Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No 28 Odysseus

ODYSSEUS

I think that the great myths and stories live in us and that is their truth and their value. The tale of Odysseus' wanderings told in Homer's great poem is surely one of those stories. This poem is a tribute to it and an expression of these ideas. The expression "in-viewed" refers to the belief that Homer was "blind" and had "inner" seeing.

ODYSSEUS

Yes, I believe you lived,

Odysseus.

For everyone like you has striven

in ever-varied living,

long-voyaging upon the windy sea of life.

Did the travelled, in-viewed poet

know everything and nothing varies,

know everyone who lives traverses

each evanescent wave to venture on

a voyage, vast or small?

Take this day.

Do I not sail

upon an ocean of the hours,

a sea of shifting circumstances?

Do I not view

its marvels and its miracles?

Do I not seek

with skill, with daring to survive

the variation of events,

a treachery of islands?

To cross a simple road is navigation

between steel monsters bearing death...

I take my breath

upon the wind;

I veer between

the fatal outer error's vortex

and the long-armed,

inner creature of the nightmare.

I blind the ancient eye of trance

with glowing-pointed reason's lance.

And Circe calls alluringly;

and strange-voiced sirens sing to me.

And still I voyage, ever-seeking

the home within the heart of all.

The poet knew the image woven,

Penelope's great tapestry of song,

the meanings that the moments give.

Yes, Odysseus,

I believe you live.

Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No 27 Rainforest Walk

RAINFOREST WALK

Many people are surprised to learn that Australia has rainforests on the tropical and sub-tropical regions of its eastern coast. To quote from the site - www.australia.com: The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia spill across 50 separate parks in northern New South Wales and south-east Queensland. Accessible from Byron Bay, this vast World Heritage-listed area embraces the world’s largest subtropical rainforest, along with warm and cool temperate rainforest types.

These remaining parks and areas have a remarkable richness of life and quite literally create their own atmosphere, 


 

 

              RAINFOREST WALK

                  Terania Creek

Like a sudden passing

through an unseen border,

entering the shadow of the forest is.

Like a sudden diving

beneath the surface of the sea,

unexpectedly

the bright light of the day has gone

and it is cool and less illumined.

The sun just glances through a topmost green

and filtering through

its pale light seems to grow green too-

for here trees tower to the sky

and spread new leaves like roofs on high.

Beneath our feet there is no grass,

the forest floor

is fully spread with brown leaf mold;

the moistness of the air

mixes with its mustiness,

distilling a living ambience

of venerable timelessness.

Here growth is crowding all the room:

palm stems stand straight on every side,

and ferns uncoil huge, spiralled leaves,

and moss has crept upon each stone

within this cool, damp wood of dusk-soft gloom.

Smooth trunks of giant fig trees

branch somewhere in invisible heights.

Roots burrow through the watered earth,

and silence resonates softly to

the "oom.....oom" of white-headed pigeons.

We follow red markers on stems and branches

which guide us up beside the busy stream,

till, scrambling over the last, few boulders,

we suddenly find the day again.

For there the canopy is broken

above a rock pool's rippling circle;

cathedral-like, a basalt cliff

soars, massive for a hundred feet;

and down this break a cool wind blows,

and from its top cold water flows

and leaps to fall, to veil the rock,

in dizzying and downward streams,

and mist the air and catch the wind

and spread fine moisture all around.

And I was glad to have the privilege of life:

to be and see cascading, holy water

in the altar by the mountainside.

Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No. 26 Watchers of the Sun

WATCHERS OF THE SUN

This short poem describes a scene that leads to a final line that is an observation but carries some metaphorical sense. Scarecrows are like the "hollow men... headpiece stuffed with straw" of T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men. Obviously facing the light they cannot see it as they have no sight or even awareness. Yet I feel there is something more about this image but I'm not quite sure what it is.

                                                        WATCHERS OF THE SUN

Feather clouds are stilled by windless silence.

Within wide distance gathered starlings fly;

As one form weaving, black-pattern the blue sky.

Some contemplative cows mull over grass.

Two sunlit scarecrows, one brown and one of white,

Are staring eyeless towards eye-blinding light.

