go catch that planet

just a playful exchange with friends. Easy Roader introduced a poem called "With Tenure" (by David Lehman). later on, hbai suggested me to do sth with "some materials": Beethoven had a lifetime appointment, tenured job. So was Gallileo, from Medici of Florence. Tenure may had saved Mozart from poor youthful death...it is easy enough to just re-order what he said ---

WITH TENURE

With Tenure
And silence,
Beethoven composed
Nine symphonies in a row

With tenure,
And wings - probably -
Gallileo caught the planet
Around the star?! Oh! No!

And tenure-less
Mozart died a youthful death -
Mr. Antonio Salieri they say*
You are his tenured foe!

(*I always have a soft spot for Salieri)

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter --- or a puzzle

(last time i read about it, it was celebrated as one of the most influential poems of america. so i had to read it again. and disliked it again. granted modern poetry is beyond me. and this one is still harder to appreciate -when its "original" has been ingrained in my mind since childhood. still the much fame? this incredulous acclaim? and its ubiquitousness? this is the answer i found by google search (picture from www.esg.net):

(it was) "a stage in the development of Pound's poetic concerns from his original concepts of "luminous detail"and "Imagism," through "vortex" and "haiku" and "metaphor," and ultimately to the "ideogrammatic composition" of his Cantos." - by one Thomas

well, i could only see an awkward creative attempt. :-)

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
by Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
By Rihaku

Now, "the real thing" ----

长干行

李白

妾发初覆额，折花门前剧。 郎骑竹马来，绕床弄青梅。 同居长干里，两小无嫌猜。
十四为君妇，羞颜未尝开。 低头向暗壁，千唤不一回。 十五始展眉，愿同尘与灰。
常存抱柱信，岂上望夫台。 十六君远行，瞿塘滟滪堆。 五月不可触，猿鸣天上哀。
门前迟行迹，一一生绿苔。 苔深不能扫，落叶秋风早。 八月蝴蝶黄，双飞西园草。
感此伤妾心，坐愁红颜老。 早晚下三巴，预将书报家。 相迎不道远，直至长风沙。

On Raglan Road - that much i know

(love this one! recommended by Dean. picture taken by him, too - somewhere downtown Disney.

love poems are often a direct outpour of emotion. as love is. powerful, but simple, too. we love "whole-heartedly". obstacles abound, but, more often than not, external. this love story, however, is a complex one about inner conflicts. as the first stanza says. there is enough doubt, or warning, about the desire from the very beginning. on Raglan Road... so what? emotion still overwhelms. takes him to the Grafton Street. when all is over, he is left on an unnamed "quiet" street, lick wounds and reflect... bitterness? yes. but more directed to self. the beauty of a true love? he gives her "gifts of the mind". he gives us a portion of that, too. and it amplifies....)

On Raglan Road

by Patrick Kavanagh

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew

That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,

And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge

Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,

The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -

O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone

And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.

With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now

Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow

That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -

When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.