Buried Alive

The Buried Life
Matthew Arnold

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there ’s a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne;
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal’d
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reprov’d;
I knew they liv’d and mov’d
Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!—doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?—must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain’d;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain’d!

Fate, which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be—
By what distractions he would be possess’d,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity—
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being’s law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us—to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.

And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves—
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress’d.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well—but ’t is not true!
And then we will no more be rack’d
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.

Only—but this is rare—
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen’d ear
Is by the tones of a lov’d voice caress’d—
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
The flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.

It's all a mystery to me.

Mystery Baseball
Philip Dacey

No one knows the man who throws out the season's
first ball.
His face has never appeared in the newspapers,
except in crowd scenes, blurred.
Asked his name, he mumbles something
about loneliness,
about the beginnings of hard times.

Each team fields an extra, tenth man.
This is the invisible player,
assigned to no particular position.
Runners edging off base feel a tap on their shoulders,
turn, see no one.
Or a batter, the count against him, will hear whispered
in his ear vague, dark
rumours of his wife, and go down.

Vendors move through the stands
selling unmarked sacks,
never disclosing their contents,
never having been told.
People buy, hoping.

Pitchers stay busy
getting signs.
They are everywhere.

One man rounds third base, pumping hard,
and is never seen again.
Teammates and relatives wait years at his plate,
uneasy, fearful.

An outfielder goes for a ball on the warning track.
He leaps into the air and keeps rising,
beyond himself, past
the limp flag.
Days later he is discovered,
descended, wandering dazed
in centerfield.

Deep under second base lives an old man,
bearded, said to be
a hundred. All through the game,
players pull at the bills of their caps,
acknowledging him.

§

I know nothing about baseball. I not only knew one of those men who throw the opening ball of the season, but was related to him. He favoured one team; I, another. I have walked the bases on a field when no game ways being played . . . and I believe, with all of my joyful, dark and curious heart, in mystery.

What you make of this poem -- and of anything else you read in this blog -- is, of course, up to you. That, too, may hold mystery and, if both of us are very lucky, occasionally, wonder.

Standing

Lament
Rainer Maria Rilke
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Everything is far
and long gone by.
I think that the star
glittering above me
has been dead for a million years.
I think there were tears
in the car I heard pass
and something terrible was said.
A clock has stopped striking in the house
across the road . . .
When did it start? . . .
I would like to step out of my heart
and go walking beneath the enormous sky.
I would like to pray.
And surely of all the stars that perished
long ago,
one still exists.
I think that I know
which one it is -
which one, at the end of its beam in the sky,
stands like a white city . . .

Fear no More

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' the great;
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan;
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownéd be thy grave!

William Shakespeare
Cymbeline IV ii

Well worth hearing is the Sondheim setting. It could reweave a heart.

In the Best Sense, Held

Relations: Old Light/New Sun/Postmistress/Earth/04421
Philip Booth

From broken dreams,
we wake to every day's
brave history,

the gravity
of every moment
we wake

to let our lives
inhabit: now, here, again,
this very day,

passionate as all
Yeats woke in old age
to hope for, the sun

turns up, under
an off-shore cloudbank
spun at 700 and

some mph to meet it,
rosy as the cheeks
of a Chios woman

Homer may have been
touched by, just
as Janet

is touching, climbing
familiar steps, granite
locally quarried,

to work at 04421,
a peninsular village
spun, just as

Janet is spun,
into light, light appearing
to resurrect

not simply its own
life but the whole
improbable

system, tugging
the planet around to
look precisely

as Janet looks,
alight with the gravity
of her office,

before turning
the key that opens up
its full

radiance:
the familiar arrivals,
departures,

and even predictable
orbits in which,
with excited

constancy, by how
to each other
we're held, we keep

from spinning out
by how to each other
we hold.

That Which is Sought

As I dig for wild orchids
In the autumn fields.
It is the deeply bedded root
that I desire,
Not the flower.

Izumi Shikibu, Japan (974-1034)

Marred Perfection

For What Binds Us
Jane Hirshfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down --
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest --

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

§

Not everything that builds a strong and beautiful relationship is easy. There are shelves of books of poetry praising the light, the lovely and the simple, the eternal honeymoon phase of an unlikely love.

Hirshfield graces love with recognition of its labour, with something greater than an acknowledgement of the powerful links forged of pain and forgiveness, fired by history.

Fluff and fancy, sweetness and new sensuality are all well and good, but the other, the hard-earned connection won and won again -- that is real love, faith tried and tested and proven, in the long run, to endure. It has scars and bumps flaws -- is a human thing -- and it has glory beyond measure precisely because of those old, tenderly healed wounds.