Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Sunday, September 26, 2021

The Pied Piper of Hamelin: a tale of pride and destruction


The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Robert Browning - 1812-1889

I

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.


II

Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.



III

At last the people in a body
To the town hall came flocking:
"'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy;
And as for our Corporation--shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can't or won't determine
What's best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you're old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?
Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!"
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.


IV

An hour they sat in council,
At length the Mayor broke silence:
"For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell,
I wish I were a mile hence!
It's easy to bid one rack one's brain--
I'm sure my poor head aches again,
I've scratched it so, and all in vain
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!"
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
"Bless us,' cried the Mayor, "what's that?"
(With the Corporation as he sat,
Looking little though wondrous fat;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle, green and glutinous)
"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"


V

"Come in!"--the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in--
There was no guessing his kith and kin!
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire.
Quoth one: "It's as if my great-grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!"


VI

He advanced to the council-table:
And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper."
(And here they noticed round his neck
A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of the self-same check;
And at the scarf's end hung a pipe;
And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying
As if impatient to be playing
Upon this pipe, as low it dangled
Over his vesture so old-fangled.)
"Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June, from his huge swarm of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of vampyre-bats:
And as for what your brain bewilders--
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?"
"One? Fifty thousand!" was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.



VII

Into the street the Piper stept,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled,
Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives--
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser
Wherein all plunged and perished!
Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar,
Swam across and lived to carry
(As the manuscript he cherished)
To Rat-land home his commentary:
Which was, "At the first shrill notes of the pipe,
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press's gripe:
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks:
And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out, 'Oh rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast dry-saltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!'
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce an inch before me,
Just as methought it said 'Come bore me!'
-- I found the Weser rolling o'er me."


VIII

You should have heard the Hamelin people
Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.
"Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles!
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
Consult with carpenters and builders
And leave in our town not even a trace
Of the rats!"-- when suddenly, up the face
Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!"


IX

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
So did the Corporation too.
For council dinners made rare havoc
With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;
And half the money would replenish
Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish.
To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
With a gypsy coat of red and yellow!
"Beside," quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,
"Our business was done at the river's brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what's dead can't come to life, I think.
So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink
From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke;
But as for the guilders, what we spoke
Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.
Beside, our losses have made us thrifty:
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!


X

The Piper's face fell, and he cried,
"No trifling! I can't wait! Beside,
I've promised to visit by dinnertime
Bagdad, and accept the prime
Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in,
For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen,
Of a nest of scorpions no survivor--
With him I proved no bargain-driver,
With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver!
And folks who put me in a passion
May find me pipe to another fashion."


XI

"How?" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I brook
Being worse treated than a Cook?
Insulted by a lazy ribald
With idle pipe and vesture piebald?
You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst,
Blow your pipe there till you burst!"


XII

Once more he stept into the street
And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.



XIII

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood,
Unable to move a step or cry,
To the children merrily skipping by--
And could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the Piper's back.
But how the Mayor was on the rack
And the wretched Council's bosoms beat,
As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!
However he turned from South to West
And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,
And after him the children pressed;
Great was the joy in every breast.
"He never can cross that mighty top!
He's forced to let the piping drop
And we shall see our children stop!
When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,--
"It's dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can't forget that I'm bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings:
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!



XIV

Alas, alas for Hamelin!
There came into many a burgher's pate
A text which says that heaven's gate
Opens to the rich at as easy rate
As the needle's eye takes a camel in!
The mayor sent East, West, North and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth
Wherever it was men's lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart's content,
If he'd only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor,
And Piper and dancers were gone forever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear:
"And so long after what happened here
On the twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six;"
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children's last retreat,
They called it the Pied Piper's Street,
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor
Was sure for the future to lose his labor.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn,
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great church-window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away,
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That, in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people who ascribe
To the outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbors lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterranean prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why they don't understand.


XV

So, Willy, let you and me be wipers
Of scores out with all men--especially pipers!
And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,
If we've promised them ought, let us keep our promise.


Sunday, August 2, 2020

As I went out one morning (with a nod to W. H. Auden)




As I went out one morning 
Walking the primal road
My shoulders were bent over
With an invisible load.

