April showers bring May flowers
To close out National Poetry Month a quote from Wallace Stevens (1879 -1955), an American modernist poet and lawyer.
“The poet refreshes life so that we share, For a moment, the first idea…It satisfies belief in an immaculate beginning And sends us, winged by an unconscious will, To an immaculate end.”
The following are song lyrics from Lebanese poet Zaki Nassif (1918-2004).
“Pick me the most beautiful rose, my butterfly, a rose fit for the poetry of her blonde hair. Pick it in the colour of alabaster and fiery gold, Of brown barren earth and dust and soiled snow, From the dreaming green valleys where laurels grow strong, Had I words to describe it, I would not have asked you. Pick one that’s sweet and lovelier than a child’s smile. May the lilies discover in its heart the poetry of old May the sparrows translate its words into song, And the new dawn sing a chorus in its honour.”
Hear it sung in its original Lebanese language on a CD titled Orient-Occident II, Hommage ála Syrie. Hesperion XXI, Jordi Savall. Alia Vox AVSA 9900.
Finally a short poem by Chinese poet Hsieh Ling-yün.
“During the last decade of his life, living as a recluse high in the mountains of southeast China, Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433 C.E.) initiated a tradition of “rivers and mountains” (shan-shui) poetry that stretches across millennia in China and beyond, a tradition that represents the earliest and most extensive literary engagement with wilderness in human history. These poems were extremely popular in Hsieh’s own time and established him as one of the most innovative and influential poets in the history of Chinese poetry, as well as a precursor of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. The quote is from a translator of Hsieh’s poems, David Hinton. Happy reading!
#33
“As for my
homes perched north and south,
inaccessible except across water:
gaze deep into wind and cloud
and you know this realm utterly.”
Joey aka “Pepe Batbon” Connolly is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is the Poet Laureate of Tinian and enjoys stargazing.
