the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 442, Nov. 28, 2003
Nikos Gatsos (1911-1992)
“Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all
over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the
treeless hills, falling softly on the Bog of Allen and, father westward, softly
falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every
part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly
drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little
gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow
falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, liked the descent of
the their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
—James Joyce, “The Dead,” The Dubliners
Enlightenment
Driving across the eastern Kansas plain, he looked up
from the road and spied the puff of light he remembered was the Pleiades, the
Seven Sisters, teachers of the infant Bacchus. To the east, just up from the
horizon was Orion, following Artemis to Delos, the scorpion in pursuit.
Birth and death and stillness. A fine vision for a
quiet, lonely night. The air was clear—there was enough moon to turn everything
silver, the ponds and streams across the fields into foiled glitter. He
listened to the hum of the engine and the breathing of his wife and child.
He adjusted his back against the seat, hooking his
index fingers over the bottom of the steering wheel. He took a deep breath,
felt it fill his lungs, smelled the interior of the car—people, food, sleep. It
was a moment that seemed like all of eternity.
The first time he knew this was in Wyoming, where he
was a graduate student. He had worn himself to a frazzle worrying about what
would happen, what would become of him, how he would compare to others. Days had
tasted of electricity. He walked about on campus and taught class in a trance,
often talking to himself.
Finally, he found himself in his underwear on his
hands and knees, shaking, staring at the dust wisps on the floor of his dorm
room praying to be relieved of the pain or he would have to jump out the window
with a rope around his neck.
Somehow, he found Don Brown, a funny, skinny little
man who owned the Blue Sky Trailer Court in West Laramie—a spread of six
single-wides on a dirt lot surrounded with wood fence. Don wore a canvas hat
pricked with porcupine quills and a down vest regardless of the season. He face
was ageless in that he looked like many Wyoming men who reach the age of 50 and
then become indistinguishable from one another in their leatheriness.
Don had a cabin in the mountains west of Laramie.
Wood stove, a washbasin, a comfortable chair and bed, and oil lamps. It had
electricity, but only for turning on the lights long enough to find the oil
lamps. A cheap phonograph stood in the corner, Johnny Cash, Elvis, and Ventures
records.
Maybe it was writing and reading in the light of oil
lamps, or the fire in the stove, or the moon turning the forest and mountain
silver. Perhaps it was the crystal cold stillness of the nights or the grand sweep
of the days as he walked along the edges of the meadows. But soon, the air
seemed fluid, soothing. He was able to sleep.
Without warning or transition, his world changed. The
worry he felt was gone. He had no thought of the future or regret of the past.
He looked about at the bear-marked trees and felt a sudden sense of comfort.
He stopped fast. He couldn’t breath. The world needed
no purpose, no God, no Satan, no evil, no good. It was whole and fulfilled
itself in this moment, every moment. For himself, he had this instant.
Expectations of wisdom he could gain from the past negated the lessons he could
learn from the past. The future was a direction lived in every moment now.
His work, he knew, was done. He stood from the grass
and looked out over the creek and the valley. It was time to be a student and a
teacher, and stop thinking so much about himself.
Now, on the prairie, listening to the car and the
people in it, he realized enlightenment comes and we only learn about it later.
Had he understood the gravity of what happened in that alpine meadow so many
years before, he would have been made crazy by the abundance and the
nothingness of it.
He smiled as the comfort he had known in the meadow filled
him again. He had everything here, in the car. Artemis, who would not go away,
whom he would not have to chase to Delos. His daughter, a Hyad who would not
disappear, sail away.
Not in this eternity.
For more astrological and
mythological information on the Pleiades and Orion: www.ras.ucalgary.ca/~gibson/pleiades/pleiades_myth.html,
www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Orion-(mythology).
Today’s poem:
By Ken Larson
ze Ruplique is DEAD
but the Empire ALIVE
with every arch of gold cast in new land
with every Indian run off good sand
the liberal hand knows not
what the right hand does
but it does and it does
you free radicals must refuse
idiot boxes, succor practice,
aromatherapy, unguents, balms and salves
the only vote you have
is that photo of George I
which you must not cast—
the redcoats are coming...
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