Frihetens röst - en svala som häckar

Jag låter Poesiskolan ha studiedag och lägger in en extra fågeldag den här veckan. Det materialet var redan framtaget till fredagens uteblivna inlägg.

Jag förstod redan som sexåring skillnaden på frihet och tvång. Hemma hos mormor och morfar, i närheten av en skånsk "rövarkula", fanns en länga och en inhägnad. Längan, en kombination av bilplats och verktygsbod, var en perfekt bostadsplats för ladusvalorna. Inhägnaden var tillägnad husets schäfer. Ni som undrar varför jag älskar fåglar men har svårt för domesticering av djur, finner ett svar i den ovanstående beskrivningen.

Jag kommer aldrig att glömma svalornas uppvisningar, när de med fart och teknik flög ut från och in till sina gömslen. Svalor är sen dess min absoluta favorit bland världens alla fågelfamiljer. I kväll hyllar jag dem och friheten.

Ode to the swallow, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
(From Bright wings : an illustrated anthology of poems about birds. New York : Columbia University Press, 2010.)

Thou indeed, little Swallow,
    A sweet yearly comer.
    Art building a hollow
    New nest every summer.
    And straight dost depart
    Where no gazing can follow.
    Past Memphis, down Nile!
    Ay! but love all the while
    Builds his nest in my heart,
    Through the cold winter-weeks:
    And as one Love takes flight.
    Comes another, O Swallow,
    In an egg warm and white,
    And another is callow.
    And the large gaping beaks
    Chirp all day and all night:
    And the Loves who are older
    Help the young and the poor Loves,
    And the young Loves grown bolder
    Increase by the score Loves—
    Why, what can be done?
    If a noise comes from one.
Can I bear all this rout of a hundred and more Loves?

***

Svalor (Swallows) är för övrigt den näst populäraste fågelfamiljen i diktantologin "Bright Wings". Jag återkommer i ett senare inlägg med en presentation av den populäraste.

The blue swallows (vers 1-2), by Howard Nemerov (1920-1991)
(From The blue swallows : poems. Chicago : Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967.)

Across the millstream below the bridge 
Seven blue swallows divide the air 
In shapes invisible and evanescent, 
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s 
Or memory’s power to keep them there. 

“History is where tensions were,” 
“Form is the diagram of forces.” 
Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge, 
While gazing down upon those birds— 
How strange, to be above the birds!— 
Thus helplessly the mind in its brain 
Weaves up relation’s spindrift web, 
Seeing the swallows’ tails as nibs 
Dipped in invisible ink, writing… 

***

Om svalan är mästerflygaren så kan väl sånglärkan (i kamp med näktergalen) utnämnas till mästersångaren. Jag bjuder på en svensk hyllningsdikt åt den.

Den första lärkan, av Albert Theodor Gellerstedt (1836-1914)

Nyss ner ur molnen
en visa klang
så ljuv att ögat
i tårar sprang,

att blott dess eko
uti mitt bröst
förstummat minnet
av frost och höst,

att hela nejden
klang till helt glatt
av hälften jubel
och barnaskratt.

Den första lärkan
det var som slog:
jag såg en driva
som grät och log.

Äldre och klokare?!

Bloggen har legat i träda sedan förra måndagen. Ibland orkar man inte leva upp till sin egen (väl optimistiska) tidsplanering. Jobbet tog mycket tid och kraft i förra veckan. Sedan tävlingsspelade jag i dagarna tre. Nu är jag redo för en ny poesivecka med bloggen.

Nyligen fyllde jag år, hur mycket är fullständigt ointressant. Faktiskt funderar jag mer över åldrandet när barnen fyller år, än jag gör vid min högtidsdag.

För drygt fyra år sedan tillfrågade Carol Ann Duffy några poetkollegor om de kunde tänka sig att skriva var sin dikt om åldrandet. Det resulterade i en lång artikel, med 16 dikter, som publicerades i The Guardian, 13 mars 2010. Dagens Måndagsklubb lyfter fram tre av dessa.

Vi börjar med Wales nationalpoet Gillian Clarke.

Blue Hydrangeas, September / by Gillian Clarke (f. 1937)

You bring them in, a trug of thundercloud,
neglected in long grass and the sulk
of a wet summer. Now a weight of wet silk
in my arms like her blue dress, a load
of night-inks shaken from their hair –
her hair a flame, a shadow against light
as long ago she leaned to kiss goodnight
when downstairs was a bright elsewhere
like a lost bush of blue hydrangeas.
You found them, lovely, silky, dangerous,
their lapis lazulis, their indigoes
tide-marked and freckled with the rose
of death, beautiful in decline.
I touch my mother's skin. Touch mine.

