Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev - Day and Night

I find it laborious, yet exciting, how a particular course of study will open up subcategories of study, which in turn open up other subcategories that relate to the previous ones (and this can go on and on). I say ‘exciting’ because learning about new things, especially those that pertain to what one is particularly passionate about, is just that … exciting. This is how I ultimately came to know of the one of the most incredible writers of Russian poetry.

I was engaged in a study of French Symbolism years ago, and the path that that study took me down lead me to the first Russian poet I came to actively read, Alexander Blok. I loved his style immediately, and his theological bent and the way he beautifully employed abstract imagery. After having studied him for a time I was led to another poet, a poet who heavily influenced Blok, and one who I consider a favorite … Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev.

Tyutchev was more of a literary genius than a poet, but when he wrote poetry he poured his entire creative prowess into it. The first poem that I read of his, translated by the incredible mind of Vladimir Nabokov, was Glum is the Sky. I was indelibly hooked, and to this day consider Tyutchev to be one of the best writers of poetry that I have ever come across. Please, check him out ...

 Day and Night

The spirit world we may not see,
That nameless gulf, is shrouded over
And hidden by a golden cover;
Thus do the gods on high decree.
Day-this most splendid shroud is thee,
Day-for us mortals, animation,
The ailing soul's alleviation,
That men and gods delight to see.

But let day fade and night commence;
The blessed veil is torn, revealing
The fateful world it was concealing,
And hurled incontinently hence...
The gulf lies naked to the sight
With its black horrors of perdition,
'Twixt them and us lies no partition:
And that is why we fear the night!


  

Of the Poem (A Quick Overview): 

Tyutchev’s poem consists of two eight-lined stanzas called octets. The meter he employs, as was very popular in the Russian poetry of his time, is iambic tetrameter (i.e. eight syllables or four metric feet per line). His rhyme scheme is very interesting, and certainly contributes to the harmonious cadence of the read- please, allow me to explain.

First, it’s important to understand that, although Tyutchev divides his poem into two stanzas called octets, these individual stanzas are each essentially a composite of two quatrains- specifically, Italian quatrains.

An Italian quatrain is a stanza that consists of four lines with an enveloped rhyming pattern, whose rhythmic scheme looks like this: abba; or, to give it visuality:

x x x x x x x a

x x x x x x x b

x x x x x x x b

x x x x x x x a

So if we take the first four lines of Tyutchev’s poem, in both the original and Nabokov's translation, we are able to see clearly that he was working with quatrains while constructing his poem, and specifically the type of quatrain we call Italian. Take a look:

На мир таинственный духов,

Над этой бездной безымянной,

Покров наброшен златотканный

Высокой волею богов.

The spirit world we may not see,

That nameless gulf, is shrouded over

And hidden by a golden cover;

Thus do the gods on high decree.

Before we continue, it will be interesting to note that Nabokov’s translation of Tyutchev’s Day and Night remains faithful not only to the poem’s overall structure, meter and rhyme schematic, but also to the imagery Tyutchev employed line by line. I’ve come to learn that Nabokov’s translation preserves beautifully the poetic element Tyutchev intended.

Now, it is evident that Tyutchev invested a great deal of energy in the ordering of his poem, from the quatrains that make up the poem’s internal structure, to the iambic tetrameters that contribute to the poem’s metric regularity- indeed, even the way Tyutchev employs the contrast between ‘day’ and ‘night’ (devoting the first stanza to the former, and the second to the latter) seems anything but unintentional. It is for this reason that I find it curious that he would choose to switch things up by employing rhyming patterns between the two stanzas that differ. But I believe there’s an answer for this. First, let us see what those patterns look like.

The first stanza follows what can be described as a very uniform, very orderly rhyme scheme whose euphony is almost musical- it looks like this: abbaacca.

x x x x x x x a

x x x x x x x b

x x x x x x x b

x x x x x x x a

x x x x x x x a

x x x x x x x c

x x x x x x x c

x x x x x x x a

The second stanza, although orderly and uniform, seems less so than the first; here is how that one looks: deedfggf.

x x x x x x x d

x x x x x x x e

x x x x x x x e

x x x x x x x d

x x x x x x x f

x x x x x x x g

x x x x x x x g

x x x x x x x f

There is an internal harmony to the first stanza that reflects Tyutchev’s praise of the sun, a harmony he achieves by linking the two quatrains of that stanza together with a rhythmic pattern that weaves itself through lines 1, 4, 5, and 8 (abba acca). With the second stanza there is a discordance that reflects his aversion of the night- again, a discordance achieved by dissolving the rhythmic link between the two quatrains that constitute that stanza (deed fggf). I’m thoroughly persuaded that Tyutchev was fully aware of this delineation, and intentionally allowed the musical rhythm of the second stanza to fall into dissonance in order to depict daylight’s descent into night’s grim chaos … incredibly genius, if you ask me .

