The Muse Speaks

An Ode to a Broken Arm
or The Physical Therapy Fight Song

You slide your right arm out
You pull your right arm in.
You swing it back and forth
And give it a li'l spin.
Oh it won't do no harm
To your achey, breaky arm.
No, it don't do no harm
To your achey, breaky arm. 

You stretch your right arm here;
You stretch your right arm there.
Make a spider with your fingers
And climb the wall of stairs.
Oh it won't do no harm
To your achey, breaky arm.
No, it don't do no harm
To your achey, breaky arm.

Sometimes, the Muse speaks. This time when the Muse spoke, she slapped me upside the head and said, don't do that again.

Skopje

A fan has suggested that the following poem, fictitiously penned by the character Robert Carson in Firestar, would be appropriate for Memorial Day. In the novel, the poem was in celebration of the successful rescue of UN Peacekeepers from Skopje airport by a squadron of semi-ballistic space shuttles. Alas, the "Planks" have not yet been built -- though one hears rumors -- but we will trade the loss of the SSTO shuttles for the loss of Serbian aggression in the Balkans, the one failed "prediction" cancelling out the other.

 

The poetry collection, Styx Up, is as fictional as Roberta Carson, who called herself "Styx" in those days. Just in case you were wondering. 

"Skopje"

by roberta carson

from Styx Up

Were you at Thermopylae when Persia crossed the sea?

Did you lay your bones between your homes and the spears of the enemy?

Or did you stand before Chalons with old foes at your side

And with sword and shield refuse to yield, and stemmed the Hunnish tide?

Did you ply a boat to Dunkirk? Did you drive a taxicab

To the Marne's grim banks and never charge a fare?

Did you roll down rocks at Morgarten? Or die at Manzikert?

Did you shout back "Nuts!" in the frigid Christmas air?

If you were no strutting conqueror, but fought for hearth and home...

If you warded the defenseless and shielded them from harm...

If you swooped in for the rescue, if you ground a tyrant down,

Accept the thanks from the world's poor ranks;

You've earned your plot of ground.

Sestina

Well, this one did not make the cut at Analog, and I can't say I am surprised. It was my first attempt at writing a sestina, which is a difficult form to begin with. Even the best examples often have a stilted aspect to them from the word repetition.

So, here it is:

Though finer points of their philosophy may prove obscure
By Michael F. Flynn

Alas we seem alone; no other mind takes form
On this fair Earth – nor any other place
That eye can see or instruments appraise.
From distant stars no missives we receive.
As if in that vast vacuum no soul
Abides save only those we call our own.

Such life, we’re told, will be unlike our own;
That’s true for trivia: species, body, form,
Appetites and senses foreign to our soul.
(What lusts do bats endure when squeaks they place,
What pleasures due to echoes they receive?
Our minds cannot conceive what bats appraise.) 

But not unlike entire, for kinship we appraise
Beneath those accidents they call their own:
They too preserve, perfect what they receive.
(The struggle to survive is higher form
Of that by which a boulder holds its place.
Inertia is but life deprived of soul.)

They will pursue the good known to their soul,
Whatever good it is that they appraise
In foreign far-flung interstellar place.
Survival’s urge is much alike our own,
Though executed through some other form:
Those powers and appetites that they receive.

Do bats admire the echoes they receive?
Do certain sounds enrich their very soul?
What drives impel the unfamiliar form
On distant stars we do not yet appraise?
Far from and yet alike unto our own
They are, no matter where their outré place.

And what awaits, would we fare to their place
Or they to ours? What welcome to receive?
A sister mind? A tasty snack? A pet to own?
It all depends on what completes their soul
And how both good and ill they do appraise.
When seeing us, what image do they form?

L’Envoi
A place within each soul
Receives and does appraise
Its own and other’s form.

Transgressive Poetry

Grania Uaile (Grace O'Malley)

One night as oppressed with soft slumbers I lay,
And dreamed of Old Erin oft thought of by day,
With the long, wasting wars between Saxon and Gael,
Up rose the bright vision of fair Grania Uaile.

Old Erin's green mantle around her was flung,
Adown her fair shoulders the rich tresses hung,
Her eyes like the sun of the young morning shone,
Whilst her harp sent forth strains of the days that are gone.

