Autumn Into Winter

As I have mentioned here in the past, each day I read a poem in the morning and a poem in the evening.  This was today's morning poem:

                                   Autumn Ends

Lost in vacant wonder at how the months flow away in silence,

I sit alone in my idle hut, thinking endless thoughts.

An old man's cares, like these leaves, are hard to sweep away.

To the sound of their rustling I see autumn off once again.

Tate Ryūwan (1762-1844) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), Kanshi: The Poetry of Ishikawa Jōzan and Other Edo-Period Poets (North Point Press 1990), page 117.  A kanshi (a Japanese word meaning "Chinese poem") is a poem written in Chinese by a Japanese poet, following the strict rules of Chinese prosody.  (For a discussion of kanshi, please see my post of November 2, 2014.)  

I have read "Autumn Ends" several times in the past, but I hadn't revisited it recently.  This morning, I came upon it while browsing through Watson's anthology, which is one of my favorite books.  After reading the poem, it occurred to me: isn't today the day of the winter solstice, or was it yesterday, or is it tomorrow?  I checked: it is indeed today.  Reading poetry tends to put one in the way of serendipity.

But, beyond this nice bit of happenstance, I realized that, with each passing year, "Autumn Ends" seems more and more apt.  Something along these lines: "In a lifetime, how many springs do we see?"  (Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), "Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade.")  Or this: "the years just flow by like a broken-down dam."  (John Prine, "Angel from Montgomery.")  Ah, well, no help for it.

John Milne Donald (1819-1866), "Autumn Leaves" (1864)

As I am wont to say: "In poetry, one thing leads to another."  Thus, not surprisingly, my favorite autumn poem came to mind soon after I read "Autumn Ends" this morning.  The poem usually appears here each autumn, but this year it makes its appearance on the first day of winter.

                   Leaves

The prisoners of infinite choice

Have built their house

In a field below the wood

And are at peace.

It is autumn, and dead leaves

On their way to the river

Scratch like birds at the windows

Or tick on the road.

Somewhere there is an afterlife 

Of dead leaves,

A stadium filled with an infinite

Rustling and sighing.

Somewhere in the heaven

Of lost futures

The lives we might have led

Have found their own fulfilment.

Derek Mahon, The Snow Party (Oxford University Press 1975), page 3.

It is lovely to find "rustling" leaves in both "Autumn Ends" and "Leaves."  It is those rustling leaves that follow us on our autumn walks -- dogging our footsteps -- that capture the heart of autumn.  And Mahon takes things a beautiful step further: "It is autumn, and dead leaves/On their way to the river/Scratch like birds at the windows/Or tick on the road."

George Vicat Cole (1833-1893), "Autumn Morning" (1891)

Today I went for my daily late afternoon walk, both poems still on my mind.  After intermittent rain, often heavy, in the morning, the sky overhead and to the west was clearing: a mix of blue, gold, pink, and orange.  The sun was on its way to disappearing beyond the waters of Puget Sound, beyond the Olympic Mountains, off into the Pacific.  Not a bad way to bring autumn to a close, to enter winter.

The ground remains strewn with all of those rustling leaves.  But the sparrows, our companions throughout the winter, were lively, sporting in the remaining sunlight.  Of course, they know what the fallen rustling leaves are telling us.  But they go on being their sparrow selves.

After seeing them twittering and flitting in the bushes and on the green meadow grass, I thought of this:

                        The Bamboo Sparrow

Doesn't peck up millet from the government storehouse,

Doesn't bore holes through the master's house;

It dwells a lifetime in the mountain groves

And roosts at nightfall on a branch of bamboo.

Gido Shūshin (1325-1388) (translated by Marian Ury), in Marian Ury (editor), Poems of the Five Mountains: An Introduction to the Literature of the Zen Monasteries (Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan 1992), page 68.  "The Bamboo Sparrow," like "Autumn Ends," is a kanshi.

Alexander Docharty (1862-1940), "An Autumn Day" (1917)

I returned from my walk.  I have not yet read my poem for the evening.  However -- again, one poem leading to another -- I thought of this tonight: 

          The River

Stir not, whisper not,

Trouble not the giver

Of quiet who gives

This calm-flowing river,

Whose whispering willows,

Whose murmuring reeds

Make silence more still

Than the thought it breeds,

Until thought drops down

From the motionless mind

Like a quiet brown leaf

Without any wind;

It falls on the river

And floats with its flowing,

Unhurrying still

Past caring, past knowing.

Ask not, answer not,

Trouble not the giver

Of quiet who gives

This calm-flowing river.

Patrick MacDonogh (1902-1961), Poems (edited by Derek Mahon) (The Gallery Press 2001), page 86.

Rustling leaves.  Sparrows.  Autumn into winter.  The river.

William Samuel Jay (1843-1933)

"At the Fall of Leaf, Arundel Park, Sussex" (1883)

Journey

The swallows have departed.  The tall, dry meadow grass rustles in the nearly empty air.  Now and then a sparrow suddenly flutters up from beside the path, then flies off toward the trees surrounding the field.  Ghostly white tufts of thistle seed float past, rising and falling.

