Poetry Blog No 171 The Fox and the Crow

THE FOX AND THE CROW

This is a retelling of a famous fable from Aesop in the form of a ballad. This common ballad form has four lines per stanza with four iambic feet per line (short syllable, long syllabe- A young crow stole, on summer’s day) and a rhyme scheme of ABAB. This neat form is relatively easy to create in English and moves the narrative along at a reasonable pace.

The earliest surviving versions of the fable, in both Greek and Latin, date from the 1st century of the Common Era. Evidence that it was well known before then comes in the poems of the Latin poet Horace, who alludes to it twice.Wikipedia

  

It is interesting to note that historically some have objected to the fable on the grounds that the fox gets away with his “immoral” action. Certain Christian circles in La Fontaine’s time provided a song in which the fox’s funeral is described and the crow sits on a branch and says-

I’m not at all sorry, now that he’s dead,

He took my cheese and ate it in my stead,

He’s punished by fate - God, you’ve avenged me – Wikipedia.

The German writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who had decided views on how fables should be written, gave Aesop’s Der Rabe und der Fuchs an ironic twist. In his rewritten version, a gardener has left poisoned meat out to kill invading rats. It is this that the raven picks up but is flattered out of it by the fox, which then dies in agony. To emphasise the moral he is drawing, Lessing concludes with the curse, ‘Abominable flatterers, may you all be so rewarded with one poison for another!’ - Wikipedia.

Apparently Lessing felt this was a reasonable punishment for getting someone else’s piece of cheese. I think that the fable does not praise the fox (he is, after all, the cunning flatterer) but simply warns us about flattery and points out that those who flatter us usually have hidden motives for so doing. Perhaps we should consider this when politicians try to flatter us by bolstering our pet views and opinions. 

 

THE FOX AND THE CROW

A young crow stole, one summer's day,

A beak-rich morsel of tasty cheese.

At once he rose and flew away

To eat his prize in peace and ease.

In his strong beak he bore it high
And perched upon a tall, dead tree,

A hungry fox was slinking by;

He stopped and gazed up craftily.

"If I, " he thought, "play my cards right,

I shall enjoy some cheese for free."

He kept the crow fixed in his sight

And crept up slowly to the tree.

"Oh, crow," he called to him on high,

"How splendid your black wings appear

Against the blue of this bright sky.

Your eyes see far and are so clear."

"Your breast, it is an eagle's breast,

Your claws, I mean, your talons, sir,

Are tough as tempered steel. Your dress

Of feathers is finer by far than fur."

"Your beak is as a sword of steel!

Your bearing's better than the best!

And all in all, one can but feel

Your glossy tail just fits the rest!"

"Yes, over all, one can but say

You are a most brave and graceful creature:

A ruler of the air by day,

A flying king in every feature."

The crow was pleased to hear these things

And gave the fox a friendly gaze,

And wagged his tail and flapped his wings

With pleasure at this sudden praise.

"Oh, crow," the sly fox called once more,

"What a pity that the king of birds

Should lack a voice to call and caw,

And should be silent, want for words."

"I've yet to hear your fair throat ringing,

But I am sure that it must be

Much better than all other singing

For sweetly moving melody."

"A bird who has such strength and grace

Must have a voice to match. What's wrong

That you don't fill this airy space

With the power of your joyful song?"

At this the crow's heart pulsed with pride,

For often, in the past, he'd found

That he had had his voice described

As a hollow, harsh, unmusical sound.

And so to please the fox below

With his rare voice, both loud and raw,

The proud and pompous, foolish crow

Called mightily, "Ark, ark; caw, caw!"

But as his black beak opened there,

The tasty cheese slipped from his grip,

And tumbled downwards through the air,

The fox beneath was watching it.

Before it touched the dusty ground,

His waiting jaws snapped up the prize,

The cheese went down with a munching sound;

He finished it on the crow's last cries.

The fox looked up and said at length,

"I loved what came out from your beak.

I praised your beauty and your strength;

About your brains I did not speak."

The crow looked down, sad was his gaze,

For he has been too slow to see

The difference between real praise

And false and cunning flattery.