***

Ibland är steget inte långt, i bloggen blott en mening, från hortensior (Hydrangeas på engelska) till björnbär.

Liselott among the blackberries, by Gerda Mayer (f. 1927)

Caught on September's
blackberry hook,
her hands reach out
for the sweet dark fruit;
wholly under
the blackberry spell.
"Hurry up, Lieselott,
it is late." (Plenty
of time! She
feigns deaf and dawdles.)
Old woman tasting
the last of the fruit,
in sunny oblivion,
in a still brightness.

***

Dagens avslutande dikt är lite längre, men så välskriven att jag valde att återge den i sin helhet. Den är skriven av Anne Stevenson, som förekom i Måndagsklubben i maj med dikten "The spirit is too blunt an instrument". Hennes dikt om åldrande innehåller både klokhet, humor och vacker rytmik.

The password, by Anne Stevenson (f. 1933)

For Peter

Memory, intimate camera, inward eye,
Open your store, unlock your silicon
And let my name's lost surfaces file by.
What password shall I type to turn you on?

Is this the girl who bicycled to school
A cello balanced on her handlebars?
Shy, but agog for love, she played the fool
And hid her poems in the dark of drawers.

First love of music bred a love of art,
Then art a love of actors and their plays,
Then actors love of acting out a part,
Until she'd try on anything for praise.

Siphoned to England, she embraced her dream,
With Mr Darcy camped in Hammersmith,
Bathed in a kitchen tub behind a screen,
Pretending love was true and life a myth.

Waking with a baby on her hip,
Yeats in her shopping basket, here she is,
Thin as a blade and angry as a whip,
Weighing her gift against her selfishness.

Three husbands later, here she is again,
Opposed to her own defiance, breaking rules.
Not mad, not micro-waved American,
She trips on sense, and falls between two stools,

Finding herself at sixty on the floor,
With childhood's sober, under-table view
Of how in time love matters more and more.
Given a creeping deadline, what to do?

Look at the way her wild pretensions end.
One word, its vast forgiving coverage,
Validates all her efforts to defend
Every excuse she makes, and warms with age.

Dancing through the words

Veckans Måndagsklubb innehåller inte några enstaka vackra fraser, utan mycket mer än så. Ni bjuds på en vacker dikt om en stad långt bort, ackompanjerad av ett underbart bildspel, uppläst på ett språk vi sällan hör. Ni bjuds på en insiktsfull sångtext, och ett youtube-klipp, av en artist som nästan är bortglömd. Klubben avslutas med en dikt som fyller 200 år 2015 och som fortfarande används inom engelskundervisningen i Storbritannien. Den inledande raden är en av världens mest citerade. Dikten är mitt yttersta bevis på att poesi är självläkningens medicin.

**

Först ett besök i Indien. Ett bildspel på 3½ minut.

The city that never sleeps, Satyanshu Singh

***

Så en helt fantastisk sångtext av Jackson Browne. Låten är inte någon av hans mest kända, men texten berör. Han toppade Billboard-listan 1980, med ett annat album, men är idag rätt bortglömd. Jag upptäckte att han fyller år samma dag som våra två barn. Ytterligare ett skäl att ta med honom i Måndagsklubben. Först kommer texten och sedan musik-klippet.

Farther On, by Jackson Browne (f. 1948)
(From album: Late for the sky. Label: Asylum, 1974.)

In my early years I hid my tears
And passed my days alone
Adrift on an ocean of loneliness
My dreams like nets were thrown
To catch the love that I’d heard of
In books and films and songs
Now there’s a world of illusion and fantasy
In the place where the real world belongs

Still I look for the beauty in songs
To fill my head and lead me on
Though my dreams have come up torn and empty
As many times as love has come and gone

To those gentle ones my memory runs
To the laughter we shared at the meals
I filled their kitchens and living rooms
With my schemes and my broken wheels
It was never clear how far or near
The gates to my citadel lay
They were cutting from stone some dreams of their own
But they listened to mine anyway

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say
It could be I’ve lost my way
Though I keep a watch over the distance
Heaven’s no closer than it was yesterday