                    Swallows Flown

Whence comes that small continuous silence

     Haunting the livelong day?

This void, where a sweetness, so seldom heeded,

     Once ravished my heart away?

As if a loved one, too little valued,

     Had vanished -- could not stay?

Walter de la Mare, Memory and Other Poems (Constable 1938).

None of this comes as a surprise.  Still, every year there is a pang. Something along these lines: "Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering --/in a lifetime how many springs do we see?"  (Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), "Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade.")  A time comes when you realize with certainty that the seasons you have seen far outnumber the seasons that remain to you.  This is not a bad thing to take to heart.

                                  The Last Swallow

       The robin whistles again.  Day's arches narrow,

       Tender and quiet skies lighten the withering flowers.

       The dark of winter must come. . . . But that tiny arrow,

       Circuiting high in the blue -- the year's last swallow,

Knows where the coast of far mysterious sun-wild Africa lours.

Walter de la Mare, Inward Companion (Faber and Faber 1950).

Alfred Thornton (1863-1939)

"Hill Farm, Painswick, Gloucestershire"

The dragonflies seem to have vanished as well.  I remember an afternoon this past summer when I stood in the middle of a field as the swallows climbed and dived and swerved and skimmed just above the tops of the green meadow grasses.  On that day, the dragonflies were also out in the field, and they and the swallows circled around me.  Please bear with me, but, as I stood there, I couldn't help but think of this: "At the still point of the turning world."  (T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton.")  (Fortunately, it can't be helped: certain of the poems we loved when we were young never leave us, do they?  They remain within us always, waiting.)

Being but man, forbear to say

Beyond to-night what thing shall be,

And date no man's felicity.

          For know, all things

          Make briefer stay

Than dragonflies, whose slender wings

     Hover, and whip away.

Simonides (556-467 B.C.) (translated by T. F. Higham), in T. F. Higham and C. M. Bowra (editors), The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (Oxford University Press 1938), page 234.

A few years after coming across Simonides' dragonflies, I happened upon this, and the two are now forever linked:

"October 6, 1940.  Late in the season as it is, a dragonfly has appeared and is flying around me.  Keep on flying as long as you can  -- your flying days will soon be over."

Taneda Santōka (1882-1940) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), For All My Walking: Free-Verse Haiku of Taneda Santōka with Excerpts from His Diaries (Columbia University Press 2003), page 102. Watson provides this note to the passage: "This is the last entry in Santōka's diary, written four days before his death."  Ibid, page 102.

John Aldridge (1905-1983), "The Pant Valley, Summer" (1960)

Whenever the topic at hand is the evanescence of the beautiful particulars of the World, it seems that Edward Thomas hovers over my shoulder.  And often, as in the case of this post, he is in the company of his friend, Walter de la Mare.  I don't know what I would do without the two of them.

          How at Once

How at once should I know,

When stretched in the harvest blue

I saw the swift's black bow,

That I would not have that view

Another day

Until next May

Again it is due?

The same year after year --

But with the swift alone.

With other things I but fear

That they will be over and done

Suddenly 

And I only see

Them to know them gone.

Edward Thomas, The Annotated Collected Poems (Edna Longley, editor) (Bloodaxe Books 2008), page 131.

Swifts and swallows go well together.  Antic sprites that frolic and then vanish.

Alfred Thornton, "The Upper Severn"

A thought by Thomas Hardy comes to mind: "Earth never grieves!" ("Autumn in King's Hintock Park," in Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (Macmillan 1909).)  One can find comfort and equanimity in the thought that, once our short time in the World is over, the seasons will continue to come and go without us, with their generations of leaves and birds and clouds.

                         At Night on a Journey

Bell-sounds night after night -- falling on whose ears?

The traveler's dream: forty years pass in an instant:

Sitting up by shutters under the pines, I forget "I" --

Clouds issue from the peaks, the moon courses the heavens.

Ryūshū Shūtaku (1308-1388) (translated by Marian Ury), in Marian Ury (editor), Poems of the Five Mountains: An Introduction to the Literature of the Zen Monasteries (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan 1992), page 59.  Ury includes this note to the poem: "The second line refers to a Chinese folktale that became popular in Japan. A man who has come to the capital to seek his fortune lies down for a nap and experiences in dream all the vicissitudes of a long, glorious but ultimately tragic official career; awaking, he discovers that no more time has passed than it has taken for his supper of yellow millet to cook."  Ibid, page 59.

When I walk down an avenue of trees on a sunny day, my attention is usually focused upward, on the leaves turning in the wind, set against blue and gold.  But one afternoon this past summer my eyes were drawn to the swaying shadows of branches on the asphalt pathway before me.  A beautiful, ever-changing world of its own, replicating in its own fashion the beautiful, ever-changing world overhead.  After a few moments passed, I noticed down on the sunlit pathway the small but distinct shadow of a butterfly that was balancing out on the shadow of the far tip of one of the moving branches.  As I watched, the shadow of the butterfly flew away.  I looked up, but I saw no butterfly in the sky.

               On the Road on a Spring Day

There is no coming, there is no going.

