By the cool water the breeze murmurs, rustling
Through apple branches, while from quivering leaves
Streams down deep slumber.

– Sappho (c. 600 B.C.E.)

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

– William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Do not seek too much fame,
but do not seek obscurity.
Be proud.
But do not remind the world of your deeds.
Excel when you must,
but do not excel the world.
Many heroes are not yet born,
many have already died.
To be alive to hear this song is a victory.

Traditional, West Africa
– from Bly, Robert; Hillman, James; & Meade, Michael; The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart; 1992: New York, Harper Perennial.

I went to a symposium on “Arts Relation to News” this weekend. It was held in conjunction with an exhibit at the Benicia Public Library called “I Read the News Today, Oh Boy!,” which brought together poets and visual artists to form pairs and create responses in their respective media to news stories of their choosing. The exhibit serves up wonderful food for thought on every level – visual, intellectual and emotional. One could easily spend a couple of hours feasting on the thoughtful, in-depth, high quality material on display. It’s a veritable Rupert Murdoch antidote.

The symposium panelists included artists, activists and journalists across a range of media. I enjoyed their discussion, but my primary takeaway was the thought that not enough concern was expressed about the extent to which straight, unbiased news reporting and high quality journalism have been steadily degraded in our society ever since the Vietnam/Watergate era. We’re getting dangerously close to a place where people taking over the prominent soapboxes aren’t old enough to remember a time when “fair and balanced” wasn’t just an empty slogan used to tout unabashed propaganda. Somehow, we need to find a way to restore the concept of good faith in the public commons. It’s refreshing to see artists and activists banding together to take things in a constructive new direction.

With saints and sages on each side,
How could a fool through lack of knowledge,
Vote wrong? If learning is no guide
Why ought one to have been in college?
O Son of Day, O Son of Night!
What are your preferences made of?
I know not which of you is right,
Nor which to be the more afraid of.

The world is old and the world is bad,
And creaks and grinds upon its axis;
And man’s an ape and the gods are mad!—
There’s nothing sure, not even our taxes.
No mortal man can Truth restore,
Or say where she is to be sought for.
I know what uniform I wore—
O, that I knew which side I fought for!

–Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
from “The Hesitating Veteran”

In wading into matters such as American foreign policy, it’s important to maintain a sense of humor. It can be a life preserver when currents threaten to become turbulent.

In that spirit, as the madness of the Iraq war was getting underway several years ago, a writer with Slate Magazine compiled some of the verbatim utterances of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and presented them in the form of poetry. It was published a few months later as a book entitled Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld. Here’s a taste, taken from a Department of Defense news briefing in February 2002:

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

We’re wa-a-a-ayyy down the road from the Twilight of Post-Modernism, here.

Let me gather from the Earth, one full grown fragrant flower,
Let it bloom within my bosom through its one blooming hour.
Let it die within my bosom and to its parting breath
Mine shall answer, having lived, I shrink not now from death.
It is this niggard halfness that turns my heart to stone,
‘Tis the cup seen, not tasted, that makes the infant moan,
Let me for once press firm my lips upon the moment’s brow,
Let me for once distinctly feel I am all happy now,
And bliss shall seal a blessing upon that moment’s brow.

– Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

The cherry blossoms
have lost their fragrance.
You should have come
before the wind.

– Princess Shikishi (d. 1201)
translation by Hiroaki Sato

#3

So forlorn am I
that when I see a firefly
out on the marshes
it looks like my soul rising
from my body in longing.

– Lady Izumi Shikibu 
translation by Steven D. Carter

The wind is cold.
Leaves one by one
are cleared from the
night sky.  The moon
bares the garden.

– Princess Shikishi (d. 1201)
translation by Hiroaki Sato