Poetry Blog No 144 Chorus of a Winter Dawn

CHORUS OF A WINTER DAWN

This poem in "free" form plays with a contrast between iambic lines (unstressed, stressed- e.g. of long ) and trochaic ones (stressed, unstressed- e.g. cry-ing ). The last verse is an example of a literal image that can also be read as metaphorical.

The Pied Currawong is a large, mostly black bird, with a bright yellow eye. Small patches of white are confined to the under tail, the tips and bases of the tail feathers and a small patch towards the tip of each wing (visible in flight). The bill is large and black and the legs are dark grey-black. Both sexes are similar, although the female may sometimes be greyer on the underparts. Young Pied Currawongs are duller and browner than the adults. From Birds in Backyards http://www.birdsinbackyards.net

Currawong is pronounced like curry but instead of y=ee sound replace with another short ah sound and wong rhymes with song. 

 

CHORUS OF A WINTER DAWN

Black-coated like

Priests of the progress of the light,

Celebrants of day's nativity,

Currawongs

Have perched among

The susurrant, dark leaves

Of long-enduring, eucalyptus trees

To chorus dawning clarity;

Dark-silhouetted on the yellow-white,

Dawn-bright

Vastness.

Alighting from their windy way,

They take their swaying stand,

Crying for increase of day

In this ancient land.

Poetry Blog No 143 The Great White Bird

Poetry Blog No 142 Tree and Stars

TREE AND STARS

We tend to think of the "eternal" as something static but what if it is a growing thing, Perhaps life is so full of meaning that we cannot see it-rather in the manner of the fish trying to grasp the water. This poem is in the form of the ballad stanza- four lines of four iambic feet. Note- the tree in this glorious image is of course not an iron bark.

 

TREE AND STARS

The detailed day has vanished now

Into far vastness of wide night.

Now darkness shows the winter sky-

The glory of more distant light.

The great, sun-wakened world’s at rest,

And silenced is each busy hour-

For every moment flowing on

Must ever pass from present power.

For time, like turning of the earth

Which wheels the stars across the sky,

Will never pause from constant pace,

But must be ever passing by.

Above black hills our southern cross

And pointers flame white in the dark;

Wide Scorpio sweeps overhead,

With bright Antares’ wild, red spark.

On cloudy stream of star-mist shine,

Against far-arching galaxy,

Is spread a mass of lightless leaves-

A tall iron-bark, wide-branching tree.

All of a sudden I see that time

Is not just flow but ever growing;

Like some, vast, universal tree

Spread from these depths where stars are glowing.

The passing moment lives to praise

The lasting of eternity;

There is no waste of living days…

For time is heaven’s spreading tree.

Poetry Blog 141 Night-Sound Meyer

NIGHT-SOUND

From Wikipedia - Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (11 October 1825 – 28 November 1898) was a Swiss poet and historical novelist, a master of realism chiefly remembered for stirring narrative ballads...

Meyer's lyric verse is almost entirely the product of his later years. He frequently celebrated human handiwork, especially works of art. Rome and the monumental work of Michelangelo were among decisive experiences in his life.

This poem "Nachtgesräusche" is, however, one of those poems that finds a suggestive resonance and a sense of metaphor in describing an everyday human experience.This English version originally appeared in Poetry Australia under the editorial overview of Les Murray.

                     NIGHT-SOUND

after the German of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

Muse, announce to me the night-soft noises,

Those which flood the ear of one unsleeping !

First the dogs' familiar, watchful barking,

Then the counted strikes of hours departing,

From the shore two fishermen's far speaking,

Then ? Nothing further than the dim, unsensed,

Spirit sound of soft, unbroken stillness,

Like the breathing of a youthful bosom,

Like a deeply hidden fountain's murmur,

Like a muffled oar-stroke's steady beating,

Then, and then the unheard steps of slumber.

Poetry Blog No 140 Four poems from German - Birds, Luck Like A Wanton, The Sigh, Moon-Night

FOUR POEMS FROM THE GERMAN- BIRDS, LUCK LIKE A WANTON, THE SIGH, MOON-NIGHT

BIRDS is a short poem by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von) Schlegel (1772 – 1829) was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher and philologist.. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of the Jena romantics. He was a zealous promoter of the Romantic movement and inspired other writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, This poem was set to music by Schubert.

LUCK LIKE A WANTON is a short ironic poem by Heinrich Heine. Towards the end of his life luck abandoned him. In May 1848 he fell ill from lead poisoning and was confined to bed for eight years until his death.

THE SIGH is a humorous poem from Christian Morgenstern (1871 – 1914) a German poet, writer and translator. He is particularly famous for his whimsical and "nonsense" poems.

