A piece of William Blake poetry I uncovered today, whilst randomly flipping through my Penguin version of The Complete Poems:

This is a curious poem (intended as a prologue to an unwritten drama about Edward IV), because it finds echoes in both the past and the future. Blake, who was a master at using Bible texts and rhetoric in the service of his recreation of religious experience, here echoes a passage from the prophet Nahum, chapter 1, verses 5-6:

This is the story of a vengeful God, torching everything in sight.

Its echo to the future is in the kinds of munitions that human beings have developed that ignite the air and propagate the “flood of Death.” And of course Blake is the natural connection between the old prophet and the wars that rage in the deserts around Nahum’s old stomping grounds because he indignantly rails against the appropriation of what was considered God’s exclusive destructive power by humans, and political leaders. He moves that power into the hands of humans and imagines what kind of damage we could all do with it.

As a visionary poet, Blake sometimes gives me the creeps.

It has often been said that we are the universe gazing upon itself. We have made eyes and sent them to Mars, and beyond that. and we are able to hold the mirror a long way from our face and see a view of our planet that almost loses us in the blackness of the space between spaces.

This photo is not just a photo of Earth from Mars, it is also a photograph of a sunrise over the island on which I live, off the west coast of North America. As this photo was taken, on the morning of May 8 I was immersed in a conference call with people in Edmonton. The dawn chorus of robins and varied thrushes and woodpeckers and chickadees was alive outside my window. This is a photo of a typical Thuirsday morning in May on Earth.

What were you doing? Where were you as the sun rose on my home that morning? Which tiny pixel of blue did you occupy at that hour?

Image courtesy of NASA

Just discovered Les Murray, who is no stranger to antipodean readers and many others no doubt, but is new to me:

Cotton Flannelette

Shake the bed, the blackened child whimpers,
O shake the bed! through bleak lips that
never will come unwry.  And wearily the iron-
framed mattress, with nodding, crockery bulbs,
jinks on its way.
		Her brothers and sister take 
shifts with the terrible glued-together baby
when their unsleeping absolute mother
reels out to snatch an hour, back to stop
the rocking and wring pale blue soap-water
over nude bladders and blood-webbed chars.
 
Even their cranky evasive father
is awed to stand watches rocking the bed.
Lids frogged shut, O please shake the bed
her contours whorl and braille tattoos
from where, in her nightdress, she flared
out of hearth-drowse to a marrow shriek
pedaling full tilt firesleeves in mid-air,
		are grainier with repair
than when the doctor, crying Dear God, woman!
No one can save that child.  Let her go!
spared her the treatments of the day.
 
Shake the bed.  Like: count phone pole, rhyme,
classify realities, band the head, any
iteration that will bring, in the brain's forks,
the melting molecules of relief,
and bring them back again.
		O rock the bed!
Nibble water with bared teeth, make lymph
like arrowroot gruel, as your mother grips you
for weeks in the untrained perfect language,
till the doctor relents.  Salves and wraps you
in dressings that will be the fire again,
ripping anguish of agony,
		and will confirm
the ploughland ridges in your woman's skin
for the sixty more years your family weaves you
on devotion's loom, rick-racking the bed
as you yourself, six years old, instruct them.

The first time I read this poem my eye caught in different places. It started with the word “unwry” in the first stanza. Having that word followed by “wearily” made me initially read “unwry” as “unwary.” I had to double back, smiling at the word play.

But then it continued…the mother “reels” out instead of “reaches”, “chars” instead of “chairs.” I thought the whole thing strange and just the product of reading too rushed, so I slowly read the poem out loud and the same thing happened. On the same words.

It is as if there is signal noise built into this poem. Deliberate places to trip and pause, a poet that asks you to sit still and concentrate even as he lulls you into the seemingly easy flow of the work.

It’s beautiful and engaging and lovely all at once.

Many Murray links (poems, reviews, audio):

• Les Murray’s homepage
• Plagarist
• Nice review of Murray by Jack Foley
• Plain index page of a few Murray poems
• Murray reading

My friend Micheal Herman (who is new to blogging but not to wikis) has added a really interesting point in my comments about the god/human division and Pilate’s role in the whole matter:

..there are those who’ve suggested that mao tse tung was a very high tibetan teacher, come to essentially take the karmic hit for busting the tibetan practices out of tibet so that the rest of the world could get at them.

god messing in lives of people seems only to extend the division between god and people, no?

That is a very interesting perspective. I replied:

Maybe one way to think about the Christian story from that persepctive is to see Jesus as just that attempt the erase the division between God and human. I mean if Jesus wasn’t a blended being, then it’s hard to imagine who would be.

Meanwhile, Bob Hunt adds that the Old Testament God creeping into the New Testament troubles him from time to time:

It is most definitely an echo of the Old Testament God – the God I find troubling. I feel a certain cognitive dissonance when I think of these different faces of God. I can’t help but think of God as infinitely compassionate, and yet we have countless examples of God behaving in ways that appear very cruel at worst, and unforgiving at best. I suppose I have come to a tentative resolution in this regard by realizing that God is Love, yes, but Love is not only beautiful and compassionate, but also fierce and seemingly unjust.

Our little place-blogging community has shown up on this week’s Carnival of the Vanities. Thanks to all who made it happen. Now go over there and read what these really interesting people have written about. Scroll down to the bottom to see the place blogging entry.