Why?

“why?” the first question we ask our parents when we are young.  “brush your teeth,” “do your homework”… why?  Parents now use the statement “because I said so” as a vague authoritarian statement.   Even now as a first-year in college, I ask myself the same question; why?

I go to school to get a job, to make money and support a family, and I do all of this to make a better life for myself, but why? To be happy? Greed and jealousy spout from wealth.  Maybe there is an anxiousness to the unknown, and unknowing of what I want to do when I am through with college, but more often than not I find myself pushing to do something only to stop and ask why.  Listening to an old man stand before my lecture hall talking about sitcoms in the fifties-making a connection to media and today- I can’t help but wonder why the hell this is an assistant to my happiness.  I had often thought that we lived on the idea of complete procreation; that as cells our job was to make more and in that keeping up our species, only to have society throw layer upon layer of trivial ideologies at us. And while I don’t completely disregard that mentality, I feel the more and more I think about life and our existence the less and less I understand, has society just screwed with a perfectly plain lifestyle? Has society toyed with the faults and vices of humanity, changing its priorities?

People try to picture heaven and God to be selfish. Maybe with this notion that we’ll all be together again, we focus less on the immediate intensity of the human emotionally capabilities of love and anger; we focus on the mundanities of the self. Perhaps there is no heaven and this is it, this is all we’ll ever know. Are we better off going through life without knowing more than names and faces? Or knowing what life really means? Does wanting to change the world and learning all its faults in humanity make us better people or just pessimistic?

“I’m sick of not feeling anything. I laugh cause I should, never cry. Smile to be polite. I lvoe without true feelings. No tingles, no surges of engery run through my blood. Music becomes a drug, I exist because I can listen and breath. But for what? We shall all die soon. With the hope of all knowing death will be my relief. The numbness is killing me. I am loosing what little of me stays on. Why?”

Gerald Manley Hopkins

Moonrise

I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;

A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quite utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber.

There is something about the sunsetting, the beginning of night, that time in the day when the moonrises and the stars come out; its the most exciting and majestic time of day, the night is canvas for dreams and fairy tales. In Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Aladin, almost every fairytale and romantic movie that the night time is the time in which the infinite can be reached. At ‘moonrise’ the anticipation of night time is at peak. There is a divide between the known, and the unknown, constant and variables; a sudden urge and pull back or hesitation is revealed through this poem and its metaphorical depiction of the moonrise, “A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, not quite utterly.” This is the grey area of day.

I’d rather the ‘moonrise’ part of a day be called the undecided, or indecisive time of day. The time of day where a person can dwindle and thin into the last chapter of the day as it comes to an end. I enjoyed this poem’s trigger for me, who doesn’t love watching the moon come up, the sky turning to a deep sorrowful and mysterious color, and best of all, who doesn’t love watching the blanket of starts that envelope the sky?

Sylvia Plath

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful—
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Honestly never thought about the aspects of the mirror in the way that Plath describes.  This personified mirror has no preconceptions, never cruel only truthful, honest. When I was younger my dad used to mention my actions making me able to look into a mirror at the end of the day; a mirror gives an honest depiction of who you are, what you look like on the outside. Because it only gives the 2 dimensional image, it does not give you insight to the depth of a person. “A woman bends over me, searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and I reflect it faithfully.” Unlike a painting or a photograph, a mirror cannot misconceive the viewer. I have two mirrors in my bedroom, I have one large mirror and seven decorative mirrors in my bathroom, every morning I go from my bedroom to my bathroom, thats a hell of a lot of honesty for one morning.

“She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes… She has drowned a young girl and in me an old women rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.”  Your clothes, and fake faces are just disguises to a mirror because they know what your are  when it comes down to it. Like a cycle, in the morning out of bed you are one face (the true face) as you leave for work or school you have a different, slightly cleaner, face.

Tufu’s ‘Ballad of the Old Cypress’

Ballad of the Old Cypress

In front of K’ung-ming Shrine
stands an old cypress,
With branches like green bronze
and roots like granite;

Its hoary bark, far round,
glistens with raindrops,
And blueblack hues, high up,
blend in with Heaven’s:
Long ago Statesman, King
kept Time’s appointment,
But still this standing tree has men’s devotion;

United with the mists
of ghostly gorges,
Through which the moon brings cold
from snowy mountains.

(I recall near my hut
on Brocade River
Another Shrine is shared by
King and Statesman

On civil, ancient plains
with stately cypress:
The paint there now is dim,
windows shutterless. . .)

Wide, wide though writhing roots
maintain its station,
Far, far in lonely heights,
many’s the tempest

When its hold is the strength
of Divine Wisdom
And straightness by the work of the Creator. . .

Yet if a crumbling Hall
needed a rooftree, Yoked herds would, turning heads,
balk at this mountain:

By art still unexposed all have admired it;
But axe though not refused,
who could transport it?

How can its bitter core deny ants lodging,
All the while scented boughs
give Phoenix housing?