From what quarter departed?  Toward what quarter bound?

Pity him! in the midst of his journey, journeying --

Flowers and willows in spring profusion, everywhere fragrance.

Ryūsen Reisai (d. 1365) (translated by Marian Ury), Ibid, page 33. Ury includes this note to the poem: "The poem begins with a Zen truism, which is expanded into a personal statement."  Ibid, page 33.

John Aldridge, "Stubble Field, Thaxted" (1968)

September

Once again, September.  The past few weeks, the afternoons have sometimes been as warm as midsummer.  But the leaves -- ah, the leaves: green going to gold, and to brown, amber, orange, and red. Fallen, falling, ready to fall.  Before long, they will "Scratch like birds at the windows/Or tick on the road."  (Derek Mahon, "Leaves.")  Not quite yet.  And where have the swallows gone?

Speaking of Derek Mahon, I recently realized that I have been remiss: it has been a few years since we last visited my favorite September poem.

     September in Great Yarmouth

The woodwind whistles down the shore

Piping the stragglers home; the gulls

Snaffle and bolt their final mouthfuls.

Only the youngsters call for more.

Chimneys breathe and beaches empty,

Everyone queues for the inland cold --

Middle-aged parents growing old

And teenage kids becoming twenty.

Now the first few spots of rain 

Spatter the sports page in the gutter.

Council workmen stab the litter.

You have sown and reaped; now sow again.

The band packs in, the banners drop,

The ice-cream stiffens in its cone.

The boatman lifts his megaphone:

'Come in, fifteen, your time is up.'

Derek Mahon, Poems, 1962-1978 (Oxford University Press 1979).

Reginald Brundrit (1883-1960), "The River" (c. 1924)

Late September, and the green leaves still outnumber those that have turned.  As the boughs sway in a breeze, one hears a susurration, a sea-sound, not a rattling.  On a clear day, leaf-shadows and patches of sunlight continue to revolve on the ground, kaleidoscopic, unceasing.

But yesterday afternoon I noticed dry yellow leaves gathering in the gutters as I walked through what was otherwise a green tunnel of trees.  A group of three maples I have come to know as the earliest heralds of autumn began their transformation at the beginning of the month: the highest boughs and the leaves out at the tips of the lower branches are scarlet; only a dwindling inner core of summer green remains.  "Now it is September and the web is woven./The web is woven and you have to wear it."  (Wallace Stevens, "The Dwarf.")

                         The Crossing

September, and the butterflies are drifting

Across the sky again, the monarchs in

Their myriads, delicate lenses for the light

To fall through and be mandarin-transformed.

I guess they are flying southward, or anyhow

That seems to be the average of their drift,

Though what you mostly see is a random light

Meandering, a Brownian movement to the wind,

Which is one of Nature's ways of getting it done,

Whatever it may be, the rise of hills

And settling of seas, the fall of leaf

Across the shoulder of the northern world,

The snowflakes one by one that silt the field . . .

All that's preparing now behind the scene,

As the ecliptic and equator cross,

Through which the light butterflies are flying.

Howard Nemerov, Gnomes & Occasions (University of Chicago Press 1973).

John Lawson (1868-1909), "An Ayrshire Stream" (1893)

I have a vague notion of what occurs when "the ecliptic and equator cross."  Something to do with the movement of spheres, I suspect. But I'm reminded of my oft-repeated first principle of poetry: Explanation and explication are the death of poetry.  Here is a wider principle I have adopted at this moment: Explanation and explication are the death of enchantment.  The enchantment of the World, of course.  Mind you, I accept the existence of the ecliptic and the equator.  This is not an anti-scientific manifesto.  I simply prefer, for instance, a single butterfly or a single leaf, with no explanations attached.

In a headnote to a haiku, Bashō (1644-1694) writes: "As we look calmly, we see everything is content with itself."  (Bashō (translated by Makoto Ueda), in Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary (Stanford University Press 1991), page 153.)  The haiku is: "Playing in the blossoms/a horsefly . . . don't eat it,/friendly sparrows!"  (Bashō (translated by Makoto Ueda), Ibid, page 153.)  Ueda provides this annotation: "The headnote is a sentence that often appears in Taoist classics, although Bashō probably took it from a poem by the Confucian philosopher Ch'eng Ming-tao."  (Ibid, p. 153.)

Bashō's headnote brings to mind a notebook entry written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "September 1 -- the beards of Thistle & dandelions flying above the lonely mountains like life, & I saw them thro' the Trees skimming the lake like Swallows --."  (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Kathleen Coburn (editor), The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1: 1794-1804 (Pantheon 1957), Notebook Entry 799 (September 1, 1800).  The text is as it appears in the notebook.)

All of which leads us to a single leaf:

                         Threshold

When in still air and still in summertime

A leaf has had enough of this, it seems

To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage

Its drifting in detachment down the road.

Howard Nemerov, Gnomes & Occasions.

A single leaf.  Or a single butterfly.  No explanations required, or necessary.

A butterfly flits

All alone -- and on the field,

A shadow in the sunlight.

