O Captain! My Captain!

I had heard him say this out loud to me every time I asked him to tell me a poem. Back then, a child, I understood little what it meant. The one thing I never forget was his diction and intonation, as he narrated this with great emotion, stressing on 'O Captain! My Captain!'

I wondered over the years as to what could have made an ailing man of 75 narrate something like this to his grandchild. There were pastorals, green meadows, dandelions and daffodils but for me, it was always, 'O Captain! My Captain!'

He would be 89 today. 

Here's to you grand-père, for always being the angel to your wildly capricious grand-child!

-

O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman 
     
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead. 

-

As I learnt, much later, (Wiki Link)

Walt Whitman wrote the poem after Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Repeated metaphorical reference is made to this issue throughout the verse. The "ship" spoken of is intended to represent the United States of America, while its "fearful trip" recalls the troubles of the American Civil War. The titular "Captain" is Lincoln himself. With a conventional meter and rhyme scheme that is unusual for Whitman, it was the only poem anthologized during Whitman's lifetime. Image source here.

Primo Levi

 

“I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer. I am none of these; I’m a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.”

 
"The Premise," The Mirror Maker (1986)

Reminder

“What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? — The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.”

Source: Firstpost contributor, S. Anand's take on the Jaipur Literature Fest 2012 
Image source: Here 

Levi and Borges

To My Friends
Primo Levi

Dear friends, and here I say friends
the broad sense of the word:
Wife, sister, associates, relatives,
Schoolmates of both sexes,
People seen only once
Or frequented all my life;
Provided that between us, for at least a moment,
A line has been stretched,
A well-defined bond.
I speak for you, companions of a crowded
Road, not without its difficulties,
And for you too, who have lost
Soul, courage, the desire to live;
Or no one, or someone, or perhaps only one person, or you
Who are reading me: remember the time
Before the wax hardened,
When everyone was like a seal.
Each of us bears the imprint
Of a friend met along the way;
In each the trace of each.
For good or evil
In wisdom or in folly
Everyone stamped by everyone.
Now that the time crowds in
And the undertakings are finished,
To all of you the humble wish
That autumn will be long and mild. 

Source is here

Limits
Jorge Luis Borges

Of all the streets that blur into the sunset
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance, omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
For all the shadows, dreams and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this life
We without knowing it have said farewell?
Throwing the dawning window the night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

Source is here

Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas!

... and I call upon some old friends who always made me feel right! 

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!

3 from Roger McGough

Roots
Like a poem around a tree
Like a freedom flag unfurled
A homeless refugee
I have travelled round the world

I remember slanted mountains with dusted white peaks
ivory snow and emerald green trees.
I remember the tickle going up my spine
when birds settled on my branches.
The soft footfall of a passing fox.

I remember the sweet smell of pine-scented smoke
wafting from chocolate log cabins.
I remember thinking that there will come a time soon
When I will no longer remember any of this:

A sickle moon
The scrunching sound of footsteps
A brutal saw chomping through my bark
and the snow slides off me like a silken robe.

The squabble of sea birds and an icy deck
the savagery of ropes and roller-coasting waves,
until eventually, the warm cuddle of sleep.

In a clearing in the concrete forest of a city
I rise to the noise of pigeons and car horns,
Of children laughing and crowds cheering.
With 500 white lights I am adorned. Am excited.
Crowned with a star. I am adored and delighted.

When the children leave and the music stops
And the lights and the words taken down
Unlike the tree I have put down roots
In London, my new home town

Lights, camera, action!
A switch is pulled
and I light up like an angel.


The way things are
No, the candle is not crying, it can not feel pain.
Even telescopes, like the rest of us, grow bored.
Bubblegum will not make the hair soft and shiny.
The duller the imagination, the faster the car,
I am your father and that is the way things are.

When the sky is looking the other way,
do not enter the forest. No, the wind
is not caused by the rushing of clouds.
An excuse is as good a reason as any.
A lighthouse, launched, will not go far,
I am your father and that is the way things are.

