—
the butcher has no use for that—
plucks the entrails, out they go!
Heedless throws the heart away,
along with liver, spleen and brain,
and then begins to break the bones
with mighty overhanded blows,
to make the limp and lifeless form
closer match the current norm.
For this the butcher hacks and rends,
discards with savage glee, and then—
prepared and packaged, skinned and stripped—
sends me back my manuscript.

If you go, love, dawdle
down the unlit path.
Fob the ferryman off
with vague replies.
I won't be far behind.
Throw your penny in the water,
or hand it to some poor shade
trapped on the shore. I'll
bring you another. We'll cross together.

...

Don't drink the water! If you forget me
my name will become another word for sorrow.