SHE SUSPECTS THAT THE RELIEF HOPE GIVES IS CRUELTY IN DISGUISE

BY SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ

(TRANSLATED BY ALAN TRUEBLOOD)

    Hope, long-lasting fever of men's lives,

constant beguiler of my weary eyes,

you keep the needle of the balance poised

at the still centre between joys and fears.

   You hover at the midpoint, disinclined

to move this way or that, lest your deceit

allow too free a hand to either state:

 unbounded confidence, abject defeat.

   Who was it claimed you never killed a man?

That you're a slayer anyone can tell

from the suspense in which you keep the soul

    poised between lucky and unlucky chance.

Nor is it true your aim is multiplying

our days on earth: it's to protract dying.

The 17th century Mexican was acclaimed in her time as the "Phoenix of Mexico. America's Tenth Muse". She is now considered as one of the finest Hispanic poets of seventeenth.

Her life reads like a novel. A spirited and precocious girl, one of six illegitimate children, is sent to live with relatives in the capital city. She becomes known for her beauty, wit, and amazing erudition, and is taken into the court as the Vicereine's protégée. For five years she enjoys the pleasures of life at court--then abruptly, at twenty, enters a convent for life. Yet, no recluse, she transforms the convent locutory into a literary and intellectual salon; she amasses an impressive library and collects scientific instruments, reads insatiably, composes poems, and corresponds with literati in Spain. To the consternation of the prelates of the Church, she persists in circulating her poems, redolent more of the court than the cloister. Her plays are performed, volumes of her poetry are published abroad, and her genius begins to be recognized throughout the Hispanic world. Suddenly she surrenders her books, forswears all literary pursuits, and signs in blood a renunciation of secular learning. The rest is silence. She dies two years later, at forty-six.

I had heard a lot about this Mexican nun who had written a lot of love poetry too but never had a chance to read. In August,  while I was in Toronto, we went for a picnic to  "Thousand Islands". On return, we stopped at the city of "Kingston " for lunch. It was Sunday and adjacent to our dining place was a busy Sunday  market . A second handbook seller had many left over poetry collections. I picked 5 fine poetry collections  for a total of 10 dollars that included "A Sor Juana Anthology" brilliantly translated by Alan Trueblood with an introduction by none other than the great Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz. It was as if the book was waiting for me.

Emily Dickinson has romantically sang

“Hope" is the thing with feathers-

That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops -at all-".

 But here is a different take on Hope and  I love Sor Juana's pessimistic tone  . More realistic too.   'Hope'  often succeeds to cleverly  balance between "Joy and Sorrow",  "unbounded confidence and  abject defeat” but its true intention is to protract death.

Ref: "A Sor Juana Anthology" translated by Alan Trueblood

It Is Night, in My Study

Miguel de Unamuno

Translated by Willis Barnstone

It is night in my study.
Deepest solitude; I hear the pounding
in my turbulent chest
it feels alone
and blanched by my mind
and I hear my blood
whose even whisper
fills up the silence.
You might say the water clock's liquid thread
is dropping to the bottom.
Here, in the night, alone, this is my study.
The books don't speak.
My oil lamp
cools these pages with a light of peace,
light of a chapel.
The books don't speak.
Sleeping are the spirits
of the poets, the thinkers, the learned.
It's as if cunning death
were all around me.
I turn at times to see if it's waiting there,
I squint into darkness.
Among the shadows I try to spot
its wary shadow.
I think of heart failure,
at my strong age. Since my fortieth year
two years have gone by.
Silence turns me about
to face a bullying temptation.
Silence and shadows.
And I tell myself, "Maybe soon
when they'll come to say
that supper is waiting for me
they'll find a body
colorless and cold
-the thing I was, waiting-
like these quiet and stiff books,
blood already stopped,
jelling in the veins,
the chest quiet
under the weak light of soothing oil,
a funeral lamp."
I tremble as I end these lines
that don't seem
an unusual testament
but rather a mysterious presentiment
from the shade on the other side,
lines dictated by hunger
for eternal life.
I finished them and am still living.

This is indeed a magnificent poem . Unamuno, who in his solitude sees very clear things that are not true. It is world of the self--and it is also the world of the other worlds beyond the self. What I love about is its piercing passion--about life and death --no qualms about it. And yet, these are our daily preoccupations too.

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher. His major philosophical essay was The Tragic Sense of Life (1913). He was a member of the group of Spanish intellectuals and philosophers known as the "Generation of '98," and a writer whose work dramatically influenced a wide range of 20th-century literature.

Stopping By rain to visit Master Shu

Stopping By rain to visit Master Shu

By Su Tung-P'o

(Translated by David Hinton)

Bamboo scratches at the window-screen,

and rain clattering in bamboo clatters.

