It's April

I know--April is two-thirds gone already, but as the old cliche goes--better late than never.  Following are several poems about April, and not all agree about April.  That's what makes poetry so interesting, for me anyway.

While this first poem doesn't specially refer to April, in the Midwest, where I grew up, April would seem to be the best fit.  A frost in March wouldn't really be considered a late frost, while one in May is extremely unlikely.  Moreover, the blossoming appears to be more like April, which seems, to me anyway, to be set between the "orchard bare" and the "orchard green."   But, I'm sure there will be those who disagree with my weather observations.

Frost here uses his name to signify something dangerous, which he has done several times in the past in a number of poems.  Other writers have also suggested that reading can be dangerous to one's ideas or one's perspective.


A Peril of Hope

It is right in there

Betwixt and between

The orchard bare

And the orchard green,

When the boughs are right

In a flowery burst

Of pink and white,

That we fear the worst.

For there's not a clime

But at any cost

Will take that time

For a night of frost.
-- Robert Frost --




The following opening lines to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales provides a different feeling about April--partly I think as a reaction to the escape from winter, as well as recognition of the beauties of Spring.


Prologue to Canterbury Tales

WHANNE that April with his shoures sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swiche licour,
Of whiche vertue engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eke with his sote brethe
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye,
So priketh hem nature in hir corages;
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,

 -- Geoffrey Chaucer --
 from The Canterbury Tales


For those who don't have a glossary for Middle English handy:

  When April's gentle rains have pierced the drought
Of March right to the root, and bathed each sprout
Through every vein with liquid of such power
It brings forth the engendering of the flower;  
When Zephyrus too with his sweet breath has blown             5
Through every field and forest, urging on
The tender shoots, and there's a youthful sun,
His second half course through the Ram now run,
And little birds are making melody
And sleep all night, eyes open as can be                     10
(So Nature pricks them in each little heart),
On pilgrimage then folks desire to start.






I think the opening lines of this poem plays on Chaucer's opening lines.  Of course, the difference can be seen as due primarily to the differing locations for each poem:  Chaucer's set in England, "Now that Aprils' here,"  while Eliot's is set in a wasteland.  It's sort of related to Frost's poem, in that both speak of thwarted hope. 




The Wasteland, first stanza

  April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

-- T. S. Eliot --
from The Wasteland



Here's another view of April, very different than that of Eliot.  It's very simple and straightforward and echoes Chaucer's "April with his shoures sote ." 

April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night--

And I love the rain.

-- Langston Hughes --



I can't leave out my favorite haiku, even though I've posted it several times already.

April's air stirs in
Willow-leaves.  .  .  a butterfly
Floats and balances.
          -- Basho  --

Robert Louis Stevenson and Langston Hughes: Two points of view

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
   And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
     And the hunter home from the hill.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson --




Death of an Old Seaman

We buried him high on a windy hill,
But his soul went out to sea.
I know, for I heard, when all was still,
His sea-soul say to me:

Put no tombstone at my head,
For here I do not make my bed.
Strew no flowers on my grave,
I've gone back to the wind and wave.
Do not, do not weep for me,
For I am happy with my sea.

-- Langston Hughes --
from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
Arnold Rampersad, Editor


It almost seems as though Hughes' poem is a response to Stevenson's.  Some days I'm with Stevenson, but on other days, well, Hughes seems right for me.  Actually I'm of two minds here: both seem right and fitting when I read them. 

Langston Hughes: two poems

Empty House

It was in the empty house
That I came to dwell
And in the empty house
I found an empty hell.

Why is it that an empty house
Untouched by human strife
Can hold more woe
Than the wide world holds,
More pain than a cutting knife?


Is he really talking about an empty house?  What is "an empty hell"?   How could it be empty if it was filled with woe and pain?



Minstrel Man

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter 
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long?

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter,
You do not hear
My inner cry?
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die?

 -- Langston Hughes --
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes


I think "Minstrel Man"  could have been included in a previous post of mine, Congruence (Jan. 29, 2014).   On the other hand, it also shares the idea of hidden grief with another powerful poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, "We wear the mask."  This is the last stanza (the complete poem is posted on June 27, 2009).


We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
- Paul Laurence Dunbar -

Langston Hughes: Does it matter?

New Year

The years
Fall like dry leaves
From the top-less tree
Of eternity.
Does it matter
That another leaf has fallen?

