We Shall Not Escape Hell

If you are a fan of National Poetry Month, or poetry, or books, or something vaguely related to such subjects, go on over to Powell’s Poetry Madness voting and cast your vote for who among these passionate sister-poets should win the crown. (Emily D, the Queen Bee herself of American lit, won last year, so she’s out of the running.). Who will win the (dark, tarnished, anti-) halo this year?? Don’t let your voice remain uncounted!

Today, we have one of the poetry Queen Bees of the fair Russian lands, the delightfully dark and intense Marina Tsvetaeva:

We shall not escape Hell

We shall not escape Hell, my passionate
sisters, we shall drink black resins––
we who sang our praises to the Lord
with every one of our sinews, even the finest,

we did not lean over cradles or
spinning wheels at night, and now we are
carried off by an unsteady boat
under the skirts of a sleeveless cloak,

we dressed every morning in
fine Chinese silk, and we would
sing our paradisal songs at
the fire of the robbers’camp,

slovenly needlewomen, (all
our sewing came apart), dancers,
players upon pipes: we have been
the queens of the whole world!

first scarcely covered by rags,
then with constellations in our hair, in
gaol and at feasts we have
bartered away heaven,

in starry nights, in the apple
orchards of Paradise
––Gentle girls, my beloved sisters,
we shall certainly find ourselves in Hell!

Call Me Ishmael Tonight

 

Today’s poem is the ghazal Tonight by one of my favorite poets, the Kashmiri-American writer Agha Shahid Ali. There is a nifty annotated version here that explains various references and an interesting essay by Stephen Burt in which he explores the history of the ghazal form in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu poetic traditions, and discusses the Sufi imagery behind the poem.

TONIGHT by Agha Shahid Ali

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?
Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”
“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—
All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken;
Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities
multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.
He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed.
No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.

God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—
I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.
Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?
This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

Nothing But A Man

Today’s poems are by the Lebanese Francophone poet Nadia Tueni:

Nadia Tueni

Nothing But A Man

Nothing but a man
let’s execute him against the door.
The morning of taking him away was robed
with the freshness of water;
it would be best to finish him off
against a door of blue wood.
His knees were knees of water
a forehead of oak under the rain.
He told me: ” talk
of this flower dying according to the curve
of a thought,
of oblivion it offers in the shelter of
the sun,
and of multiplied love”. . .
Enough.
We shot him against the light
and let hatred rise like baked bread.
Maybe I’ll weep for him.
It was simple in the deep earth
and brief.

Would You Come Back?

Would you come back if I said the earth
was at the tip of my fingers
like a charred branch already cooled?
birds often die deep in your blond hair
they adopt the sea as a vice
because of its sonorous seaweed
and runaways coming undone
too late to be born each second
on their knees before the faces whose every color
is a holy wafer
like a throat seized by cattle who devour a sunray
would you come back if I said the earth
was at the tip of my fingers?

“What do you hate, and who do you love….”

Another rainy-sunny not-quite-spring no-longer-winter morning in Washington. Today’s poem is from the late Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, who died in 2011. He was born in the Galilee, lived briefly in Lebanon, and during his life had a souvenir shop in Nazareth. (A poet owning a souvenir shop: either perfect, or perfectly ironic…)

An important question:
“What do you hate,
and who do you love?”

(Does what we hate always become a what – even if it is, in fact, a who – and what we love become a who, something personal?)

And who can’t love this answer:

“I hate departure,

and I love the spring,

and the path to the spring,

and I worship the middle

hours of morning.”

Spring in Galilee by Betty Rubinstein

About this poem:

Since his childhood, Muhammad Ali’s family had counted on the income from his various enterprises – selling eggs, then cigarettes and other small items in Saffurriya. “Providing for his family had, for him, an essential moral dimension,” Hoffman writes, “and he considered it a value above almost all others. Only when he had figured out how to care for their material needs could he set out to indulge this private, slightly selfish desire.” Muhammad Ali is an autodidact, having taught himself literary Arabic, reading Arabic and western classics, and then the modernists. It took him years to prepare, while working long hours in his shop which also served as a kind of local salon for constant literary debate and coffee drinking with his writerly friends. The first poems showed that Muhammad Ali “had no interest in replicating the standard rhymes and meters” of classic and even some modern Arabic verse. “He relied as he always did on more intuitive sounds and structures, which allowed him to explore a meandering, gently melancholy line of feeling and thought and to create a charged poetic landscape.” The result would sharply contrast with the more arch style of Darwish. Writing in a free verse style called shi’r nathr and rejecting the rhetorical flourishes expected of an Arabic poet, Muhammad Ali became a poet “squarely on the fringe … Taha’s books remain largely unknown to most readers of poetry in his own language.”

