Rapture

Yesterday I heard a poem entitled Rapture on NPR's The Writer's Almanac.  It amounted to conceptual rapture for me, worthy of serious meditation:

Rapture

by Richard Jones

In the desert, a traveler
returning to his family
is surprised
by a wild beast.

To save himself
from the fierce animal,
he leaps into a deep well
empty of water.

But at the bottom
is a dragon, waiting
with open mouth
to devour him.

The unhappy man,
not daring to go out
lest he should be
the prey of the beast,

not daring to jump
to the bottom
lest he should be
devoured by the dragon,

clings to the branch
of a bush growing
in the cracks of the well.
Hanging upon the bough,

he feels his hands
weaken, yet still
he clings, afraid
of his certain fate.

Then he sees two mice,
one white, the other black,
moving about the bush,
gnawing the roots.

The traveler sees this
and knows that he must
inevitably perish, that he will
never see his sons again.

But while thus hanging
he looks about and sees
on the leaves of the bush
some drops of honey.

These leaves
he reaches with his tongue
and licks the honey off,
with rapture.

"Rapture" by Richard Jones, from The Blessing: New and Selected Poems. © Copper Canyon Press, 2000.

Metaphora: Transference

For a Tear is an intellectual thing,
And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
And the bitter groan of the Martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.

~William Blake from "The Grey Monk"

The Quick and the Dead (aka Haunting The Ghosts)

I  like to commune with saints, sinners and saintly sinners.  I believe I know some who came before and some who will come after me better than those with whom I drink coffee and carry on conversation daily.  One such soul is Edna St. Vincent Millay.  I feel a familiarity with her spirit, and our lives and deaths are something of a mirror with 44 days separating our individual occupations of planet Earth.  Our masks are similar; our experiences not entirely different; like all artists, our deep artistic feelings revealed not in who you see, but in what we produce.  

In the Spring of 1950 at the time I was conceived, Millay mourned the death of Eugen Boissevain, her husband of 26 years.  She was preparing for death at the age of 58 and voiced a fear of spring's rebirth as "shrinking from being hurt too much." She wrote to a friend, "I have already encountered the first dandelion. I stood and stared at it with a kind of horror. And then I felt ashamed of myself, and sorry for the dandelion. And suddenly, without my doing anything about it at all, my face just crumpled up and cried. How excited he always was when he saw the first dandelion!"

Not long ago I encountered spring's first dandelion, but I did not cry.  I photographed, captured and studied it.  But, then again, I am not drugging and drinking like Edna was during the spring she faced death.      

In October 1950 I was close to birth as I formed in my mother's womb while Millay shrank from being hurt too much, gave in to death and wrote her final lines, impressively objective despite the cloud of drugs:

I will control myself, or go inside.

I will not flaw perfection with my grief.

Handsome, this day: no matter who has died.

Millay the artist, reaching the end of her strength, likely found the atmosphere full of ghosts tapping and sighing on her window on that October evening in 1950.  The ghosts most certainly listened for reply, and she responded with a heart attack, falling from the top of the stairs at her home, Steepletop.  Her reply snuffed that lovely candle that had so famously burned at both ends; and she joined eternity with her beloved Eugen.  When found, her head was resting on a page of her notebook that contained the penciled draft of one last poem. The final three lines quoted above had a ring drawn around them.  Did she die of a broken heart?  If anyone could pull of such a thing, it would be Vincent.

Forty-four days later I was born, and I have lived 57 years to reach a point of understanding the value of ending a life refusing to flaw perfection with grief.  As such, I don't think Vincent would mind my borrowing her art to reply to the fading ghosts who tap on my window:  

My candle burned at both ends

til darkness stole the light

But oh my friend and oh my foes

That light will haunt your night...

I am pretty sure Vincent would like a good haunting.  

Gifts to Aphrodite

"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared

"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them

"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song..."

Sappho --translated by Mary Barnard

Sanctuary

Bluebeard   
 
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed... Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see... Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
 

Cleaning Out Closets

Give away her gowns,
Give away her shoes;
She has no more use
For her fragrant gowns;
Take them all down,
Blue, green, blue,
Lilac, pink, blue,
From their padded hangers;
She will dance no more
In her narrow shoes;
Sweep her narrow shoes
From the closet floor.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

What will you die for?

I died for beauty, but was scarce

Adjusted in the tomb,

When one who died for truth was lain

In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?

“For beauty,” I replied.

“And I for truth – the two are one;

We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,

We talked between the rooms,

Until the moss had reached our lips,

And covered up our names.

                          Emily Dickinson

The Rose That Never Fades

Oft as summer closes when thine eye reposes on its lingering roses once so loved by thee

Think of her who wove them, her who made thee love them

Oh, then remember me.

From Go Where Glory Waits Thee

by Thomas Moore

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply.

From The Harp-Weaver by Edna St. Vincent Millay

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For a non-lover of poetry, I find so much timeless and image intensive in Millay's poetry.  She painted pictures with her words. 

Can you imagine the rain full of ghosts tapping and sighing upon the glass?  That is a thought worth contemplating to make into a visual image.  I will work on that because I, like everyone, have rain, ghosts and windows. 

My Candle

Edna St. Vincent Millay created the famous image of human energy and action like a candle burning at both ends:

"My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-- It gives a lovely light!"

A lovely, lovely light.....