And this is what Tyutchev does with this poem, sets up countless contrasts throughout. Even down to the poem’s title, Tyutchev establishes his intentions for contrast. For example, in the Russian language, as in most Slavic and Germanic languages, the word for day (день, den) is masculine, while the word for night (ночь, noch) is feminine. Surely in everyday language the distinction is hardly worth noting, but when in the hands of a poet you can be certain that their gender and their use become significant … and so, after realizing that the first stanza of his poem dedicates itself to the illumination and joys of the sun, and the second to the horrors of the night, it becomes very clear that a masculinity dominates the first stanza, and a femininity the second.

It is with a myriad of techniques and devices like this that Tyutchev sets up the foundation for a poem whose meaning is beautifully illustrated and piercing: that we delight in daylight because it masks an enormous, vacuous blackness whose void and brooding presence strikes fear in our hearts … the night sky.

Conclusion (A Note of Curiosity):

Just a thought before we close.

The phrase from the first line of the first stanza мир таинственный духов refers to ‘the spirit world’. Some translations render ‘mysterious world of spirits’. Either way, the reference is to the spirit realm, a realm we mortals reach after our passage through death. I find it interesting that it is the spirit world, which in this poem is represented by the night sky, that daylight shrouds from us. And I find it equally interesting that the poem concludes that the reason we fear the night is because it represents that mysterious realm.

Is it possible that it isn’t the spirit world (or night) per se that we fear, but rather the dismantling of the shroud that cloaks it from our perceptions? And is not this ‘dismantling’ that event which we humans refer to as death? If this is true, that would mean that not only does Tyutchev use his poem to contrast day against night, and to have us recognize our inherent fear of night’s intimidating enormity, but that would also mean that he intended another meaning, one that would have us recognize our fear of death when it approaches, as well as our fear of that mysterious and nameless and unknown realm.

I would love, love to know your opinion of Tyutchev and your interpretation of his poem.

Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper

I'm he whose face is ever hid,

That unseen silhouette in shades-

Aloof, yet ever here amid

The winded wheat with reaping blades.

My dwelling none shall ever know,

My goings none shall ever see-

Til I arrive, my face to show,

No soul shall ever know it's me.

Whitechapel is my threshing floor ...

The scythe and sickle- ah, the tools.

The grain? - the harlot and the whore.

The yield? - a city full of fools. 

jwm

A Poem by Lieutenant Commander Data

I’m hardly what you’d call a Trekkie. Indeed, apart from a few episodes, the original Star Trek with Captain James T. Kirk was a very tiresome series for me. But then 21 years later Gene Roddenberry decided it was time for an ‘update’. Hence the emergence of one of the best television series ever, StarTrek: The Next Generation.

Of the characters Picard, Riker, Tasha Yar, Worf and the rest, I’d have to say that Lieutenant Commander Data is my favorite, hands down. His plight, or should I say, his quest as an android to understand what it means to be human, coupled with his intelligence and humor, have produced some very thought provoking and philosophical episodes- my favorite being, Star Trek (The Next Generation): The Measure of a Man, Season 2 Episode 9.

Another one of my favorite episodes would have to be Star Trek (The Next Generation): Schisms, Season 6 Episode 5. In this episode we’re privileged to hear some of Data’s poetry, and I have to say, for an android, he writes damn good poetry!

I’ll let Data introduce his poem, enjoy ... 

“Throughout the ages, from Keats to Jorkemo, poets have composed odes to individuals who have had a profound effect on their lives. In keeping with that tradition, I have written my next poem in honor of my cat. I call it Ode to Spot.” 

"Ode to Spot" 
by Lieutenant Commander Data (2338 – 2379)

Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents.
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
Oh Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array,
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.

Written Stardate 46154.2

A Valentine's Quatrain

She Loves Me Not

 

Pluck not the petals of the daisy
If love would be your sacred lot
For many men have thus gone crazy
Whose daisy said she loves me not

-jwm

Tennyson's Eagle: A Victorian Poem

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.



Of the Poem:

Line I:
He clasps the crag with crookèd hands

Right from the jump one gets a sense of the mood of this poem. First of all, there’s the alliteration that's caught tightly within the eight syllables of this first line. The rough and almost turbulent sound of these 'Cs' lends a kind of harshness to the opening of the poem that corresponds to harshness that is this eagle's life and environment. Indeed, clasps, crag, and crookèd taken merely as words here are all indicative of the eagle's state of austerity, and the poet would have us know that this majestic bird of prey resides right there on that rocky mass in a somewhat rigorous, and flinted, and nearly defiant way.

