My November Guest, by Robert Frost

I realise I’ve posted a few poems lately—sorry for those who aren’t so into this. But I thought I’d post one more I came across this morning, by Robert Frost, called “My November Guest”. It is, I think, a poem about what we might now call Seasonal Affective Disorder, though as those who have read my essay on Sadness (see essays page) will probably guess, I feel we need to say more (though not less) than this. Frost speaks of his sorrow, who comes in November, and teaches him to see the world differently. I feel there is too much embrace of sorrow here (though I’m still not sure about how the last stanza affects this judgment); but it’s a beautiful and sad and interesting poem.

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
  Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
  She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
  She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
  Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
  The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
  And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
  The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
  And they are better for her praise.

Jacob — A poem

“Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” (Genesis 32:24)
“I walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” (Psalm 116:9)

Jabok. The name sends a chill through me
even now,
years later,
when my sons have grown and my flocks are fat,
and I walk with a stick. So carefully.

For I remember that night,
how I sent my wives and children across the ford,
and
inexplicably,
went back. Compelled by what?

My heart was full
—could I really have slept?—
of the day’s prayers blurted out in anxious faith’s bluster.
“Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother.
I am afraid. He will kill us all.”
And it was cold sitting by the water,
looking at the stars,
thinking of stories my Grandfather told.

Sometimes I wonder if it was a dream.
If I only imagine I heard the footsteps,
and turned to see him come upon me,
and pushed back with all my might,
holding him off,
rolling down the bank,
kicking and biting,
and even when he broke my hip
did not let go,
until he blessed me:
“What is your name?” He said.
And I gave it; but never caught his,
and was left to work it all out for myself.
“Prevailed”?
Held on, survived, more like it.

Was it all the lies of fitful sleep,
and so with false hope
that I met Esau next day?
A strange sleep, though, that gives a man a limp;
and “Israel”
—I did not give myself that fame.

No, I did see him.
I held him, face to face
And won my fears and doubts.
And I’m still alive
to remember
Jabok.

Sneezes

Sneezes all have different sounds.
Some are quiet, some are loud.
Some are heavy, others light.
Some can wake you in the night.
Some sound like a cat exploding.
Others like a distant moaning.
Some require whole body movement.
Others sneak out like a truant.
(And some are not just sound, but solids;
Watch out for their stray deposits!)
Yes as surely as the world is round,
Sneezes all have different sounds.

Forgive me for this lapse from more "serious" content.
We've had a bit of hay-fever at my house lately and I was in a cheerful mood.

An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow, by Les Murray

The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There’s a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can’t stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets
which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
There’s a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.

The man we surround, the man no one approaches
simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
not like a child, not like the wind, like a man
and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
sob very loudly — yet the dignity of his weeping

holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit —
and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
as many as follow her also receive it

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea —
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

John Donne on Good Friday

Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward By John Donne
(An extract)

Yet dare I almost be glad I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God’s face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands which span the poles,
And turn all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height which is
Zenith to us, and our antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of His,
made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for his apparel, ragged and torn?

O Sacred Head Sore Wounded

Tune: Passion Chorale, by J. S. Bach
Words: Paul Gerhardt, 1607-67 (O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden)
Trans.: H. W. Baker and J. W. Alexander

O sacred head sore wounded,
with grief and shame weighed down;
O kingly head surrounded
with thorns thine only crown.
Death’s pallor now comes o’er thee,
the glow of life decays;
yet hosts of heaven adore thee
and tremble as they gaze.

What language shall I borrow
to praise thee, heavenly friend,
for this thy dying sorrow,
thy pity without end?
O agony and dying!
O love to sinners free!
Jesus, all grace supplying,
turn thou thy face on me.

In this thy bitter Passion,
good Shepherd, think of me
with thy most sweet compassion,
unworthy though I be:
beneath thy cross abiding
for ever would I rest,
in thy dear love confiding,
and with thy presence blest.

Be thou my consolation,
my shield, when I must die;
remind me of thy passion
when my last hour draws nigh.
Mine eyes shall then behold thee,
upon thy cross shall dwell,
my heart by faith enfold thee;
who dieth thus, dies well.

This hymn (number 255 in The Australian Hymn Book) is a remarkable reflection on the death of Christ and its intense importance in the life of the believer. In the opening verse we picture the dying Jesus, but then are jolted as we lift our gaze to the surrounding, adoring heavenly hosts. With the second verse we begin in praise that is conscious of its inadequacy, and then flow into the astonishingly bold request for Jesus’ attention (to me!) in the very moment of his passion. And in the final verse we face our own death squarely, and throw ourselves upon our only hope in that hour: who dieth thus, dies well! What a wonderful, robust, honest hymn!

Tom Sawyer on theft, Huck Finn on casuistry

Here’s a great passage from a great novel. (Readers, please excuse the racist language, which comes from a book that is actually profoundly anti-racist.) Huck and Tom are in the process of devising an escape plan for Jim, Huck’s runaway slave friend.

Along during that morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn’t borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don’t blame them for it either. It ain’t no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it’s his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for, to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we warn’t prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean ornery person would steal when he warn’t a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was that comes handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime, without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with, there’s where the difference was. He said if I’d a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn’t see no advantage in my representing a prisoner, if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that, every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon. (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 314-315).

Photo: EssjayNZ/Flickr.com

A Poem for Christmas

Journey of the Magi
By T. S. Eliot

‘A cold coming we had of it,
just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high-prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

On Dumbledore and Sexuality

Alastair has posted a wonderful reflection on J. K. Rowling’s revelation that Dumbledore is gay. Here’s a sample:

Undoubtedly we are sexual beings, but our sexuality belongs, I believe, within bounds. There are parts of life that should be non-sexualized. This is part of what concerns me about many of the things associated with the ‘outing’ or ‘coming out’ of homosexuals. By defining the person too much in terms of their sexuality, sexuality in general is brought out of the contexts in which it belongs and starts to invade every area of life. I don’t like being called ‘heterosexual’ for a host of reasons, but one of these reasons is that, although I do possess a sexual nature, it is not something that I believe belongs in most contexts of discourse…

In the books the character of Dumbledore is defined by far, far more than his sexuality. He comes across as a very human and a very noble person. As such a person, he is the sort of person who might truly wrestle with the complexities of human sexuality, without reducing himself to being defined by or purely driven by this sexuality. In fact, the Dumbledore that we encounter in the Harry Potter canon seems to be chaste and celibate. I see no reason why such a character should not appear in a book written for teens. There are many virtuous people who have struggled with homoerotic desire. Is a person defiled more than any other person simply because they have sinful desires? Is there any of us who doesn’t have sinful desires?

Whether your reaction to this revelation is one of fear or delight, I encourage you to read Alastair’s thoughts.

Annunciation, by John Donne

Some time ago, I posted the final part of John Donne’s La Corona. Now that we are in advent, here is the second part, Annunciation. This poem is overwhelmed by the majesty of the incarnation, and the incredible humility of the Son, in yielding himself to lie in the Virgin’s womb, so that she becomes “Thy Maker’s maker!” I think some contemplation of the wonder of this is only right at Christmas time.

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That all, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison in thy womb; and though he there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He’will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy son and brother,
Whom thou conceiv’st, conceived; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker and thy Father’s mother,
Thou’hast light in dark; and shut’st in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.