hic, hic est

Auld Lang Syne.
Here's to the rock star with the crooked teeth,
the cellist, banker, mezzo bearing gifts,
the teacher with the flask in her jeans -
those girls who made us sweat and lick our lips.

To the jeune fille who broke my heart in France,
the tramp who warmed your lap and licked your ear,
the one who bought me shots at 2 a.m.
that night I tied your pink tie at the bar.

Who smoked.  Who locked you out.  Who kissed my eyes
then pulled my hair and left me for a boy.
The girl who bit my upper, inner thigh.
My raspy laugh when I first heard your voice

toasting through broken kisses sloppy drunk:
To women!  To abundance!  To enough!

- Emily Moore

from the New Yorker

"Bitter-sweet" by George Herbert

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve:
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament, and love.

I was reminded of this poem reading something today.  I read it for the first time on Maundy Thursday sometime in high school, and I've never quite forgotten it.  It's basically a nice summary of everything I believe set out elegantly in three stanzas.

"Love"
by George Herbert
from The Temple, 1633

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
    Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
    From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
    If I lack'd any thing.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here:"
    Love said, "You shall be he."
"I the unkind, ungrateful?  Ah my dear,
    I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
    "Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
    go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
    "My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat:"
    So I did sit and eat.

Based on Horace's Ode 4.10
(O crudelis adhuc et Veneris muneribus potens)

~

Cruel and powerful gifts of desire

When your beard grows
when it grows unwelcome on your pride...

When you have to cut your hair
the hair which now hovers over your shoulders...

When the rosy color in your cheeks changes
when your cheeks becomes rugged...

You will say,
whenever you look in the mirror:

"Why couldn't i have had this mind as a boy,
the mind that i have now?"

"Why can't i have my face back,
why can't i have my face back unharmed?"

cae cae
tan rápido como se creó
sé sus pensamientos a través de su cara
y nunca jamás volveremos al comienzo
porque así no funciona el tiempo
porque estamos de pie con la cara hacia delante
y no hacia atrás

porque siempre que estoy atraído a un hombre
me doy casi completamente
casi completamente
y cuando termina
he de construir el templo de nuevo
he de construirme de nuevo

y no quiero que sea un fin
pero siento que hemos llegado al fin
y yo no puedo hacer nada
y me quedo sentado y mirando
pasivo y desplomando

saldré a recoger ladrillos
pronto saldré
y comenzaré
la resconstrucción

Assaig de Càntic en el Temple (Essay of Song in the Temple)
by Salvador Espriu

Oh, que cansat estic de la meva
covarda, vella, tan salvatge terra,
i com m'agradaria d'allunyar-me'n,
nord enllà,
on diuen que la gent és neta
i noble, culta, rica, lliure,
desvetllada i feliç!
Aleshores, a la congregació, els germans dirien
desaprovant: "Com l'ocell que deixa el niu,
així l'home que se'n va del seu indret",
mentre jo, ja ben lluny, em riuria
de la llei i de l'antiga saviesa
d'aquest meu àrid poble.
Però no he de seguir mai el meu somni
i em quedaré aquí fins a la mort.
Car sóc també molt covard i salvatge
i estimo a més amb un
desesperat dolor
aquesta meva pobra,
bruta, trista, dissortada pàtria.

Oh how tired I am of my
cowardly, old, so savage land,
and how I would like to get away from it,
toward the north,
where they say that the people are clean
and noble, cultured, rich, free,
awake and happy!
Then, in the congregation, the brothers would say
disapprovingly: "Like a bird that leaves its nest,
so is the man who leaves his place",
while I, now far off, would laugh
at the law and the ancient wisdom
of this my arid people.
But I never should follow my dream
and I will stay here until death.
For I am also very cowardly and savage
and, moreover, I love with a
desperate pain
this my poor,
dirty, sad, unlucky fatherland.

Callimachus, Epigram 1, translated by Stanley Lombardo and Diane Rayor

1.

"Is Kháridas beneath this stone?"
"Yes, if you mean Arrímas's son
from Kyréne, I'm his tomb."

"Kháridas, what's it like below?"
"Dark." "Are there exits?" "None."
"And Pluto?"  "He's a myth." "Oh, no!"

"All that I'm telling you is true,
but if you want the bright side too,
the cost of living here is low."

"Nones" (stanzas 1 and 2) by W. H. Auden

What we know to be not possible,
though time after time foretold
by wild hermits, by shaman and sybil
gibbering in their trances,
or revealed to a child in some chance rhyme
like will and kill, comes to pass
before we realize it: we are surprised
at the ease and speed of our deed
and uneasy: it is barely three,
mid-afternoon, yet the blood
of our sacrifice is already
dry upon the grass; we are not prepared
for silence so sudden and so soon;
the day is too hot, too bright, too still,
too ever, the dead remains too nothing.
What shall we do till nightfall?

The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.
The faceless many who always
collect when any world is to be wrecked,
blown up, burnt down, cracked open,
felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,
have all melted away: not one
of these who in the shade of walls and trees
lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping,
harmless as sheep, can remember why
he shouted or what about
so loudly in the sunshine this morning;
all if challenged would reply
- 'It was a monster with one red eye,
a crowd that saw him die, not I.' -
The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat;
we are left alone with our feat.

Poem.  Magnificat anima mea Dominum.

Fleeting beauty, bleak beauty of my youth,
I already feel you slipping away.
Time marches on blindly, creating new
beauties, new displays of the divine, ways
to experience God as the whole of whom
we are but incomplete - oft broken - parts.
Some tacit pantheism with age blooms
and births faith and finds solace in the art
of subtle touches, and the laughs of friends.
'Magnificat' i mouth, and smile again.