Note the intentional use of the word ‘hand’ as opposed to ‘claw’ or ‘talon’. This should be the first indication that this bird- which Tennyson may or may not have experienced- may serve as a symbol of something other than its literal self. It's cool how Tennyson uses a great deal of personifications (like 'hand' vs talon) in so short a poem.

Line II: 
Close to the sun in lonely lands

There’s a beauty that I read in these lines that I’ve seen reflected in so many figures of the past- from Socrates to Spinoza, Buddha to Thoreau- individuals who moved as close as they could to that which they deemed transcendental (or as as our poet says, closer to the sun) only to find themselves alienated in various ways from common society. Not that this is what Tennyson intends, but that image always pops up in my mind. The point I think Tennyson means to convey here is the eagle's noble solitude on those lonely heights.

I love how the poet enjambed the rough alliterations of line one with the line that follows

He clasps the crag with crookèd hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands

and then ends that line with the smoother lonely lands ...

Line III:
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands

The poet ends the first stanza by establishing the height and heavenly grandeur within which his bird abides: the azure sky, his world, his domain and plain of freedom.

By reading the first line, the poem almost seems to impart the idea of an unforgiving habitat, a remote and perhaps cold and lonely place; but now there's something about this particular line that hints to us that this is exactly where this eagle belongs, and more importantly, wants to be. This sky, this world of his surrounds all he is and all he wishes to know, it is the source of not only his liberty, it is the source also of his sovereignty (as we will see in the following stanza).

Again, that the first stanza ends with this majestic creature standing on that rocky formation is a powerful image to contemplate.

Lines IV and V:
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls
He watches from his mountain walls

The vantage point from which the eagle looks is the high summit of a rocky crag, where all is exalted and serene. The waves and the beakers beneath him seem to be little more than wrinkles crawling slowly along the water's tempered surface. The eagle, quite literally, transcends this tumultuous, chaotic world below.

Now Tennyson, like a true and faithful poet, deliberately and carefully chooses his words here. He doesn't say, He watches from the mountain walls; but rather, He watches from his mountain walls. As was previously mentioned, this is exactly where this eagle belongs, and more importantly, wants to be.

But a question is begged ... what does the eagle watch? Let's check out the last line.

Line VI:
And like a thunderbolt he falls

Probably one of the best lines of the poem, and most certainly and most appropriately the most climatic. I love this line, and how Tennyson uses lightning to depict the incredible speed that this bird takes on.

Another thing that I love that Tennyson does is that he doesn't tell you what's happening, he shows you (a technique mastered by some of the best writers the world has known). The first time I read this poem and came to this line I immediately, and without any mental effort, pictured this eagle diving down from off his perch fixed on a fish he eyed from the crag. When that final line was read and that image flashed through my mind I thought to myself, as I often do of poetry, how amazing it is that so much detail can be expressed in so short amount of space.

Conclusion (And One More Consideration): 

Now, the above outline was intended to be a general line by line commentary of the poem- modest and not reading too much into it. The truth is there could be many interpretations rendered about what Tennyson was trying to impart when he wrote this particular piece ... was it just a poem referring to an actual event, or could there be some other hidden, symbolic meaning to it?

To be honest with you, a few things popped up in my mind after having read it. For example, when I read the last line of the poem: and like a thunderbolt he falls, I instantly remembered the line out of Luke 10:18 where Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." In that instant I thought to myself that this poem could very well be talking about Satan's fall, and that the eagle is a symbolic representation of the Devil himself. 

If this were true- and this is just a suggestion- would it explain the uneasiness of the the poem's opening; and would it not make sense of the crookèd hands personification, as the Devil is depicted as a wingèd creature with hands. Maybe I'm reaching, but perhaps crookèd could also mean crooked in the sense of dishonesty (the Devil is, after all, said to be the father of all lies).

And what of this, my curiosity begs ...

Close to the sun in lonely lands / Ring'd with the azure world 

The sun is easily symbolic of God; and the azure world, easily symbolic of heaven. And no doubt such an environment, as unappealing as it would be to the Prince of Darkness, would be a lonely place. Hence the rebellion, or 'stand' as it were. The context, as conjectured as it may be, seems to correspond quite well ...

Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. 

And then there's the sea upon which the 'eagle' gazes. The sea is often depicted as a place of hell in the Bible, a place where Leviathan, that great and evil serpent dwells. Indeed, Revelation 20:13 parallels the idea of the sea directly with that of hell. So there would be no wonder why the eagle here, potentially symbolic of Satan, would be transfixed on the sea below.