After producing the poems for his first book, he went silent for yet another decade – until the invasion of Lebanon. Then, in a four month period, he wrote most of his second book. In this work, he addressed the figure of “Amira,” the name he gives to the girl-bride promised to him but from whom he was separated. She had remained in the camps in Lebanon – and part of Hoffman’s history is the telling of the terrors that she and her people faced at the hands of the Phalangists (and the Israelis, tacitly approving). Also, in these poems Saffurriya becomes mythologized, the locus of desire, the image of a fulfilling life and community now vanished.

Muhammad Ali finally met his Amira in Lebanon through the agency of a Jewish friend. From this moving encounter came this poem:

MEETING AT AN AIRPORT

You asked me once,
on our way back
from the midmorning
trip to the spring:
“What do you hate,
and who do you love?”

And I answered,
from behind the eyelashes
of my surprise,
my blood rushing
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure …
I love the spring
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle
hours of morning.”
And you laughed …
and the almond tree blossomed
and the thicket grew loud with nightingales.

… A question
now four decades old:
I salute that question’s answer;
and an answer
as old as your departure;
I salute that answer’s question …

And today,
it’s preposterous,
here we are at a friendly airport
by the slimmest of chances,
and we meet.
Ah, Lord!
we meet.
And here you are
asking – again,
it’s absolutely preposterous –
I recognized you
but you didn’t recognize me.
“Is it you?!”
But you wouldn’t believe it.
And suddenly
you burst out and asked:
“If you’re really you,
What do you hate
and who do you love?!”

And I answered –
my blood
fleeing the hall,
rushing in me
like a shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure,
and I love the spring,
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle
hours of morning.”

And you wept,
and flowers bowed their heads,
and doves in the silk of their sorrow stumbled.

Because I do not hope to turn again…

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent in the Western Christian calendar. I was thinking of going with something snazzily obscure but decided, what the heck, I’m going to go with the classic here, the Ash Wednesday poem in English. If you haven’t read it, you probably should. If you have, you lucky thing, it shouldn’t hurt to read it again, eh?

It’s one thing to talk about repentance, conversion, teshuvah in Hebrew – all these good words that mean turning, reorienting, rethinking your life. But once you’ve turned, sticking to that path can be the hardest part. Staying on the wagon. Following the narrow way through the narrow gate…

Because I do not hope to turn again…

Ash Wednesday, TS Eliot

Ash Wednesday in Hyderabad, India

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

– – – –

For an interesting reading and the rest of the poem (there are five more sections!), see here. For more information about the genesis of Eliot’s writing, thou may clickest here

Poem of the Day: Half Omen, Half Hope by Joanna Klink

Half Omen, Half Hope from Raptus

 

When everything finally has been wrecked and further shipwrecked 

When their most ardent dream has been made hollow and unrecognizable,

They will feel inside their limbs the missing shade of blue that lingers

Against hills in the cooler hours before dark, and the moss at the foot of the forest

When green starts to leave it. What they take into their privacy (half of his embrace,

Her violence at play) are shadows of acts which have no farewells in them.

Moons unearth them. And when, in their separate dwellings, their bodies

Feel the next season come, they no longer have anyone to whom

To tell it. Clouds of reverie pass outside the window and a strange emptiness

Peers back in. If they love, it is solely to be adored, it is to scatter and gather

Themselves like hard seeds in a field made fallow by a fire someone years ago set.

In the quiet woods, from the highest trees, there is always something

Weightless falling; and he, who must realize that certain losses are irreparable,

Tells himself at night, before the darkest mirror, that vision keeps him whole.

