Tum-Foolery
Black holes –
They say
Are the voracious
Gloti
Of the universe
Swallowing all:
Matter, energy, light,
Even darkness
Rendering laws
Meaningless…
Done feasting
They rest,
Quiescent, digesting
Then,
Suddenly
They belch back
With a Big Bang!
Are life, hope, wisdom,
Art
But the result
Of Cosmic Indigestion?
Forgive me,
Physicist,
If I still prefer
The ancient
Seven-day
Hypothesis.
When two hypotheses purport to explain the same phenomenon, scientists choose (often) the more “elegant” of the two. At the present stage of development, our scientists have produced several hypotheses (at this stage “metaphors”) of Creation. On the principle of “elegance” I prefer the old “seven day” explanation over the particular one suggested here.
Destruction is Creation Played Backwards
Successfully
Predicting
Models are
Histories
Of the future
Written
before
The event
So thinking
Scientists
May soon deduce
Why
Big Bang particles
Are spread
Round and round
Through the cosmos
So evenly
Distribution occurred
Before the birth
Of time
Or was it after
It’s death?
Again, the notion of replaying or rerunning time – the possibility of “action” out of time. Since gravity seems to have an effect on slowing down or speeding up the “rate” of time, was there time before gravity, i.e. when there was no “matter”, but merely energy?
Big Bang
Whatever
made
Our Cosmos:
matter,
time,
space,
and
us
Is Still
Intangent
Passing through
The nets of science
Baited hooks of faith
Traps of belief
Elusive and unscathed
The Far Horizon
Still recedes
As we approach it
Still there…
And yet
No nearer
Than it ever was
Before.
Written to express some dissatisfaction with our various versions of cosmography – the “making” of our Cosmos – versions scientific, religious, mythological, etc.
Some Thoughts at Berne
Achilles
Still chases
His tortoise
Zeno’s arrow
Still sings
In the air
Tomorrow
We’ll midwife
The Cosmos
Or stand
Half a distance
From there?
Berne, Switzerland, is a great scientific research center, where, by use of tremendously sophisticated equipment, scientists have gotten closer, and closer, and closer to defining the “conditions” of the Big Bang (birth of our universe) – it is now a matter of an incredibly small amount of time which seems to separate the experimenters from their goal – something on the order of several ten billionth of a second. But as they get closer and closer and closer, the question arises: Will they reach that goal, or are they caught in something like Zeno’s paradox?
Atom Smasher
Awesome building!
Leaded shielding
Massive walls
Smell of ozone
In the halls
Static chatter
Relay clatter
Miles of cable
Power-laden to enable
Generators, accumulators
Boosters and accelerators –
Guided lightening, captive thunder! –
Megawatts to rend asunder
At computer’s coded call
Nuclei so infinitely small
That their spatial matrix is
Mere calculate hypothesis.
Why then,
Is it
so simple
To smash a man?
The old problem of human fragility and, at the same time, the immensity of both mind and physical power we command
A Matter of Identity
I
The cloned
Toad
Sits
(with a
feint air
of
self-approval)
Eyes abulge
Resting
A puzzle
For us all
What patterns, matrixes,
Genetic codes,
What senses, feelings,
Thoughts, discriminations,
What energies
molecular,
atomic,
psychic
What double helixes
Still tie it
To that other toad
Which is
Itself?
II
But the toad’s trial
Is over
Past
Events
Acquit it
For it lives,
Sits
(with a feint air
of self-approval)
Untroubled
Quiescent.
III
Now
Comes our
Human
Turn
Our trial
Our ordeal
The crisis
Is upon us
What good
What ill
Will come
Of this day’s
Doing?
How like a God!
Or is it
Devil?
The Mary Shelley question again. The power of science – the fragility of human life and morals.
From Master Lao to Professor Hegel and Back Again
I
But in that
Other
cosmos,
Then,
Is
their ying
Our yang,
Their Lord
Our
Jade
Emperor?
Is not, then,
Our pride
Their
humility;
Our
wealth,
Their
poverty;
Our
right,
Their
wrong;
Our
good,
Their
evil?