Poetry Blog no 170 Fire Weather

 

FIRE WEATHER

Sometimes in summer in the area of the far north coast of NSW if it doesn’t rain for a while and the heat grows towards the high 30’s (centrigrade) or beyond it grows dry and the days are almost too bright, the colours feel washed out by the glare. This is “fire weather” in a more threatening way also- the dangers of actual forest fires or bush fires as they are known in Australia. This poem also references the “Fire Sermon” traditionally ascribed to the Buddha.

The Ādittapariyāya Sutta (Pali, "Fire Sermon Discourse"), sometimes referred to simply as the Āditta Sutta, is a discourse from the Pali Canon, popularly known as the Fire Sermon.In this discourse, the Buddha preaches about achieving liberation from suffering through detachment from the five senses and mind.

In this discourse, the Buddha describes the sense bases and resultant mental phenomena as "burning" with passion, aversion, delusion and suffering. Seeing such, a noble disciple becomes disenchanted with, dispassionate toward and thus liberated from the senses bases, achieving arahantship. From Wikipedia

FIRE WEATHER

Ever-ceaseless sun is parching

Pasture grass on browning hills.

Heat gives topic to tired talk,

Day is blazing silent haze.

Afterthoughts of white cloud contrast

With the brilliancy of blue:

Day's dome bathing all in thirsting

Radiance that drinks earth dry.

Here is heat that holds the landscape

In a sorcery of glare;

Like a sulphured dragon breathing

Fire through the trembling air.

Even butcher birds and magpies

Hide in fainting leaves to shelter

In solicitude of shadow,

Beaks slight-parted, softly-panting.

Now time sweats. And even colours

Burn upon the vision, flame,

Hazed in day's intensity,

Focused in a crystal furnace.

Yellowed grasses wither back

To dry-fisssured ground which bakes

To a hot and lifeless dust.

Creeks and dams sink towards the earth.

Hazed with heat, eyes glazed with glare,

Restlessly we scan the rim

Of our sight for rain's relief,

For release from fire weather.

For tranquillity is coolness,

And detachment from sense flame;

Fire weather's fire sermon:

All the world seems burning, burning.

Poetry Blog 169 Scene 7 from Narrow Roads to Inner Lands

SCENE SEVEN from Narrow Roads to Inner Lands

     

Shiragawa

In this scene we find the travellers in a wretched inn at night during a storm. The conversation drifts towards the side of life where we experience disappointment and accept time’s passing. Acceptance rather than denial seems to mark his attitude but it is not mere pessimism but is moderated by the philosophic realisation of the transitory nature of outer life. Bashō also shows in his haiku that, in his belief, poetry started from the folk and work songs of the people.

   

water iris Katsumi

SCENE SEVEN

A room in a wretched inn. Earth floor. Shadow. Enter Bashō and Sora, followed by a shabby innkeeper with two straw mats.

SORA

Please light the fire over there so we

Can see at least what we are doing.

The innkeeper does so.

BASHŌ (bowing)

Thank you.

(The innkeeper puts down the mats and exits bowing.)

Would you believe it? Not one lantern in

The whole of this foul, filthy, shabby place!

Indeed, this is a wretched spot to sleep.

I'd hoped for better rest at Iizuka.

Yet still, let's warm ourselves a while and hope

To cheer the silent drift of time with talk.

SORA

It’s now some time since we left Sukagawa.

BASHŌ

And Tokyu's pleasant house. A good man, Sora;

Though an official, more importantly

A poet and a friend.

SORA

Do you remember -

He asked how we had fared while passing through

The Shirakawa gate?

BASHŌ

                                     Yes, we admitted

Absorption in the splendour and the power

Of sweeps of wild or cultivated views

That filled our watching souls with beauty's flame,

And contemplating lines of ancient poets,

Had not left time for weaving verse in such

Fine volume as tradition would have wished.

SORA

Then he said, "What a pity," and suggested

That you weave something present there.

BASHŌ

And I

Invoked a single verse that I had written.

I said it was - "All that the crossing brought."