 

On the verge of warm and simple sleep they tell themselves certain loves

Are like sheets of dark water, or ice forests, or husks of ships. To stop a thing

Such as this would be to halve a sound that travels out from a silent person’s

Thoughts. The imprint they make on each other’s bodies is worth any pain

They may have caused. Quiet falls around them. And when she reaches

For him the air greens like underwater light and the well-waters drop.

They will see again the shadows of insects.

They will touch the bark and feel each age of the tree fly undisturbed

Into them. If what is no longer present in them cannot be restored,

It can at least be offered. Through long bewildered dusks, stalks grow;

Rains fill and pass out of clouds; animals hover at the edges of fields

With eyes like black pools. For nothing cannot be transformed;

Pleasure and failure feed each other daily. Do not think any breeze,

Any grain of light, shall be withheld. All the stars will sail out for them.

Contemporary Poetry: Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make

Lately I’ve been on a quest to find contemporary poetry that deals (explicitly) with questions of faith, doubt, belief – all of which are usually interwoven. After spending the last years intensively studying theology, I’ve come to crave  expressions which better gives voice to the ambivalence and ambiguity of attempting to have any form of “faith” in the modern world.

What do you do when faith is broken but you still deeply need it, crave it? What can we say concerning the praying that we cannot make?

Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make

Jane Mead

Jesus, I am cruelly lonely
and I do not know what I have done
nor do I suspect that you will answer me. 

And, what is more, I have spent
these bare months bargaining
with my soul as if I could make her
promise to love me when now it seems
that what I meant when I said “soul”
was that the river reflects
the railway bridge just as the sky
says it should—it speaks that language.

I do not know who you are.

I come here every day
to be beneath this bridge,
to sit beside this river,
so I must have seen the way
the clouds just slide
under the rusty arch—
without snagging on the bolts,
how they are borne along on the dark water—
I must have noticed their fluent speed
and also how that tattered blue T-shirt
remains snagged on the crown
of the mostly sunk dead tree
despite the current’s constant pulling.
Yes, somewhere in my mind there must
be the image of a sky blue T-shirt, caught,
and the white islands of ice flying by
and the light clouds flying slowly
under the bridge, though today the river’s
fully melted. I must have seen.

But I did not see.

I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness—
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy—
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.

Of course, of course.

What I meant when I said “soul”
was that there should be a place.

On the far bank the warehouse lights
blink red, then green, and all the yellow
machines with their rusted scoops and lifts
sit under a thin layer of sunny frost.

And look—
my own palm—
there, slowly rocking.
It is my pale palm—
palm where a black pebble
is turning and turning.

Listen—
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
pile of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried—listen
listen, I am holy.

(repost) The Problem with Truth, or Why there are more than two options on the menu

Here, I offer a few thoughts on Truth, as spurred by a recent blog post I read while strolling through the Jewish section of Patheos. With apologies to Rabbi Yaakov, I’m going to use his blog post as a springboard to air a few of my pet peeves of religious apologetics.

In his post The Search for Truth, Part 2: There Are No Agnostics, Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov writes:

To get the most out of life, it is of utmost importance to uncover what is reality in order to make the most in-tune, educated, and best decisions possible regarding all aspects of life.

Even assuming for the case of argument that this is true, as in so many of these articles or books, there is no serious attention to the question of how one uncovers the truth. Presumably Rabbi Yaakov lucked out by being born a Jew (and, as far as I can tell, a frum one), which happens to be the Cosmic Truth (at least for Jews) according to his scheme. What about other people who aren’t so lucky?

So, how then does one determine the Truth? Take a Buddhist approach, try out a certain practice, and see whether it works for oneself? Follow the advice of Jesus in Matthew 7:16 that “Ye shall know them by their fruits” and take a look at how it seems to be working out in the lives of adherents of those religions? Try out some Thomist or Maimonidean  proofs for the existence of God? Go with the tradition you were born into? –  which makes sense from a Jewish or Hindu perspective, but not necessarily from the point of view of evangelical Christianity. Broadly speaking, Christianity or Islam assume that there is one practice or truth universally applicable and open to all; rabbinic Judaism and brahmanic Hinduism do not – already, then, we are speaking of divergent approaches to truth.