And the angels are older
They know not to wait up for the sun
They look over my shoulder
At the maps and the drawings of the journey I’ve begun

Now the distance leads me farther on
Though the reasons I once had are gone
I keep thinking I’ll find what I’m looking for
In the sand beneath the dawn

But the angels are older
They can see that the sun’s setting fast
They look over my shoulder
At the vision of paradise contained in the light of the past
And they lay down behind me
To sleep beside the road till the morning has come
Where they know they will find me
With my maps and my faith in the distance
Moving farther on

Jackson Browne - Farther On - Long Beach 2011 

(Audio acoustic)

***

Slutligen dikten som skrevs 1804 av William Wordsworth efter en vandring längs sjön Ullswater i Lake District, England. Den publicerades i sin första version 1807. Men Wordsworth ändrade senare sin dikt och en ny version publicerades 1815.

Daffodils, by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

(First published 1807. This version published 1815.)

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Flygande diskar

Den här veckan har orden i Lördagsalfabetet intressanta ursprung. Vi börjar i Bombay och slutar på ett pajbageri i Connecticut.

*

D som i Dungarees - arbetsbyxor, ofta med bröstlapp och hängslen, kring sekelskiftet (1900) sydda i kraftig bomull, men numera mest tillverkade i denim. Namnet har de fått efter ett område i Bombay, Dungri (hindi). Källa: NE

I dikten har dottern lagt till några accessoarer till sina dungarees, och dessa leder mammans tankar till munkar och beduiner.

My daughter's dungarees, by Heather Brett
(From The Poetry Ireland Review, No. 36, Autumn 1992.)

For a while
I couldn't place it -
a delicate tinkle
too slight to recognise,
anyway, the light was going
and I thought of monks heading home
bare-headed and silken clad
their robes like fire,
red dust on their feet;
prayer belts of leather swaying
where tiny silver cymbals meet

I heard the sound again this morning,
dawn was a blue tear in the dark
and I thought of caravans moving,
the pitch and slant of yawning camels,
the fall and fold of silken tents,
the spurring on of skillful drovers
that approaching, scorching, sun
and underneath the black djellabas
waist length hair coiled in combs,
diamond pins adorning nostrils
every finger ringed,
and hooked upon each little earlobe
a clump of elfin, clinking bells.

***

E som i Evergreen - har två betydelser. Det kan betyda 'evigt grön' men också stå för en melodi ("örhänge") som förblir populär under en lång följd av år. Har funnits som ett sammansatt adjektiv, ever + green, sedan 1660. Källor: Bonniers Lexikon, Online Etymology

Evergreen, by David Malouf (f. 1934)
(From Revolving days : selected poems. St Lucia, Qld. : University of Queensland Press, 2008.)

At twenty an admirer
of crocus and hyacinth, all
those dawn stars like snowflakes
lighting the grass,
I expected like them
to burn out fast, touch-paper
flaring, gone
in a quick blast before thirty.
How else should one live?

And here I am a decade
on from that early death.
Having endured
thirty and the years
beyond, it's the stolid ones, the inchling
head-in cloud slow-growers
I envy - turning
stars in their branches, holding
fast to earth.

It's trees I look for nowadays,
year after year
adding their rings, recording
this month's frost, that season's
burning, the arrival
and departure of leaves, birds,
mice, barefoot invaders,
and applecore wars
in the kingdom of twigs.

I've discovered an old man's folly,
I'm planting giants: wych elm,
chestnut, larch a seed
cast into the next
long-shadowed century.
I doze in the shade
of a bunya pine, its roots
deep in the 1880s,
bubbling with doves.

In its wind-rocked boughs the heavy
green Pacific drowses
and grandfather sets sail
to find us; the tree
is dreaming our lives.
Its dust-thick shadow reaches
the road, and I swing
high on a tide of voices.
Green, green, evergreen.

***

F som i Frisbee - har fått sitt namn efter ett varumärke, Frisbie Pie Company. Ett pajbageri där anställda roade sig med att kasta pajformar på lediga stunder.

Tävlingsdiskar är 21-40 cm i diameter och väger 85-200 gram. Källa: NE

The flight of a frisbee, by Hamish Ironside (f. 1971)
(From Thumbscrew No 15 - Winter/Spring 2000.)