-- Langston Hughes --
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes


About ten days ago Mayan Calendar ended and a new cycle began.  Today, our calendar begins a new cycle.  In spite of the foolish panic of some, I really didn't see any difference when the Mayan Calender ended.  And, frankly, this morning I had to remind myself that we are now in 2013 for I couldn't see anything different this morning either.

If either calendar change makes a difference, I think it's only because we decide that it does. Langston Hughes asks a question--Does it matter/That another leaf has fallen?-- and, like many other writers, doesn't answer his question.  He leaves it for you and me and the other guy.

Does it matter?

Langston Hughes: Looking for Joy

Joy

I went to look for Joy,
Slim, dancing Joy,
Gay, laughing Joy,
Bright-eyed Joy--
And I found her
Driving the butcher's cart
In the arms of the butcher boy!
Such company, such company,
As keeps this young nymph, Joy!
--Langston Hughes--

I think the charm is its ambiguity.  Is Joy a young girl or is it the emotion itself?  Or is it both?  Whichever it is, Joy can be found anywhere, even in the arms of the butcher boy.    I can picture the cart moving through the streets guided by the butcher boy with his love in his arms, and their hands intertwined while holding the reins.  I can also picture that same cart driven by a young boy, grinning cheerfully, smiling at all who meet his eye, just glad to be alive.

Several Spring Poems

I guess it's a truism that poetry is not about something but rather about the poet's perception of something. Glancing at the several poems below, all about spring, does show that each poet has a different perception about Spring. Even the titles suggest those varying viewpoints.


Metamorphosis

Always it happens when we are not there--
The tree leaps up alive into the air,
Small open parasols of Chinese green
Wave on each twig. But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first.

Lovers of wind, who will have been aware
Of a faint stirring in the empty air,
Look up one day through a dissolving screen
To find no star, but this multiplied green,
Shadow on shadow, singing sweet and clear.
Listen, lovers of wind, the leaves are here!

-- May Sarton --





Loveliest of Trees,
The Cherry Now

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. Houseman --



Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms--
lights
of years past.

-- Basho --



In Time of Silver Rain

In time of silver rain
The earth
puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads
Of life,
Of life,
Of life!

In time of silver rain
The butterflies
Lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,And trees put forth
New leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,
In time of silver rain
When spring
And life
Are new.

-- Langston Hughes --


All poems come from the following collection:

Art and Nature: An Illustrated Anthology of Nature Poetry
Selected by Kate Farrell

It is a collection of seasonal poetry and paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a remarkable anthology.

Langston Hughes: Feb. 1, 1902--May 22, 1967

Some short early poems by Langston Hughes.


Cabaret

Does a jazz band ever sob?
They say a jazz band's gay.
Yet as the vulgar dancers whirled
And the wan night wore away,
One said she heard the jazz band sob
When the little dawn was grey.


The night is over, and the fantasy world created by music must retreat before the harsh reality of the coming day. What do the jazz players face during the day that elicits a sob before they gather again to enter that fantasy world?

"vulgar dancers"-- Does he mean "vulgar" in the modern sense of coarse, crude, or uncouth, or in the earlier sense of common or ordinary?



Winter Moon

How thin and sharp is the moon tonight!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!

A scythe? -- the implement frequently depicted as being carried by Death, the Grim Reaper.




Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.


the white day of activity, furious and frenzied, and the dark night of rest and tenderness.
But--both are only dreams.

Langston Hughes: some short poems gathered at random

The following poems come from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. These are the ones that I stopped to read a second time as I browsed through the book, opening randomly at various pages. As I write this, I'm not sure why they interested me, though. Perhaps another reading might give me a clue.




Monotony

Today like yesterday
Tomorrow like today;
The drip, drip, drip,
Of monotony
Is wearing my life away;
Today like yesterday,
Tomorrow like today.


It ends the way it begins--does that suggest monotony? He resists the impulse to make a logic chain of the two repeated lines. He could have written--

Yesterday like today
Today like tomorrow

which gives us the following progression: Yesterday-->Today-->Tomorrow


Instead he gives us-- Today-->Yesterday-->Tomorrow-->Today

Perhaps it's because the one I suggested shows a direct line from yesterday to today to tomorrow, which denotes a progression, while what he gave us was more like a circle from today to yesterday to tomorrow and back to today--no beginning and no end--monotonous.




Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Without dreams, we can't leave the ground. Without dreams life cannot come forth. It seems that dreams are elusive and transient, and we must "Hold fast" to them. Could the cure for monotony be a dream?




Gods

The ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond and jade,
Sit silently on their temple shelves
While the people are afraid.
Yet the ivory gods
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond-jade,
Are only silly puppet gods
That the people themselves
Have made.


