Written by
Howard Nemerov |
Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn
The language of the trees. That's done indoors,
Out of a book, which now you think of it
Is one of the transformations of a tree.
The words themselves are a delight to learn,
You might be in a foreign land of terms
Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,
Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.
But best of all are the words that shape the leaves –
Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform –
And their venation – palmate and parallel –
And tips – acute, truncate, auriculate.
Sufficiently provided, you may now
Go forth to the forests and the shady streets
To see how the chaos of experience
Answers to catalogue and category.
Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree
May differ among themselves more than they do
From other species, so you have to find,
All blandly says the book, "an average leaf."
Example, the catalpa in the book
Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three
Around the stem; the one in front of you
But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost;
Maybe it's not catalpa? Dreadful doubt.
It may be weeks before you see an elm
Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids,
A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.
Still, pedetemtim as Lucretious says,
Little by little, you do start to learn;
And learn as well, maybe, what language does
And how it does it, cutting across the world
Not always at the joints, competing with
Experience while cooperating with
Experience, and keeping an obstinate
Intransigence, uncanny, of its own.
Think finally about the secret will
Pretending obedience to Nature, but
Invidiously distinguishing everywhere,
Dividing up the world to conquer it.
And think also how funny knowledge is:
You may succeed in learning many trees
And calling off their names as you go by,
But their comprehensive silence stays the same.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside --
Nature imparts the little Blue-Bird -- assured
Her conscientious Voice will soar unmoved
Above ostensible Vicissitude.
First at the March -- competing with the Wind --
Her panting note exalts us -- like a friend --
Last to adhere when Summer cleaves away --
Elegy of Integrity.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Go slow, my soul, to feed thyself
Upon his rare approach --
Go rapid, lest Competing Death
Prevail upon the Coach --
Go timid, should his final eye
Determine thee amiss --
Go boldly -- for thou paid'st his price
Redemption -- for a Kiss --
|
Written by
Ogden Nash |
Oh, "rorty" was a mid-Victorian word
Which meant "fine, splendid, jolly,"
And often to me it has reoccurred
In moments melancholy.
For instance, children, I think it rorty
To be with people over forty.
I can't say which, come eventide,
More tedious I find;
Competing with the juvenile stride,
Or meeting the juvenile mind.
So I think it rorty, yes, and nifty,
To be with people over fifty.
The pidgin talk the youthful use
Bypasses conversation.
I can't believe the code they choose
Is a means of communication.
Oh to be with people over sixty
Despite their tendency to prolixty!
The hours a working parent keeps
Mean less than Latin to them,
Wherefore they disappear in jeeps
Till three and four A.M.
Oh, to be with people you pour a cup for
Instead of people you have to wait up for!
I've tried to read young mumbling lips
Till I've developed a slant-eye,
And my hearing fails at the constant wails
Of, If I can't, why can't I?
Oh, to be beside a septuagenarian,
Silent upon a peak in Darien!
They don't know Hagen from Bobby Jones,
They never heard of Al Smith,
Even Red Grange is beyond their range,
And Dempsey is a myth.
Oh golly, to gabble upon the shoulder
Of someone my own age, or even older!
I'm tired of defining hadn't oughts.
To opposition mulish,
The thoughts of youth are long long thoughts,
And Jingo! Aren't they foolish!
All which is why, in case you've wondered
I'd like a companion aged one hundred.
|
Written by
Dejan Stojanovic |
Our desires flew like birds in the mornings
When we were waked by the bells of dreams
Hypnotized and ready for another round of living
We would walk down the street of a foreign city mesmerized
By our own history seen on the streets and in the gardens
Filled with exotic flowers and the grass; you loved the grass
You said you would teach me everything
I never found out really what but I accepted you as mentor
To learn whatever might be
I accepted the usual, but unusual, ways of life
And lived a life I never thought I would.
It became a typhoon passing through paradise.
You accepted my gifts but perhaps not my ideas
I thought I knew you
Although I hardly knew if I knew myself;
I learned to accept your unusual, but usual, ways
Your strange thoughts about living and dreaming and mixing living with dreams
I learned to like your usual ways of presenting unusual desires
What about psychology?
There is no way to analyze the working of the brain machine,
Working billions of cells, transmitters, and neutrons
Flying, fighting, competing
How do ideas come to life?
That was another hard question.
I was not able to find out anything about anything,
Except that I was alive and felt alive and yet felt dead as well;
I watched rain, fog, horses, birds, and trees, and I watched the blue;
I really loved watching the blue every day;
You loved the same, although maybe for different reasons;
Maybe we loved each other for different reasons too.
Did we hate each other?
I felt I hated you not a few times.
Did you hate me? Maybe you did as well sometimes
And maybe you still hate me
When you think of that July when the blue was everywhere
With the white dot in the middle, shining like the first time
When everything was green
And you were glistening in the middle of the blue, the green, the summer,
But I was not there.
|
Written by
Dejan Stojanovic |
At twenty-six, I was inexperienced;
Still, I knew much about love
In the waste land, reasoning,
It's not important when you start
Practicing, rather when you start searching;
And I committed myself to finding
It before others even knew it existed, 'breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing'
My thoughts, my longings, my love
For something that didn't need naming
In the misty mornings, recognizing
The dew on the petal, alive yet sleepy;
I was a dreamer, I admit, thinking,
April is the cruelest month, flying
Thoughts about some distant teaching,
Seeing invisible in the visible, loving
Wild thoughts making love, searching
To find it; love was a secret hard to decode—
Sacred to me. Students talking
Of business, Dante and Michelangelo;
That was important, yet not so important
In the land where death died long ago, blooming
Roses taught me a lesson, doing
My search for me, wakening
The land where human measures are important
Yet not so important; so I stayed, deserving
A degree from real roses, forgetting
The Ph.D. at Harvard, which for me was waiting
Of course it was not about Michelangelo,
But does it really matter? I saw paintings
And landscapes, dead lands and lands
Alive, knowing it's more important
To feel than to know. I had it all in my head;
And I stayed where dreaming
Was more important than competing
In the land where the women come and go, talking
Of Sara Bernhardt and Coco Chanel in the Sistine Chapel
And men come and go, talking
Of wars, children come and go, talking
Of chocolate, and they all go, leaving
Not much to think about exchanging
Experiences with feelings, transforming
Experiences into meanings, mixing
Thoughts about love evaporating
Into 'the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes.'
And in the end I understood April, learning
That April seemed cruel only in the dead land, knowing
That every month is equally paradisiacal and hellish,
Equally paradoxical.
|