If you like that sort of thing, the flight of a frisbee
Can be a kind of perfection, like shooting a plane
Along the edge of a door so the shaving curls,
Unbroken, with the shiver and snap of snake. However,

This is something else: the wobbles and plummets
Of an awkward silver-speckled disc that flashes
The summer’s hottest sun across the vast
Lawn on which I watch the distant throwers.

Yet I am spellbound by the unceasing chasing
And flailing, the frisbee’s flightless arcs, the girls;
Vague and happy limbs and gestures, the sight
Of laughter, too far away for me to hear.

Too far for me to even see their faces.
Only their shadows creep towards me. I could
Move closer; then again, perhaps this is
As close as one can get to love, or should.

OOHU!

Till mina fågelfredagsinlägg hämtar jag ibland inspiration från antologin "Bright wings - poems about birds". I den finner jag att den tredje vanligast förekommande fågelfamiljen i engelsk poesi är owls, ugglor. Jag bjuder faktiskt på två uggledikter i kväll.

Men först ut fågelbonas egen bully (mobbare), göken.

To the cuckoo, by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), tre verser.
(From The essential Wordsworth. New York : Ecco Press, 1988.)

O blithe New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

***

Den första ugglan väcker med sitt mytiska läte, ett barn i natten. Poeten Richard Wilbur sätter rim till ropen.

A barred owl, by Richard Wilbur (f. 1921)
(From Mayflies : new poems and translations. London : Harcourt Brace, cop. 2000.)

The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

***

Jag avslutar med en dikt om lappugglan, som storleksmässigt är i paritet med berguven. På engelska kallas den Great Gray Owl.

Great Gray Owl, by Annie Finch (f. 1956)
(From Bright wings : an illustrated anthology of poems about birds. Edited by: Billy Collins, David Sibley. New York : Columbia University Press, 2010.)

Who knew you would grow from gray bark
So that nothing is separate or new
But your yellow eyes following through
From the mottling brown in the dark,
Spectral Owl—from the spiral, the spark
That the circling feathers lead to?
Who knew you could speak as you do,
Great Gray Ghost—who knew you could speak?

Next Generation

Jag har tidigare skrivit om min fäbless för listor - med författare, poeter, boktitlar, nyord, etc. Av den anledningen var ämnesvalet till veckans Utblick, givet.

Vart tionde år (2014 var det tredje gången) väljer The Poetry Book Society, med hjälp av en erfaren jury, ut 20 brittiska poeter som de tror kommer att bli betydelsefulla röster i framtiden. Utnämningen går under namnet "Next Generation". 

För tjugo år sedan, 1994, fanns en av mina favoriter Carol Ann Duffy bland de utvalda.

Den tredje kandidatlistan presenterades 10 september av juryordföranden Ian McMillan. Alla poeter, med fotografier, presenteras på Next Generation Poets.

Jag har redan läst in mig på några av dem. Här får ni några smakprov.

KATE TEMPEST (f. 1985) grew up in South-East London, where she still lives. Starting out as a rapper, she toured the spoken word circuit for a number of years, and now works as a poet and playwright. Brand New Ancients won the Ted Hughes Prize for innovation in poetry, and is published by Picador. Source: Publishing company

Ur Brand New Ancients, by Kate Tempest
(London : Picador, 2013.)

The editor looked over his glasses. 
He had a smile like dog shit hidden in grass, 
complexion the colour of marshes. 
He says take a seat and he passes a fat little hand 
out for Tommy to grasp. 
Tommy is nervous, all that he’s ever wanted to be 
is an artist, a wordsmith, a cartoonist, 
and even though he kind of hates the fact 
that this gross little man has the power to do this,
he’s 26, he knows well enough to smile in all the right places, 
this might be the chance, and he’s not gonna waste it. 

He takes himself out to celebrate, 
allows himself the pleasure of a steak, 
a nice glass of wine, 
a giggle ripples up and down 
the middle of his spine: 
You did it! says his heart. 
Shut the fuck up says his mind.

***

JEN HADFIELD's second collection, Nigh-No-Place, won the 2008 T S Eliot Prize. With family in Canada and England and a deep love of her adopted home in Shetland,  it is perhaps no surprise that her writing is often drawn to the contradictions of travel and home, the music of voices, and the importance of land and place. Source: Scottish Poetry Library

Blashey-wadder, by Jen Hadfield (f. 1978)
(From Nigh-no-place. Tarset : Bloodaxe Books, 2008.)