Remember how carefully Tennyson selected his words when he said, He watches from his mountain walls rather than He watches from the mountain walls ... wouldn't that be just like the Devil, to lay claim of possession to that which is in fact not his own at all-especially heavenly possessions.

This discontentedness with the celestial spheres (that azure world), this rebel disposition (his stance), combined with that unlawful notion that the vaulted heights are his possession, could only lead to his inevitable expulsion: like a thunderbolt he falls.

And this is only one of a few interpretations that I have pertaining to this poem!

Make no mistakes, though- I take Tennyson's poem for what it's worth, and delight in it, and marvel at it's details and imagery, but I cannot deny that it's language conjures up within me the suspicion that he means something more by it than the simple sighting of so magnificent a creature.

With that, I would love, love, love to hear your interpretation of it.

Colorado's First Poet

There’s no question that there’s a definite stylistic thread that weaves the Imagist movement together- the works of Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle (my favorite), and James Joyce, for example, all bare an uncanny similarity of intensity and radical use of imagery.

Some of the poems I’ve read by poets like this have literally left me staggering in awe- moved to passion, as it were, by a realm of imagination human minds seem to seldom touch. I don’t exaggerate when I say that that kind of poetry carries within itself the very potency that’s at the seat and center of every form of art known- sometimes it’s too overwhelming.

Mina Loy (1882 – 1966), who is said to be Colorado's first official poet, was heavily influenced by the Imagist movement, and all of her works bare the signature of that movement’s style. Although she wasn’t exclusively a poet (indeed, toward the end of her life she denied she ever was) the few works that she produced were very important contributions to poetry and the history thereof. 

Her poems are short blasts of intense imagery skillfully consolidated in a handful of lines- lines that almost at times seem possessed by some remote mystical state verging on madness. With that said, I will admit that she loses me sometimes, with lines like ... 

Dilation has entirely dominated
your long reality
 
 ... but still, her mesmerizing style, like Roethke, ceaselessly draws me back. If you haven't come across her verse, or haven't read Imagist poetry, you should check out some of her works. Here’s one below, a poem which rages against that ruthless deterioration culminating in our inevitable ending ... aging:


An Old Woman

The past has come apart
events are vagueing
the future is a seedless pod
the present pain.

Not even pain has that precision
with which it struck youth.

Years like moths
erode internal organs
hanging or falling
in a spoiled closet.

Does you mirror bedevil you?
Or is the impossible
possible to senility?

How could the erstwhile
agile and slim self--
that narrow silhouette--
come to contain
this huge incognito--
this bulbous stranger--
only to be exorcised by death?

Dilation has entirely dominated
your long reality.

I had to post it ...

Poe's Annabel Lee

It takes a sort of disturbed, divine genius to concoct precious literary works that revolve around the theme of death, and of death’s potential, and of the suffering and the loss thereby, and to render that theme beautiful. Think about it … to draw beauty from the ultimate source of trepidation that, consciously or subconsciously, plagues the life of every living human being … to draw beauty from death? To achieve such a thing requires incredible wit, and audacity, and most certainly a creative mind unmoved by the prospect of risk.

Edgar Allan Poe is such a mind. He is said to have thought that the death of a beautiful woman is “the most poetical topic in the world.” As pathological as that statement may sound, I don’t believe that Poe was moved by some diabolical euphoria revolving around the death of beautiful women, or that some infernal strain of delight flowed through his blood by the thought of it. Poe’s poetical melancholy was derived from real tragic losses that he endured throughout his life, losses that involved women in his life for whom he cared deeply.

The most tragic of these losses was his wife Virginia, who died at the age of 24 after a long and painful battle with tuberculosis. Poe loved her dearly and with all his heart, and was steeped in a deep, desolate depression that could only be assuaged by the remote hope that his beloved might be reunited with him. It was from this tortuous mode of misery, coupled with the longing he had for his wife, that Poe’s final poem would emerge, Annabel Lee.

Annabel Lee is a poem Poe completed two years after Virginia’s death. He struggled desperately to make it as perfect as possible (it is said that there were roughly 11 known versions of it). The poem itself is about love, and about what happens with love when death intervenes.  

The narrator speaks of a love that he shared with a girl by the name of Annabel Lee. This love was so pure between the two, and so deep and innocent, that even the angels were jealous of it. One day “a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling” Annabel Lee, which is said to be the cause of her eventual death. The narrator goes on to say that it was the jealousy of these angels that produced this wind that killed his beloved. Notwithstanding, the narrator continues, the depth and purity of their love was such that it was immutable- nothing, not even death or angels or demons, could separate the two:

And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee

The poem then takes a strange and almost repelling twist as it comes to a close. We are told that despite their immutable love, and the beautiful imagery describing Annabel’s presence with him, every evening, during the night-tide, the speaker goes into the tomb of his wife and lies there lovingly by her side.

