Cherry Blossoms and Butterflies

Cherry Blossoms and Butterflies*

...they are so alike, so akin to one another, inhabiting so intimately such the same world, so alike not just in their impossible beauty, the extreme frailty of their essence, in their primordial designation as symbols of metamorphosis, of perpetual play of being and not-being

...so alike not even in the fact of both being dead and rotten metaphors, the sure signs of bad poetry, so exceedingly familiar as to be by default, and at once, the ultimate criterion of a nativity and the sign of being suffocated or duped by it

...but so alike in the fact that by virtue of them being what they are, what they really mean, still there are, and there will be, poets who dare call these mortal (and practically dead, as was just argued) beings back to life again, put them back in a verse or two, and show--by way of shedding light on yet another dark corner of our fragile but divine existence--that so long as cherry blossoms bloom and perish and butterflies love and perish, there will be poems written featuring them; and they will be sure signs of good poetry, excellent poetry, in fact

...so alike are cherry blossoms and butterflies...and yet, so unlike each other upon closer observation...so identical...so different when you think of them...that I wonder if any poet has ever thought of putting them next to each other, not fearing prolixity... not fearing paradoxes...in one and the same verse.

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* The obligatory search in the internet yielded, as a matter of fact, a prose piece and a relatively large number of images (including tattoos and merchandise) with the exact same title as this piece here.

Book of I

I

Pushing upward in the deserted city,
Pushing Upward, chapter forty six,
Lying line number three.
Changing into: Gathering (chapter forty five):
The King steps into his temple and consults the great.
Heading south, fortune! 

II

"Truthful You, I, I, false and fearful, blind,
perplexed with Age and Absurdity?"
Gradual Progress, chapter fifty three,
Tree on the Mountain, Sun above, a River,
The conjugal procession. No lying lines.
Nothing (ever) changes; Incomprehension persists. 

III

Power at Large: all but two lies, from the toe up;
Chapter thirty four; Thunder above Heaven.
No vigor; I cast my net, entangle my horn.
Bushy barrier burned; at large?
Upright, robust, a hero with no regrets, (but) not a god?
Second six-liner, (two); Lady Earth, from North-East to South-West.

IV

Eleven, Flow, difficulty in the extreme:
Empty crossing River leaving all behind--lying and gaining honors.
Great comes, petty goes; This is his measures.
He is the ladder between Heaven and Earth,
Lying and with no shame bedding down his daughter. (sixty three),
Already Settled; and little by little, no pattern at the end. 

V

First lie: Blameless leaving quickly.
Decrease, chapter forty one; two small plates.
At the foot of Mountain Lake.
Rage subsided, desire detained; supreme success.
Increasing, greater than ten pairs of tortoises, second lie.
Wind disperses Water, King building his Temple (fifty nine).  

VI

Words not trusted, yours, I,  Alone in the valley of shadows.
Tree ascending Confined; following First Confidence.
Lake above River; there is a mandate.
Within a bronze chariot: lying ends; Shame?
Following the Last; River above Lake.
Sweet Measures exacting Articulation.   
(Farvardin 1, 1391--March 20, 2012)








 

Mulberry

Mulberry


Apples and Pomegranates, Figs and Olives;
Sycamore, Poplar, Cypress, Cedar,
What i s the difference?
I don't know; I was saved,
For the first time, from myself,
When I was seventeen,
And I am now far and away
Not a botanical expert.

But this much I know, remember:
A long time ago,
Right before I left the West of Wishiwash River for good,
In the State of Who'sthere and Who'snot,
At the crossing of a sinful alleyway, 
With a blistering Noontide of Judgment,
I found, without much effort, a mulberry tree,
Which shed its own blood everyday,
Underneath the sinners' step.
And so far as I observed,
Not once one of them stopped on his way,
Never to look up at the trunk, twigs, limbs or branches,
Nor below, at the bloodied pavement,
Let alone ever taste the tempting vintage.
And if one early morning,
One of them saw me with my bowl in my hand,
Plucking and devouring, (and gathering for my friend),
He would stare at me as though I had gone mad,
Or was from a savage land,
Wondering if I knew,
Whether or not I would be poisoned.
O what a blissful ignorance!

Here too, now,  somewhere, in an obscure corner,
On one of the fingers of this island,
There is another mulberry tree,
But she is far from me, quite inaccessible, not on my way,
And besides,
I suspect others than me have already discovered,
How a mulberry actually tastes.



 

The Outlaw

The Outlaw

God must have known, when he was creating the world and molding Adam and Eve, and establishing His Order, and instituting His Law, that there would be human beings so remarkable in the excellence of their constitutions, in the vastness of their hearts, in the height of their souls, in the strength of their characters, and in the infinity of their passion for Truth, Beauty and Goodness, that He would be, at the end of His Days, proudest for having created THEM, but who, at the same time, and for the exact same reasons mentioned above, would never accept the mastery of anyone over themselves, not even His, who would never be slave to anyone and anything, not even to Him, who would never obey laws, any law, not even His--they are the o u t l a w s, they are their own law, that is why He would be proudest of them, He might have created the world to be seen, but not by any old dirty eye, but by the eyes of such humans--, who would never accept that they themselves are not masters, are not supreme, are not God, NEVER!

And for those, to submit to another MAN's rule, to prostrate before another MAN?

