I can't console the crying bird

[Violet]

I can’t console the crying bird


she’s lost inside

her wounded wing,
a song
not yet a song.

though
in your eyes
I felt her
once; she stirred there
all aflutter

love’s loss and promise;
love’s telling of
itself

(its broken wing, broken
of love's
winged dream)


so sing me
all aflutter

take me
now,
love’s arms

for even without words,
it's love that does console
the crying bird


January 10, 2009


much later edit: shortened it considerably.

[George.Wright]

Violet,
Lovely poem, U are a goddess.

Love Georges.

[Cate]

Your crying bird poem is sensitive and sweet.

Well done making a tricky line work so well.

(side note which has nothing to do with anything, but my Mother is here and she is baking a pineapple upside down cake. You can not believe how good it smells!)

[Violet]

... I wish I were over there partaking of the pineapple upside down cake with you and your mom... tea parties on the ceiling just came to mind, actually... I guess I've yet to use the Alice in Wonderland metaphor for this place, I mean, as opposed to The Wizard of Oz... but if you had an upside down cake while upside down... of course, you turn it right side up, don't you, after baking it? so... really, it would remain an upside down cake if you ate it on the ceiling I think... Cate, cancel the cake, and let's just start doing shots...
(or at least some blueberry tea)...
v i o l e t

[Cate]

I like the Alice in wonderland metaphor you can be Alice.
Yes we'll have a tea party on the ceiling in honor of an upside down cake and serve shots in our tea cups and drink the cake with a straw. We won't come down until everything just spins away.

Cate

[Violet]

... Cate, spinning, as I've mentioned elsewhere I believe, has metaphysical implications, and belongs to very early pagan practices, and yes, is related to those whirling guys with the funny hats and the skirts... (think Stonehenge, only dressed up and inter-dimensionally functional)... and Mr. Dogdson (Lewis Caroll) was in fact writing about the fourth dimension with his adventurous tale... what this means to you and I in this situation I have no idea... but then you had no idea why you were mentioning the pineapple upside down cake to begin with... so... free association is dangerous, I must conclude... a finding that probably belongs on that "test" thread you're doing... strange how all these things are related... Anyway I think we should probably get off the ceiling and behave... and maybe have Manna come and help us to manifest the proper trepidation at the ever present prospect of sudden grammatical or spelling malfunction... Lord M. I'm sure could be on hand for the caning procedures... [to be continued would be ill advised]... v.

[danceme1000times]

Well Violet I think its bloody brilliant!!!! Yes....its wonderful! Wow...those images are flying around in my head and touching my soul so lightly with their thread of gossamer! Its beautiful.

[Violet]

Dance Me... thanks so much for your comment... I was wondering, though, if you were talking about the poem or my last post... either way, I thank thee...

v i o l e t

[anunitu]

Lovely

[Violet]

Well Violet I think its bloody brilliant!!!! Yes....its wonderful! Wow...those images are flying around in my head and touching my soul so lightly with their thread of gossamer! Its beautiful.

... after quite some time I'm afraid, I've decided you were talking about the poem, and I thank you again. Why I was confused the first time around with this I'm no longer sure... it could have been all that spinning...

v.

[lazariuk]

it's love that does console
the crying bird

Maybe - who knows?

The above line that Violet wrote was probably the best I saw that was in response to the request to write a poem with the title " I can't console the dying bird"

When I first saw us being asked to write a poem with that title I felt that it hit me in the gut that there was something very wrong about it. I didn't think that there should be any poem with that title. I was a little awestruck with how much I disliked it.

I have spent some time thinking of why it bothers me so.

and I have come to think that it is because it is so remote from what is experienced.

Who has seen a crying bird?

How would you know if you have consoled it? How would you know that you can't?

Those are some of the questions that wandered into my mind.

Mostly though I think that some strong feelings about that title were invoked in me was because there was a moment in my experience when I was sad and crying and a bird arrived and consoled me.

Maybe there will come a day when I learn how to write poems and will write one called
" When crying I was consoled by a bird"

Jack

"If love be not in the house
there is nothing" Ezra Pound

[Violet]

Jack,

I think you should write that poem... especially since such strong feelings have been evoked by this other title... it's what a writer of poetry wants, to feel things strongly, even if it's a negative feeling... To me writing poetry is about allowing that other side of our brains, that more irrational or unconscious side, to try and have its say... then it's for the more conscious side of our writer's selves to try to give some discernible, even beautiful form to that thing that's trying to speak... and so to me, the crying bird was a mystery... a feeling... and yes I've been crying too of late... what in me has been crying? what might console such a forlorn feeling?... to be loved, maybe... desired, even... no longer crying, this crying bird is in this way suddenly all aflutter...

