Mother, Summer, I

(Mama by William Kurelek, 1927-1977, Canadian artist
and writer)

After considering a few more poems about storge, the affection within a family, we will spend the rest of July examining philia, or friendship.

Today’s poem is by a poet who usually stands at a distance from his subject. In this case, however, Philip Larkin writes with some tenderness as he thinks of the differences between his mother and him.

“Maternity is a sublime calling, and even though man’s ungrateful heart often forgets his mother’s sufferings to bring him into the world and her endless devotion in order to bring him up, it is well-known that when a man faces death on the battlefield, his last words are often directed to his mother. Dying soldiers scream, ‘Mother.’”

~ Alice von Hildebrand, writer and philosopher, born 1923 in Belgium, from The Privilege of Being a Woman

MOTHER, SUMMER, I

My mother, who hates thunderstorms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost.

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone;
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can’t confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear.
An autumn more appropriate.

~ Philip Larkin (1922-1985), English poet, novelist, and jazz critic

Being Born Is Important

(The Butterfly by William Kurelek, 1927-1977,
Canadian artist and writer)

The life of Jean Vanier is an example of agape (pronounced ah•gah•pay) or unconditional charity in action.

Born in 1928, Vanier is a Canadian philosopher and theologian. In 1964, he established L’Arche, or “the ark,” an international movement of communities where intellectually disabled persons live and work together with those who take care of them. He travels around the globe to plead for the poor, the lonely, and the handicapped.

“To love people,” wrote Vanier in Becoming Human, “is also to celebrate them . . . . every child, every person, needs to know that they are a source of joy.”

BEING BORN IS IMPORTANT

Being born is important.
You who have stood at the bedposts
and seen a mother on her high harvest day,
the day of the most golden of harvest moons for her.

You who have seen the new wet child
dried behind the ears,
swaddled in soft fresh garments,
pursing its lips and sending a groping mouth
toward the nipples where white milk is ready —

You who have seen this love’s payday
of wild toil and sweet agonizing —

You know being born is important.
You know nothing else was ever so important to you.
You understand the payday of love is so old,
So involved, so traced with circles of the moon,
So cunning with the secrets of the salts of the blood —
It must be older than the moon, older than salt.

~ Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), American poet and writer and biographer of Lincoln

The Magic Mountain

(The Boardwalk at Toronto’s Beaches by William
Kurelek, 1927-1977, Canadian artist and writer)

Soon, the happy day will come when, once again, we’ll cast off our winter jackets and coats and hats and scarves and gloves and boots, and raise our faces to the warm sun.

from A MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Sultry Octobers, cool Julys, trees blossom in February.
Here the nuptial flight of hummingbirds does not forecast spring.
Only the faithful maple sheds its leaves every year.
For no reason, its ancestors simply learned it that way.

~ Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), Polish poet, essayist, and translator, and winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nurse’s Song

(Prairie Children Building a Snow Fort by William
Kurelek, 1927-1977, Canadian artist and writer)

William Blake wrote two poems with identical titles and opening lines but with very opposite moods.

In the poem below, from Songs of Innocence, the nurse or nanny is happy and cheerful and kind towards the children. In Blake’s other version, from Songs of Experience, she is not.

The differences between the two volumes reflect, Blake suggests, how the struggle between good and evil in life can transform innocence to experience.

NURSE’S SONG

When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.

“Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.”

“No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep.”

“Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.”
The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laughed
And all the hills echoed.

~ William Blake, 1757-1827, English poet, painter, engraver, and mystic visionary

Snow Day

(Balsam Avenue, Toronto, After a Heavy Snowfall by
William Kurelek, 1927-1977, Canadian artist and writer)

I have a wonderful memory of sliding down a snowdrift from a second-storey window during one of the great blizzards of Winnipeg.

SNOW DAY

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with — some will be delighted to hear —

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and — clap your hands — the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

~ Billy Collins, born 1941, American poet

25. XII. 1993

(Eskimo Nativity, with Joseph in the back
tending to his team of huskies and the Northern
Lights flashing in the sky, by William Kurelek,
1927-1977, Canadian artist and writer, from his
nativities set in Canada.)

What if Jesus were born now?

25. XII. 1993

For a miracle, take one shepherd’s sheepskin, throw
in a pinch of now, a grain of long ago,
and a handful of tomorrow. Add by eye
a little chunk of space, a piece of sky,

and it will happen. For miracles, gravitating
to earth, know just where people will be waiting,
and eagerly will find the right address
and tenant, even in a wilderness.

Or if you’re leaving home, switch on a new
four-pointed star, then, as you say adieu,
to light a vacant world with steady blaze
and follow you forever with its gaze.

~ Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), Russian-born poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, from his collection Nativity Poems