Oh, ambitious unknowns,
sigh no more sadly:
Using timber as big
was never easy!

The First thing that came to mind when I began reading this poem was the large white tree in the middle of the palace court in Lord of the Rings. So untouched by the rulers of its time, it stands alone and proud for all to see. Trees have a tendency to represent wisdom and knowledge, and this Old cypress is no different. “With branches like green bronze and roots like granite;” This tree cannot be touched or moved. The cypress holds the strength of Divine Wisdom, so tall into the heavens it stands alone. Stronger and more powerful than the rulers, kings and men who gave devotion to the tree there is still a sense of unknowing-ness about the tree, “Oh, ambitions unknown, sigh no more sadly: Using timber as big was never easy.”

Monistic religious views relate to a higher power and knowledge of being; a state of understanding. this tree untouched in such lonesomeness and hierarchy represents this idea of being one with nature and the higher power which can only be obtained through meditation: ” men’s devotion.” Though I can’t quite squeeze a meaning out of the last line, ‘Using timber as big was never easy!’

Silence

Silence
My father used to say,
“Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow’s grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat –
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth –
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.”
Nor was he insincere in saying, “`Make my house your inn’.”
Inns are not residences.

Marianne Moore’s poet about silence makes sense in many ways. I have encountered many persons whose character is best reflected in their lack of words. Somewhat like being true in perfection, Why feel the need to share with others if you have already obtained it? Silence all too often is more dramatically understood than a bunch of rambling sentences that are meaningless. Similar to actions speak louder than words, someone who is ‘superior’ never have intentions of spending time alone, restraint for boisterous behavior. Those who yell and blabber to try to get their point across are far less wise than those literate few who are able to frankly or tersely respond. Her father’s response to making his house their inn would relate to the line in which he examined that ‘superior people never make long visits.’ People without long visits have somewhere to go, a destination. Reminds me of Mr. Darsey, soft spoken, and always appearing to have a better place to be. 

Silence has that element of the unknown, the unexpected and the vast.

Walt Whitman

As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days

As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,
Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)
Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,
The announcements of recognized things, science,
The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.

I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.

But I too announce solid things,
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,
triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,
They stand for realities–all is as it should be.

Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face
of the earth,
The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these
centuries-lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements
of any.

Of all of Whitman’s poems, this struck me the hardest. “What else is so real as mine?” what an amazing question. On countless occasions  I have wondered whether or not this life is such a real existence, do we all see the same colors, is this more than a vivid dream? How do we define the realities from the make believe? And once we differentiate the two, how do we know that what we perceive as real, truly isn’t what we had made it believed to be; dreams become realities, are dreams not made up? Whitman’s third and fourth lines of this poem point upon the vast odds we have won, the battles we have yet to meet, tomorrow we wait for a ‘denser wars.” Today’s society is optimistic for tomorrow, trudging on for the greener grass and tomorrow’s blank page. Hey, we forget that today’s battles have been won! Every hump, tough decision, every move from today has been a success, we’ve won today and continue hopes that tomorrow will even better.  Like Whitman, I too have solid things to announce, what human doesn’t go through daily life without a wanting to share with another? After all it is in our nature to name and to share.

The World announces to us everyday, businesses announce, people announce, nature announces to us, all in ways that we respond to. We respond by not objecting, or not protesting, or speaking out, taking steps in directions which announce our individual votes or cast our opinions into the world.  We make our realities in our own majestic days and I think that is what Whitman’s poem points out the most.

Mark Strand’s: A Piece of the Storm

A Piece of the Storm

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,  A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up from your book, saw it the moment it landed. That’s all There was to it. No more than a solemn waking To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly, A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm, which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back. That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say: “It’s time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.”

I like the use of scenery and momentum that this poem uses, and yet I can really grasp the meaning.  Is he describing a reaction? An emotion?

A Storm in April

Richard Wilbur’s A Storm in April:
Some winters, taking leave,
Deal us a last, hard blow,
Salting the ground like Carthage
Before they will go.

But the bright, milling snow
Which throngs the air today:
It is a way of leaving
So as to stay.

The light flakes do not weigh
The willows down, but sift
Through the white catkins, loose
As petal-drift

Or in an up-draft lift
And glitter at a height,
Dazzling as summer’s leaf-stir
Chinked with light.

This storm, if I am right,
Will not be wholly over
Till green fields, here and there,
Turn white with clover,
And through chill air the puffs of milkweed hover.

When reading this particular poem I was reminded of the taunting that winter does as it comes and goes. I felt this piece by Wilbur was fairly light hearted, explaining the brevity of the winter and yet it also describes the longevity of emotions that the winter brings.

Much like the poem itself, or similarly to a relationship, the winter never really is over. There is always a lasting impression or ‘hard blow, salting the ground’ that lingers. Even though A storm in April is unexpected and somewhat out of the ordinary, the way that Wilbur describes snow like petals or glitter relates back to the theme.

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