Shutters wide-open tranquility, no dust,

mist rises from a table's cold ink-stone.

You relish in this solitude in quiet mystery

and returned to origins, wanting nothing,

sit ch'an stillness on sackcloth and mat,

stand listening to wind's voice in a bowl.

Presence and absence blank here, in cold

cap and sandal, you sprinkle and sweep,

offer thick tea rinsing depths of night,

light incense drifting all worry away,

and on my way home, fireflies meander

north-hall darkness one by one by one

This life tangled in sorrow and trouble

somehow offers such repose in idleness.

Roaming vultures regret former laughs,

earthworms lament their late awakening,

and I'am no T'ao Ch'ien for quiet integrity.

But where's karma in all this idleness?

( ch'an is derived  from 'Dhyana' in sanskrit , meaning meditation . T'ao Ch'ien is Chinese poet and Ch'an buddhist who seems to have cultivated a melancholy sort of contentment in his life.)

Some poems can be nectar for the soul like the above one by Su Tung-P'o 

One of the greatest poets of the Buddhist tradition, Su Tung-P'o (1037-1101) has been a model and source of inspiration for a millennium of Chinese and Japanese poets. He wrote from direct, verifiable experience.

A man from a family of modest means, west central China, upper reaches of the Yangtze, travels downriver at 18 and passes, first time he takes it, the most prestigious civil service examination in the empire. Same year he marries a 15-year-old bride, and goes out on his first government assignment. He serves as a major administrator, then falls into disfavor and serves time in jail and is exiled. He develops a hardscrabble farm in the south, studies with a Zen master, runs rivers and climbs peaks, writes hundreds of letters, drinks wine with friends, and through it all is always writing poems. Brought back, he serves again, and then is exiled to a remote tropical island. Two wives having died, he travels south with his lover. Back in favor once more, he dies before he can get settled in a new home. He was also a marvelous calligrapher, whose large firm free writing can be seen in the museum in Taipei. He is considered one of China's top poets. He lived in the 11th century A.D., when China was in some ways more 'modern' artistically and intellectually than 20th century America.

Su Tung-p'o's elegant, diverse poems are full of compassion, vision, the sense of the moment, the sweetness and hardness of life. It is a  a joy to meet his bright, undefeated spirit through his wonderful poems.

Source of poem:Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology [Paperback] David Hinton (Editor, Translator)

LOCKED WITH A TEAR

LOCKED WITH A TEAR

LUIS ROSALES

(Translated by Ralph Nelson and Rita Nelson)

As the stubborn ant carries its load counting on it to stay alive,

that's how I find you always locked around a tear,

one of your tears that you haven't cried yet,

that you don't want to cry,

that you can't cry because it's larger than your body,

because it's larger than your body

and you can't hold it back, just as the world can't hold back its night,

against it you rest, without crying over it, to stay together,

sleeping beside it sometimes open-eyed,

and you hold it in your arms, without possessing it, the way the rail holds a train,

and you protect it with your body from desecration,

so that the world, so tiny now, can't soak it up in its handkerchief.

Loved this one. It is not easy to achieve a level of poignancy with exaggeration. Rosales remarkably succeeds in it .

Luis Rosales was a renowned  Spanish poet and essayist Spanish of the generation of 1936 .Like Lorca, he was also a native of Granada. A poet praised by Neruda for his mastery of poetic techniques , he won the Cervantes Prize in 1982 for his entire literary work.

ZEN OF HOUSEWORK

ZEN OF HOUSEWORK

BY AL ZOLYNAS

I look over my own shoulder

down my arms

to where they disappear under water

into hands inside pink rubber gloves

moiling among dinner dishes.

My hands lift a wine glass,

holding it by the stem and under the bowl.

It breaks the surface

like a chalice

rising from a medieval lake.

Full of the grey wine

of domesticity, the glass floats

to the level of my eyes.

Behind it, through the window

above the sink, the sun, among

a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches,

is setting in Western America.

I can see thousands of droplets

of steam—each a tiny spectrum—rising

from my goblet of grey wine.

They sway, changing directions

constantly—like a school of playful fish,

or like the sheer curtain

on the window to another world.

Ah, grey sacrament of the mundane!

In the life of California poet Al Zolynas, a moment of activity, namely, washing dishes, and the moment of the poem itself are not separated, and we can even imagine that he talks to himself washing dishes and that a tape has recorded his words. This would be a new kind of coping with time, though we know that composition is an integral part of poetry, and that direct reaction to events is rather rare and the poet wrote the poem at another point of time.

We are thus inclined to consider this poem a composition on the subject of washing dishes, with a consciously maintained illusion of the present tense. In fact housework  is constantly emphasized throughout the poem with nearly synonymous words, such as “moiling,” “domesticity,” and “mundane" and repetitions of "grey".  It has some striking imageries too like wine glass rising like a chalice from a medieval lake.

