Poem by Osip Mandelstam

Monument to Mandelstam in Russian city where he was exiled

Seamus Heaney called the wonderful Russian poet Osip Mandelstam "the Lazarus of modern poetry." His life's heartbreaking end in a Stalinist purge is something I think about frequently. The Soviets suppressed his work after about 1928, but the burial was premature; his wife Nadezhda, who wrote the inspiring and generous memoir, Hope Against Hope, hid some of it and memorized some of it and so it survived and is now appreciated, even in Russia, as some of the greatest of the 20th Century. Much of it is very difficult, even beyond comprehension for me, without notes. Sometimes whether I can get anything out of it depends on the translation, of course. But much of it is bright and filled with meaning expressed in concrete images. (By the way, Mandelstam wrote lively prose as well.)

This title-less poem (many were given only numbers, not titles, this one was #8), translated by James Greene, is one of the bright and beautiful ones. To me, anyway. I like the idea of uniqueness unto eternity. I especially like "I am gardener, flower too..."

[8]
What shall I do with the body I've been given,
So much at one with me, so much my own?

For the calm happiness of breathing, being able
To be alive, tell me where I should be grateful?

I am gardener, flower too, and un-alone
In this vast dungeon.

My breath, my glow, you can already see
On the windowpanes of eternity.

A pattern is imprinted there,
Unknown till now.

Let this muddle die down, this sediment flow out.
The lovely pattern cannot be crossed out.
                 - Osip Mandelstam, 1909

Poem by Samuel Beckett

Beckett tends to go over my tiny head housing its small brain. But this one, run across frequently in John Montague's anthology The Book of Irish Verse, brings me pleasure, especially the notion of squandering courage, even as I am still figuring it out. Let me know if you can help.

Gnome
Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through the world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning
                      - Samuel Beckett

Poem by Charlotte Mew

Charlotte Mew, British, 1869 - 1928

This one is in the vernacular so let me translate a little to get you started. The first line is saying "Some said because he wouldn't speak." The fourth line means "He must be bird-witted." In the second stanza, the fourth line means he would "sit and talk with his shadow." The sixth line means "And there ain't no memory on the place." The poem is easy to read if you go slow the first time and just go with the sound.

The poem like the poet, Mew, is beautiful (okay, maybe not physically, but give her a break, she was a great poet who killed herself by drinking Lysol) and sad. It stands out for me of course because of "the spider's lace" and the "whizzle and race of the dry, dead leaves." 

But mostly for its subject, old taciturn Dave, so obscure, an object of some scorn perhaps, who here is allowed to have been talented in his work and especially to have loved, even if the thing he loved, nature, Arracrombe Wood, wasn't inclined, or able, to love him back exactly. Maybe that was the point.

       Arracombe Wood
       Some said, because he wud'n spaik
       Any words to women but Yes and No,
Nor put out his hand for Parson to shake
       He mun be bird-witted. But I do go
       By the lie of the barley that he did sow,
And I wish no better thing than to hold a rake
      Like Dave, in his time, or to see him mow.

       Put up in a churchyard a month ago,
'A bitter old soul,' they said. but it wadn't so.
His heart were in Arracombe Wood where he'd used to go
To sit and talk wi' his shadder till sun went low,
Though what it was all about us'll never know.
       And there baint no mem'ry in the place
       Of th' old man's footmark, nor his face;
       Arracombe Wood do think more of a crow --
'Will be violets there in the Spring: in Summer time the spider's lace;
       And come the Fall, the whizzle and race
Of the dry, dead leaves when the wind gies chase;
       And on the Eve of Christmas, fallin' snow.
                                -Charlotte Mew (1921)

Mother's Day - a poem

Mother's Day

3 springs running the sisters

planted a dogwood in the yard

and 3 summers running it died barren

The 4th spring they gave her red

and white cut flowers meant to die

Today the koi have left L.A.

They are coming north in tanks

When they come they will have come to heal

her mind. 50 summers on 

the sisters truck solely in the perishable.

                                      - J. O'Brien