It’s a fascinating poem that consists of six stanzas with equally fascinating imagery. The tempo of it, most especially when read aloud, flows so incredibly well. Poe uses repetition, alliteration, and polysyndeton with great literary effectiveness. It is a poem that every poet, and every romantic minded person, must of necessity know.

  

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

And we're back ...

It's been quite some time since I last posted in my blog, and a lot has certainly happened since then ...

... of course, there was that incident where my blog was hacked and tampered with- which thankfully I was able to remedy. Then there was a trip I took in August to the east coast (visiting Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York)- a trip that has inspired in me a great deal of imagery and ideas for future works of mine. Then there was that discovery of hundreds of etchings that were done by the poet William Blake- a really awesome modern day find in the world of poetry. And then there was the publication of not just one, but two chapbooks by Colorado poet, Daniel Klawitter- reads that I highly recommend. In short, a lot has happened.

During this time I did a comprehensive study of both Shakespeare's Hamlet (which I'm please to say I'll be seeing next month), and the history and tradition of Russian poetry, studies that were exceedingly informative and edifying.

Just yesterday I posted a biography that was done by Poets.org on a very popular Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam- an interesting man full of conviction and an awesome writer whose life under the Bolsheviks was heavy laden. His poetry is beautiful, and radical, and was clearly in a state of perpetual evolution, even to the very end.

I think everyone should check out these poets, even if unfortunately some of the substance of their works are lost in translation. These poets, from Trediakovsky to Brodsky, are an incredible breed. Indeed,  Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (as translated by Vladimir Nabokov) is one of my all-time favorite poets- I mean absolutely amazing, amazing works of art.

Anyhow, my sabbatical is ended, and I can't wait to share more tidbits that pertain to the works of poets, to the poets themselves, and to poetry in general. Here ... here's one of the first poems written by Mandelstam that I read and that I'm sure you'll appreciate (keep in mind that he emerged during the Symbolist period of Russian literature):

I Could Not Among the Misty Clouds

I could not among the misty clouds
Your unstable and painful image catch,
'Oh, my God', I promptly said aloud,
Having not a thought these words to fetch.

As a bird -- an immense bird and sound --
Holly Name flew out of my chest.
And ahead the mist mysterious crowds,
And the empty cage behind me rests.

- Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam 1891 - 1938

Born in January, 1891, in Warsaw, Poland, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was raised in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a prominent leather merchant and his mother a teacher of music. Mandelstam attended the renowned Tenishev School and later studied at the Sorbonne, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of St. Petersburg, though he left off his studies to pursue writing. He published his first collection, Kamen, or Stone (1913), when Russian Symbolism was the dominant persuasion. Like Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, who cleared the ground for Russian Futurism, Mandelstam departed from this old mode of expression in favor of a more direct treatment of thoughts, feelings, and observations under the aegis of Acmeism, a programme that included Nikolay Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova. As translator Clarence Brown observes, Mandelstam's variant of Acmeism was a mixture of poetics and moral doctrine, the former based on an "intuitive and purely verbal logic of inner association" and the latter on a kind of "democratic humanism." His second book, Tristia (1922), secured his reputation, and both it and Stone were released a year later in new editions.

Yet the Bolsheviks had begun to exert an ever increasing amount of control over Russian artists, and Mandelstam, though he had initially supported the Revolution, was absolutuely unwilling to yield to the political doctrine of a regime that had executed Gumilev in 1921. The poet published three more books in 1928—Poems, a collection of criticism entitled On Poetry, and The Egyptian Stamp, a book of prose—as the state closed in on him. Mandelstam spent his later years in exile, serving sentences for counter-revolutionary activities in various work camps, until his death on December 27, 1938, in the Gulag Archipelago.

Bio from Poets.org

Neruda's Death ... Questioned

Chilean poet, Neruda ... murdered? If true, how terrible ...

{Smiling}

The Spires

I think they're vulgar, those stately spires,
That raise their heads up to the sky-
The boast of bygone, lost empires
That once against the heavens vied.

Like Babel and that wretched tower
That dared in vain God's heaven reach,
As if they held some sovereign power
To flank the Gates and set some breach!

So yes, these ‘modern' symbols pain me-
They seem disdainful, haughty, rude …
And when I see them vaulted vainly,
I shake my head and mumble, dude? 

-jwm