SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, 5*, blue, colour, dew, irony, journey, moon, morning, question, shirt, sky, smile, song, summer, tie, wandering, William Carlos Williams

                                SUMMER SONG

                Wanderer moon
                smiling a
                faintly ironical smile
                at this
                brilliant, dew-moistened
                summer morning,–
                a detached
                sleepily indifferent
                smile, a
                wanderer’s smile,–
                if I should
                buy a shirt
                your color and
                put on a necktie
                sky-blue
                where would they carry me?

 

from Al Que Quiere, 1917

the trajectory of a turn of quip of humour going absolutely nowhere far, with dew

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
moon wormhole: sufficiently away
morning wormhole: letting them go
sky wormhole: transferring
smile wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
William Carlos Williams wormhole: EL HOMBRE by William Carlos Williams

 

fifty-eight // and silent prayers

Tags

1979, 2017, 6*, age, birthday, blue, Castleton, clouds, cross-section, direction, gold, green, hair, heartbeat, hills, identity, knees, landscape, lifetimes, metal, neck, prayer, ripple, road, shirt, silence, silver, step, sun, time, travelling, walking, wandering

                                fifty-eight times now

                wandering dopey through another landscape

                                (walking) up into the hills
                                to find the golden sun –
                                sheet-metal through
                                flanks of cloud

                                the snaking A-road
                                sunk and cascaded
                                in 1979, petrified cross-
                                sections there to study

                                never travelling far
                                but up in giant gulp-steps
                                heart beats in the back
                                of the neck and down

                                through the knees
                                with the rising pass

                I stand now at fifty eight with clipped and

                                silvering hair with
                                check and green-blue
                                shirt and silent prayers
                                rippling to all directions

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

birthday wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
blue wormhole: I
Cadtleton wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
clouds & hills wormhole: mauve
gold wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
green & walking wormhole: abandoned sound mirrors
hair & sun wormhole: ash leaves
identity wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
lifetimes wormhole: oh, alright then
silence wormhole: where did the silence go
silver wormhole: Coleton Fishacre
time wormhole: sreet
travelling wormhole: breakfast

 

ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …

Tags

2016, 8*, being, breathing, child, clothes, colour, comics, despair, Dorian Gray, emperor, exclamation, exposed, flowers, Granada, hope, identity, inspiration, light, love, mantra, model, phrase, portrait, Prajnaparamita, rain, rainbow, realisation, retirement, secret, seeing, self, self-containment, self-image, speech, step, thread, tragedy, vanity, wandering, words, world

 

 
le mot just
the piquant phrase
                                         the simple model rising magnificent
                                         from cavalcades
                                         of stoic tumbling

                                         threads through like
                                         weave which clothes me
                                         presentable to the world …

                                         but no one sees the
                                         emperor’s clothes of
                                         such fine thread it cannot
                                         be seen, no wise child
                                         to point and exclaim
                                         the hang and drape
                                         to put an end to all step –
                                         “look, mummy, that man
                                           is not an emperor!”

 

 
less than naked
I am seen right through
                                         adrift of discourse
                                         I step with stubborn countenance,
                                         all the better to
                                         stare myself into existence,

 

 
awkward and
hidden away in some attic
                                         lest I lose [what I haven’t
                                         got] self-contained in trembling
                                         vanity, secretive in hope
                                         of things to come, desparate
                                         in tragedy that my grimy
                                         portrait might be seen …

 

 
wander, wander
around the flowers, smell
                                         their colour, breathe their
                                         light and let the light rain
                                         fall in shards of rainbow,
                                         cleansing with love –

 

 

 
                      om     ga – te     ga – te
                                      pa – ra – ga – te
                                                      pa – ra – sam – ga – te
                                                                      bo – dhi     so – ha

 

retirement #3 when in Granada … visit the Alhambra, and visit the Generalife gardens … [if you have booked up to three months ahead]; on the walk up to the palaces are trees and shrubs which are plenty-watered by sprinklers, in the morning sun the sprays will often catch a rainbow at their edge; the bordered captions in the poem are comic-conjunctives, there is a beginning, middle and end being told here, folks; the mantra: thaya tha om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha, is the mantra of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom; it can be somewhat semantically translated as “it’s like this: [everything is] gone, gone, completely gone, completely and perfectly gone with no loss, enlightened [dispersed, dispelled] all-right!”; but what’s ‘gone’: “the slings and arrows of outrageous romance” … of one’s self and the whole world positioned awkward to placate its mewling little story, as stolen by Joni Mitchell, who was talking too much at the time, from ‘Willy the Shake’;

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being wormhole: pocket
breathing wormhole: within
child & light wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
comics wormhole: chartless …
identity wormhole: not / the Catcher
love wormhole: love and precision
rain wormhole: monument to vainglory
realisation wormhole: passing below
seeing wormhole: con / sum / mate
speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
words wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
world wormhole: the skyline