Bashō (translated by Makoto Ueda), in Makoto Ueda, Matsuo Bashō (Twayne 1970), page 50.

Henry Justice Ford (1860-1941)

"A View of Church Hill from the Mill Pond, Old Swanage" (1931)

[A coda. "The boatman" calling in someone out on the water whose "time is up" in Derek Mahon's "September in Great Yarmouth" makes an appearance in another poem:

               Yorkshiremen in Pub Gardens

     As they sit there, happily drinking,

their strokes, cancers, and so forth are not in their minds.

     Indeed, what earthly good would thinking

about the future (which is Death) do?  Each summer finds

     beer in their hands in big pint glasses.

     And so their leisure passes.

     Perhaps the older ones allow some inkling

into their thoughts.  Being hauled, as a kid, upstairs to bed

     screaming for a teddy or a tinkling

musical box, against their will.  Each Joe or Fred

     wants longer with the life and lasses.

     And so their time passes.

     Second childhood; and 'Come in, number 80!'

shouts inexorably the man in charge of the boating pool.

     When you're called you must go, matey,

so don't complain, keep it all calm and cool,

     there's masses of time yet, masses, masses . . .

     And so their life passes.

Gavin Ewart, in Philip Larkin (editor), Poetry Supplement Compiled by Philip Larkin for the Poetry Book Society (Poetry Book Society 1974).  Ewart and Larkin were friends.  The poem has a Larkinesque feel to it, doesn't it?  It's not surprising that Larkin chose to include it in the Poetry Book Society's annual Christmas anthology.

But I like to think that if Larkin had written the poem he would have softened it a bit, and made beautifully clear that we are all Yorkshiremen in pub gardens, each in our own way.  He likely would have done so in the final stanza: one long, lovely sentence hedged with one or two qualifications and perhaps containing a reversal -- but absolutely, humanly true.  He is not the misanthropic, dour caricature he is often incorrectly made out to be by the inattentive. For example: "Something is pushing them/To the side of their own lives."  (Philip Larkin, "Afternoons.")  Or: "As they wend away/A voice is heard singing/Of Kitty, or Katy,/As if the name meant once/All love, all beauty."  (Philip Larkin, "Dublinesque.")  And this: "we should be careful//Of each other, we should be kind/While there is still time."  (Philip Larkin, "The Mower.")

For some reason, I find myself reminded of a poem by Su Tung-p'o. It is a poem of spring, and thus may seem out of season.  But the final line is apt in any season, and at any time, in any place.

          Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade

Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green --

when willow fluff scatters, falling blossoms will fill the town.

Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering --

in a lifetime how many springs do we see?

Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o (Copper Canyon Press 1994), page 68.

In a lifetime, how many Septembers do we see?]

Alexander Jamieson (1873-1937)

"Halton Lake, Wendover, Buckinghamshire"

In Passing

"Life passes swiftly, hedged by sorrow;/how long before you've lost it -- a scene like this?"  (Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101), "On a Boat, Awake at Night.")  One of the pleasures of reading classical Chinese lyric (shih) poetry is coming across lovely and evocative lines such as these.  This happens frequently.  Lines of this sort are not intended to be didactic, edifying, or admonitory.  Instead, they arrive quite naturally, as part and parcel of a contemplative poem that may be about, for instance, the beautiful particulars of the World in any season, parting from a friend, or simply passing through an ordinary day.

Interestingly, one sees the same thing occur in classical Japanese poetry and in the poems of The Greek Anthology.  One also notices that the classical Chinese, Japanese, and Greek lyric forms share a common feature: brevity.  The two predominant Chinese lyric forms are the chüeh-chü (four lines) and the lü-shih (eight lines).  The two basic Japanese lyric forms are the waka (five lines and 31 syllables) and the haiku (three lines and 17 syllables). The poems in The Greek Anthology generally range between two, four, six, or eight lines.  In addition, all of these short forms are governed by strict prosodic requirements.  Does this concision and craft encourage pensive reflection?

My thoughts are prompted by revisiting three poems by Shao Yung (1011-1077).  In his day, he was perhaps best known as a Confucian scholar and philosopher.  Yet he was also a fine poet.

               Arriving in Lo-yang Again

Those years, I was a green-youthed wanderer;

today I come again, a white-haired old man.

From those years to today makes one whole lifetime,

and in between, how many things have had their day and gone!

Shao Yung (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (Columbia University Press 1984), page 335.

This poem, and the two poems by Shao Yung which appear below, are all in the chüeh-chü quatrain form.  This form requires rhyming of the second and fourth lines, as well as compliance with the complex rules of tonal parallelism that are an essential element of traditional Chinese lyric poetry.  Ibid, pages 8-11, 373.

Richard Wyndham (1896-1948), "Summer Landscape" (c. 1932)

But, putting aside matters of form and prosody, it is the affecting and redolent character of these poetic reflections that is so beguiling. Although classical Chinese poetry is, of course, the product of a unique ancient culture and of three interacting philosophies (Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism), lines such as "Life passes swiftly, hedged by sorrow;/how long before you've lost it -- a scene like this?" and "From those years to today makes one whole lifetime,/and in between, how many things have had their day and gone!" do not move us because of their cultural origins or because they may arise out of a certain philosophical system.  Rather, they move us because they are True and Beautiful articulations of what it means to be a human being, and to live in, and to be fated to depart from, a wondrous and mysterious World -- at any time and in any place.

