Poem by Derek Mahon

Can't find the book this poem comes from; it's somewhere among the piles

I have long loved this poem by the Irish poet Derek Mahon, but I always have to look up the word "imprevisable," even though its meaning is detectable from its spelling. It means "lacking predictability," but also can mean voluble, or "moving quickly from solid or liquid to vapor." I think maybe Mahon/Horace meant it to be read both ways, even though the meanings are, in this context, contradictory: that is, certainly the future is unpredictable, except that we will all change from our bodies of mass and water into vapor, into dust. But this is a happy poem with a message of embracing life in moments, as it happens, and not worrying yourself too much. I love "the days are more fun than the years..." Decant your wine.

How to Live
(Horace, Odes, Book One, II)

Don't waste your time, Leuconoe, living in fear and hope
of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.
Accept whatever happens. Whether the gods allow
us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now
which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,
decant your wine: the days are more fun than the years
which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest
one day at a time, and never mind the rest.
                                                       - Derek Mahon

Slowly twisting in the wind - Lines from the Singing Loins

The Singing Loins are a great folk duo from the Medway Delta in Kent, SE England. Some of their records have been produced by Billy Childish. They create great harmonies and play many serious songs ( Video: "Hauling in the Slack"), but they are also funny, and even in the song these lines are from, all about self-doubt, they end up laughing. Anyway, this is how I always feel whenever it's time to write, especially the last few stanzas and the wind-twisting thing:

Little Devil Doubt by the Singing Loins

Little devil doubt
I'll cast you out
Tomorrow...
For today, you've ruined me (sic) life.

Little devil doubt
I'll cast you out,
Today....
For tomorrow, I've work to do.

Little devil doubt
though I've not sinned
I'm slowly twisting in the wind.
I wish my friends would all come by
to pull my leg and help me die.

Slowly twisting in the wind
Slowly twisting in the wind

Little devil doubt
I'll cast you out
In a while...
For now, I'm paralyzed.

Little devil doubt
I'll cast you out
this minute...
Before you hang me high.

Slowly twisting in the wind
Slowly twisting in the wind
Slowly twisting in the wind
Slowly twisting in the wind...

All these Pale Fires...

Reading Shakespeare last night, came to the passage from which Nabokov chose the title for my favorite novel, Pale Fire. Then, this morning, there the term was again in a Flannery O'Connor short story, so here they all are together, along with some Nabokov Pale Fire paraphernalia....

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea. The moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun...
                                           - Shakespeare
                                             Timon of Athens
                                             Act 4, Scene 3

Tarwater lurched into the middle of the stream bed and crouched on his hands and knees. The moon was reflected like pale fire in the few spots of water in the sand... 
                                                                     - Flannery O'Connor
                                                                       "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead"

Nabokov's endlessly great novel:                                                 His fictional poet's poem:

                                     Also Shades' famous index cards: 

Shade stuff from the beautiful Gingko Press edition, Berkeley 2011.

                                                

The Lonely Goatherd

The charlatan,
a suicide,
he never really could decide:
mountain goats?
Or whores with sores
in their throats?
                   -J. O'Brien

A Messenger

He said, “God is the light of day.” 

Then what is the dark of night? 

He said God is:
the bright white wine
and the inky red that stains

the enormous void we bear 
and the thing we bear it in
all we do not know 
and how we know it. Tell him
my mind flutters and flits
like a very plain butterfly
over a flaming field in mid-summer
that deadens the soul. 

And there is no chance of rain 
and the sun is set to remain
remote for years without dying
and nothing will change
not direction nor this weak, weakening 
effort to alight in shaded 
safety. 

                              Tell him this then, 
approximately where I can be found: 
in a field aflame in dead 
summer, unable to land.
                                       -J. O'Brien