And down by the creek where the salmon
Sing all day in the spring
I heard a man with holes in his clothes
Say, “Love has no ending.”

I wondered at his heresy
He wasn’t supposed to speak
Of things he did not understand
And shouldn’t even seek. 







“I love you, Lord, I love you,”
the ragged man proclaimed,
although his face was badly scarred
and his body bent and maimed.

The man was clearly crazy
For as he spoke his rhyme,
The salmon danced in the shallow stream
In fish-determined time.

I didn’t try to love him
But I loved him just the same
For he broke the diver’s quivering bow
And called his God by name.

“Oh tell me, man, oh tell me,”
I cried in my anguished state,
“What is the secret of the world?
Where is the end of hate?” 







And all at once his face had changed
To an evil, ugly mask
His body had become the hate
About which I had asked.

“How stamp this mask into the mud,
How keep despair at bay?”
“You can’t,” he told me, grinning,
"But my God can point the way.”

“How dare you speak of God, you wretch,
When God’s abandoned you?
How dare you use the Holy Name?
He doesn’t want you to!





Your life’s just spent surviving
With the sidewalk as your bed
And taking poisons in your veins
And scrambling to be fed.”

The man just stood in leaves and mulch
While the salmon sang and spawned:
“Just see the other side of me
And tell me I am wrong.”

Another face appeared just then
A face all beaming bright
Its eyes were streaming like the sun
With pure mysterious light:

“You blinded fool, you stand before
A drop of mist made rain
An eye that Paradise looks through
That holds both joy and pain.” 






“I cannot understand you, for
You play such games with me!
How can you masquerade as God
And tell me how to see?”

“No one knows how Life began,
From Nothing came our birth.
A stir of seething molecules
Sparked all the life on earth.”

“Don’t tell me, wretch, you are the one
Who made this world come true!
Imposter, get out of my road,
I cannot look at you.”

“Just so,” the man said, streaming light,
“For no one knows the why.
But you will be forever changed
By looking through my eye.”



Nonsongs and Neopsalms: a compendium of poems by Margaret Gunning, (Part two)




Part two of an excerpt from a much longer book-length manuscript of poetry (Nonsongs and Neopsalms) that never saw the light of day, though some of the poems were excerpted and published in various literary magazines. These were written over a long stretch of time and represent multiple mental and spiritual transfigurations.



                                       
Delivery


This is a strange
Horse I ride, feet
Pointing up, all bloodless and blue
On a long trail of ether.

My brain swims in a vault of chrome
through the removed murmur of voices
and a distant
Clinical clanking.

I will emerge now, slick and
purple as a baby.  The surgeon’s eyes
Crinkle over the mask.

Hands cool as paper, hands that have never
Handled a snake, patiently suture
All of my holes.  The work is true.


Emergency waiting room


Which is worse:  the spilled
smell of
accidents
or the sound
of magazines
slowly
growing older
in this
ticking house of death?
  
Sorry

My heart unclasped
One day in your office,
Suddenly, all in a shot, the catch
Broke loose, andit
Fell behind a pile of files.

I did not mean to;
It was an accident of gravity.
Earth reached up and pulled it down.

I stood dizzy,
My centre lost, the core
Riven.  It felt silly
to lean over like that.

My face grew hot.

There was no way to put it back.
The space had grown over already;
The fall had changed me.

I left that place different,
Looked outside.  The light
Hurt my skin.  The world
was a new color.

I wiped my eyes, and kept on walking.
A small place
in my chest
Grew still with singing.


loom (a hymn of gratitude)

God sings
As she works.  My, my.  A merry

tune:  Bach; birds.

This weaving

of flesh fibres, new nerves

stretched across dead pain, Awakens
the ache of joy.

How it tingles!  Deft hands move,
A shuttle.  Darting threads,
A gleam.  A sense of fabric.

Substance where there were holes.

The moths driven out.

I will hold now.  No secrets will
Spill through.  The bag is
Solid; it nests
All the marbles.