                 Thoughts on T'ien-chin Bridge

The countless great lords and statesmen of past regimes --

later ages know them merely as a list of names.

Only the water under T'ien-chin Bridge

goes on year after year, making the same sound.

Shao Yung (translated by Burton Watson), Ibid, page 336.

Richard Wyndham, "Tickerage Mill" (c. 1939)

This past week Spring began to emerge, in a place where I have become accustomed to see it first arrive: in a group of small bushes beside a pathway that passes through a grove of tall pines.  The bushes are sheltered within the dark, quiet, and windless grove, although sunlight and rain do filter through the deep canopy of pine boughs.  One day this week, in the late afternoon yellow light that angled down through the boughs, I noticed bright green leaf buds shining at the tips of the branches of the bushes.

   Song of the Water Willow in Front of Comfortable Den

In front of Comfortable Den, by a little crooked stream,

New rushes, a delicate willow, turn green year by year.

Before my eyes a procession of good sights pass --

Who says that life is so full of wants?

Shao Yung (translated by Burton Watson), in Kōjirō Yoshikawa, An Introduction to Sung Poetry (translated and edited by Burton Watson) (Harvard University Press 1967), page 83.  Shao Yung, who "lived all his life in semi-seclusion," gave his house the name "An-lo-wo," which may be translated as "Comfortable Den."  Ibid.

Richard Wyndham, "The Medway near Tonbridge" (1936)

April

I'm certain I'm not the only young man or woman whose budding interest in poetry was quickened by happening upon the following lines:

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (Boni and Liveright 1922).

I seem to recall that the presence of April, my birth month, played some role in why I was smitten with the lines.  But I could be misremembering.  On the other hand, I was a melancholy, bookish lad (some things never change), so I suspect my recollection may be accurate.  In any case, the lines have remained with me for nearly fifty years, even though my affections have long since migrated from The Waste Land to Four Quartets.

All of which leads (in a roundabout fashion), dear ever-patient readers, to our annual visit to my favorite April poem:

                         Wet Evening in April

The birds sang in the wet trees

And as I listened to them it was a hundred years from now

And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.

But I was glad I had recorded for him the melancholy.

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems (edited by Antoinette Quinn) (Penguin 2004).  The poem was originally published on April 19, 1952, in Kavanagh's Weekly.  Ibid, page 280.

Allan Gwynne-Jones (1892-1982), "Spring Evening, Froxfield"

I suppose one might argue that "Wet Evening in April" is not a true "April poem" at all.  One expects something along these lines: "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/Is hung with bloom along the bough . . ."  Or something even more effulgent and, yes, flowery:

                                   April, 1885

Wanton with long delay the gay spring leaping cometh;

The blackthorn starreth now his bough on the eve of May:

All day in the sweet box-tree the bee for pleasure hummeth:

The cuckoo sends afloat his note on the air all day.

Now dewy nights again and rain in gentle shower

At root of tree and flower have quenched the winter's drouth.

On high the hot sun smiles, and banks of cloud uptower

In bulging heads that crowd for miles the dazzling south.

Robert Bridges, The Shorter Poems (George Bell & Sons 1890). Caught up in his enthusiasm for the month, Bridges includes sprightly internal rhymes within the first five lines.

Or perhaps something more restrained, but still evocative of the month's beautiful and hopeful course:

                    April

Exactly: where the winter was

The spring has come: I see her now

In the fields, and as she goes

The flowers spring, nobody knows how.

C. H. Sisson, What and Who (Carcanet Press 1994).

Mind you, I am quite fond of each of these poems, and they have appeared here on more than one occasion.  Still, April would not be April without its characteristic tinge of melancholy.  All of those cherry, plum, and pear petals drifting down beneath a blue sky, carpeting the green grass and the sidewalks.  It's wonderful how April and October share a similar bittersweet wistfulness and wistful bittersweetness, isn't it?  Every six months, year after year, the falling of petals and the falling of leaves.  Trying to tell us something.

William Wood (1877-1958), "April Weather"

Ah, well, everything in the World and in our life eventually comes around to our evanescence, and the evanescence of the beautiful particulars that surround us.  "But it is a sort of April weather life that we lead in this world.  A little sunshine is generally the prelude to a storm."  (William Cowper, letter to Walter Bagot (January 3, 1787), in James King and Charles Ryskamp (editors), The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, Volume III: Letters 1787-1791 (Oxford University Press 1982), pages 5-6.)  This is lovely, but perhaps too dramatic.  Life is a matter of petals and of leaves.  And of gratitude.

          Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade

Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green —

when willow fluff scatters, falling blossoms will fill the town.

Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering —

in a lifetime how many springs do we see?

Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o (Copper Canyon Press 1994), page 68.

