Lizkdc Dislocation

Feast of the Epiphany: A Cold Coming We Had of It

 

It's the Feast of the Epiphany.

I used to love T. S. Eliot in a way that you can only love an artist when you yourself are young and guiltless.  Once you know a little more about yourself, and him, it's never quite the same. I walked in flowery parks in England and recited the horrible, beautiful dark lines and I knew nothing about anything, et cetera, but gods, was it pleasurable.

When you are old, and a little horrible yourself, you understand the poet better, but your love is not free of regret. Anyway, what a fantastic voice he has.

An old story

IMG_0789.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Fragmentary Roman torso, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island

The Shield of Achilles   
by W. H. Auden

    She looked over his shoulder

       For vines and olive trees,

     Marble well-governed cities

       And ships upon untamed seas,

     But there on the shining metal

       His hands had put instead

     An artificial wilderness

       And a sky like lead.



A plain without a feature, bare and brown,

   No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,

Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,

   Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood

   An unintelligible multitude,

A million eyes, a million boots in line,

Without expression, waiting for a sign.



Out of the air a voice without a face

   Proved by statistics that some cause was just

In tones as dry and level as the place:

   No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;

   Column by column in a cloud of dust

They marched away enduring a belief

Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

There may be horribles; it's hard to tell.

IMG_0243.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Twilight meeting winter meeting mist meeting snow creating unreal. Stonybrook Reservation, Roslindale, Boston, December 29, 2007.

To accompany my uncanny moment in the woods photo, a creepy poem of winter from John Berryman.

Dream Song 28: Snow Line by John Berryman

It was wet & white & swift and where I am
we don't know. It was dark and then
it isn't.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be eat
nothing. I am usually tired.
I'm alone too.

If only the strange one with so few legs would come,
I'd say my prayers out of my mouth, as usual.
Where are his note I loved?
There may be horribles; it's hard to tell.
The barker nips me but somehow I feel
he too is on my side.

I'm too alone. I see no end. If we could all
run, even that would be better. I am hungry.
The sun is not hot.
It's not a good position I am in.
If I had to do the whole thing over again
I wouldn't.