The irreversible in
Of their
Out?
II
All this
is
Too much
A Western
Conception
The dialectic
Need not be
a struggle,
But a harmonious
Balance,
betimes
a blending,
Of opposites
The dao
Eludes
The syllogism
It can only be lived,
Only practiced
III
Blizzards
Blow
From the north
Hot winds
From the south
But on Lake
Tung-tin
There’s nary
A ripple,
Save fish striking,
To ruffle
The surface.
Eastern concepts seen through Western eyes. The possibility of a “peaceful” dialectic seems intriguing, and certainly a happier conception than Western disciples of Hegel have envisioned.
Two Lunatics
Twelve hundred years ago
Old man Li-po
Tried to embrace
His Mistress Moon,
But failing, he merely fell
And drowned in a lonely
Chinese
well…
Much later,
Spurred
By knowledge hunger
And by pride,
The need to win a triumph
For our side,
Yet acting for the Human Race,
We sent brave men
Into the awesome well of space
At journey’s apogee to place
Boot scars forever
On Her earth-lit face
We called it
Furthest reach
Of man!
But can we know,
When all is said and done
If Armstrong or Li-po
Got closer
To the moon?
The answer is neither. Poetic and scientific “knowledge” compliment, not supplant, each other.
Snake Control
Within my dreamscape
Lies
An ocean’s deep
Strange dragons
Dwell
Within its keep
All silently…until
A sudden gale’s sweep
Whips waves to frenzy
When
They surface, rise to challenge
And to roar
And drive reality before
The terror
of their ways!
But then,
As suddenly,
The gale gone,
They fall again
At beck and call
Of something other
Then my conscious
Will…
Upon awakening,
All is still;
Once more
I am the dragon keeper,
While they,
Reduced to symbols,
Are
Whatever
I shall make them seem
Seem
Mere figments
Of an old professor’s
Dream?
…or is it I,
A shadow shape,
In cycles
Of a dragon’s dreamscape
Caught
…with
no escape?
A rephrasing of the question posed by a Chinese philosopher who dreamt of a butterfly and upon awakening wondered whether he was really a butterfly dreaming that he was a Chinese philosopher. As a child in China, I was fascinated by dragons – which to this day serve for me as symbols of certain aspects of China.
Tales Told and Untold
(From the Bright and Dark Sides of the Sun)
The Zuni storyteller
Stares
at us
In open-mouthed
Frank
Surprise:
Our presence
disturbs
the desert
Our ignorance,
the fitness
of things
We show
no
knowledge
of the simplest
sunlit
symbols
Nor
of the
other
side, the darknesses
beyond
the sun…
But then,
He makes his eyes
Long tearless
And with visions
Full
Grow dull
Not to reveal
For wastage
Treasures
Of the wise…
And let’s us:
count bones
and measure stones
collect our artifacts
to write
our learned
tracts
and try to glue
shards of the past
together
As if
A broken pot
Once
It has lost
Its soul
Can be made whole
Again
By merely
…men.
Again, an attempt to understand something of Zuni Indian culture, and their apparent belief that a pot, once broken, has lost its “soul.” There is a Russian belief that church-bells also have souls – if a hole is drilled in one, it can never be restored to ring the same tone.
Australian Soulscape
The last wave broke
Washing
The right side
Of my mind
In images
Fleeing…
It left
Whorls and curliques,
Tracings, designs
Soul symbols,
Spirit signs
Of strange dark men
I’ve never seen,
I’ve never met…
And yet,
surely
And yet,
joyfully
My brothers!
Australian aborigine culture in many ways seems distant – perhaps, of all cultures, the most distant – from our Western ways. Some thoughts about the underlying similarity (after seeing the superb Australian film “The Last Wave”).
French Landscape Seen when Looking out of a Window of
an Inn
How marvelous
It is!
So close at hand:
One world with
And one
Without
Glasses.
I put them on
(if you insist)
And see details
As realist
But then,
As quickly
As I can
I take them off
And look again
And see essentials
Like Cezanne!