Adrian Paul Allinson (1890-1959), "The Cornish April"

Spring

Each spring arrives in its own fashion.  The day before the equinox, we unexpectedly had a day of nearly 80-degree, sunny weather.  The World took this as a sign, and spring appeared overnight, right on schedule.

Now, above us, we have cherry, plum, pear, and magnolia blossoms. At our shoulders we have camellia blooms.  And at our feet we have -- joining the previously-arrived crocuses -- daffodils, hyacinths, and a few early tulips.  This is only a partial inventory.  As for the trees: they are still biding their time, although their branches are tipped with green leaf-buds, at the ready.

          Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade

Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green --
when willow fluff scatters, falling blossoms will fill the town.
Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering --
in a lifetime how many springs do we see?

Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o (Copper Canyon Press 1994), page 68.

"Snowy boughs."  The confusion of spring fruit tree blossoms with snow-filled branches is a venerable poetic conceit, isn't it?

For instance:

                    The Cherry Trees

Under pure skies of April blue I stood,
Where, in wild beauty, cherries were in blow;
And, as sweet fancy willed, see there I could
Boughs thick with blossom, or inch-deep in snow.

Walter de la Mare, Memory and Other Poems (Constable 1938).  De la Mare uses the word "blow" (line 2) in a sense that is now, alas, considered archaic:  "to blossom; to bloom."

This also comes to mind:

                    Nailsworth Hill

The Moon, that peeped as she came up,
     Is clear on top, with all her light;
She rests her chin on Nailsworth Hill,
     And, where she looks, the World is white.

White with her light -- or is it Frost,
     Or is it Snow her eyes have seen;
Or is it Cherry blossom there,
     Where no such trees have ever been?

W. H. Davies, The Loneliest Mountain and Other Poems (Jonathan Cape 1939).

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Glamis Village in April"

The blossom-snow confusion leads many of us to return to a poem we visit each spring.  Mere habit, perhaps.  Or ritual.  But, consider this: we are not who we were last spring, are we?  We have no way of knowing how the poem will make us feel this spring.  There is something to be said for habit and ritual in the midst of a feckless world.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy years a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, Poem II (Kegan Paul 1896).

"To see the cherry hung with snow."  For some of us, this line is the embodiment of spring.  The novelist J. L. Carr (A Month in the Country) served as the headmaster of a primary school in Kettering, Northamptonshire, for fifteen years.  Through the streets of Kettering, "under the cherry trees, Carr would march his entire school in the spring, all chanting, 'Loveliest of trees . . .'"  (Byron Rogers, The Last Englishman: The Life of J. L. Carr (Aurum Press 2003), page 153.)

James McIntosh Patrick, "A City Garden" (1940)

So, dear readers, here we are again:  at the intersection of Beauty and Evanescence, in the land of bittersweet wistfulness and wistful bittersweetness.  Also known as Life.

"In a lifetime how many springs do we see?"  Su Tung-p'o wrote that line in 1077.  Eight centuries later, in 1895, A. E. Housman wrote: "And since to look at things in bloom/Fifty springs are little room,/About the woodlands I will go/To see the cherry hung with snow."  The good poets, in all times and in all places, know what is humanly important, know where our attention should be directed. Human nature was the same in China in 1077 and in England in 1895.  And wherever you are at this moment.

                              Spring Night

Spring night -- one hour worth a thousand gold coins;
clear scent of flowers, shadowy moon.
Songs and flutes upstairs -- threads of sound;
in the garden, a swing, where night is deep and still.

Su Tung-p'o (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Selected Poems of Su Tung-P'o, page 19.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Glamis Village" (1939)

Little Things

Yesterday, my afternoon walk began amid a sun shower.  As I walked along a row of trees (budding, but still bare), I was surrounded by veils of rain shot through with sunlight.  The world was a-glitter.  Overhead, a single bird chirped.  I looked, and finally found it:  a lone robin perched on empty black boughs near the top of a 50-foot tall bigleaf maple.

I've read all the books but one
Only remains sacred:  this
Volume of wonders, open
Always before my eyes.

Kathleen Raine, The Oracle in the Heart (The Dolmen Press 1980).

Allan Gwynne-Jones, "Spring Evening, Froxfield" (1922)

I mention the sun shower and the robin not because they are unique, and certainly not to display any special powers of observation on my part, for I have none.  In a week's time, I likely will have forgotten the moment.  In one sense, scenes such as this are commonplace.  Yet that does not render them any less miraculous.

And though a week from now the robin and the sun shower may be "forgotten," will they indeed have vanished from my life?  Or is there a place where these moments reside, and congregate?

Forest is multitude,
But one tree all, one apple-bud
Opens the flower of the world, infinite
Golden stamens and rose petals, here.

Kathleen Raine, Ibid.

Wanting to know all
I overlooked each particle
Containing the whole
Unknowable.

Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems (Counterpoint 2001).

William Wigley (1880-1943), "Mevagissey Quay, Cornwall"

As I turned toward home, I came across a small puddle in the middle of the path.  The puddle contained the whole of the blue sky, all of its stately white clouds.  I often feel that I am not as grateful as I ought to be.

Incredible that anything exists -- this hotch-potch
World of marvels and trivia, and which is which?

