Poetry

Visual arts, music, poetry and other forms of art.
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Angolmois

Re: Poetry

Post by Angolmois »

Thanks for the sense of relief, Polyhymnia! Now I feel a little silly with these commentaries on a damn poem, but this astral over-sensitivity of mine made me feel those things needed explanation.

In general I have to win my hesitation to write anything at all every time I comment on something, especially if its impulsive, since usually almost immediately I start to feel like "what did I say wrong" or that my posts feel stupid and inadequate. But as I've noticed, it is not that uncommon feeling in this forum. Pride and shame...?

Thanks for clarifying the rest of your poem also. It springs to mind the biblical phrase "We wrestle not against flesh..."
obnoxion
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Re: Poetry

Post by obnoxion »

EARTH'S ANSWER
William Blake

Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread & drear,
Her light fled,
Stony, dread,
And her locks covered with grey despair.

Prisoned on watery shore,
Starry jealousy does keep my den
Cold and hoar;
Weeping o’er,
I hear the father of the ancient men.

Selfish father of men!
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!
Can delight,
Chained in night,
The virgins of youth and morning bear.

Does spring hide its joy,
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower
Sow by night,
Or the ploughman in darkness plough?

Break this heavy chain,
That does freeze my bones around!
Selfish, vain,
Eternal bane,
That free love with bondage bound.



This is the second poem from The Songs of Experience. It is feminine Earth's answer to the previous poem's Bard, who declares Earth's shackles to be mind-forged (to lend a term from Blake's poem "London"). But Earth experiences her chains as concrete. The illuminated plate of the poem depicts a spring night, (which is the setting of Christ's prayer in Gethsemane). At the lower left, a light is dawning from a serpent's mouth.

The poem plays with many meters. One reason I shared this beautiful poem is to suggest, if shared meter could imply shared meaning. My example would be three anapaestic occurences:

"From the darkness"
"Virginis of youth"
"Father of The Ancient"
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
Kavi
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Joined: Mon May 09, 2016 4:52 pm

Re: Poetry

Post by Kavi »

Excerpt from Baba Tahir's poem

My sickness and cure are from the friend
My union and separation are from the friend
If a butcher separates my skin from my body
My soul shall never be separate from the friend

I am the homeless sufferer
I am the ill-fated survivor
I am the wandering tumbleweed in the desert
Which runs before any wind that blows

I look at the desert, Your desert I see
I look at the sea, Your sea I see
Wherever I look, mountain, sea or valley
Signs of your elegant stature I see

I who am in a state of sadness, how should I not moan?
Broken-feathered and broken winged, how should I not moan?
Everyone says: "so-and-so, don't moan so much"
You come to my imagination, how should I not moan?

With a sigh, Elijah's dome, I burn
The whole of firmament, from head to toe, I burn
I burn unless you build my work
What do you command, will you build or shall I burn?

The sorrow of your love raised me in the desert
Your distance made me featherless, wingless bird
You told me to be patient, patience
Patience poured choice earth on my head


Edit: What I find interesting, questionable and confusing in this translation is that original says "gonbad-e Khazra" which means Green dome.
Also earth or dirt on my head is usually saying for "I wish I would die" or one has made a mistake.
obnoxion
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Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 7:59 pm

Re: Poetry

Post by obnoxion »

Kavi wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 11:10 am Excerpt from Baba Tahir's poem

[...]

With a sigh, Elijah's dome, I burn
The whole of firmament, from head to toe, I burn
I burn unless you build my work
What do you command, will you build or shall I burn?

[...]

Edit: What I find interesting, questionable and confusing in this ...
translation is that original says "gonbad-e Khazra" which means Green dome.
This is an interesting question. Perhaps Elijah is used here because he both brought fire down from heaven, and entered heaven in a fire while still alive. In Islamic thought (which, of course, is hardly monolithic in its global scope), there are four men who did not die. These were Idris (that is Enoch), Jesus, Elijah and Khidri. The first three entered heaven while alive, but Khidri's immortality is of a different kind. Khidri is not named in the Holy Quoran, but he is associates with Hermes (also, sometimes, with Buddha). Khidri, however, means something like The Green Man, and as a close associate of Elijah, his greenness rubs on Elijah.

