IV by e.e. cummings

IV

our touching hearts slenderly comprehend
(clinging as fingers,loving one another
gradually into hands)and bend
into the huge disaster of the year:

like this most early single star which tugs

weakly at twilight,caught in thickening fear
our slightly fingering spirits starve and smother;
until autum abruptly wholly hugs

our dying silent minds,which hand in hand
at some window try to understand
the
    (through pale miles of perishing air,haunted
with huddling infinite wishless melancholy,
suddenly looming)accurate undaunted

moon's bright third tumbling slowly

I've always felt awkward about explaining poems. It's not so much a hesitation on how to start the critique, if ever it be called such, but a reticience in dissecting it and finding empty skins, discarded pistachio halves.

We can never really get at the heart of things; once a doctor slices a man up, all he finds are more surfaces. His incisions, deeper and deeper, never tear at the curtain. To him said: I'm sorry, Sir, please go back to your seat; the backstage is off-limits to viewers. But when the opera does show, and when the man's eyes do speak, there will be nothing on his operating desk, and nothing to show for. The inexperienced surgeon's fears can never be allayed.

The diver enters the water. And the sea heals itself faster than any broken heart could. Its hands clasp in joyous leaps and forgets that any breach had been made. Within water, the diver makes masterful strokes that meet persuasive currents: he learns a secret or two. Within him, his blood converses like old friends with the water beyond. The diver lifts himself from generous water, walking away with nothing but the droplets in his skin.

The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro

(A copy may be found here.)


This is last short story in Jeffrey Eugenides compilation My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead, which I borrowed from a dear friend. I haven't gone through all of the short stories though. May they be ravished slowly. ü

Curiosity was piqued by Eugenides glowing description of the story-- that's why I read it first. I hesitate between a review and a personal response to the story: should I go for technical brilliance or its effect? Munro writes in such a way that the grayness of life is ever drawn out. All intermingle. The effect of great literature, I suppose is a tempering of the reader's outlook-- a tolerance for shadings past the borders and the lines.

The Bear Came Over the Mountain follows the story of aged couple Grant and Fiona. Fiona suffers from Alzheimer's and Grant is forced to move her to an institution. A month later, Fiona develops an attraction to an elderly patient named Aubrey. She seemed to have forgotten Grant; and she slips away with Aubrey in their own world, sprinkled with strange endearments she never addressed to Grant. She tolerates Grant, who regularly visits and her almost stalks her, with politeness. He does not tell her he is her husband of fifty years; but despite his hurt, sadness and loneliness that pervade the story.
Fiona never leaves the passages; she is there even when she is not physically present in the scene. The past and the future dally in Grant's mind; the recollections ebb and flow in the most natural of manners. It brings a subtle point about memory and time; and perhaps, the Alzheimer's do not depart too radically from the normal course of the mind. Our walk is never entirely straightfoward; we often wander from room to room, lingering in some and sometimes passing by old corridors with diffidence. Perhaps, Alzheimer's patients are unable to direct their paths; perhaps like an invalid incapable of controlling his bladder.
Eugenides noted in the introduction the complexity of the characters of the story. Though his devotion is most apparent during the time of the story, he had always loved Fiona even though he he was a philanderer when he was younger.. But there is no harsh moral light cast upon him.
Old married couples always elicit feelings of warm, fuzzy, admiration; I suppose partly because it is supposed that their love is divested of any imperfections.-- as if being old rids you of any hang ups on beauty and all else superficial. But Monroe paints a more complex and realistic portrait of love. In the story is a intermingling of eros and agape, though neither is really out of the picture at any given point. And it's never all about love; it's also about betrayal and the inescapable faultlines and trembles of human errors.
At the end of the story, however, Grant's selfless act is still a stark gem of agape.
Monro ends the story poignantly and brilliantly. Fiona remembers, perhaps only for a moment.
“You could have just driven away,” she said. “Just driven away without a care in the world and forsook me. Forsooken me. Forsaken.”
He kept his face against her white hair, her pink scalp, her sweetly shaped skull.
He said, “Not a chance.”

It merits another reading. For sure, a few details eluded the first reading. It strikes me as poignantly, beautifully sad.

