gosh

PORTLAND THROUGH MY LENS

what survives

16
First day of the first week: rain
on perennial ground cover, a sheen
like oil of verdure where the rock shows through;
dark ochre patched more dark, with stubborn glaze;
rough soggy drystone clinging to the fell,
broken by hawthorns. What survives
of memory | you can call indigenous
if you recall anything. Finally
untranscribably, that which is | wrests back
more than can be revived; inuring us
through deprivation | below and beyond life,
hard-come-by loss of self | self’s restitution.

Geoffrey Hill, Speech! Speech!

sex

And by her yielded, by him best receivd,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctance amorous delay.

Paradise Lost 4.310-311

*

This said unanimous, and other Rites
Observing none, but adoration pure
Which God likes best, into thir inmost bowre
Handed they went; and eas'd the putting off
These troublesom disguises which wee wear,
Strait side by side were laid, nor turnd I weene
Adam from his fair Spouse, nor Eve the Rites
Mysterious of connubial Love refus'd:
Whatever Hypocrites austerely talk
Of puritie and place and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to som, leaves free to all.
Our Maker bids increase, who bids abstain
But our Destroyer, foe to God and Man?
Haile wedded Love, mysterious Law, true source
Of human ofspring, sole propriety,
In Paradise of all things common else.
By thee adulterous lust was driv'n from men
Among the bestial herds to raunge, by thee
Founded in Reason, Loyal, Just, and Pure,
Relations dear, and all the Charities
Of Father, Son, and Brother first were known.
Farr be it, that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual Fountain of Domestic sweets,
Whose bed is undefil'd and chaste pronounc't,
Present, or past, as Saints and Patriarchs us'd.
Here Love his golden shafts imploies, here lights
His constant Lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile
Of Harlots, loveless, joyless, unindeard,
Casual fruition, nor in Court Amours
Mixt Dance, or wanton Mask, or Midnight Bal,
Or Serenate, which the starv'd Lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
These lulld by Nightingales imbraceing slept,
And on thir naked limbs the flourie roof
Showrd Roses, which the Morn repair'd. Sleep on
Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.

4.734-775

words

haulm
n. - collective sing. stems or stalks of various cultivated plants, as peas, beans, vetches, hops, potatoes, etc., now less commonly of corn or grass; esp. as left after gathering the pods, ears, etc., and used for litter or thatching; straw

not tragic

LXV

Not quite heat- or rain-scrim, this heavy
blankness, thinning now, presides with a mauve-
tinted wipe-around grey. Noon, yet no distance
to any horizon. The Malverns gone in haze.
I would not, formerly,
have so described bereavement. Land
of Unlikeness a similitude, certitude
moves to dissolution. Still, an answer:
misprised, misplaced love,
our routine, is not tragic;
misadventure at worst. And my self-styled
lament must cover for us both.
Something here to know time by, in all
conscience. In all conscience we
shall lie down together. Dear one, be told
you chose impenetrable absence; I became
commonplace fantasy’s
life-sentenced ghost. Allow
our one tolerable scena its two minds.
Abruptly the sun’s out, striking a new
cleave; skidding the ridge-grass, down steep hangers;
buddleia in dark bloom; a wayward covey
of cabbage-whites this instant balanced
and prinking; the light itself aromatic.

Geoffrey Hill, The Orchards of Syon

autumn

ROS: We'll be cold. The summer won't last.
GUIL: It's autumnal.
ROS (examining the ground): No leaves.
GUIL: Autumnal--nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day...Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it...Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses...deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth--reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke.

Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

what a voice

I

Now there is no due season. Do not
mourn unduly. You have sometimes said
that I project a show more
stressful than delightful. Watch my hands
confabulate their shadowed rhetoric,
gestures of benediction; maledictions
by arrangement. For us there is
no deadline, neither for stand nor standoff.
I can prolong the act at times
to rival Augustine, this shutter
play among words, befitting
a pact with light, the contra-Faustian heist
from judgement to mercy.
I shall promote our going and coming,
as shadows, in expressive light; take
my belief, if only through a process
taxing salvation—may I proceed?—
not merely to divert with faith and fiction,
to ease peregrination, what a life!
Has it ever been staged
seriously outside Spain, I mean
La vida es sueño? Tell me, is this the way
to the Orchards of Syon
where I left you thinking I would return?

Geoffrey Hill, The Orchards of Syon

the desperate man

from X

But the significant feature of the desperate man reveals itself
when he meets other desperate men, directly or vicariously;
and he experiences his first kindness, someone to strain with him,
to strain to see him as he strains to see himself,
someone to understand, someone to accept the regard,
the love, that desperation forces into hiding.
Those feelings that find no expression in desperate times
store themselves up in great abundance, ripen, strengthen,
and strain the walls of their repository to the utmost;
where the kindred spirit touches this wall it crumbles--
no one responds to kindness, no one is more sensitive to it
than the desperate man.

