memorize poetry

Returning to my animal theme, here is Whitman on the topic.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid
and self contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands
of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

This is Mystic Ode 833 by Rumi but I think of it as “Nate’s poem” because it was recited at the funeral of Nate Fisher in “Six Feet Under.” The last line knocks me out.

Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? “God is One.”
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don’t call all these lights “the Light of God”;
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.

I seem to be doing a lot of “spiritual” reading lately and this poem seems to fit right in. Hopkins was a Jesuit priest as well as a poet.

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I happen to be having a VERY BUSY time in my life right now but I don’t want to stop with the poetry. So, here is a VERY SHORT poem. In fact, I have memorized it already,,,:-). Actually, it kind of ties in with my “joie de vivre” goal. Herewith, “Dust of Snow”

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Robert Frost

I’ve found that every couple of weeks I have to review the past poems that I have memorized in order to keep them in my memory. If I don’t have a long suffering friend/family member handy…well, my cat daisy is a pretty good audience,,,;-)
So, herewith yet another animal poem,,,,

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

The Pinsky poem was actually pretty easy to memorize. And I noticed that the process of memorization helps to focus on each individual word, which, after all, is what poetry is all about. So, to continue the animal theme here is a poem about a fox by Kenneth Patchen.

The Fox
Because the snow is deep
Without spot that white falling through white air

Because she limps a little – bleeds
Where they shot her

Because hunters have guns
And dogs have hangman’s legs

Because I’d like to take her in my arms
And tend her wound

Because she can’t afford to die
Killing the young in her belly

I don’t know what to say of a soldier’s dying
Because there are no proportions in death.
Kenneth Patchen

Well, I had a hard time with “The Heaven of Animals” because it was so LONG. But I finally did it. Here is a nice poem about a cat written by our former poet laureate.

The cat cries for me from the other side.
It is beyond her to work this device
That I open and cross and close
With such ease when I mean to work.

Its four panels form a cross – the rood,
Sign of suffering and redemption,
The rod, a dividing pike or pale
mounted and hinged to swing between

One way or place and another, meow.
Between the January vulva of birth
And the January of death’s door
There are so many to negotiate,

Closed or flung open or ajar valves
Of attention. O kitty, if the doors
Of perception were cleansed
All things would appear as they are,

Infinite. Come in, darling, drowse
Comfortably near my feet, I will click
The barrier closed again behind you, O
Sister, fellow-mortal, here we are.

For my first try at this I am challenging myself to memorize something longer than I am comfortable with. This is one of my favorite poems so I’m hoping that the “feeling” will make it easier.

The Heaven of Animals
Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.

For some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward ; to walk
Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance,
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycles center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.
James Dickey