Archive for the ‘W.H. Auden’ Tag
“Poetry Lovers” — Image by kenne
Born in Milford, Delaware in 1938, Robert Phillips passed away January 21, 2022
W.H. Auden said of artists, “We were put on earth to make things.” We can do so by being generous
as well as by being creative, by becoming a master class to someone else. We all have it within us,
the capacity to make someone else’s luck.
One of the first presenters at the Writers in Performance Series, Lone Star College, Montgomery
and one of my favorites, was Robert Phillips. Robert authored more than 30 volumes of poetry, one of
which is Spinach Days. It’s not easy to select a poem for the Capturing the Word series, since I like
most all Robert’s poetry.
Early Lesson
Her mother brought her down
to the laundry room. Picking
through the wicker clothes basket
she explained, “You must separate
the colored from the white.”
Her mother brought her down
And they did. Their black maid,
ironing in the corner, nodded.
— Robert Phillips, Spinach Days
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Hand of Time — Photo-Art by kenne
Our Bias
The hour-glass whispers to the lion’s paw,
The clock-towers tell the gardens day and night,
How many errors Time has patience for,
How wrong they are in being always right.
Yet Time, however loud its chimes or deep,
However fast its falling torrent flows,
Has never put the lion off his leap
Nor shaken the assurance of the rose.
For they, it seems, care only for success:
While we choose words according to their sound
And judge a problem by its awkwardness;
And Time with us was always popular.
When have we not preferred some going round
To going straight to where we are?
— W.H. Auden
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Sherman Robertson (Houston, TX, 05-11-04)– Image by kenne
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
— from September 1, 1939, by W. H. Auden
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Mt. Lemmon Fall Colors, A Gift From The Mountain Gods
— Photo-Artistry by kenne
Autumn Song
Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse’s flowers will not last;
Nurses to the graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.
Whispering neighbours, left and right,
Pluck us from the real delight;
And the active hands must freeze
Lonely on the separate knees.
Dead in hundreds at the back
Follow wooden in our track,
Arms raised stiffly to reprove
In false attitudes of love.
Starving through the leafless wood
Trolls run scolding for their food;
And the nightingale is dumb,
And the angel will not come.
Cold, impossible, ahead
Lifts the mountain’s lovely head
Whose white waterfall could bless
Travellers in their last distress.
— W. H. Auden
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“Fall of Icarus” by Breughel
Brother Tom will often uses the birthday or anniversary of a favorite author to share his love. This past Sunday I received this:
Today is the birthday of W.H. Auden ( 1907…died at 66 yrs)…. I have always enjoyed this poem of his, “MUSEE des Beaux Arts”; 1940
“MUSEE des Beaux Arts”
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
A great poet’s reflection on apathy, a fundamental part of the human condition.
Thank you, Tom.
kenne
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Becoming is Superior to Being 