  Somedays

Somedays, the harshness of nostrils

Bus-lurching crowds, rudespeak
of news-seekers, is too much for me,

I need to nestle, to throstle,
wrestle with the renewal

(of your mint-melting
inner adagio)

The bus vomits; I catch hold of things
again.  Taking charge of the crowd,
grabbing thumbs
manipulating the traffic

pulling the world with a pair of
pliers

It’s no good any more:  I need your dependable
light somnolence:  the old silk robe
of your being
(I need to
wear you
like
hair)

 Crown (For Joshua)

It’s purple out today; no mistaking
it.  Purple sings

The imperial air.  Where
roses were lost, that dimension

They were sucked into/I traverse
(as through a secret panel
or revolving door)

to the Other Side, where essence of roses
Smells.
Purple wings shot through
with veins – with skeins of slaughter
We know the price:  the smell of
(blood and roses)

Purple sings the imperial air.  Where
roses are hidden/purple roses
that spill

 You-riff (a favorite)

If mint ice cream could be made flesh,
(moreover
                Gershwin’s
                                   (innocent
piano keys (not the    (inanimate:  but the

        (hot
very (act of playing) teeth, a fine Mary-
morning

(could be a bald spot:a hunch of shoulders)
                                                                 (all
then I guess this Everywhere where we  (call
the universe/this minimouse, into the Here

would be exhaling you/expressing you
daily,
in daily bliss, dally, bless blush 
       
              doily
in gaily, /  earthshivering
Maymess triumphant, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’
hosiery/then, I guess your

Bashful tigersmile’s a paean to
“Great Chocolate!” eyes  (a-bleeding
                                         (monument to
(hooting hyaena’s
                            laugh’s a plainsong to)


  Lean into it


Haven’t they played this song before?
It’s pain, and it has been on my radio
For weeks now.  Let’s settle down

(my yoyo:  the tiny precious blue one,
has been asleep for days; some dream
told me it had died,
             (spring died,
That it   (would not be back again.)

“But an astral yoyo”  (this is
an official statement) broke loose

between our tromboning eyebeams,
our Sprung-together selves.  You are
an Arctic expedition; I a mere

can of Spam, better than eating the dogs
but less tasty than your bunkmate


           Everything stopped breathing


There was a gown
Made of apricots,
Woven from
A dream of bees, a smile
so drunken it was breathed by
Mother Teresa; I was saturated.
Then you came along like an
Old saddle, your walk as
wobbly as
Copland’s cowboy.
Was I expected to just
                                                           (go on)
breathing again?



  Mary Alice


I sing of Maryalice,
nun as sweet as she
(tied up in the AA meeting/back to back
with Ray the pervert, the man
with the gun in his pocket

Fisheye Red, Lazy Sprockett, and the kindly forever prostitute)

A dizzy harrumph, and Mary Alice spoke
of life/in an abstinent/dry convent


Not even the sacrificial
Wine/A sober nun!  I longed
to anoint
her
/        screwed brow
with the oil of self-congratulation the raw
Bursting sanctity of very existence.

Her voice was frail as a Gramophone,
her hug like rails,
her print dress (out of habit?) disdainfully
Particolored.  I wanted an umbrella

to shield her bent crown

from the raining destruction of reality
  

  Buzzed

Your hive was a hum of
Cortical surprise; a splendor
                                (golden fuzz)
Of psalms:  a salty                        of Bee
being.  Such passion
in the apiary!  Such dizzy repro- (se-?)
Duction!  Bee
attitudes frighten me.  I will pick
the salacious hairs, the
haloed laughter of swarms
From my bee-blurred eyes.


                                                
Three-part invention

(a) indigo eyes

I am the salt
you are the sweet
hair/
        My heartsprung

(horse) of the air,
au clair
ah! care,
         clover
to the/stables,
We.

     Drenched with the scent
of hens of hay
                    dear
of tree:  your/odor
(of salt
(of sap
(of sea


b) cunningerotic

Lip, let me laugh
You.  Set the salt
Sally, sashay down
The hay of my mind.