It is often a matter of perception. I’m very nearsighted, and without glasses tend to see outlines of objects and colors, sometimes (especially when in France) something like a Cezanne landscape. The title suggests that for me this is an in (“Inn”) thing to do.
Prayer for Sense Extension
Lord…
Grant me eyes
To see
A sigh
And ears
To hear
Sorrow.
Sense-data (empirical data) is essential to science. Scientists spend much effort on what may be called “sense extension” – for example, trying to “see” beyond normal or ordinary sight into the infra red and ultra violet ranges of the full spectrum (as in the case of infra red and ultra violet telescopes). This little verse expresses a hope that sense-extension should be attempted into ethical/moral as well as physical realms.
The Judas Blackbirds
When the blind
Ask the sighted
They get the same
Reply
But deep inside
They know
The sighted always
Lie
This truth
All blindmen
Can see
In thirteen tongues
It cries to me…
Wallace Stevens wrote a magnificent poem concerning the thirteen ways of seeing blackbirds. None of these “work” for “blindmen” and, of course, blindwomen. So how, in how many ways (unknown to the sighted) do they “see” blackbirds?
Yard Music
His hard analytical
Lens
Bought at Harvard
Typically sees
Less
Than there is
Letting truth
Slip around
The eyeball
To settle
Like dust
In a corner.
Too much “hard” analysis may desiccate both the subject of analysis and the scientist performing the analysis.
Inner Vision for the Outward Bound
Space
Is not
The final
Frontier
But the mind
That
made
It.
A kind of tribute to the philosopher Bishop Barkeley. The nutrino was first hypothesized, and only years later discovered. Scientists knew “where” and “what for” to look. Until “found” empirically the nutrinos did not exist in a scientifically significant sense. To what extent can it be said that the nutrino was “created” theoretically before being discovered?
Solo Stag at Business
In this
Our universe
Where
Two plus two
Equals four
Infinity or
Zero ---
In this welter world
Of laissez faire ---
The choice
Was obvious,
Wallace
But the precincts
Of your agency
Were haunted
By ghosts
Of another
Genre:
Willows and green
springs
Elephant’s ears
Claviers
Uncles and monocles
Monarchs of ice cream
Tambourines, dancing
mice
And whispered refrains
(Silk pillows beaded
with tears
And persimmons, with
honey?)
Gorgeous symbol-systems
Tuned to finesse,
Precise and compelling,
Structured, shaped, balanced,
Deployed
In columns and lines
Wound tight
Then set
Into motion
Real order found, after all!
Or sense of office
Protocol?
In verse
As in prose,
Wallace
Key West
was never wholly free
Of bottom
line symmetry…
In America, two brilliant “artist-businessmen”, the composer Charles Ives and Wallace Stevens, refused to recognize any barrier or contradiction between “culture” on the one, and “business” on the other hand. The “Stag” in the title is the logo of the Hartford Insurance Co., and Stevens was Vice-President of Hartford. “Money,” said Stevens, “is the greatest symbol of all. A kind of poetry.” (I’m not sure the quote is exact). The long and the short of it – Stevens enjoyed being both poet and businessman. And this is an interesting insight into American culture (whether the “aesthetic” elite likes it or not). Both the English and Russian translation have been published.
Meteor
Once – how?
I don’t lnow
I caught the flow
Of sound
Made long ago
(Unheard ‘til now)
A flow of sound
All aglow
It kissed the stars
Then bowling low
Embraced
The ground.
The genesis of the poems’ title is interesting. I wrote it to describe the mystical experience (which I have never had) mentioned by poets – that of hearing “celestial” music. I showed it to an astronomer friend (in our Cosmic History Club) who immediately said, “Ah! A meteor.” This does – and perhaps should – happen in poetry. A natural object – trees, mountains, clouds – “mean” and “communicate” different things to different people. A poem – once written – begins to “lead a life of its own” (according to the great American poet Wallace Stevens) – a poem, once written, becomes an “object in nature” and in this sense, a “natural object”. Why shouldn’t – then – a poem communicate different things to different people (to an extent, it does so already). Finally: I’ve never heard celestial, star music, but I’ve seen meteors hit. This may have been my mystical experience.