At dusk I walked to the postbox,
and the storm that must've passed you earlier today
skirled long, luminous ropes of hail between my feet
and I crackled in my waterproof
like a roasting rack of lamb.

And across the loch,
the waterfalls blew right up off the cliff
in grand plumes like smoking chimneys.

And on the road,
even the puddles ran uphill.

And across Bracadale,
a gritter, as far as I could tell,
rolled a blinking ball of orange light
ahead of it, like a dungbeetle
that had stolen the sun.

And a circlet of iron was torn from a byre
and bowled across the thrift.

And seven wind-whipped cows
clustered under a bluff.

And in a rockpool,
a punctured football reeled around and around.

And even the dog won't heel since yesterday
when - sniffing North addictedly -
he saw we had it coming -

and I mean more'n wet weak hail
on a bastard wind.

***

DALJIT NAGRA (f. 1966). My parents are Sikh Punjabis who came to Britain from India in the late 1950s. My elder brother, Daljinder, and I were born and grew up in Yiewsley, near Heathrow Airport. We moved to Sheffield when my parents bought a shop in Gleadless Valley in 1982. Source: daljitnagra.com

Look we have coming to Dover!, by Daljit Nagra, tre verser.
(London : Faber, 2007.)

So various, so beautiful, so new…’
- Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’

Stowed in the sea to invade
the lash alfresco of a diesel-breeze
ratcheting speed into the tide, with brunt
gobfuls of surf phlegmed by cushy come-and-go
tourists prow’d on the cruisers, lording the ministered waves.

Seagull and shoal life
Vexin their blarnies upon our huddled
camouflage past the vast crumble of scummed
cliffs, scramming on mulch as thunder unbladders
yobbish rain and wind on our escape, hutched in a Bedford van.

Seasons or years we reap
inland, unclocked by the national eye
or stab in the back, teemed for breathing
sweeps of grass through the whistling asthma of parks,
burdened, ennobled, poling sparks across pylon and pylon.
...

***

REBECCA GOSS was born in 1974 and grew up in Suffolk. She studied English at Liverpool John Moores University and has an MA in Creative Writing from Cardiff University. Her first full-length collection, The Anatomy of Structures, was published in 2010 by Flambard Press. Source: Publishing Company

Welcome, by Rebecca Goss
(From Her Birth. Chicago : Carcanet Press Ltd., 2013.)

    Welcome 

to Molly, 2010 

For those secret hours, she was just ours. 
No-one else knew about my breaths
(deep, hard, long) to spill her, soft as mole

into the light. Her crawl across my chest to drink 
untold, we let the world stay furled in sleep 
to hold her. As dawn swelled behind curtains 

we thought of a name. It came in chorus, 
as if we had always known and carried it 
under tongues for nine months, only now 

its round vowel released into the room. 
With your lips at her ear, you let syllables 
slide into flooded canals, named her 

over and over while outside, Mersey gulls 
swooped semi-dark, cawing their applause.

***

Avslutningsvis presenterar jag min "vinnare", bland de tjugo.

HELEN MORT was born in Sheffield in 1985, and grew up in nearby Chesterfield. Five-times-winner of the Foyle Young Poets Award, she received an Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and won the Manchester Young Writer Prize in 2008. In 2010, she was Poet in Residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. She lives in Derbyshire. Source: Publishing Company

Beauty, by Helen Mort
(From Division Street. London : Chatto & Windus, 2013.)

‘. . . is nothing but the beginning of terror’ – RILKE 

When Beauty stumbled down my road, tapped at my door 
I saw her from the lounge and hid – her eyes were raw 
from smoke, her cheeks like dough from where she’d wept 
and worse, I didn’t like the company she kept: 
a red-faced drunk who towed a dachshund on a string. 
Her mouth was slack. She never said a thing, 
just stood and waited, dropped ash in my rose bed, 
though as they walked away, she slowly turned her head.
For all she had a face made delicate by rain, 
I told myself I’d never think of her again. 

Besides, I spent the next year drinking in The Crown. 
One Saturday, I rose to leave as they sat down.
She wore a hat. Her eyes were brighter than before 
(although I didn’t doubt that it was her I saw, 
the stale light slung across her shoulders like a shawl, 
her silhouette drawn sharp against the wall), 
and though I grabbed my coat, I stood and stalled. 
I knew I had to ask what she was called. 
At last she spoke. I felt my hair rise all the same: 
it’s not the face we shrink from but the name.