MOON-NIGHT is a short, famous poem from Joseph Freiherr Von Eichendorff. Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (10 March 1788 – 26 November 1857) was a German poet, novelist, playwright, literary critic, translator, and anthologist. Eichendorff was one of the major writers and critics of Romanticism. Ever since their publication and up to the present day, some of his works have been very popular in Germany. From Wikipedia.

 Heine

 Schelgel

 Eichendorff

Morgenstern

BIRDS

From the German of Friedrich Schlegel

It's a joy and delight, as we glide and we sing,

To glance from clear heights and view everything.

For men are all foolish, they cannot fly;

They weep in their need, we rise through the sky.

And we scoff at the hunter as we peck his fruit,

Then startle and fly off before he can shoot.

 Fortuna Goddess of Goof Fortune

Ate Goddess of Mischief

LUCK LIKE A WANTON

After the German of Heinrich Heine

Luck like a wanton won't allow

Herself to make too long a stay,

She smooths the hair back from her brow,

Gives a quick kiss and slips away.

Yet Mrs Misfortune's otherwise,

She takes to you with love instead,

"I'm in no hurry, dear," she sighs

And knits while sitting by your bed.

THE SIGH

after the German of Christian Morgenstern

A sigh sped on skates on the ice in the night

and dreamt upon love and on pleasures.

It was by the town wall, and snowy and white

glittered the town wall's high structures.

The sigh, he thought of a girl so sweet

and glowing, stood in dream...

That melted the ice track under his feet-

and he sank- and was nevermore seen.

Moonlight Ralph Albert Blakelock

MOON-NIGHT

after the German of Joseph Freiherr Von Eichendorff

It was as if the sky

The earth had quietly kissed,

That she must dream of him,

Alone, in flower-mist.

Through fields there flew a breeze,

Corn ears waved softly near,

Low-rustled forest trees;

The night was so star-clear.

And then my soul outspread

Her wings, wide and alone,

Through silent lands she fled,

As if she flew towards home.

Poetry Blog No 139 Ballad of the Outer Life

BALLAD OF THE OUTER LIFE

Hugo Von Hofmannsthal (February 1, 1874 – July 15, 1929) was an Austrian prodigy, a novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist. He wrote the libretto for a number of Richard Strauss' operas. His poetry was remarkable and written at a relatively early age. As Stefan Zweig wrote of him: "The appearance of the young Hofmannsthal is and remains notable as one of the greatest miracles of accomplishment early in life; in world literature, except for Keats and Rimbaud, I know no other youthful example of a similar impeccability in the mastering of language, no such breadth of spiritual buoyancy, nothing more permeated with poetic substance even in the most casual lines, than in this magnificent genius, who already in his sixteenth and seventeenth year had inscribed himself in the eternal annals of the German language with unextinguishable verses and prose which today has still not been surpassed. His sudden beginning and simultaneous completion was a phenomenon that hardly occurs more than once in a generation."

— Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern, Frankfurt am Main 1986, 63-64

This English version was originally published in the magazine Meanjin.

BALLAD OF THE OUTER LIFE

after the German of Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

And children develop, grow up with deep eyes

That know of nothing, they grow up and die,

And all mankind goes on upon its way.

And bitter fruits grow sweetened, hanging high,

And, like dead birds, fall down at night; and then

They lie a few days and they putrefy.

And ever blows the wind: and we take in

And speak again and again our words and phrases

And feel delight and weariness of limb.

And streets and roads run through the grass, and places

Are here and there; and filled with trees, lakes, lights,

And menace us, and have deathly withered spaces...

What use to us is all of this, these games,

As we're still great and ever lonely ones,

Who wander never seeking any aims?

What use, likewise, to have seen much and roamed?

And yet he still says much who utters: "evening,"

A word, from which deep sense and sadness run

Like heavy honey from the hollow combs.

Poetry Blog no 138 Rainbow Lorikeets

RAINBOW LORIKEETS

Rainbow Lorikeets and their close relatives are amazingly bright, noisy, cheerful birds of the parrot family that live on the East coast of Australia, feeding off the nectar of various native flowers. The poem has lines of varying length but they are mostly made of iambic feet (unstressed, stressed- they come.

RAINBOW LORIKEETS

They come in furious flight,

to feed on the grevilla's

bright spirallings of gold,

with red, curved beaks,

red, beady eyes

the brightest, swift-winged messengers of day,

a yellow, scarlet-orange, green,

blue-purple sight;

as though, in falling through a rainbow light,

they'd got their motley on the way.

All chattering

and squabbling for a hold,

or strutting wildly, bobbing and bold,

or hanging ludicrously upside down,

they caper like loud clowns,

arrayed in all the colours of the day-

court jesters of the heavens.