Caption

Caption*

But on the other hand, "[m]an, in the ideal," writes the great H.M., the shipmate, or whatever you want to call him, call him Ishmael, in the account of his adventures in the watery regions, "is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.”
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* Caption writing is not an interesting literary genre. That is why most people first write something and then find something for which that thing could be a caption. I am no exception. The original idea of this piece was simply to let my friends re-read  that great line by the great H.M. But then things took,as usual, a life of their own. Now it was necessary to have something, a picture, a caption, to illustrate what the great H.M. actually meant. The purpose of this footnote was simply to remind the reader that while writing the main body of the text took some considerable amount of time and energy, not to mention idiotic audacity, finding something for the purpose of illustration was very easy. I randomly searched the word "beheading" in the internet and picked one of the first photos that crossed my eye. Here it is.
THAT, and also to mention that the emphasis in the first line is mine. 

T O

T O

She writes, underneath t h e  k i s s:
[You hear thunder and remember me--
and I think: she wanted storms.]
And I think:
Does she do to me
What the Spring will be doing soon to the cherry tree?

O no, poor poet, do not open me!
O harlot of a heart, be quiet, still,
do not again run fast and wild and free,
O I am not he,
I have never seen a tiger,
the sight of a knife always frightens me,
and fear and shame will forever run in my family.
Do not open me,
I am a lie (a small one),
I am forgery upon forgery upon forgery,
I am an insult upon myself upon injury,
I am a dark night alright,
But he who's afraid of me,
will find no roses under my cypress tree.

Not a storm, not a thunder, not even a breeze,
no light at all for you to see.
I am a silence, I am that thirst,
in that dungeon that's called the body.
O, do not open me, for then my stench,
will make it for you impossible to be.

Borges and I *

As with so many individuals, his first encounter with the puzzle--the puzzle which was to haunt him and whose solution to elude him so long as he lived, the puzzle of which every other inexplicable and irresolvable puzzle in his life was a mere reflection--took place at the conjunction of a mirror and two words; the puzzle was never to be clearly articulated and the more he learned the art of articulation, the more he learned that the puzzle had no formulation beyond commonplace. Philosophy, which he pursued in despair, only confirmed the impossibility of the puzzle and deepened his anguish. 

In a dark corner of the memory, he saw a room, three by four, the top half story of a 2 1/2 story building in a desolate part of a heat-struck and muggy city, and in that room, a small closet, full of old clothes and odds and ends of a family of six, built into the wall and with a mirror perched on its door. Not much older than an infant, barely able to stand and walk on his baby feet, he leaned forward with the help of his youngling arms against the closet door and watched the image in the mirror; he knew one day that what he saw was his face, and he could not understand it. Soon after, he began to stand before the mirror everyday and whisper--for he was ashamed--to the face in the mirror the two words; they were its name, his, and he could not understand them.
Later in his life, when the dreams proved all illusions, his beautiful brown hair turned gray, his soft clear skin wrinkled and he called himself several different names. But to himself, he whispered all the names with the same shame; with the same shame he saw the same face in all mirrors.

There were, to be sure, moments of forgetfulness in his life. As a school boy, like a whirling dervish, turning around himself and playing all alone in the front yard of the same house, during the cooler hours of summer days, he told himself the story of the poor boy who rescued the princess and joined the royal family. As a young man, some, perhaps many, disliked him, but few doubted that he was destined for greatness. And with the illusion of grandeur, his face was as handsome, and his name as lofty as anyone's who calls upon himself proudly in the face of a mirror. But those moments became rarer and rarer and one day, he, like all persons with similar afflictions, found himself resigned to his utter impotence and succumbed to a deceiving indifference before the truth and untruth of mirrors and names.

If I now write in his name, and in layers of preteritum, it is not because he is gone and has disappeared. Reluctantly yet joyously, he goes on living among us, goes on liking one thing here, disliking another there. Every morning at half eleven you are sure to find him in the outdoor cafe around the corner, reading his book in the shade, no longer searching for an answer. If you speak to him, he will politely and softly reply. He will tell you that everywhere he goes, the heat brings him to despair and that he despises nothing more than loudness. If you insist, he will tell you of the rainy days of a gloomy city where and when he felt his happiest, of a particular aroma added to the tea which is what he calls home, of a song that fills his eyes with tears even today.  He will tell you that he adores Moby Dick and the six cello suites. He will tell you that blue is his favorite color and that just a few days ago, a pair of eyes of the most exquisite shade of that color have again had him captivated.
If I write in his name, it is because I know him better than anyone else, because I have studied his face, I have listened to his names, I know his story from the beginning to the end. I write for him because I am his, my, best, only friend, the only one who has never left him and never will; I am his only witness, his loneliness.
(August 2007)

* Borges, or perhaps the other one, the good old grammarian, the author of Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, who knew better than anyone the falsity of all names, all titles, all beginnings, all predications, all presentations and all images, must have known, while writing the short piece with this title, that not mimicry, whether done  in poor or refined taste, cleverly or dilettantly, but simply copying a writing in one's own hand, nay, reading it out loud or even in silence, is what suffices for the reader, that reader whom we know, whom we certainly know with a true name, to be identical with him, with the other one, to be one with I. One may satisfy one's logical curiosity by observations regarding the universality of I and the particularity, and therefore the inadequacy, of all others, but all this can be attested to by the much simpler observation--an observation most definitely anticipated by the master of falsification himself--that even the most stringent copyright laws cannot possibly prohibit anyone from using this title as his own. (February 2012)