 

passersby

Tags

2016, 6*, architecture, artist, blue, buildings, facade, finials, ghosts, Granada, identity, others, passing, rooftops, self, Shantideva, sky, smile, streets, superhero, thought, walls, wandering

                “acting like an apparition
                  with no sense of self”; not

                martyring myself an apparition
                because no one recognised my

                self; let me wander the streets
                and plazas parrying every foil

                in my head, swinging up
                facades and leaping rooftops

                with closed-lipped smile
                to greet the passersby; the

                artist sits with his back
                to the wall to finish

                the finials opposite with just
                touches of blue sky

 

the quote is from Stephen Batchelor’s translation of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara (V, 57) which I was reciting as my holiday reading; the ideal and the model, the should and the example; how to be amongst other (and amongst others), it is not the finials, so much, as the sky before which they reach …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

architecture wormhole: the purple mist between
blue & passing & thought & walls wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
buildings & streets wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
ghosts wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
identity wormhole: I
others wormhole: Clea
rooftops wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
Shantideva wormhole: inbreath
sky wormhole: be
smile wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
superhero wormhole: zero

 

with endless love

Tags

'scape, 2016, 5*, arrival, coffee shop, dog, found, hoping, identity, Ironbridge, love, passing, pavement, poem, talking to myself, tongue, walking, wandering, wondering, writing

 

 

 

                           so don’t just arrive here and wander
                           about hoping for the poem ready-made
                           and reasonably priced to be la-la ^laa la
                           found and claimed with a waving flag rather

                           be the scruffy dog with tongue-out-pulling
                           the leash-sniff every leaf-post along the
                           narrow pavement blocking-awkward-step-
                           over walk of its owner with endless love

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

coffee shop & passing & walking & writing wormhole: reaching branch
dog wormhole: dog bark
identity wormhole: more than effigy
love wormhole: 1964
talking to myself wormhole: zero

 

dream 260815

Tags

2015, balcony, buildings, Carol, cellar, child, dream, Genesta Road, glass, grey, hills, home, identity, kiss, life, living, looking, love, Nan, parent, path, Plumstead, promenade, purple, schoolgirls, shoes, teenagers, Thames, thinking, wandering, windows, wood, Woolwich

 

 

 

                      dream 260815

wandering about the promenade, the schoolgirls¹ urge, again, with
girly concern, for their friend, (‘am I old, should I listen to them?’),
I should speak to her, in Spanish – learn the sounds, (‘what does it
mean?’): ‘let me enclose you’; this time I will; I have demurred too long

I have said it; I find myself, returned to Genesta Road²; the frontage
rebuilt, even a storey higher, central stairwell – vertical purple glass –
where houses join, art deco³, Edinburgh rock cladding, balconies for
viewing, windows for seeing, stylish; (‘what’s happened to my home?’)

Nan⁴ opens the door, she is younger, smart, she has energy, things to
do; government grant, upgrade houses; (‘how have the rooms changed,
what is their view now?’); story: a skeleton found, (‘where?’), in her 40s
when she died, drunk, unfound, (‘in a cellar?’), (‘we haven’t got a cellar’),

(‘have we got a cellar?’); so we drive around Plumstead, Woolwich⁵, we
boat on the river; new buildings, coffee and cream block pattern, new
woodland on the hills, straight paths; I am looking after the child,
(‘Joseph?’)⁶, I love this child, I will look after him, at the swimming pool,

he jumps into a pool, it is deep, he goes under, arms asplay, I jump in,
save him, no panic, hold his soft body; we make to the paddling pool,
teenage boys sit around, various grey jackets with label design, sullen,
defiant, looking; they sit on the edge, put on their shoes, water has

drained: platforms, winkle-pickers, creepers, suede, chains; mud on the
tiles; I make the stand¹, I hold my child, they should not do this: they leave,
slowly, I am now marked; I hand the child back to his parents, I kiss his
head, I’ll see him again; we are coming home now, Carol⁷ smiles at my love

 

1. I am a teacher
2. my teenage home
3. there are somewhat famous examples of art deco terraces further up the road at 85-91, designed by Berthold Lubetkin
4. my grandmother (1906-1989), helped bring me up as a teen
5. SE London, where I grew up
6. my eldest son
7. my lovely wife

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

buildings & glass & Thames wormhole: that comicbookshop in dreams,
Carol & dream & life & looking & Woolwich wormhole: dream 230315
child wormhole: … back to the outbreath
Genesta Road wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
grey wormhole: Ashdown Forest / 080213 14:47
hills wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
identity wormhole: The Godfather III: // AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH …
living wormhole: I can say / that I do all sorts of dance
love wormhole: I do
Nan wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
Plumstead wormhole: corner of Plum Lane / Eglinton Hill and / Shrewsbury Lane
promenade wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
purple wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
thinking wormhole: dedication
windows wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925