Stoa
Who weeps
For failures
And matches
Tear for tear?
Success
Is far too blind
To its price
And deafens
Ears
To mercy
While losers
Are
Too much
Caught-up
In self
To tightly pinned
By pain of their loss
To offer others
Comfort,
Shelter
Or surcease.
An
honest stand-off –
Stale
mate with life
Seems
better
Than
the two extremes…
I’ve always admired Epictetus (the slave) and Marcus Aurelius (the Emperor) – and all genuine stoics. But I suppose I’m not strong enough to be one with them. This poem also seems to contain a tough of Dao.
Talking to an Agency
Words rubbed each other
Abrading a sibilance:
Like hot beach-wind
Humming
Through carapaces
Of dead crustaceans
Sand-scowering the meatless,
Brittle, bleached husks
Hissing in whispers
Ever knelt
On hard rock
To listen?
Or begged
For a loan
At a bank?
I have.
Litany of a Wounded Barn
The barn door
Hangs unhinged
Forming
Geometric patterns
Elongated rectangles and triangularities
Structuring
Gradations of light and darkness,
Of color and shadow
With iconographic
Exactness.
The barn
Sings to God
In symbols
Of liturgical significance
While Wyeth and Mondrian
Worship.
Art – both realistic and abstract – is a form of worship. Wyeth (realist) and Mondrian (abstractionist) belong at two ends of the same “liturgical” continuum. There are, however, other forms of art which cannot be likened to worship.
A Question of Epistemology
The world is
Too much…
Agreed?
But is it
Too much
With us
Or without?
In our victory
Or rout?
How to perceive
The final sense:
By abstinence
Or deed
By science, calculus,
Or creed?
What to condemn?
What tout?
When to be
Silent
When
To shout:
Agreed!
That’s it!
That’s all –
All we dare hope
All we dare need:
A common bond!
Agreed?
As a graduate student (at Stanford), my professors kept telling me: you must learn to ask meaningful questions. As a graduate student (at Moscow University – long before glasnost), my professors supplied me with answers and told me not to ask questions. Did I emerge from my education with sets of (now) meaningless answers to meaningless questions? Does agreement define meaning? I’m still confused.
The Illogic of Linguistic and Other Systems
Can you really
Expect
Logic
From a language
Where
Twice nyet
Is
just
that:
A way
To emphasize
Rejection?
But is this
Any worse
Than having
“Fat chance”
and
“Slim chance”
Mean
The same
Thing?
Were Shakespeare
And Pushkin,
Stevens
And Pasternak
Logical?
Is God?
In Russian – unlike English – a double negative (“Twice nyet” or “twice no”) merely emphasizes, and does not negate, the negative. It may be argued that if God were logical, then He would be determined by logic in his actions, and hence “unfree”.
In Memoriam
Poetry
is
The mnemon
Of human
Emotion
Once rhymed,
Forever
Remembered.
Poetry helps people “remember”. The fact/legend of a Greek tyrant unknowingly marrying his own mother, if described in prose, might have been forgotten or remembered as an early day “psychiatric” case study. Sophocles made it immortal – something that will be remembered until the end of human imagination. Most religions are first vocalized in poetry (as chants); most religious books – the great ones – contain poetic elements, or are themselves poems. Most alchemist formulas were set down in poetic form – and the only way I can remember how many days a month has is by reciting the jingle: “30 days hath September, April, June, and November…” etc. Poetry helps us all to “Remember”.
Anarchist’s Song
No!
Ultimate truth
Is not
For the poet
It ends
The freedom
Of questing
The sky
Has been punctured too much
With final equations
And earth,
With the horror
Of final solutions.