Birth of poetry

In the core of north country -

The rice-planting songs.

SORA

And then, beginning with the brevity

Of those fair lines, we worked up linking verses

Until we had composed three, little books.

BASHŌ

A time to ever be recalled as warm

With friendship. Yet time must move and so bring change

And changes bring more contrast in our lives.

(Bashō pauses. The fire dies a little. Behind them two shadows, like those of Bashō and Sora, are thrown up on a screen. These enact in mime the further text.)

BASHŌ

That said, do you remember, Sora, how

One time, a few days on, we thought to seek

The iris of the season all light long

Upon the fields, beneath the well-known hills

Near Mount Asaka?

SORA

                             Yes, that water-loving,

Fine bloom, Katsumi. Off the road a little,

Some five miles past Hikada town, we searched

And poked about midsummer marshes, asking

Each person that we passed where they might be,

Where we might see those flowers from beauty’s heart

As we progressed from pool to shining pool.

BASHŌ

Yes, beauty's search. But strange to note no-one

Had ever heard of them - no farmer or

Rice-planting woman. Thus we looked until

The golden sun was grazing mountain tops.

SORA

With dawn we set out for Shinobu village.

BASHŌ

We went to view an old stone's chequered face

On which a sort of cloth, now famed in time,

Was dyed. We found it in a small, out-lying spot,

Ignored, half-buried in the common earth.

Small, cheerful children tagged along, explaining

That it had lost its pride of place upon

The mountain top. The farmers nearby found

That constant travellers who sought it caused

Destruction of good crops with careless feet.

Hence they had heaved the rock some way along,

Then bowled it down the heedless mountain side

Into the valley, leaving it face flat.

I thought it may have well been so. Indeed,

It is the way of fame within this world.

SORA

It often seems while travelling one sees

Such traces of past glory, lost in time.

BASHŌ

Yes, shortly after that we witnessed such-

Another illustration of that truth.

For further on we crossed the river foam,

Down at the ferry spot that's called "Moon Halo".

We reached, with some relief, the small, post town

Of "Rapids' Head". Not far from there we found

A small hill, desolate in loneliness,

A bare mound on an open, empty plain,

The crumbled ruins of a hero's castle-

Once dwelling of the dauntless Sato Shoji.

Nearby a solitary, ancient temple

Still stood against time's certain dissolution.

SORA

Yes, in its graveyard lay the weathered tombs,

Last traces of that once-proud family.

BASHŌ

I wept as I was pondering the graves

Of two young wives, recalling, as I did,

How they had clad their feminine, frail bodies

In their dead husbands' robes and cold, hard armour.

Thus fate stalks fame; the swiftest samurai

Can't stay time's passing. Cold and silent are

Old tombs upon the desolated plains.

SORA

It sounds as if a storm is coming up.

(There is a clap of thunder, followed by sounds of rain. The figures on the screen disappear. The light from the fire is dying. Suddenly there is the brief glow of lightning followed by another thunderclap.)

BASHŌ

Fine time to talk of tears while heaven weeps.

(Bashō gives a sudden groan of pain.)

SORA

What's wrong?

BASHŌ

My old complaint has made me ill.

The slippery ditch of doubt it is - an illness

When you are on the road, when there are still

The hundreds and the hundreds of hard miles

All stretching out before your tiring feet.

And yet to be a pilgrim is to know

The sense world's briefness and to let it go.

To die upon life's road is destiny.

And so if I should sicken and thus fall

While trudging onward towards the bitter north

It would but be fulfillment of a sort.

So thus resolved I'll walk along the way,

Along those long and muddy pathways to

The long-famed, twin-trunked pine of Takekuma.

The fire's sinking low. It's time for sleep.

(Bashō and Sora curl up on the straw mats. The fire dies.)

BASHŌ (Raising himself on one arm.)

So weary that he sleeps despite the storm-

I cannot sleep. I'll lie and stare at darkness,

Companioned by mosquitoes, fleas, and thought,

And hear deep thunder and sky-tearing rain

Till dawn; and taste the bitterness of pain.

(The last trace of light fades)

Shinobu rock