Adrienne Rich, "An Atlas of the Difficult World"

chinese migrants workers

The Parents: "We were so eager to leave home sixteen years ago. We wanted to get on the train and go...
...find a good job and make money. We were very poor when we left home in the 90's. On the day we left, my mom held my baby. Qin was only a year old. I was crying when I left. I didn't want to leave her but I had no choice. The last time I held Qin was at my mother's place. They all said I should stay home until Qin grew a little older. I didn't say a word. I hardened my heart and left with my husband. I had no choice. That's life. Every time I received a letter form home, I would cry. I always cried. Every time I received a letter from my father I would cry and I couldn't eat anything. I would have to eat before reading a letter from home. Otherwise I couldn't eat anything."

Qin: "A good friend of mine worked here. She told me that the factory was recruiting and asked me to come. I thought it would be good to work in a factory, but after coming, I couldn't really get used to anything here. And other than her, I have no friends...
...is life good here? For us, after all, freedom is happiness."

Last Train Home

silenus

Jusepe de Ribera, The Drunken Silenus (1628)

honest oratory, honest poetry

Imagine that I was drawn to your body as a lover is drawn; then you would see that when I touch you I want my touch to carry my love to your heart; but that means that my feelings must be allowed to flow into my fingers; and that means that you must allow my fingers to move along your nerves like a voice within a wire; then the sound of your heart will be, as well, the sound of my voice, and the sound of my voice--not as simple sound, not because it's mine, and not because my accent is so wondrously unique, but because it contains the touch of the true word--will circulate as one blood between us. This is what honest oratory--this is what poetry--is all about.

William Gass, "The Habitations of the Word"

wait, what?

A scribe then approached and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Another of his disciples said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."
Matthew 8:19-22

immure

Our prison strong, this huge convex of Fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round

Milton, Paradise Lost 2.434-435

*

You are still kind whom the same shape immures.
Kind and beyond adieu. We miss our cue.
It is the pain, it is the pain endures.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

William Empson, "Villanelle"

jerusalem

On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot on a pile of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves; and they shall devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples, while Jerusalem shall again be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem.
Zechariah 12:6

satan's shield

He scarce had ceas't when the superiour Fiend
Was moving toward the shoar; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round,
Behind him cast; the broad cirucmference
Hung on his shoulders like the Moon

Milton, Paradise Lost I.283-287

the american dream

[...] prime-age families are working in the paid labor market now relative to the labor supply of earlier cohorts. In that sense, today's families are running faster yet gaining less ground.

These mobility and cohort analyses consistently reveal some degree of income mobility and growth in America. By no means does the United States have a totally stagnant, immobile society, where people are stuck in their place in the income scale, decade after decade. But neither are they moving that far from where they start. Most who start at the top and the bottom are there a decade later. Most who start out in the middle-class are still in or near the middle-class a decade later; of those who start out in the middle fifth, about 75% are in one of the middle three-fifths a decade later.

Moreover, the rate of mobility has not changed over time. The data [...] cover roughly the last two decades, but the last edition of this book took the analysis back yet another decade [...] and showed the same result. This finding is important in the context of the inequality debate. It is true that greater mobility can offset higher inequality. But that is not happening in America.

Lawrence Mishel, The State of Working America 2008-2009

prophets

Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones; and had none to cry to, but with the Prophet, O earth, earth, earth! to tell the very soil it self, what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to.

Milton, "Readie and Easie Way"

habakkuk

Was your wrath against the rivers, O LORD? Or your anger against the rivers, or your rage against the sea, when you drove your horses, your chariots to victory? You brandished your naked bow, sated were the arrows at your command. Selah
You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you, and writhed; a torrent of water swept by; the deep gave forth its voice. The sun raised high its hands; the moon stood still in its exalted place, at the light of your arrows speeding by, at the gleam of your flashing spear.
Habakkuk 3:8-11

shannon wilsey

I retire to a split-white smile to be seen
in some old stag magazine.
And this girl's eyes, when they were roughly wrenched
open I could see a starry stair up your thigh,
you hid behind your hair oh but I
saw you smiling while all these guys,
all these curious sets of eyes safe behind
a TV screen, I let them pry, pick apart
and hang up to dry almost every piece of me...

[...]

Oh what a trip
Oh what a shimmering silver ship
Oh what a hot half-life I half lived
Oh and the stripes and stars, how they stripped
off the siding when my life ripped
off from the part that played as a kid
into the part that plays through your lips
to find a warm, safe place
and sit curled up inside it

so here's goodbye
from the part that's staying behind
to the part that has to leave,
to the sublime lips
that were never spoiled by lying
but to the face inside the being
who wasn't me,
who wasn't me,
oh no, no
She's not me oh no

Okkervil River, "Starry Stairs"

leaves

His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat

Milton, Paradise Lost I.301-305

sex

then, but as I built my courage up
he stiffened.

And I threw
my heart into the act, as one

who plows the earth with spite for it,
his anger lightening his labor, that

the ground break open for
his putting in the seed. I will not
lie fallow always though

my body rot.

—the thick
warmth running in my mouth like
bitter salt dissolved in water,

like the ocean beautiful
though full of bloated fish.”

Allen Edwin Butt, "If Briefly"