Some poets and literary critics demand that poetry seek and deliver “Truth”. But is “Poetic” – the language of poetry – the proper medium for articulating truth? My own goal is a bit more modest – an attempt through poetry to present different points of view: sometimes my own, sometimes of others, even of my “enemies”. I think poetry should be included in any serious attempt to investigate Cosmic History – both because there is (or can be) a history of poetry, and also because “Poetic” as an instrument of communication is uniquely suited for conveying other points of view together with the various emotions evoked by such other (different, contradictory, synthetic, and anti-synthetic, etc.) views.
Is Youth Wasted on the Young?
Mean
Time
Has been
Truly named
It starts off slowly
(More or less)
But then accelerates
Speeds on
Speeds by
And leaves us
Breathless
In the end…
“Lineal time”, “cyclical time”, “serial time”, and here “psychological time.” And now that I am over sixty years old, time does seem to run faster.
Zeitgeist + Geldgeist = Weltgeist?
“For time’s
Money”,
So they say
Yet, physicists
Still argue
Whether time
Really is
Or ever was.
Wise Albert said
The tenses
Are
Yes, stubborn – yet
A mere
Convention.
Then,
surely
Money
Does exist!
Of course,
But only
If it serves
As symbol,
As something
Which is
Something else…
In essence,
A conventional
Device
Worth more
Than self
As figment
Of a larger
Human
Fiction.
And this
Is proof
Enough
For us
That in a world
– all
too real –
It’s unreality
That’s crucial.
George Slays the Dragon
Conceive of time
As a snake
Locked into loop
With mobius twist –
Hence, infinite –
And yet, devouring its tail
And with each gobbled serpent’s scale
“When” turns to “then”
Conceive of time as a constant, mutilating
Pain
Of crumbling bone and naked nerve
Conceive of time as a twisted, self-consuming
Jail
In which we serve…
And then, release!
For Aleph becomes Beth
And higher calculus of life
Transcends
Infinities of suffering and death.
“George” of the title is the mathematician Georg Kantor, the formulator of the famous transfinite system of number, in which “Aleph” (the first letter of the Jewish alphabet) is the first “number” and is equivalent to ¥ (or infinity in our ordinary system of numeration). “Beth” (the second letter of the Jewish alphabet) becomes the second number in Kantor’s transfinite series. Kantor’s use of the Jewish alphabet suggest that his transfinite series was itself finite!
Coming or Going Home?
And is it now
In the ebb
and flow,
Or half a century
Ago,
As I return,
A traveled man
To where,
for me
It all began?
And in the universe
I sense,
Time’s canvas
Is,
of course
Immense…
But not without
Recompense
A hitch…
A slippage –
To or fro? –
In time’s flow:
Is it today?
Tomorrow?
Or
Long,
long ago?
A stitch
Once dropped
Unravels
The entire
Knitted
skein
The end is here,
At last!
Or is it time
To begin
Again?
Again, the fascinating notion of cyclical time. Written after a visit to the University of Oregon – my undergraduate University which I had not seen for over thirty years.
Pre-Requiem Litany
I’m not the man
I used to be
In truth, I never was
But still I am
What God made me
For purposes he chose
He spun the clay
And gave it birth
In image, we are One
And I will triumph
Over death
‘though nailed like His Son
The earth, the sea
The sky at dawn
The pine and the rose
This journey
That God set for me
Myself, I gladly chose.
Are we determined? Are we free? For me – and I can only speak for myself – the Christian metaphor provides the best insight. We are determined (not necessarily predestined or destined) to be free. Evil roots in anything less than freedom.
“We Are All Actors”…
It is really
Too appealing
Curtain up
And curtain
falling
Roles and roles
Just keep on rolling
Nights and days
And months and years
Who am I?
And who
My peers?
All I know
Is that applause
Never gave me
Rest nor pause…
Merely feeding
My ambition
For a
greater
Repetition.
The stage metaphor for life seems particularly appealing when applied to time. Plays have beginnings and ends (linear time); yet the same play, containing the same beginning and end, is presented over and over again (circular time); sets of plays, e.g. by Sophocles or Chekhov, are sometimes grouped together and presented in sequence (sequential or serial time), etc. And while plays have endings, actors die (offstage), and playhouses burn down – theater as a process goes on and on and on (immortality?).