Stoppa huvudet i sanden

Poesiskolan del 7
I kväll blir det en kort lektion i bildspråkets metaforer och liknelser. De är viktiga beståndsdelar när poeten för fram sitt budskap. Det är egentligen ingen stor skillnad mellan en metafor och en liknelse.

En metafor är en direkt bild medan en liknelse alltid innehåller en jämförelse.

Det är faktiskt så att många av våra sammansatta ord, som vi numera betraktar som alldagliga uttryck, är till sitt ursprung metaforer. Exempel: stolsrygg, bordsben, gräsrötter.

Om vi studerar liknelsen "sjön låg blank som en spegel" förstår vi att vattenytan jämförs med en spegelyta. Tar vi bort ordet som och istället skriver "sjön låg spegelblank" eller "sjöns blanka spegel", så vips har vi skapat en metafor.

Det är oftast orden som, likt och liksom vi tillför när metaforen blir en jämförande liknelse.

***

Övning 1

Känner ni igen uttrycken? Hur slutar de?

1) From som ett ...

2) Platt som en ...

3) Hal som en ...

4) Pigg som en ...

5) Arg som ett ...

6) Stark som en ...

7) Lätt som en ...

8) Frisk som en ...

9) Vacker som en ...

10) Rik som ett ...

*

Övning 2

Gör en egen liknelse. Para ihop den inledande beskrivningen med ett valfritt substantiv ur den andra listan.

Åskan mullrar som …		en dammsugare
Regnet låter som …		en hejaklack
Klassen väsnas som …		en idrottsledare
Läraren tjatar som …		en inbromsning
Sångaren sjunger som		en rumpnisse
Havet ryter som …		en symaskin
		en uggla
		ett bisamhälle
		ett dragspel
		ett fyrverkeri
		ett jetplan
		ett ånglok

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Måndagsklubben har förlagt sitt möte till andra sidan Atlanten. Det blir dikter av tre amerikanska poeter som skriver med tydliga avsikter, även om det finurliga språket kan försvåra för en del.

Det sistnämnda gäller i synnerhet det första exemplet. John Ashbery anses väl inte vara någon lätt poet, hur nu en sådan är ... Följande rader öppnar gränserna för [själv]dissektion.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, by John Ashbery (f. 1927), de avslutande tolv raderna ur den mycket långa dikten.
(Från Poetry Magazine, augusti 1974.)

We have seen the city; it is the gibbous
Mirrored eye of an insect. All things happen
On its balcony and are resumed within,
But the action is the cold, syrupy flow
Of a pageant. One feels too confined,
Sifting the April sunlight for clues,
In the mere stillness of the ease of its
Parameter. The hand holds no chalk
And each part of the whole falls off
And cannot know it knew, except
Here and there, in cold pockets
Of remembrance, whispers out of time.

***

Nästa dikt är så vacker att jag tappar målföret men samtidigt får den mig att tro på mental återhämtning. Det är sådana verser som bygger min tes - Poesi är bästa sortens självterapi.

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow, by Robert Duncan (1919-1988).
(Från The opening of the field. New York : Grove Press, cop. 1960.)

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down

whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.

***

Jeffrey Harrison visualiserar en annan äng, för er. Notera den vackra "artkompositionen" som förärats fetare stil. Lite annat än Linnés latin, eller hur?

The names of things, by Jeffrey Harrison (f. 1957), första halvan av dikten.
(Från Incomplete knowledge : poems. New York : Four Way Books ; Lebanon, NH : distributed by University Press of New England, 2006.)

Just after breakfast and still
waking up, I take the path cut
through the meadow, my mind caught
in some rudimentary stage,
the stems of timothy bending
inward with the weight of a single
drop of condensed fog clinging
to each of their fuzzy heads
that brush wetly against my jeans.
Out on a rise, the lupines stand
like a choir singing their purples,
pinks and whites to the buttercups
spread thickly through the grasses—
and to the sparser daisies, orange
hawkweed, pink and white clover,
purple vetch, butter-and-eggs.
It’s a pleasure to name things
as long as one doesn’t get
hung up about it. A pleasure, too,
to pick up the dirt road and listen
to my sneakers soaked with dew
scrunching on the damp pinkish sand—
that must be feldspar, an element
of granite, I remember from
fifth grade. I don’t know what
this black salamander with yellow spots
is called
...