Seashorn,
feverworn
hairborne:  Your
face a chiming, a
Brining.  The
(stainglassed
seahorse
of your
                                          (voicy
                                      (ice




c)     Fifth chakra (for ray lynch)

a blues tunnel
blamed open

pitched down
to the base of the soul

Mermaids spinning
in your throat, Dear
heart:  shining vessel,

opened for a song,
shut open,

Wept for a penny

disabled
    the
by/(dreaming
      (door


  
Three more haiku

I.     Back road
                                             
The way unspools, retreating
           from a back window:
           Unreeling
           vision.

II.               Spiral

               Higher I mount, and higher.
               I look down.  The screw
               Turns deeper.
               I climb.

 III.           Final exam

              Horses explode from the gate.
              Pens surging forward –
              Furious
              focus.

                            

Friday, January 3, 2020

Jazz Cat (for Bill Prouten)




JAZZ CAT

a true jazz cat can live in the moment
able to duly see
the sweet mauve haze of an unadorned blessing
the fruit of an angel tree

and when he plays he plays like a tiger
a jungle cat slinking wild
and when he plays he moves like a cobra
and laughs like a wayward child

there is no now just a moving abstraction
there is no then or when
there is an is, unfolding in rhythm
in which we are born again

it’s true that some hearts chime to the music 
it’s true that some cats know
and play the pulse of divine recreation

(as above. . . so below)




The Invention of the Saxophone

i don’t know who invented this 
reflexive question mark of an instrument 

but i think it was a good thing 

for it’s great to look at, 
with fat keys like frog eyes 

and a big bell like royal jelly 

you could keep flowers in there if you wanted to, 
extra socks 
or even a clock 

Snakes kink too 
and this sound is snakey 

purply mauve as the deepest bruise 
and raunchy 
as a man in love 

smoked as some cat of the night 
disappearing over a fence 
it makes leaps 

(but only because it has to) 

There is no 
morning saxophone 

this is a sound that 
pulls the shades down 

a hangover 
howl 
fading to twilight 
or the blackmost 
belly button 
of the night 

Few can wrap their lips around 
this gooseneck 
without some harm coming to them 
for this is an instrument 
with a long history of 
hollowing out 
all but the most hardy 

Bird flew into a pane 
of glass and was 
smashed 

we don’t know why it does this to people 
(maybe it was mad at him 
for taking it all to such extremes) 

but how could you blow this thing 
halfway 

i ask you 

how could you rear back 
in some great pained whiplash of the spine 
without a sense of 
terrible commitment 

i never much cared for 
saxophones myself 
until i heard one blown correctly at last 
jazz is a genre i will never understand 
but perhaps that’s good 
for like the priesthood, one must enter into it 

without question 
reservation 

or doubt


Friday, August 10, 2018

Gone west (for David)




                   Gone west
  
It seems in my life I have always
moved west, New Brunswick, Alberta,
the boardwalk behind the Quay;

it’s a left-handed sort of life
driving me heartwards, though never,

no never,

heartwise.
  
                                        that day
When I thought I saw you/ on the boardwalk
my guts jumped:                    it
jerked the hook in my colon
(you always knew about bait)

You know how it was:    I wanted to stand on my desk
on the last day of classes
and shout:  O captain!  My captain!

But you had your own rotation – I saw
it reel from view, and

(helpless to catch you)

watched your spiralling apogee.

What is the remotest segment of an orbit?
Booze, blondes.  Too much of
a good thing.  But I did love you.
We wandered, Pooh and Piglet in an
Escher maze, searching for heffalumps.

You calmly said, “Watch this,” and set fire
to my mind.

I saw you as the human yoyo, bobbing up and
                                                                   down,
sleeping, walking the dog, in and out
and ‘round the world.

I knew you’d be back, like hounds,
like a cycle of blood, like black
fruit springing into tree.  When the
string broke, I hid my eyes, and
said, but it’s only a lute,
it will heal itself,
half-hoping I was wrong.

I don’t know why or how God looks
after you, beached like Stanley’s whale,
stared at by the curious.  I don’t know
how God manages.  It was beyond me.

And so I kept on moving. 
                                
Margaret Gunning