I think he forgot the most prevelant gods that the people make and worship and fear: entertainers, athletes, politicians, the past . . .




The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.


When I read The Dream Keeper, I immediately thought of the earlier one, Dreams. This poem also suggests that dreams are transient and fragile, which is why they belong off this earth, castles in the sky.



Formula

Poetry should treat
Of lofty things
Soaring thoughts
And birds with wings.

The Muse of Poetry
Should not know
That roses
In manure grow.

The Muse of Poetry
Should not care
That earthly pain
Is everywhere.

Poetry!
Treats of lofty things
Soaring thoughts
And birds with wings.


Is there a touch of irony here?

Fall Equinox

Like last year, the first day of autumn, or the Fall Equinox, doesn't seem much like fall here in Tucson, where the temperature is expected to hit 100. But, the Sun and the Stars have decreed that today is the day, so here's a few poems that may be closer to reality in a month or so.

For you in northern climes, therefore:



Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the fragrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
with a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

-- Carl Sandburg --


(Autumn--the season of memories . . .)




Yellow autumn moon . . .
Unimpressed the scarecrow stands
Simply looking bored

-- Issa --
from A Little Treasury of Haiku






Autumn Refrain

The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of the sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never--shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness that comes to me out of this, beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never--shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.

--Wallace Stevens --


(I find this the most puzzling of the autumn poems.)




#656

The name - of it - is "Autumn" -
The hue - of it - is Blood -
An Artery - upon the Hill -
A Vein - along the Road -

Great Globules - in the Alleys -
And Oh, the Shower of Stain -
When winds - upset the Basin -
And spill the Scarlet Rain -

It sprinkles Bonnets - far slow -
It gathers ruddy Pools -
Then - eddies like a Rose - away -
Upon Vermilion Wheels -

-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
ed. Thomas H. Johnson


Autumn Note

The little flowers of yesterday
Have all forgotten May.
The last gold leaf
Has turned to brown.
The last bright day is grey.
The cold of winter comes apace
And you have gone away.

-- Langston Hughes --





Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

-- Robert Frost --


(That last line raises some questions, doesn't it? Frost has a habit of doing that. Does the poem end on an ominous note?)




Dry cheerful cricket
Chirping, keeps the autumn gay . . .
Contemptuous of frost

-- Basho --
from A Little Treasury of Haiku
(This poem also seems to end on an ominous note.)

(Just noticed the double tie-ins with the previous poem.)

In Memoriam: Langston Hughes Feb. 1, 1902--May 22, 1967

Afro-American Fragment

So long,
So far away
Is Africa.
Not even memories alive
Save those that history books create,
Save those that songs
Beat back into the blood--
Beat out of blood with words sad-sung
In strange un-Negro tongue--
So long,
So far away
Is Africa.

Subdued and time-lost
Are the drums--and yet
Through some vast mist of race
There comes this song
I do not understand,
This song of atavistic land,
Of bitter yearnings lost
Without a place--
So long,
So far away
Is Africa's
Dark face.

-- Langston Hughes --
from Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes--"Troubled Woman"

A word painting:



Troubled Woman

She stands
In the quiet darkness,
This troubled woman
Bowed by
Weariness and pain
Like an
Autumn flower
In the frozen rain,
Like a
Wind-blown autumn flower
That never lifts its head
Again.

Langston Hughes: Feb 1, 1902--May 22, 1967

Today is Langston Hughes' birthday:



Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?



The second line--"like a raisin in the sun?"--provides the title for Lorraine Hansberry's highly acclaimed play, A Raisin in the Sun (1959), which depicts the experiences of a black family in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood when they receive a $10,000 insurance check and try to decide what to do with the legacy.

Langston Hughes: February 1, 1902--May 22, 1967

The following quotes are from the Wikipedia entry on Langston Hughes.


"James Mercer Langston Hughes, (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.

. . .

On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from complications after abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer, at the age of 65. His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer leading to the auditorium named for him within the Arthur Schomburg Center for Reasearch in Black Culture in Harlem. The design on the floor covering his cremated remains is an African cosmogram titled Rivers. The title is taken from the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Hughes. Within the center of the cosmogram and precisely above the ashes of Hughes are the words My soul has grown deep like the rivers."


Since this poem has been singled out at his monument, I thought I would post it here.



The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

-- Langston Hughes --







Below is a link to the Wikipedia entry about Langston Hughes.

http://tinyurl.com/6kkyb6