Of Erin's fair daughters a circle was seen,
Each one with her distaff surrounding the Queen,
Whose sweet vocal chorus was heard to prolong
The soul stirring anthems of harp and of song.

To Erin what shame and lasting disgrace
That her sons should be crushed by a vile foreign race,
Who have banished her priests and polluted her fanes,
And turned to a desert her beautiful plains!

-- John McHale, archbishop of Tuam


As sung by the rather political Wolfe Tones:

Note: the real Grace O'Malley cut her hair off because long hair
could get tangled in the rigging of the ship.

A three hour epic Grainne Uaile was supposed to have been released in April. It's supposed to be spelled Grainne Mhaol (graŋyeh wail) but that would only confuse English speakers. The movie folks said of their film:

"It was very important for us to show the character of a strong woman in this movie. To move away from the typical stereotypes we have seen in recent years..."

However, it seems to TOF that women acting masculine is the main stereotype of recent years. It is saved somewhat in this case by the historical facts of Grace O'Malley, the "Pirate Queen," who while actually one of the 1% did make a living by extorting tolls and taxes from ships passing her many castles in exchange for safe passage.

The Engineer Discourses Upon His Love

A change of pace. The first poem I ever sold for cash money was "The Engineer Discourses Upon His Love," now appearing for a limited engagement on the Preview Page. It appeared in ANALOG, March 1989 and was reprinted in the Rhysling anthology for that year as a nominee, and again in the collection Captive Dreams.

It ends in a pun of dread and scandalous entendre.

When the inmost sea of all the earth was shaken with his ships

TOF has been reminded that today is the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, forty-two years after the First Siege of Vienna. In recent years, this has been re-imagined by the bien pensants as a minor border skirmish, barely noticed by the mighty muslim world, although much puffed about by the puny West. That in itself, beside being an instance of what W.S. Gilbert noted as "the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone/Every century but this and every country but his own", it is even if true an indicator of what a significant victory it was: The very fact that an existential threat to the West was just a ho-hum to Islam tells us what a David-Goliath thingie it was. It would not be until 1683, a century after Lepanto, when the Jihad finally faltered and broke at the Second Siege of Vienna.

Celebrated in verse:

Poetry Time: Hopkins

When TOF was in high school, he (along with his fellow scholars) was assigned to write a term paper on a selected English writer. Unlike most of the others, the selection in his case was made by Sister. She selected for his edification Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet of whom TOF had not hitherto heard of. (Sister had the firm belief that TOF would one day become a Jesuit, and Hopkins was a Jesuit. In the end, the Jesuits lucked out.)

This was not the poem, but one TOF selected more or less at random for the blog. It is one of several untitled poems, apparently written while Hopkins was suffering from clinical depression, with its accompanying sleeplessness and despair. Like all of Hopkins' poems, it is meant to be read aloud.


'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day'
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

   With witness I speak this. But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament

Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

To dearest him that lives alas! away.

   I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

   Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see

The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Hopkins was a verbal poet, and said his poems were to be recited, not read. He also used isochronous feet, meaning the poem is broken into segments that take the same amount of time to speak, no matter how many syllables they might have. (Unstressed syllables could get swallowed up.) He called this "sprung rhythm." He also tended to use only words of Anglo-Saxon origin - no French need apply - and you can often find the double alliteration of Anglo-Saxon poetry. In each half-line there is usually the same stressed consonant. For example:

I wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, not Day.

or

This night! what Sights you, heart, Saw; Ways you Went! 

He also invents words, as the poet of Beowulf called the sea the "whale-road". In this poem we find the word "selfyeast," which is a seriously cool wordpacking of what would otherwise be a longer phrase. When it came to squeezing meaning into the smallest compass of words, none did it better.

There is evidence from his letters that Hopkins was feeling clinical depression, separated from his family as he was by his conversion to Catholicism and his move from England to Ireland. He seems to equate his prayers (to dearest him) to dead letters, sent but not answered, and compares his depression to what the damned must feel in their eternal separation.

There are spiritual exercises the Jesuits engage in, and one set is for dealing with "desolation."

Time Out

Another of those ancient college-days poems lately unearthed in moldering drawer.  Traces of high school project to study G.M. Hopkins. Retouched a little. Needs work.

