The Sound of Silence

Oh, for silence & velvety darkness & painless peace---

The most beautiful lyrics on silence ever written. Take a listen.

xo,
Marion, melancholy today

The Sound of Silence
By Simon & Garfunkel

"The Sound Of Silence"

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

"Fools," said I, "You do not know –
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls

And whispered in the sound of silence.http://youtu.be/4zLfCnGVeL4http://youtu.be/4zLfCnGVeL4

Trapeze By Deborah Digges

I posted this a year ago, but it's one of my favorite poems, so I'm reposting it on this fecund, rainy first full day of Spring.  My flowers are blooming wildly. The bulbs I planted have every single one come up, eagerly, a miracle.  I also recommend an amazing book of beautiful poetry, "Cloud Pharmacy" by Susan Rich. When I first bought it, I sat and read it straight through.

Happy International Poetry Day. Read a lot of poetry today and every day.

Blessings,
Marion 🌷🌹🌻🌺🌼



Trapeze
by Deborah Digges

See how the first dark takes the city in its arms
and carries it into what yesterday we called the future.

O, the dying are such acrobats.
Here you must take a boat from one day to the next,

or clutch the girders of the bridge, hand over hand.
But they are sailing like a pendulum between eternity and evening,

diving, recovering, balancing the air.
Who can tell at this hour seabirds from starlings,

wind from revolving doors or currents off the river.
Some are as children on swings pumping higher and higher.

Don't call them back, don't call them in for supper.
See, they leave scuff marks like jet trails on the sky. 

from:  Trapeze

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"What I am is all that I can carry." ~ Deborah Digges

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"We are what we don't throw away," ~Daniel, Rectify (Act As If, Season 2, Episode 5)

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Fairy-tale Logic by A. E. Stallings

In Memory of Sir Terry Pratchett  (April 28, 1948 - March 12, 2015)
R.I.P. Gentle Author & a moving quote from his Twitter account:

@terryandrob: Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.


Fairy-tale Logic
BY A. E. STALLINGS

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

Source: Poetry (March 2010)

Evil

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." ~Edmund Burke

This week ISIS killed more than 20 Christians and burned over 8,000 rare books.  We don't even know how many women and children have been brutally raped and murdered, some reportedly crucified.  I weep daily...Our leaders are doing nothing and evil is prevailing.  I am so ashamed of our President and our leaders.  What is it going to take for someone to act on behalf of our country and stand up for those who are powerless?

It is a travesty.

God help us.

The Circus Animals' Desertion By Yeats

The Circus Animals' Desertion

William Butler Yeats

I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what. 

II 

What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride. 

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love. 

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of. 

III 

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. 

Poet Rod McKuen Died

Rod McKuen died yesterday at age 81.  He was a bestselling poet in the 1970's and my muse during that decade.  My favorite books of his are "Lonesome Cities" and "In Someone's Shadow".  His title poems in both of those books are magical.  His love poems have no equal.

Rest in peace, gentle poet...

Preface To a Twenty Volume Suicide Note By Imamu Amiri Baraka

Preface To a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
By Imamu Amiri Baraka

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way 
The ground opens up and envelopes me 
Each time I go out to walk the dog. 
Or the broad edged silly music the wind 
Makes when I run for a bus... 

Things have come to that. 

And now, each night I count the stars. 
And each night I get the same number. 
And when they will not come to be counted, 
I count the holes they leave. 

Nobody sings anymore. 

And then last night I tiptoed up 
To my daughter's room and heard her 
Talking to someone, and when I opened 
The door, there was no one there... 
Only she on her knees, peeking into 

Her own clasped hands

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Opal by Amy Lowell

Opal

By Amy Lowell

You are ice and fire,

The touch of you burns my hands like snow.

You are cold and flame.

You are the crimson of amaryllis,

The silver of moon-touched magnolias.

