between the rock and the cold, cold sea

So my exercise lately is going for a swim. (I swam to the shore and back in that image, not exactly endurance swimming but I'm building up.) Sometimes a bike ride and a swim. The sea surface temperature is up to a balmy 15C - well up from the 9C of back in late April, even if it's not exactly a Mediterranean sort of blissful, stay-in-all-day temperature.

What else is new with me? My beloved wife has offered to celebrate with a nice meal if I reach 50K words on my novel-in-progress - if I stop shying away from it, acting like what I write could never have value. (She didn't say that, exactly. But she's right, I should try to have more self-belief.)

Here is a poem I was reading:

The Blue-Green Stream

by Wang Wei
Translated by Florence Ayscough and Amy Lowell

Every time I have started for the Yellow Flower River,
I have gone down the Blue-Green Stream,
Following the hills, making ten thousand turnings,
We go along rapidly, but advance scarcely one hundred li.
We are in the midst of a noise of water,
Of the confused and mingled sounds of water broken by stones,
And in the deep darkness of pine trees.
Rocked, rocked,
Moving on and on,
We float past water-chestnuts
Into a still clearness reflecting reeds and rushes.
My heart is clean and white as silk; it has already achieved Peace;
It is smooth as the placid river.
I love to stay here, curled up on the rocks,
Dropping my fish-line forever.

Over the last few days, we've been rearranging the house. My books have moved downstairs into the newly-floored-in-laminate-wood room, to be a combination office/spare room, while the previous shared office is... being less shared. Stacked on top of the bookshelves are my unread books, a mountain that does not encompass the set of shelves by my bedside at night.

The dis-arranging of things (in order to rearrange them) is deeply unsettling to my ability to focus. I have succeeded in getting nothing else done.

But here is a poem I was reading:

Interrogation of an Alternate Timeline

Hazem Fahmy

On a dusty rooftop in Giza, I tell Imam,
in another life, he and Hugh would have been
the best of friends. I picture Hugh, taking him
by the arm down the corniche
or the Cape, the cool night air refusing
silence. I hear their strings and tubes cutting through
beaming crowds in Imbaba and Soweto. Miriam
is serenading an open sea, clicking to the wind
by El Montaza. I see Biko
and Negm, side by side, in a crowded auditorium,
a whole generation huddled
around their voices. This is to say, in another
life revolution would be but
abstract. Biko would be a doctor,
perhaps in Durban. There would be no trains
for Hugh to sing of, save for those
that would bring him back to his loved
ones, safely. Negm would only be known
for love poems. What more
could one ask for? Let us not cheer
for those who would rather die
as soldiers when there is no
war. My whole life I have envied
the kind of thirst for music
that can be quenched by
Elvis and Sinatra. I have prayed
nightly for those I have idolized
to find a good night’s sleep
before deadly fame. What good is poetry
if it kills the poet? In another life, what must be said
here is but fairytale, ghost stories
for the rowdy children. Kanafani would live
in Acre, Baldwin would die
in Harlem, neither knowing the taste
of exile. I would write of bees
and clocks. I would not need men’s solemn
crooning to put me
to sleep. I would not mourn
the dead.

"Against Death"

Stare Death in the eye when he follows you home,
Spit in his face and call him by his name.
For all we will do for Death is die:
We are not his partisans, and
we are not his spies
(the password and the plans of our city,
comrades, shall not by me be betrayed).
This is a fight song.
This is the rhythm in my bones.

Here: I hear their footsteps on the porch
I hear their whispers by the door
these are the ghosts who've stared him down before.
Stand up one says, and hold the line,
All must die, but let it be another day
do not wait for death, do not take him by the hand:
make him wait for you a little longer
make him work for every grain of sand.

Carve back a fragment from the dark,
a brick in the wall of love and memory
and let us stand, let us stand
if not forever, then as long as we may.

---

Some inspiration from Edna St. Vincent Millay.

tithenai said such fine things about Najwan Darwish's Nothing More to Lose that I resolved upon the instant to get a copy.

I don't normally read poetry collections cover-to-cover. I own a handful only, that I dip into from time to time: Cavafy, Odysseus Elytis, Osip Mandelshtan, Yeats, Heaney, Eliot, Adrienne Rich, Pablo Neruda, some of the ancient poets (I keep meaning to get my hands on some of the twentieth century's famous women poets' collections, like St. Vincent Millay and Plath - some day soon!) but not many.