Kathleen Raine, Living With Mystery (Golgonooza Press 1992).

I am reminded of a statement by Ludwig Wittgenstein, which has appeared here before, but which is worth repeating, since it provides a nice complement to Raine's poem:  "Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is."  An alternative translation is:  "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists."  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Proposition 6.44, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) (italics in the original).  The first translation is by C. K. Ogden.  The second is by David Pears and Brian McGuinness.

George Mackley (1900-1983), "Brackie's Burn, Northumberland"

Unbidden, the World bestows great gifts upon us.  But we must be receptive and attentive.  I nearly skipped my afternoon walk yesterday due to the uncertain weather.  I considered taking a nap instead.

We mustn't forget:  it is always possible to wake from a sound sleep and find oneself in a luminous World.

                    On a Boat, Awake at Night

Faint wind rustles reeds and cattails;
I open the hatch, expecting rain -- moon floods the lake.
Boatmen and water birds dream the same dream;
a big fish splashes off like a frightened fox.
It's late -- men and creatures forget each other
while my shadow and I amuse ourselves alone.
Dark tides creep over the flats -- I pity the cold mud-worms;
the setting moon, caught in a willow, lights a dangling spider.
Life passes swiftly, hedged by sorrow;
how long before you've lost it -- a scene like this?
Cocks crow, bells ring, a hundred birds scatter;
drums pound from the bow, shout answers shout.

Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o (Copper Canyon Press 1994). Watson includes the following note to line 12:  "Drums were sounded in the bow when the boat was under way."

To make the imperfect perfect
It is enough to love it.

Kathleen Raine, Living With Mystery.

Claughton Pellew, "The Windmill, Sheringham" (1925)

A Dream Beneath A Summer Moon

As I have mentioned before, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) is the Shakespeare of Japan.  Or, to be fair:  Shakespeare is the Basho of England (and the English-speaking world).  Without Basho, haiku likely would not have developed into a serious form of art.  He transformed it from a sort of pleasant diversion -- an element of social gatherings in which sequences of poems were created -- into something else entirely.

This is one of Basho's best-known poems:

     an octopus pot --
inside, a short-lived dream
     under a summer moon.

Basho (translated by Makoto Ueda), in Makoto Ueda, Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary (Stanford University Press 1991), page 201.

Some background information.  "An octopus pot is an unglazed earthenware vessel made for trapping an octopus, which has the habit of escaping into a dark hole when it is alarmed.  Fishermen string a number of these pots on a rope, sink them into the sea, and pull them up after octopuses have entered them."  Ibid.  Basho wrote the haiku while visiting Akashi, a seaside town near Kobe.  The poem bears the heading:  "Staying overnight in Akashi."  Ibid.  Thus, as is the case with nearly all haiku, Basho's verse is based on direct personal experience -- a moment in time.

Charles Ginner (1878-1952), "Dahlias and Cornflowers" (1929)

Here is the original in romaji (transliterated Japanese using Romanized spelling):

tako-tsubo ya
hakanaki yume wo
natsu no tsuki

Tako is "octopus."  Tsubo is "pot" or "jar."  Ya is a particle of emphasis, akin to "!".  Hakanaki means "fleeting," "transient," "short-lived," or "ephemeral."  Yume is "dream" (as a noun).  Wo can be described as a "noun-following particle marking the direct object of a clause." Kodansha's Romanized Japanese-English Dictionary (1993), page 375.  Natsu is "summer."  Tsuki is "moon."  No is another "noun-following particle," which, in this case, turns the final line into: "moon of summer" or "summer moon."  It all seems fairly simple, doesn't it?  Deceptively simple, as is the case with all good haiku.

Charles Ginner, "Flask Walk, Skyline" (1934)

Here are a few other English translations of the haiku, for purposes of comparison.

     The octopus trap:
Fleeting dreams
     Under the summer moon.

R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido 1952), page 41.  When considering the various translations, bear in mind that, in Japanese, there are no plural forms of nouns:  singular or plural is a matter of context.  Nor is there an equivalent to "a" or "the."

     The jars of octopus --
brief dreams
     under the summer moon.

Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (The Ecco Press 1994), page 22.

     An octopus pot:
An ephemeral dream
     Under the summer moon.

Toshiharu Oseko, Basho's Haiku (Maruzen 1990), page 107.

Charles Ginner, "Hartland Point from Boscastle" (1941)

What, then, are we to make of this?  What does it "mean"?  The notion of "explaining" a haiku is one that I resist mightily.  With apologies, I will refer to a recent post:  a haiku is like a moose swimming across a lake and walking off into the deep woods.  Or like the buck emerging from the lake in Robert Frost's "The Most of It."  The moose and the buck are what they are.

Basho is reporting what he saw and felt.  Make no mistake:  there is consummate art in what he does.  But there is no symbolism.  And there are no "tropes" or metaphors or allegories.  Basho's moment is what it is.  But that does not mean that it does not have intimations and implications and depths beyond words.