What choice then do we have regarding the truth? Rabbi Yaakov gives a nice black-and-white, either/or dichotomy that would send most academics I know screaming from the room:

Hiding behind the neutrality of agnosticism works in theory, but in practice there are only two options: believer or denier. Either there is a God who gave the Torah or there is not a God who gave the Torah. Just as whether or not you are aware of gravity, the effects of smoking, or the fact that 2+2=4 does not change those realities and their effects, whether or not you are aware of any reality does not change that reality and its effects.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that the claim “that there are no agnostics” or that one’s only option is “believer or denier” – both patently untrue, as far as I’m concerned. (Though maybe that’s relative? ;) )

Far too often, I see religious apologists pushing this line of thinking. Either there is a God who gave the Torah or there is not a God who gave the Torah.  Either Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior and the Bible is the inerrant word of God, or your only other choice is some kind of (literally and figuratively)  soulless atheist materialism. The argument is akin to Pascal’s wager, except the God-side of the coin comes pre-loaded, if you will, with a whole set of particular theologies and dogmas.

And this is but one of the problems with Pascal’s wager and the approach of a Rabbi Yaakov or of an evangelical apologist such as Lee Strobel. The question is not merely ‘Does God exist’ or ‘Does the God who gave the Torah exist’ but – which God? Brahman (and if so, dualist, non-dualist, or qualified non-dualist?) The God of Rabbi Yaakov’s Orthodox Judaism? The Trinitarian God of orthodox Christianity? The God of Oneness Pentecostals or of Mormons? Thomas Jefferson’s Deist God? The God of non-Orthodox or progressive Judaism who gave some kind of divine inspiration but did not give a literal Torah?

Rabbi Yaakov or Lee Strobel can’t give any particularly satisfying answer to the question because it lies outside their religious framework. Perhaps R Yaakov can make an argument as to why his interpretation of Judaism is the correct one, at least by his standards, but the accuracy of Judaism as a whole versus, say, Buddhism is not a question his religious framework can address. To reduce agnosticism or the “choice” of religious belief to a clear-cut decision between A and B, the sole options on the menu, is a false move.

A poem for Mon(sun)day

I recently came across this in a collection of poems written by long-time author and translator WIllis Barnstone. He wrote them in French when he was a young expat living in France in the 60s, and translated them into English years later – so we have a poet in old age translating the work of his youth, while he originally wrote in a second language while learning that language…. Translations within translations :-)

 

Dawn Cafe

 

I sleep and already live tomorrow. Must be
Monday. No, it’s a beautiful negligent Sunday
    morning

and I dance with God, a beautiful woman
who tells me mouth to mouth in my soul
    the banal

secrets of my confusion and why
I can’t sleep, why I feel forced
    to get up

from sleep to speak to you in the black,
in the hours before the dawn café
    that saves me

undoubtedly. I kid myself. I kiss
the mouth of God. She is soft and doesn’t
    blame me

for dying without hope. She assures me
her presence isn’t necessary
    and I love her,

devastated by her remoteness.
I’m cold. Winter lies on my knees. Warm
    she is smiling.

Latterday Psalms by Said

SAID is the pen name of an Iranian writer living in exile in Germany since 1965. He has written quite a few books in German, several of which have been translated into English. These are selections from his latest collection Psalms, translated by Mark S. Burrows.

lord

pray

pray loudly against the noise of the human hand

which seeks to drown you out

and appear on quiet soles

so that we might understand your footsteps

exert yourself

in order to recognize our prayers

even when they appear in a different garment

because no prayer ever looses itself from the source of the one praying

– – –

lord

take up the speech

by which i pray to you

grant me the gestures

which have grown within me in your absence

so that i might remain true to my uneducable nature

and take your weakness upon me

– – –

lord

you should always wander and never let yourself

settle down

because there are no longer any dwelling places

only footsteps

be loud and penetrating

sympathize with me and my stirrings

lead me

all the way to your bread

so that my word might wake

– – –

lord

when you arrive

we will be light

bread and water

the table is set and the door opened

come and take your place among us

free me of the belief

that you are only faithful from a distance

and speak with me

in the unharried language of animals

who from far off lie in wait for us

with their unadulterated hunger