But I think that here the heaven is called green because blue is inauspicious colour in Islamic Poetic Imagination, while green is the most Holy of colours. That is why one comes across green skies in Islamic poetry. And through Elijah's close association with Khidri The Green One, and his tendency to bring fire down from and up to heaven, perhaps the translator had chosen to bring out this aspect of the verse in question.

Naturally, the mention of a green dome in Islamic context brings first to mind the dome on Mohammad's Tomb...
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Polyhymnia
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Re: Poetry

Post by Polyhymnia »

The poem plays with many meters. One reason I shared this beautiful poem is to suggest, if shared meter could imply shared meaning. My example would be three anapaestic occurences:

"From the darkness"
"Virginis of youth"
"Father of The Ancient"
That’s a great question, and I certainly think it certainly could. I’ll be on the hunt whenever reading poetry now.
"Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself." -Kahlil Gibran
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Smaragd
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Re: Poetry

Post by Smaragd »

obnoxion wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 3:38 pm The poem plays with many meters. One reason I shared this beautiful poem is to suggest, if shared meter could imply shared meaning. My example would be three anapaestic occurences:

"From the darkness"
"Virginis of youth"
"Father of The Ancient"
Generally speaking, I find the idea that ”rythmic patterns” would imply shared meaning in some prelingual way – within the power dynamics of sound – fascinating and something that is obvious to me through composing music. I’m interpreting the shared meaning to be a gate to a motive gathering the pieces to form and emphasize the arch this specific poem for example seems to contain and draw upon. It’s a joyful hidden image (which I’ve been dearly reminded of during these couple of days) depicting the union of the sexes and their progeny in its pure freedom to which you opened the door to here.
obnoxion wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:03 am
Kavi wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 11:10 am Excerpt from Baba Tahir's poem

[...]

With a sigh, Elijah's dome, I burn
The whole of firmament, from head to toe, I burn
I burn unless you build my work
What do you command, will you build or shall I burn?

[...]

Edit: What I find interesting, questionable and confusing in this ...
translation is that original says "gonbad-e Khazra" which means Green dome.
This is an interesting question. Perhaps Elijah is used here because he both brought fire down from heaven, and entered heaven in a fire while still alive. In Islamic thought (which, of course, is hardly monolithic in its global scope), there are four men who did not die. These were Idris (that is Enoch), Jesus, Elijah and Khidri. The first three entered heaven while alive, but Khidri's immortality is of a different kind. Khidri is not named in the Holy Quoran, but he is associates with Hermes (also, sometimes, with Buddha). Khidri, however, means something like The Green Man, and as a close associate of Elijah, his greenness rubs on Elijah.
I feel a bit hesitant to write my interpretations in a perhaps narrowing way, while you two seem to have given suggestions that rather widen. But for better or worse I’d like to show my appreciation towards your words and point some dry conclusions. I take the greenness of Khidri to point to the natural cycles. His immortality is there in the burning of old leaves and vivification of new ones - in the teachings the cycles try to pass on… and we burn and sigh in our often unrecognized need for it. The poem asks ”What do you command, will you build or shall I burn?”, which to me seems to long to a place where the Khidri’s dome is transcended – the Purgatorio has been passed. It is as if the translation would join in this longing and penetrate the dome calling it Elijah’s, who alive through fire could enter the heavens. So Khidri’s grenness rubbing on Elijah would not only be mythological and perhaps metaphysical closeness of them, but actual movement in the individual process. This would suggest the trial by fire have been succesfully completed and building something a fire can not destroy would be possible.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Nefastos
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Location: Helsinki

Re: Poetry

Post by Nefastos »

obnoxion wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:03 amThis is an interesting question. Perhaps Elijah is used here because he both brought fire down from heaven, and entered heaven in a fire while still alive. In Islamic thought (which, of course, is hardly monolithic in its global scope), there are four men who did not die. These were Idris (that is Enoch), Jesus, Elijah and Khidri. The first three entered heaven while alive, but Khidri's immortality is of a different kind. Khidri is not named in the Holy Quoran, but he is associates with Hermes (also, sometimes, with Buddha). Khidri, however, means something like The Green Man, and as a close associate of Elijah, his greenness rubs on Elijah.