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov: A Repeated Requiem
As the curtain
Severs
The scene
Like a scalpel
Slicing
through
Sorrow
Past applause
Understand
What I mean
In the final
Silence
To
follow
For the end
Of all
plays
Is the
same
Since time
Is
something
We borrow
For the
end
Of all
plays
Is the
same
Set the
stage
Once again
For tomorrow!
Chekhov was not only a playwright, but also a doctor. Critics say that he brought a clinical detachment to his character analysis. Be it as it may, there is some truth that he did bring some of the wisdom of his medical learning to his writing. His plays – most of them – it is said can be treated as either comedies or tragedies. Like life. Theater, again, illustrates cyclical time and a species of immortality. Whatever happens in a play, or to actors, playwrights, etc., the “stage” is “set”…”once again/For tomorrow!” And the show goes on.
No Time for Sorrow
Like a blade of spring grass
We lift our heads skyward
Greeting the day
Our brief growing season…
Too soon,
too soon
Autumn will
come
And we
The harvest
But the moment itself
Is reward enough
And the earth around us…
Another attempt to deal with the problem of time and death in “Poetic” – or the language of poetry. The same theme would find a very different articulation in “Scientific”, the language of science. Both are – would be – metaphors, giving us insight into something which we have not yet found a common vocabulary to describe completely. Maybe we never will and, yet again, we might.
Horologue
Greet the morning
Meet the day
Welcome evening
On its way
Then embrace
The fallen night
Kiss her gently
Hold her tight.
An attempt (which many poets for some reason seem they should make at least once in awhile) to come to terms with the passage of time and with death. The title “Horologue” and the expression “fallen night” suggest that death – in a traditional sense – is somehow like a “fallen” woman; that there is something “indecent” or “improper” (again, in a traditional sense) about death. So, as one must be gentle to “fallen women”, one must be “gentle” (not scream, fight, abuse) to death. I think the expression “fallen women” is odious – because convention made it so. Possibly, it has also made death seem odious.
Sentenced to Immortality
Death is not
Termination
Nor yet
A beginning
It strikes
At the reachable midpoint
Of Zeno’s strange,
Endless journey
To nowhere…
And makes
Gilgamesh
Our compass
And the
Wandering Jew
Our
brother.
I’ve always been fascinated with science fiction stories that question the desirability of human immortality. Were Gilgamesh, the Wandering Jew, and the Flying Dutchman (who was originally in, but was later deleted from the poem) ever really happy? I have been and even at sixty-two hope to be again.
Death on Campus
The streets
Grew warm,
Unseasonably so –
Confused,
Some foolish trees
Felt spring again!
They budded…
Then,
Snow fell
(Like spittle
Slopping from the sky)
Cold struck,
Buds withered,
While I?
My body warm,
And yet,
Ice touched my heart
A steam pipe froze
A ventman
Slowly
Died
That night,
What dreams were frozen
Mutely
Deep inside?
When one cold night a ventman was found dead on the Penn campus – I wrote this poem, and gave it to my students who were asked to contribute something toward organizing a “Cold Patrol” on campus, to give ventmen blankets, food, warm drink. We collected close to $300.00 (from one class) – and a “Cold Patrol” was organized. Subsequently, the poem was used by The Philadelphia Society for the Homeless (on the program for one of their outreach meetings).
Exit by Choice
Pretend –
That demise
is your matter
of choice
Don’t slobber and yell
(As on entry)
Welcome, instead,
Hot lead
In your heart
Praise the aim
Of your
Liberator.
Human beings do not enter life gracefully. Exiting, we should, perhaps, display some grace under pressure.
Remembering the Unhappened
We all have memories
Of things
Unseen,
Of times gone
That never were
Yet must have been
Of sunlit
Days
Without
Sun
Of numbers
Infinite
Yet
One
Of candles
Melting
Walls
Of ice –
For selfish
Ends
A selfless
Sacrifice,
Of love in
hate
And hell
in paradise?