             

Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No. 25 Apology for Verse

APOLOGY FOR VERSE

This poem is not only about poetry but, more specifically, why poetry? We seem to live in a prosaic age where language is merely a tool for the communication of abstract or practical concepts (or even "information"). Poetry strives to use all the powers of language- imagery, sound, rhythm and other aspects of form- to "say" what cannot be "said", to communicate something beyond the prosaic meaning of the words. The end of the poem refers to the tradition of the cosmic creative "word" or in Greek philosophy the divine "thought-word" or Logos of which the power of human language is a tiny microcosmic reflection. This is reflected in traditions as diverse as the Vedas, The Kabbalah, Odin's receiving of the runes, the Ogham or magical tree alphabet of the celts and of course the start of St John's gospel. However this is not part of modern science so it can be regarded as a metaphor for after all language is one of the things that makes our humanity (and sometimes betrays it too).

Singing Bird, Don Hon-Oai, photographer.

                       APOLOGY FOR VERSE

"But why in verse?" I heard you say,

"Why not in prose: clear-stated ways,

Well-purposed to the common day?

Not fitted in a flowery phrase."

"Screens flash the data for our eyes.

The brain combines the senses' play:

The measured model of the real-

This figures what we use and feel."

And yet the word in rhythmic flow,

Alive upon the breathing line,

Is not a dead and formal sign:

A stone to mark grave thought's last glow.

Deep in the dark a star appears:

Deep in the heart's own hiddeness

Lives something prose cannot express;

Deep in the hidden leaves it hears

The singing of the secret bird;

From quintessential life it longs

To form a fleeting echo of

The shaping, singing, world-speaking Word.

Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No 24 HIGH TIDE AT DUSK

HIGH TIDE AT DUSK

A poem inspired by a view from a headland at dusk that features the four "elements" of old tradition- earth, water, air and fire. Each "element" has its own metrical foot.

Water (first three verses) are dactyls (stressed, unstressed, unstressed) LONG, level, LIMit of EASTern deep BLUE. This rhythm (similar to the waltz) has a flowing feel.

Air (next verse) is in anapaests (unstressed, unstressed, stressed) And on HIGH the air RUNS in in-VISib-le STREAMS which has a swift, light quality.

Earth (next verse) is in the "solid" feel of trochees (stressed, unstressed) AND uPON the BASalt-BONED.

Fire (last two verses apart from 2 lines at end) and is in the energetic iambic (unstressed, stressed) The VASTness-FORMing, SOON-to-VANish VORTex.

These qualities can be appreciated more easily by reading it aloud. 

Fingal Head

                HIGH TIDE AT DUSK

Fingal Head
 

From the far-rippling, wide curve of world rim,

Long, level limit of eastern deep blue,

So never-endingly rolls in the swell,

Yellow-gold foam faint-misting slight rainbows,

In the low rays of the late-glowing sun.

Wide are the waves that arrive in half-circles,

Billowing round the blunt headland's out-butting,

Riding the sea as it comes slowly rising

To the white call of the twilight's ghost moon.

Loud are the waves in the spray's golden haze,

Like the world's wisdom of form ever-flowing,

Flinging their foam on the hard, brown-black cliffs,

Pounding the pebbles and rocks of the shoreline,

Breaking, returning, but never-relenting,

Knowing that even the stone slowly changes.

And on high the air runs in invisible streams,

In the whirling and spiralling ways of the winds;

And a far, single tern swiftly circles up there,

With its arrow wings riding the roll of rough breezes,

As it surfs on the speed of the stinging ice gusts.

And upon the basalt-boned,

Tempest-beaten, headland slope,

Carpeted by clinging grasses,

Wind-flat, salt-tough, stubborn growth;

Where I'm standing in this

Instant of the wonder;

Squat and scattered,

Everlasting daisies

Lift their small, sight-teasing flowers,

Yellow-rayed and spiral-centred,

As in reverence to far sky-fire:

The vastness-forming, soon-to-vanish vortex

Out-flowering day's last radiance-

Sea-misted, soul-dazzling,

Gold blaze of winter sun,

This moment just touching

Blue, western waves of hills.

Those yellow, petal-raying flowers tilt towards

The gold-departing heart of day;

All through the reddened grass they bend

Their round, bright blooms as if to show

In the all-in-all woven, world wisdom's wide flow,

As all lives above

So all lives below.