This is a beautiful and accessible poem and it shows how musings on such a mundane chore like dish washing can be turned into work of art. The poem reminds me of Irish poet Thomas Moore's words -"The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest." 

Al Zolynas spent his boyhood in Australia before coming to the United States when he was 15. He taught literature and writing at Alliant International University . He  is also an  experienced Zen practitioner.

THE GOD FORSAKES ANTONY

THE GOD FORSAKES ANTONY

Constantine P. Cavafy 

Translated by Rae Dalven

When suddenly, at the midnight hour,
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts --
your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not mourn in vain.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself
it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who have been worthy of such a city,
approach the window with firm step,
and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.

(1911) 

From : The complete poems of Cavafy by Rae Dalven

It is a magnificent poem by the towering Greek Poet CP Cavafy. I love his sense of balance, his organically perfect unity, his control on emotions in narrating dramatic moments. The poem refers to Plutarch's story that, when Antony was besieged in Alexandria by Octavian, he heard the sounds of instruments and voices, which made its way through the city, and then passed out; the god Bacchus (Dionysus), Antony's protector, was deserting him.

Thoughit thus depicts a moment  when the pagan gods is deserting him. it could also be a difficult moment in our life when we have to leave a city or place under difficult circumstances. The poet speaks to Antony and admonishes him .The poet speaks to Antony and admonishes him to deserve the gift he has had, the gift of living in a city as blessed as Alexandria has been. The poem opens at midnight just as the invisible procession of the gods is leaving and urges us along with his protagonist, Mark Anthony, to embrace the losses in our life along with everything else. For they, too, are a part of who we are; they, too, play their part in the process of soul-making.

"
---do not mourn in vain.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving."

The Greek Poet CP Cavafy, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt for most of his life, is considered by many to be one of the great international poets. During his lifetime he wrote one hundred fifty four poems that explore the persistent existential problems we all face. His impact is wide ranging having influenced Nobel prize winning poets such as George Seferis, Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, and Eugenio Montale. The themes that pervade his work include Hellenism, alienation, the double identity of the person, and the psychology of the crowd. His poems are short, full of irony and meaning, They speak with his unique voice and are immediately recognizable as his, and his alone.

Painting:Man at the Window by Samuel van Hoogstraten (1653)

To the Fates

To the Fates

 by Friedrich Holderlin 

Give me just one summer, stark sisters,

     One more autumn to ripen my song.

          Then I’ll gladly die, my heart filled

   With that sweet music.

The soul, which never had its godly rights

     In life, won’t find peace either.

          When just once the sacred lies down

  In my heart, the poem will find perfection.

Then I will welcome the world

     Of silence and shadows and happily leave

          My song behind—once you’ve lived

  Like the gods, what else is there?

Even though his poetry was not widely celebrated in his lifetime, and he suffered from mental illness for half of his life, Friedrich Holderlin has come to be considered one of the great poets of European and world literature. Because of his complex syntax and themes and his influence on many subsequent great poets like Rilke, Paul Celan and philosophers like Benjamin, Derrida, Adorno and Heidegger. His  fame now outstrips Goethe and Schiller as the valued poet of the Period. Considered one of the founders of European romanticism, Hölderlin had a mere 10 years to develop his distinctive style before falling prey to a debilitating mental illness, whose resultant works are the heartrendingly sweet and melancholy "The last poems". The below one comes from that phase.

I love this poem as I have always thought one must experience  the taste of divinity, something that sanctifies our existence,  in this world and not in the one above. This poem fervently echoes my belief.

A basic attitude of faith is the prerequisite for poetry, in the sense that the poet must acknowledge the existence of something higher than man. "To the Fates" is a wonderful poem that suggests the necessity of faith, for the poet is addressing the Fates (Stark sisters) as deities who are capable of governing . In three strophes of four lines each Holderlin compressed a great deal of his own struggle to deserve the role of the poet. He begins by pleading with the Fates for one more summer and one more autumn in which to perfect his poetry, that he may die fulfilled. The urgency of his plea is underscored in the second strophe , where the poet explains that a soul must receive its divine justice in life, for the afterlife will offer no second chance.

The conclusion expresses Holderlin's deepest conviction concerning the poet's calling that once he succeeds in bringing forth his sublime song, nothing else is needed as he will have lived like Gods then. The linkage that cannot be overlooked here is between the divine nature of poetry and the divine nature of the poet's life if only the Fates permit to ripen to perfection.

From: Selected Poems of Friedrich Holderlin 
Maxine Chernoff (Translator), Paul Hoover (Translator)