Nothing More to Lose, I read every page. These are gorgeous, glorious poems: the translator has done a brilliant job.

Powerful poems; some funny, some touching, some filled with pain and a kind of elegaic anger - like the last five lines of "Sleeping in Gaza":

The earth is three nails
and mercy a hammer:
Strike, Lord
Strike with the planes

Are there any more to come?


or the three brief lines that comprise the entirety of "In Praise of the Family":

There is but a single sentence fit to praise you:
You are the deep quarry
of my nightmares.


Some of his poems are available online, here. Read them. Especially "Jerusalem."

When I leave you I turn to stone
and when I come back I turn to stone

I name you Medusa
I name you the older sister of Sodom and Gomorrah
you baptismal basin that burned Rome.

"Cry havoc, and let slip."

Flags on a billboard like a washing powder ad:
"Vote yes for stability!" - we'll give you samples
of new improved political detergent
gratis, free: and freely launder sticky fingers
for the banqueting class. Let Kenny fiddle, go
cooking the books, basting his mates: for us, too late.
In back streets and broken new estates some trampled
tinder-sparks of our eternal conflagration
are forced out the pressure valves of emigration.

Remember twa corbies, the twa named Brian?
And one unto the other one said, "I wot
we'll find ourselves behind the dyke (with our boney
hoors) long before the waters flood. No Tribunals
will sit next year. Not here." Irishmen and Irishwomen
- but see, old traditions of nationhood are dead:
by hooks and crooks we'll cling to treaties that can't bring
either peace in our time, or plenty. Still looking
east for a saviour, or south, or west: devil's deals
pass for miracles if alternatives look worse.
Curse Labour, and their so-shattered promises!
Those dole-swingers grow lazy now, so Burton said,
and washed her hands, and shook her head. Name of God!
Of the dead generations, so easily forgot.

But they are liars and the truth is not in them.
I come to bury Caesar - should Caesar swiftly die:
only let Caesar die and pass like other men,
then we will move. Then we will recognise our chains,
and cast them off, and make new peace with the world to come.

---

A terrible political poem. Still, prose does no better on this subject.

Monday, met a rysmiel for lunch on what seems to have been the last day of summer. Said rysmiel was, as on our previous meeting, a scholar and a gentlebeing. That was a very pleasant afternoon.

Since then, I have occupied myself with work and with an unusually high proportion of suicidal ideations. Sometimes it seems as though the most painless option would just be to lie down and wait to die - but I can't do that, since it would leave the IIHSA in the unenviable position of having to find a replacement co-guide for the study-tour on uncomfortably short notice. Likewise with having a screaming frothing nervous breakdown.

Therefore, onwards.

Books 2011: 47-49


47. Richelle Mead, Iron Crowned.

And my trend of picking up middle books of series (in this case, third and presently last) continues. Urban fantasy. Sort of. High levels of angst and sex. Not so happy with the amount of sex relative to plot, but I cannot deny the plot is entertaining.


48. Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London.

Published in the US as Midnight Riot, this is what the Dresden files would be if Harry Dresden had a)started out with a better sense of humour and higher levels of genre-savvy and b)was a PC in the London Met. This book has a fantastic voice and feels like London all the way to the ground. Also interesting plot developments, but I'd read it for the voice and the sheer depth of London in it anyway.


non-fiction

49. Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000. Penguin History of Europe, Penguin, London and New York, 2010.

This book does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a wide-ranging survey of European history - which, as and when it's appropriate, includes the Ummayads of Damascus, the Abbasids of Baghdad, and the Fatimids of Egypt in the category Europe - from the fifth to the eleventh centuries. It is divided into four parts: the break-up of the Roman Empire, 400-550; the Post-Roman West, 550-750; the Empires of the East, 550-1000; and the Carolingian and Post-Carolingian West, 750-100. These are subdivided into chapters, which deal with separate geographical, chronological, and thematic chunks of the very large amount of information Wickham aims to cover.

It is a fascinating and very readable history, and it cracked my brain open and let new light in concerning Roman and post-Roman political systems, and how each can be expected to function. The chapters which survey the Arab invasions and subsequent polities were very helpful in understanding the forces which shaped the early medieval Mediterranean, and are not always included in general surveys of this period of "European" history.