... so... nothing too thought out went into this poem, I just went with this feeling, and hoped the writer part of me would allow itself to be steered along by that... if that makes any sense to you...

Thanks so much for adding to this conversation,

v i o l e t

[Cate]

Hi Violet and Jack,
The idea of a bird crying bothered me a bit too, there is something unnatural about it.

Maybe there will come a day when I learn how to write poems and will write one called
" When crying I was consoled by a bird"

Well Jack, you already know how to write poems but I think I get what your saying. I have a pile of that's just terribles, a stack of not quite rights, and a couple (literally) of hey almosts, but I've yet to have a - yes that's it, that's it exactly!

Here's a 'For Jack' poem/vignette that's not quite strong enough to stand on it's own, so I'll leave it for you in V's thread because she strikes me as a good person to lean up against when your not feeling quite so strong.

They climb the stairs.
Church bells sing across
the ceiling and spin.
The friends collide and move
into each others spaces,
create a new dimension, theirs
where they will tumble
into the touch of a hand.

[Violet]

Here's a 'For Jack' poem/vignette that's not quite strong enough to stand on it's own, so I'll leave it for you in V's thread because she strikes me as a good person to lean up against when your not feeling quite so strong.

They climb the stairs.
Church bells sing across
the ceiling and spin.
The friends collide and move
into each others spaces,
create a new dimension, theirs
where they will tumble
into the touch of a hand.

... hi Cate... hi Jack... Cate, thanks for that, I was beginning to feel quite invisible around here these days...

I love "where they will tumble into the touch of a hand"... and I really like the idea of this little poem too... maybe it's "the sound" of church bells that sing across the ceiling and spin... I'd also try "the friends collide, creating new dimensions"... maybe you don't even need "they climb the stairs"... maybe just "it's there the friends collide" ("there" referring to the ceiling where the church bells sing)... so...

The sound of church bells
sing across the ceiling and spin.
It's there the friends collide,
creating new dimensions; theirs
where they will tumble
into the touch of a hand.



as to the edits: I was trying to quote this material for a later post, but somehow used "edit" accidentally, so I may have lost the last part of this post... still, it's basically here... Anyway, I've amended these changes to Cate's poem on pg. 2...

[lazariuk]

They climb the stairs.
Church bells sing across
the ceiling and spin.
The friends collide and move
into each others spaces,
create a new dimension, theirs
where they will tumble
into the touch of a hand.

Hi Cate and Violet

I really like what seems like a redemptive power the two of you gave to what was to me a very poor title to start from. Violet you took crying and had it become song or a song unsung and then Cate you brought me images of bells rung or maybe not rung.

This last poem from Cate sparked a considerable amount of thought and since I am not sure where it is leading me I will just try to describe some of the landscape of the thought.

When I see bells that sing across the ceiling and spin it makes me think that the word spin means maybe it wasn't really bells but rather something that became a bell when a bell was needed.

Let me try to explain. Lets say I heard the expression "A bell skipped across the dessert in the bright sun" I can show how that can describe for me something very specific.

Dali in a very interesting way played with the idea of a bell being echoed by other things. In some of his paintings he made a very clear link between a bell in a belfry and a girl skipping.
Here is one: You may need to scroll to see the girl skipping

Echo, 1935.jpg (124.84 KiB) Viewed 3178 times

and here is another: (again with the scrolling)

1936_09_'Morphological Echo', circa 1936.jpg (122.42 KiB) Viewed 3180 times

In both of those he creates the link and then goes on in many paintings to use the image of the skipping girl to be a ringing bell, like the image at the end of Palladio's Corridor of Dramatic Surprise:

1938_10_Palladio's Corridor of Dramatic Surprise, 1938.jpg (121.98 KiB) Viewed 3177 times

I can show other examples of that image in his paintings but it seems that I am limited to three attachments. It has always been a bit of a mystery to me the significance of the bell to him and I love mystery. What has also been a mystery to me is how much Marcel's Proust went on and on about bells and belfrys in his start to "In Search of Lost Time". It leads one to think that it would become clarified at a later point but it never does. Maybe that was because he died before he finished with the book.

Anyway a feeling of mystery was given me with the start of your poem speaking of stairs and ceilings and bells that spin. Knowing why you began like this wouldn't take away from the mystery of it.

When I see "the friends collide and move into each others spaces"
it echoes the motions of bells and "create dimensions" gives me the feeling of landscape being formed where what is not a bell can be a bell.

"touch of a hand" becomes the knocker within the bell - maybe.

Jack