By the way, have I mentioned Alice Munro looks like my grandmother? No, seriously. If Grandma was Caucasian, she would totally be her twin.

MUST WATCH: Away from Her, a film by Sarah Polley, based on The Bear Came Over the Mountain

Currently Digesting

My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead - Jefferey Eugenides

Penguin History of the 20th Century - J.M. Roberts

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera

Totality and Infinity - Emmanuel Levinas

Routledge Critical Thinkers: Emmanuel Levinas - Sean Hand

Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction - Elizabeth Grosz

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know

one thing. 

You know how this is: 

if I look 

at the crystal moon, at the red branch 

of the slow autumn at my window, 

if I touch 

near the fire 

the impalpable ash 

or the wrinkled body of the log, 

everything carries me to you, 

as if everything that exists, 

aromas, light, metals, 

were little boats 

that sail 

toward those isles of yours that wait for me. 

Well, now, 

if little by little you stop loving me 

I shall stop loving you little by little. 

If suddenly 

you forget me 

do not look for me, 

for I shall already have forgotten you. 

If you think it long and mad, 

the wind of banners 

that passes through my life, 

and you decide 

to leave me at the shore 

of the heart where I have roots, 

remember 

that on that day, 

at that hour, 

I shall lift my arms 

and my roots will set off 

to seek another land. 

But 

if each day, 

each hour, 

you feel that you are destined for me 

with implacable sweetness, 

if each day a flower 

climbs up to your lips to seek me, 

ah my love, ah my own, 

in me all that fire is repeated, 

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, 

my love feeds on your love, beloved, 

and as long as you live it will be in your arms 

without leaving mine. 

Ode To The Sea - Pablo Neruda

Here surrounding the island,

There's sea.

But what sea?

It's always overflowing.

Says yes,

Then no,

Then no again,

And no,

Says yes

In blue

In sea spray

Raging,

Says no

And no again.

It can't be still.

It stammers

My name is sea.

It slaps the rocks

And when they aren't convinced,

Strokes them

And soaks them

And smothers them with kisses.

With seven green tongues

Of seven green dogs

Or seven green tigers

Or seven green seas,

Beating its chest,

Stammering its name,

Oh Sea,

This is your name.

Oh comrade ocean,

Don't waste time

Or water

Getting so upset

Help us instead.

We are meager fishermen,

Men from the shore

Who are hungry and cold

And you're our foe.

Don't beat so hard,

Don't shout so loud,

Open your green coffers,

Place gifts of silver in our hands.

Give us this day our daily fish.

Kung Paano by Rofel Brion

Kung paano dumadapo

ang buto sa malumot na bato,

at nagiging binhi’t lumalago,

gumagapang tungo sa iba pang bato,

namumulaklak, hitik na hitik,

at bago malanta’y nagkakalat ng bango,

 ganito sana ako maging ako,

 ganito sana ako maging sa iyo.

♥ I would like this to be a poem about my life.

Spring & Fall by Gerard Manly Hopkins

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Tired and Lonely by Dag Hammarskjöld

Tired

And lonely,

So tired

The heart aches.

Meltwater trickles

Down the rocks,

The fingers are numb,

The knees tremble.

It is now,

Now, that you must not give in.

On the path of the others

Are resting places,

Places in the sun

Where they can meet.

But this

Is your path

And it is now,

Now that you must not fail

Weep

If you can, 

Weep,

But do not complain.

The way chose you --

And you must be thankful.








Dr Garcia mentioned the first and last lines of this poem during Levinas class, I looked it up. It made me think of two people. She walks through a dark valley. I don't know why I thought of him; I haven't talked to him in months. But I trust in the universe and in intuition. I sent it to both of them.




Brevity and bluntness of the lines remind one of the slow and pained plodding of one exhausted beyond measure. Her most memorable lines are those that punch straight: Tired / and Lonely / So tired the heart aches. She rings so true, the lines are recognized with a pang of recognition.


An inner revolt accompanies the last lines The way chose you-- / And you must be thankful. To remember that one is human is consoling; we reserve the right to withdraw from hurt. Gratitude radically negates consolation and pain.




It's funny. This is both is and is not a poem of consolation. I recall Alain de Botton's Nietzsche.