Imagination is dangerous for a historian, especially when she/he begins to “remember” things that never happened. Unlike the historian (and I’m a professional historian) the poet is granted that privilege.
Homo academicus: After Thirty Years of Teaching
Your world is wide!
But my hallways are narrow…
So tell me,
so tell me
Do daisies
Still bloom
Outside?
Yet another reason for the Cosmic History Club. Academic walls can get narrower and narrower, and no room is left for daisies to bloom. Is there room for them “outside” beyond the academic edifice which, for some on campuses, has become their total universe? And I did write this after having taught for thirty years – for three whole decades (for some reason “three decades” sounds longer than “thirty years”).
A Thought for Some Professors
“Beneath a fashioned surface
Of diffidence
Or
Brashness”,
You pronounce
(Ignotum per ignotiores),
“All students are empty!”
Like wells
Longing
For water?
A bane or an affliction on our campuses are Professors who declare (and mean it!) that their academic careers would be wonderful if it weren’t for students.
Non-Dialogue with an “In” Poet-Critic
“Your poetry”,
He said to me,
“Has crafty lines,
Cunning rhymes
And
Rhythmic penchants.
All these
Are now
Passé”
“You see”,
He said to me,
“Your poetry
Moves
In quite a different
Direction,
Against the Trend –
Against our modern
Flexion”.
“Read copiously,
Friend,
And in the end”,
He said to me,
“You’ll fall in line.
And reading modern verse,
You can
Begin
With mine”.
What happy words!
You see
‘Til then
I did not know
My poems moved
And had
Direction…
You see,
‘Til then
I did not know
That I could be
So easily,
So inadvertently
(So gallingly?)
Original.
Some twelve years ago, when I first started writing poetry, I took my efforts to a well-established poet-critic. I felt I needed some advice, and, to confess, wanted an encouraging word. The poet-critic suggested that if I really wanted to learn how to write and be published – I should read his poetry. All of it. But he did say that I “declaimed well” and suggested that I should do a public concert of his poetry. This incident inspired the “Non-Dialogue”…
Hometown Lost
I’ve never seen
Harbin
Again…
Bombs fell
My parents
Took me
from my crib
And carried me
Away
And never looking
Back
As death
Came howling
On our track,
Pursued us on the way…
And I became
That dreadful day
An excommunicated
Émigré
Forever
On the run.
I was born in Harbin. And to some extent “Harbin of the Mind” is still “Hometown”. But there is such a thing as “Émigré” culture – located somewhere on the interface between two or more cultures. It is in this sense that I tend to write “interface” poetry.
Homo canis?
Behind desks
And barricades of books
Historians work
With such intense
purposiveness
Of pace!
Like small leashed dogs marching
Bushward.
Publish or perish! Publish or perish! This dictum often faces academics (historians among them) to write, write, write with an “intense”…”purposiveness”, but unfortunately much of what is written has little scholarly, let alone broadly cultural, value. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare.
Changing Venue: Temporarily Binomial Conduct
I’ve taken to carrying
Two briefcases
On campus
One is for “history”
The other,
For verses
The former
Gets lighter,
The latter
Grows heavy
I shall
have
No problem
Retiring!
I started writing poems twelve years ago and thereby found a “career” which I will continue pursuing after my retirement as history professor and as historian. I find that I now prefer to talk “Poetic” (the language of poetry in English and Russian) more than “Historic” (the language of history). “Poetic” (whether in English or Russian) seems to have less confining vocabulary which can, in fact, subsume and absorb “Historic” – and go beyond.
Boundaries Are Actually Frontiers
Mental fences
Merely define
The territory
Encompassed
Let’s play
leap-frog!
To me, our Cosmic History Club was precisely an attempt (at times astonishingly successful) to “leap” over the walls and fences that (on campuses and elsewhere) separate departments and disciplines – and in a larger (more “cosmic”?) sense separate science from religion, religion from religion, atheism from religion, poetry from prose, mystic from empirical, ethics (theory) from ethics (practice) and so on.