I recommend it without hesitation. I think this may be one of the best works of narrative history I've read in the last while - on point, focused, clear about its biases without being obtrusive with them, and immensely knowledgeable. Wickham dedicates it to his students - fortunate students, I would say, to have the opportunity to learn from such a mind.

---

I am tired and feel sick and stupid, and want very much not to have to get up tomorrow and pretend I care what college bureaucracy is doing. Particularly when they have scheduled me to invigilate during the times when I am supposed to be taking an exam after I specifically emailed to inform them of this.

Oh, well. I need the money, even if it's not nearly enough. (I need a job, but who the hell is hiring? And Tor.com has not begun to pay me for my work for them yet, which - argh! - is money I am counting on to be there. Eventually. Soon would be nice.)

---

When the wide world comes winding to a close
where shall we be? Who knows? That day is yet
beyond reach, unconsummated. Time flows
in one direction only, oily, wet,
impermeable to the human eye
impermeable to answers. What, why -

I saw the sibyl caged at Cumae
when every word she spoke became a lie.
This is the truth of oracles. Like us,
they guess how the dice fall before they die.


....I appear to have committed poem. I should really stop doing that in public. Or at least make sure it has a title, first.

Still, why not?

Photographs line one arm of the stairs of the grand neo-classical Museum Building in college. Dead men, bright and shiny - even happy - in their military uniforms.

I sometimes wonder why they volunteered. I wonder if, at the end of the Great War, their comrades who survived really believed it was the War To End All Wars, that there would be no real wars to follow it.

---

"In Memoriam"

Now let the silent cannons fall,
and roar no more, but overturned
in silence still the bloody call
for wars in whose fires we burned.

Turn us now to deeds of peace: let
soldiers rest in home's green fields,
reap for their harvest grain, and set
in hand no weapon, no cry of "Yield!
Or die!" in our peace-yearning throats,
no killing winter to slice our coats

To ribbons on a foreign plain,
far from home and the lives we knew.
Make amends. Let us now attain
our glories not through the red hue
of slaughter, but by building hope anew:
learn healing; heal ourselves. Live free: speak true.

---

I might not mark it to the minute, but it is worth marking.

I have a poem in the new Goblin Fruit.

I recommend going to read the other poems.

---

In other news, I do not want to go in to the library today. Alas for cruel necessity!

This one's for katallen. Probably not the poem you might've been looking for. And I'm trying to play with form, which is generally a bad idea, too.

"III. A Death in Winter."

Snow-shrouded graveyard | church and steeple
in silence they come | black-booted tromping
past white-mounded tombstones | carrying the bier.

Elves die on Tuesdays.
You can't bury them
inside the churchyard:
it wouldn't be right.
So they dig the grave
- black icy earth -
out of unsanctified ground,
ground set aside
for parricides, blasphemers
and people who don't belong.

The surpliced priest, shivering
mutters a few words about
immortal souls, and peace
- if they have souls, these
beggars out of Faerieland, these liars
selling dreams and visions
for a place at the fire.
But God knows his own.

Look at the brother, so pale
and so fey, so resentful
alone by the graveside
(they say the mother came
from the city, you know,
years back, she was born there).
And why can't they go back
where they came from,
these elves, these dreamers,
these good-for-nothings?

Famine their plate | hunger their knife
from strife fleeing | dreamers and visionaries
past white-mounded tombstones | carrying the bier.

Books 2010: 2

2. Vaughan/Jeanty/Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future For You (graphic novel).

The sparkle and wit of BtVS doesn't translate so well without the actors to carry them. But it's entertaining, nonetheless.

---

Poems from prompts:

Prompted by spartezda -

i)

Night and Memory lie
entwined in the halls of Aeolus.
Sleeping, the wind-god dreams
of earthen wombs,
caves of eros,
smothering while he slumbers.


Prompted by clarentine -

ii) "Death of an Octopus"

Soft-slime-skinned,
pseudopods curled in
octopodian snarls,
on the rock-shore below
the lighthouse with
salt and ice on the wind,
ice and salt on your lips,
you stood witness
to a silent sin:
let the ink-stained waves
reclaim their kith and kin.


...I did say I didn't promise "good" or "likeable".

---

Yeah, after an hour in the gym (mile in eleven minutes, mile point five in nineteen, and that kind of sucks) I think that's all I've got. I'm going to go slog away at some more of the thesis in a couple of minutes. And maybe see what revenant remnants of food still live in the kitchen...