Misty rain on Mount Ro, the incoming tide at Sekko --
Before you have been there, you have many regrets;
When you have been there and come back,
It is just simply misty rain on Mount Ro, the incoming tide at Sekko.

Su Tung-P'o (also known as Su Shih) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 1: Eastern Culture (Hokuseido 1949).

Charles Ginner, "Rooftops"

"In A Lifetime How Many Springs Do We See?"

I do not think that we ought to dwell unduly upon our mortality.  Unlike, say, the Elizabethans, I have no desire to place a skull on my mantelpiece as a reminder of where I am bound.  And I certainly do not wish to follow the example of John Donne, who is reputed to have occasionally slept in his coffin (which he kept inside his house).  Enough is enough.

Still, being mindful of the brevity of our days is, I think, a good idea.  If nothing else, it may help us to appreciate the moments as they fly away. Besides, in doing so, we keep ourselves in good company:  Su Tung-p'o and A. E. Housman, for instance.

Stanley Spencer, "Lilac and Clematis at Englefield" (1954)

       Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade

Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green --
when willow fluff scatters, falling blossoms will fill the town.
Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering --
in a lifetime how many springs do we see?

Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), in Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o (Copper Canyon Press 1994).

"In a lifetime how many springs do we see?"  For some of us, the question is not an idle one.  To wit:  at a certain age, the number of springs that we have already seen without a doubt exceeds the number of springs that we have yet to see.  Simple arithmetic, I'm afraid.  But this is not a cause for despair. However, to borrow from Samuel Johnson, it does serve to concentrate the mind wonderfully.

Stanley Spencer

"Wisteria at Englefield" (1955)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896).

A side-note:  on the poetic comparison of snow and blossoms ("snowy boughs by the eastern palisade;" "to see the cherry hung with snow"), please see my previous post on W. H. Davies's "Nailsworth Hill" and Po Chu-i's "Village Night" ("buckwheat blossoms are like snow").

Stanley Spencer, "Garden at Whitehouse, Northern Ireland" (1952)

Perspective, Part Two: An Entire Range, A Single Peak

I wonder:  is it possible to view oneself (or, "one's self") objectively?  I think not.  There is an inherent and inescapable conflict of interest, isn't there?  I suspect that such objectivity is attainable only by the holy (in a mystical, non-sectarian sense) or the mad.  (Perhaps "and/or" rather than "or" is more appropriate in such a case.)

It is somewhat akin to trying to imagine yourself dead.

                 F. H. Glasbury, "Sunshine and Shadow in Epping Forest"

   Written on the Wall at Xilin Temple

Regarded from one side, an entire range;
     from another, a single peak.
Far, near, high, low, all its parts
     different from the others.
If the true face of Mount Lu
     cannot be known,
It is because the one looking at it
     is standing in its midst.

Su Tung-P'o (Su Shih) (1037-1101), in Beata Grant (translator), Mount Lu Revisited: Buddhism in the Life and Writings of Su Shih (University of Hawaii Press 1994).

                        Tom Gentleman, "Balfron, the Field Bridge" (1922)

                      Distance

One's "sense of self" is a curious thing:
Compare the slights you think you have suffered
With those you have visited upon others.
Ah!  then a sudden wind rattles the doors --
As if the world had a life of its own.

sip (March 2011).

                       Ethelbert White, "Sun Through the Wood" (c. 1932)

"The Absurdity Of Stretching Out Our Arms Incessantly To Grasp That Which We Cannot Keep"

A few posts back, I quoted the following line of verse by Ryokan:  "If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things."  This bit of advice has been around in all ages and in all places.  Acting upon it in one's own life is, of course, another matter entirely.

The line kept bouncing around my head.  I seemed to recall that Samuel Johnson had said something along the same lines.  (As Walter Jackson Bate writes in his biography of Johnson:  "Whatever we experience, we find Johnson has been there before us, and is meeting and returning home with us.")  I eventually found what I was looking for in one of my journals:  I had recorded Johnson's thoughts for future reference. 

"Every man has experienced, how much of this ardour has been remitted, when a sharp or tedious sickness has set death before his eyes.  The extensive influence of greatness, the glitter of wealth, the praises of admirers, and the attendance of supplicants, have appeared vain and empty things, when the last hour seemed to be approaching; and the same appearance they would always have, if the same thought was always predominant.  We should then find the absurdity of stretching out our arms incessantly to grasp that which we cannot keep, and wearing out our lives in endeavours to add new turrets to the fabrick of ambition, when the foundation itself is shaking, and the ground on which it stands is mouldering away."

Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, Number 17 (May 15, 1750).

The Chinese poet Su Tung-P'o (also known as Su Shih) (1037-1101) beautifully expresses the same thought in a more oblique fashion:

Misty rain on Mount Ro, the incoming tide at Sekko --
Before you have been there, you have many regrets;
When you have been there and come back,
It is just simply misty rain on Mount Ro, the incoming tide at Sekko.

Su Tung-P'o (translated by R. H. Blyth), in Haiku, Volume One: Eastern Culture (1949).  I think that perhaps Blyth should have omitted the phrase "it is just simply" from the final line.

                                  Gilbert Spencer, "Bedroom Window"