No, old people do not walk slowly
because they have plenty of time.
Gardening books when buried will not flower.
Though lightly worn, a crown may leave a scar,
I am your father and that is the way things are.

No, the red woolly hat has not been
put on the railing to keep it warm.
When one glove is missing, both are lost.
Today's craft fair is tomorrows boot sale.
The guitarist weeps gently, not the guitar
I am your father and that is the way things are.

Pebbles work best without batteries.
The deckchair will fail as a unit of currency.
Even though your shadow is shortening
it does not mean you are growing smaller.
Moonbeams sadly, will not survive in a jar,
I am your father and that is the way things are.

For centuries the bullet remained quietly confident
that the gun would be invented.
A drowning surrealist will not appreciate
the concrete lifebelt.
No guarantee my last goodbye is an au revoir,
I am your father and that is the way things are.

Do not become a prison officer unless you know
what you're letting someone else in for.
The thrill of being a shower curtain will soon pall.
No trusting hand awaits a falling star
I am your father, and I am sorry
but this is the way things are.


First day at School
A millionbillionwillion miles from home
Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)
Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
Must have been born in uniform
Lived all their lives in playgrounds
Spent the years inventing games
That don't let me in. Games
That are rough, that swallow you up.

And the railings.
All around, the railings.
Are they to keep out wolves and monsters?
Things that carry off and eat children?
Things you don't take sweets from?
Perhaps they're to stop us getting out
Running away from the lessins. Lessin.
What does a lessin look like?
Sounds small and slimy.
They keep them in the glassrooms.
Whole rooms made out of glass. Imagine.

I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.
Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea.

-

Image source here

About Roger McGough

M&L

Here's the music...

And here are the lyrics...

I walk in stride with people
much taller than me
and partly it's the boots but
mostly it's my chi
and I'm becoming transfixed
with nature and my part in it
which I believe just signifies
I'm finally waking up

and there's this moth outside my kitchen door
she's bonkers for that bare bulb
flying round in circles
bashing in her exoskull
and out in the woods she navigates fine by the moon
but get her around a light bulb and she's doomed

she is trying to evolve
she's just trying to evolve

now let's get talking reefer madness
like some arrogant government can't
by any stretch of the imagination
outlaw a plant
yes, their supposed authority over nature
is a dream
c'mon people
we've got to come clean

cuz they are locking our sons
and our daughters in cages
they are taking by the thousands
our lives from under us
it's a crash course in religious fundamentals
now let's all go to war
get some bang for our buck

I am trying to evolve
I'm just trying to evolve

gunnin for high score in the land of dreams
morbid bluish-white consumers ogling luminous screens
on the trail of forgetting
cruising without a care
the jet set won't abide by that pesky jet lag
and our lives boil down to an hour or two
when someone pulls a camera out of a bag

and I am trying to evolve
I'm just trying to evolve

so I walk like I'm on a mission
cuz that's the way I groove
I got more and more to do
I got less and less to prove
it took me too long to realize
that I don't take good pictures
cuz I have the kind of beauty
that moves

and I am trying to evolve
and I am trying to evolve

-

Immortel

Il y a ni portes ni fenêtres pour aller où c’est toujours parfait. Celui qui est né là-bas, vit éternellement jusqu'à la fin du monde.

Penned Nov 17, 2011.

Image source here 

Serendipity

"To live a dispassionate and cultured life in the open air of ideas, reading, dreaming and thinking of writing--a life so slow it constantly verges on tedium, but pondered enough never to find itself there. To live this life far from emotions and thought, living it only in the thought of emotions and in the emotion of thoughts. To goldenly stagnate in the sun, like a murky pond surrounded by flowers. To possess, in the shade, that nobility of spirit that makes no demands on life. To be in the whirl of the worlds like dust of flowers, sailing through the afternoon air on an unknown wind and falling, in the torpor of dusk, wherever it falls, lost among larger things. To be this with a sure understanding, neither happy nor sad, grateful to the sun for its brilliance and to the stars for their remoteness. To be no more, have no more, want no more...."