When I am with you,

My heart is a frozen pond

Gleaming with agitated torches.

~~~~~~~~~~

I sincerely thank those of you who have stuck with me over the years of my poetry obsession and rants. I appreciate and love you all and wish you all a happy, healthy, 2015.

xo,

Marion 🌹

Still Morning By W. S. Merwin

A certain slant of Winter light...

Still Morning
By W. S. Merwin

It appears now that there is only one
age and it knows
nothing of age as the flying birds know
nothing of the air they are flying through
or of the day that bears them up
through themselves
and I am a child before there are words
arms are holding me up in a shadow
voices murmur in a shadow
as I watch one patch of sunlight moving
across the green carpet
in a building
gone long ago and all the voices
silent and each word they said in that time
silent now
while I go on seeing that patch of sunlight

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"There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons---
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes---

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us---
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are---

None may teach it - Any -
'Tis the Seal Despair---
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air---

When it comes, the Landscape listens---
Shadows - hold their breath---
When it goes, 'tis like the distance
On the look of Death---

#258 - Emily Dickinson

The Real Prayers Are Not Words, But the Attention That Comes First by Mary Oliver

 

 

My Kwan Yin statue

 

 

Of my hundreds/thousands of dragonfly photos I've taken, this is my favorite.  I love this tattered, curious little guy.  We played together for an hour or more before I took this photo.  I have it on a giant poster in my living room now.  He reminds me of the fragility, mystery and joy of life...

 

* * * * *

The Real Prayers Are Not the Words, But the Attention That Comes First

By Mary Oliver 

The little hawk leaned sideways and, tilted, rode the wind. Its eye at this distance looked like green glass; its feet were the color of butter. Speed obviously, was joy.

 

But then, so was the sudden, slow circle it carved into the slightly silvery air, and the squaring of its shoulders, and the pulling into itself the long, sharp-edge wings, and the fall into the grass where it tussled a moment, like a bundle of brown leaves, and then, again, lifted itself into the air, that butter-color clenched in order to hold a small a small, still body, and it flew off as my mind sang out oh all that loose, blue rink of sky, where does it go to, and why?

 

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There's nothing more relaxing than watching a hawk drift among the clouds on the wings of the wind.  I see them often in the woods by my house.  I even pull my car over to the side of the road to watch them twist and swirl over trees when I drive.  They fascinate me.  Last week one casually swooped down and picked off a baby squirrel that was running along the dirt road.  The circle of life...

 

It's been a mild winter, so far, here in Swamplandia.  Today, I walked around the block sleeveless and took pictures of the Ents, I mean trees, with their arms also bare.  Oh, how I love winter trees, naked for all the world to see.  The humidity is a thousand percent and it's been raining off and on today with the sun peeking out ever so often.  A typical Louisiana day.  My rain barrels are all full again and my Kale, Spinach, Lettuce and Swiss Chard are thriving wildly even though I pick from them every day.  This time last year we'd had snow three times, which was the only time in 25 years living down here that that's ever happened.  I think I prefer the warmer, humid days, having lived in the South all my life.  The Camellia bushes are already blooming (as are some of my Roses) and those vain Narcissus are poking their green heads up from the cool ground.  I act surprised every year, but I do live in a near tropical climate only a few hours from New Orleans.

 

I'm through Christmas shopping and ready for Santa to drop by.  I miss having small children around this time of year.  My youngest grandson, Warner, is 7, but he's in Nashville.  My Mary Mace turns 11 on Christmas Eve.  That blows my mind.  She's already borrowing my books and asking what I was reading at her age.  She's far ahead of me.  I gave her "The Hobbit" and she loved it and wants to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy now.  I was still reading Mark Twain and Archie comic books at 11. 

 

My college freshman grandson wanted "American Classics" for Christmas (which tickled the hell out of me...how I love my reading family!), so I dug through my 6 rooms of books and came up with a modest 50 books for him.  I put them in milk crates so he could haul them back to college with him.  It blew his mind.  He started out with some J. D. Salinger and "A Confederacy of Dunces".  I told him it's a must-read, especially if you're from Louisiana.  So, I'm happy.  All I ever prayed/hoped for my children/grandchildren was that they'd all be healthy, well-educated and then avid readers...and they are, all five of them.  My work here is done.  :-)

 

I hope you all have a safe, Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! 

 

Love and Blessings from the swamps of Louisiana.

 

xo,

Marion

 

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"Remember
This December,
That love weighs more than gold!"
~Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon

 

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"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." ~Charles Dickens