Altarwise by Owl-Light: 12.2008

Where's that title from?

Altarwise by Owl-Light

I.

Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrow's scream.
Then, penny-eyed, that gentleman of wounds,
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven's egg,
With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
Scraped at my cradle in a walking word
That night of time under the Christward shelter:
I am the long world's gentleman, he said,
And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.

-- Dylan Thomas

23 December 2008

Happy 82, Old Man

Today is Robert Bly's birthday. Bly is still my favorite poet; what he has done, and tried to do, is still my model of what poetry is for. Clouded by grad school and other po-biz pollutions, I've strayed from this model in many ways, most of them bad. The trick is to re-connect with the inspiration his oeuvre presents while not being daunted by it. (Check out this guy's bibliography on his Wikipedia page or here. Holy shit!) Mostly, when I compare my work to his, even just his early work, I see that I have failed rather thoroughly.

But this is a time for renewal. Winter solstice and all that. The birth of light from darkness. I'm going to take another shot at it, and to hell with publishing. (Unless editors wise up and decide they love my poems. But I won't go changing to try to please them.)

Anyway. Once again, in honor of his birthday, I present one of my favorite Bly poems. Enjoy.

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
The stars? He cried to Saturn: "You are my Lord!"
How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,

He cried, ""You are my Lord!" How destroyed he was
When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:
We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
We are ready to spend the rest of our life

Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,
Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

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