Category: Alphabets

“Comes Somebody” by Nelly Sachs.

April 26th, 2008

Comes Somebody

Comes somebody
from faraway
with a language
which perhaps locks
the sounds
with the neighing of the mare
or the chirping
of the little blackbird
or even as a screeching saw
that cuts up all that is near—

Comes somebody
from faraway
with the movements of a dog
or
perhaps a rat
and it is winter
so clothe him warmly-
it may be
that he has fire under his soles
(maybe he rode on a meteor)
so do not reproach him
if your perforated carpet screams—

A stranger always carries
his home in his arms
like an orphaned child
for which he perhaps
only seeks a grave.

© Nelly Sachs. 1891-1970. This translation is © Marianne Agren Mc Elroy’s family.

Image: The Decapitated Bird by Marianne Agren McElroy

Hildegard of Bingen

April 26th, 2008

I read the story of Hildegard many years before I had heard the music. I have published a link to the ‘irupert’ Hildegard site on the right column of links, and an image of ‘ O Vos Felices Radices’.

I first heard ‘The origin of Fire’ in Mayo at a point just South West of the Reek, which is the local name for Croagh Patrick, on those few days that led to the New Year in 2005 , just after the Aceh Tsunami (which very directly effected a close family member).

We seemed to have appalling percussive weather and had gone (possibly insanely) to a local beach near the base of the reek, we were literally blown out of the car.

On arriving home and being truely miserable, someone had put on a Hildegard disc and had lit candles. There was the smell of cooking.

The room filled with her song and the news emerging from Phuket was good, we did not know that there was another dying being accomplished and that the Hildegard was an oasis of calm and beauty in that horrible time. I would encourage everyone to read the depths of her visions, with the awareness that she spent her whole life in praise and composition.

The images most general to her (of her affliction) show a flame striking her forehead, and her scribe/confessor. It’s over 900 years since the compositions but the quality of contemporary interpretations are excellent– however it’s not something I would seek to listen to everyday.

Along with Julian of Norwich, Hildegard’s work is outstanding in times when education for women was limited to church and mostly the males did the vision thing. Julian’s use of Amirah– or it’s english language equivalent transcends the religious content, but the context of those lives provided the poetic tension and purity of expression.

‘The Ordo Virtum’ – (The play of Virtues) and ‘Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revealationum’ comprise the major works. These number 77 songs/antiphons. It is amazing how much you lose as you get a bit distant from education. In school we studied antiphon form and even sang a few – but most of the time we were too distracted by other things to pay much attention.
Rosalind/Ganymede

April 20th, 2008

‘Make the doors upon a woman’s wit
and it will out at the casement;
shut that and ’twill out at the keyhole;
stop that , ’twill fly with
the smoke out at the chimney’.

From ‘As you Like It‘

though many pals think that Bacon wrote Shakespeare or something like that .

Rosalind dresses as a boy in the forest of Arden. She, along with Portia from ‘The Merchant of Venice’ are beautifully written heroines.

from “Poem Rocket” By Allen Ginsberg.

March 12th, 2008

This is an excerpt from Poem Rocket, by Allen Ginsberg,

Moon politicians earth-weeping and warring in eternity
tho not one star disturbed by screaming madmen from
Hollywood
Oil tycoons from Romania making secret deals with flabby green
Plutonians-
slave camps on Saturn Cuban revolutions on Mars?
Old life and new life side by side, will Catholic Church find Christ
on Jupiter?
Mohammed rave in Uranus will Buddha be acceptable on the
stolid planets
or will we find Zoroastrian temples flowering on Neptune?
What monstrous new ecclesiastical design on the entire universe
unfolds in the dying Pope’s brain?

Excerpted from Poem Rocket by Allen Ginsberg who died in 1997. I started a conversation about him on a poetry forum, and indeed I met him briefly at the Cúirt Poetry Festival in Galway ! (amazed)

Welcome to Poethead ! This is my first ever post, so I am hoping that it gets off the ground. My emphasis will mostly be on women’s poetry, with some discussion on censorship, culture, and freedom of speech. I might throw in an index and see how it all goes.

EDIT 2014: The Poetry Ireland Forum, mentioned here has been deleted from the PI servers. I rescued an amount of drafts and original works, but I had to let conversation threads and chit chat go as no data liberation tools were provided by Poetry Ireland. PI took the decision to abandon, without archiving, their 2000-2013 poetry forum. That’s 13 years of people’s work not saved, not compressed, just chucked. Oh! how we respect the work of poets in Ireland!