Times

I
Birdsung blooming
   with flowers and love
   and groundhogs and grasses.
Mudstained snows
   melt and slough
   the tears of hope.
Colors burst,
   fresh-snapped, pure,
   promises proposed.
Spring (like love)
   is open.

II
Sunbright laughing and leaping
Stretching wide her arms,  she
        kisses
        talks
        plays
        jests:
Summer grows, a promise kept.
   Streams chuckle full,
   Trees stretch tall,
   Wingstretched bridds take flight.
With tears of joy,
   the unbound wind blusters
   cross fields and furrows
   and hums down cold tall
   concrete caverns.
So (like love)
   is summer free.

III
Leaf-rustled, silence cloaks:
The birds are soft
   and ready to
                      depart.
Children gaze in wistful reminisce
   through dustreaked windowpane
   while teachers
                         drone.
Windsong in scarlet woods
   lilts no promises,
   but broods in crustling quiet
   and remembers.
Tears that fall
   fall for the past
   unaccomplished.
Autumn (like love)
   is wistful.

IV
When snow enshrouds
   the windshorn trees,
Close, cold stars
   behold the world
   with dispassioned gaze.
The air is clear of song and hope.
   Winter must be night:
A time of solitude
   to watch the stars
   wheel the years
   without censure
   without regret.
Speak only now in whispers
   and never cry.
All tears are ice,
   and winter must be brave.


©2013 Michael F. Flynn

At the Gates of Gath

A poem.  Something like the first line of this occurred to me when I lay in delerium after suffering toxic shock a while back.  I recollect composing a mighty fantasy epic while sundry doctors of the medical arte punched shunts in my right kidney and pushed catheters up where catheters ought not go.  That epic was a serious affair and ended with a pun of intolerable cruelty, all of which, save for the first line, whirled down the memory hole as my mind returned.  Recently, as that line reoccurred to me, sundry other lines also popped up, and I have arranged them here as a sort of rough draft of a rough craft.  The meter is a bit shaky as is the stanza structure, but it might serve for whimsy. 

Mochua

A while back TOF mentioned the discovery of a folder containing poems written in high school and college years, the years when all young men are poets - or try to think they are.  TOF threatened at the time to post one of these Lost Gems of the Poetic Art here.  You have been warned.

Herewith a telling of a medieval Irish legend, part of a set portentously labeled Mythologies. 

MOCHUA

Mochua lived, a holy man,
In a wilderness in Ireland.
He lived by the rule of poverty:
Of his comforts, he numbered three.

He had a mouse, a cock, a fly
     Most helpful in his care.
The cock awakened him betimes
     To bring him to his prayers.
The mouse would nibble at his ear
If the cock he did not hear.

The fly, so nimble and so light,
     Across the page would race,
So Mochua, as he prayed at night,
     Would never lose his place.

But Time, as with all mortal ills,
     Ran out upon these three;
And when at last they came to die
     The monk wept bitterly.
"Oh, when to wake!  Oh where to chant!
     My world is all upturned!
Oh, where to find three like those three
     To learn what they had learned?"

On far Iona, Colum Cille
     Heard old Mochua's cry,
And in reproof he wrote to him
     And said, "O brother, why
Thou shouldst have known this by thyself:
That worry follows in the wake of wealth."

The Tears of October

TOF is pleased to announced that his archeological trollings in kept treasures have revealed that he too once committed poetry in his storied youth.  Is there no crime of which the college student is innocent? 

Yes.  For as feckless as he once was the TOF-that-was never inflicted these hapless poems on a wider audience.  TOF will drop them on the unsuspecting public one at a time, much like the Chinese water torture, until the victims cry out NO MORE!!!

TOF have not laid eyes on these gems for many decades.  Let's see how they run.  There are, apparently, two 'collections'.  The Tears of October and Mythologies.  Join us now as TOF returns to the errors of his youth. 

Hwaet!

Beowulf, the prologue


That was good kinging.

Poetry

Seamus Heaney is perhaps the greatest living poet.  I am listening as I write to a CD in which he collaborates with the piper Liam O'Flynn on a series of poems and airs. 

One of his poems contains the single most terrifying line in English poetry.

Midterm Break
Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying --
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks.  Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.