But I think that here the heaven is called green because blue is inauspicious colour in Islamic Poetic Imagination, while green is the most Holy of colours. That is why one comes across green skies in Islamic poetry. And through Elijah's close association with Khidri The Green One, and his tendency to bring fire down from and up to heaven, perhaps the translator had chosen to bring out this aspect of the verse in question.

I just sent forth a commentary on Matthew 14 thinking about John the Baptist's death and possible immortality (in re-headed Ganeshian "Baphomet") and how it is woven into the immortality of Elijah, whose revolution he was (as the John the Apostle was the revolution of his). I wonder if this permutation between the axes of Jovian & Saturnine azure & greenness is the same. At the same time you had written the above text, I was reading Sepher Yetzirah's latest Finnish version, where the union of colours blue & green is mentioned: footnote 48 on page 57. The source point for this footnote is the mention where the azure blue is joined to Desolation, i.e. the wilderness which is the place of the Baptist (as well as Azazel), namely, "this world". The same just came up in my Zohar studies.

Once again it is fascinating – and a bit scary – to see how different permutations of the same mystery we come across when studying the four different religions from the same root: Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Satanic (or should we say, Johannite templar) faith.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
obnoxion
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Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 7:59 pm

Re: Poetry

Post by obnoxion »

Nefastos wrote: Tue Jul 14, 2020 11:36 am I wonder if this permutation between the axes of Jovian & Saturnine azure & greenness is the same.
I wonder, too. The greeness here might be supra-sturnian, as after the dark colourlessness of Saturn, according to Islamic legends there were the self-illuminating mountains of emerald, where the djinn lived. It is written of the evil djinn, that Solomon gained power over them from Allah:

"Then We subjected The Wind to his Power, to flow gently to his order, withersoever he willed - as also the evil ones, including every kind of builder and diver" (Quoran 38:36 - 38)

So as the poem reads:
Kavi wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 11:10 am I burn unless you build my work
What do you command, will you build or shall I burn?
Together with the green dome and the quote from The Quoran, this brings to mind the builder-djinns...
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
obnoxion
Posts: 1806
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 7:59 pm

Re: Poetry

Post by obnoxion »

Who spurs the beast the corpse will ride?
Who cries the cry that kills?
When Satan questioned, who replied?
Whence blows this wind that chills?
Who walks amongst these empty graves
And seeks a place to lie?
'Tis something God ne'er had planned,
A thing that ne'er had learned to die.


- A Poem spuriously attributed to Edgar Allan Poe, but the real author is unknown to me. It was used in the promotion of the folk horror film "Cry of The Banshee" (1970). It is written in the ballad stanza, which tends to break a little towards the end. A pure ballad stanza could be sang to the melody and rythm of the Suvivirsi (a christian hymn sang in Finnish schools before the Summer vacation), an that is an easy way to detect how the last two lines break the pattern. The ballad stanza was famously favoured by the poetess Emily Dickinson. I chose to share the poem because of the subject matter, and because of its relation to the folk horror genre. I hope poetry would more often be used in the promition of horror fiction - and in horror fiction in general.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
Angolmois

Re: Poetry

Post by Angolmois »

Lyrics I made a few years ago to a band called Khanus.

The Dance of a Dionysian Shaman

A wizard in his blueblack cloak
Wandering through the world of shadows
Finding no peace or liberation
from the shallow doctrines of the collective hypnoses

he goes through the woods of passion
finding the Yggdrasil from its midst
there lies a lady in red
powerful and dangerous
full of dissolution and destruction

the wizard approaches her in passionate lust
realizing the imminent danger of destruction
so they begin the dance of Shiva and Shakti
a divine dance of lila and maya

their left hands holding them together
they unite under the world tree
While on top of the near mountain peak
A fraternity of the red-blue Dragon
Smiles with benevolent communion

What exactly is cold ascetic enlightment
of the right handed buddhas compared
to the union of the brothers and daughters of the black flame
the immanent ascendant trancendence of a tantric union
beyond the shallow world of forms and doctrines?

Enlightment, sex, death - all unite
under the light of the Midnight Sun
under the Trishula Sceptre of Shiva
where all the wrong things are done for all the right reasons!

So the eternal dance of Shamanic Ecstasy continues forever more
for those with the eyes to see and things to understand

Liberation, Ascension, Destruction - The dance of the dionysian Shaman!
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