Tag astrology

* rivering via bill knott

José Angel Araguz 2 Comments

This week’s poem is another Bill Knott gem.

What moves me most about it is how it stirs up from mere words a whole fabulistic world from a distance, and, by the end of the poem, brings the world closer to the reader, as close as the glass of water in hand that makes up the final image.

Seeing as the poem involves rivers meeting (and not meeting), this week’s image is of the confluence of the Rhone and Arve River in Geneva, Switzerland.

* the friday confluence *

* a friday confluence *

By the River BAAB – Bill Knott

We know that somewhere far north of here
the two rivers Ba and Ab converge to form
this greater stream that sustains us, uniting
the lifeblood length of our lands: and we believe
that the Ba’s sources is heaven, the Ab’s hell.

Daily expeditions embark upcountry to find
that fork, to learn where the merge first occurs.
Too far: none of our explorer’s return.  Or
else when they reach that point they themselves
are torn apart by a sudden urge to choose –

to resolutely take either the Ba/the Ab, to trace
good or evil to its spring.  Each flips a coin
perhaps, or favors whichever one the wind’s
blowing from at that moment.  Down here
even we who have not the heart to venture

anywhere that would force us to such deep
decisions, even we, when we hold that glass of
water in our hand, drink it slowly, deliberately,
as if we could taste the two strains, could somehow
distinguish their twin flow through our veins.

***

Happy veining!

Jose

* (re)noting the hidden things via shin kyeong-nim

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Not that anybody needs another reminder of what snow looks like, but here:

* cincisnowti *

* Cincisnowti *

There’s been plenty of the cold stuff these past few months.

Heading into March, I’m waiting for spring to arrive – yet I can’t help but type that and immediately note that I can’t exactly remember what it was like without snow. Not that “Oh, it’s been snowing so long, I can’t remember what it was like without it — ” but rather, there’s a rather elegiac habit of mind I encounter that has me always looking at the world with an emphasis on what isn’t there versus what is.

At times, this habit is powerful – in envisioning a way out of a problem, for example. But there are times that require a bit of restraint from thinking away from them.

This week’s poem by Korean poet Shin Kyeong-nim evokes a feeling  of what is missed in the turning/thinking away I experience. With each reading, the poem makes me see that life, as it gathers in the years behind us, becomes a series of turns, and that, while much is irretrievable, the experience is constant: what we will miss is in front of us long before we begin to be able to miss it.

The Baby – Shin Kyeong-nim

I.

Baby looks at the snow piling up outside the window;
signs it’s all lovely, all strange; waves a hand.
Like baby trees shaking baby leaves.
Baby knows all the hidden things:
why snow falls, and the lovely things the snowflakes whisper;
knows all – a perfectly contented still life.

II.

After a while, baby learns the word “Mum.”
This means he is forgetting the hidden things of the word “Mum.”
But he doesn’t realize.
Flowers, trees, stars.
With elation baby learns the words,
forgetting the hidden things in each.
And when he has forgotten all the hidden things,
baby is a full-fledged person.

III.

Thus when snow piles up like today,
he’ll fret from thoughts of a girl.
Walking the bank of the stream,
he will cry from nostalgia self-directed.

***
Happy self-directing!

Jose

p.s. Thank you to Daniel Paul Marshall for introducing me to this poem and poet.

* poem found in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry.