Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
No one puts store in dreams now
the way our elders used to do—
Teeth falling out of a mouth
like dice out of a cup: your life
is in gravest danger. Wings of a moth
or a butterfly grazing your cheek: the dead
have remembered something they need to say.
Flying over a sleeping town and touching
the bell-pull in the tower: soon it will
be morning; soon, the night is going.
In response to Via Negativa: November dusk.
At the office all the morning, and coming home found Mr. Hunt with my wife in the chamber alone, which God forgive me did trouble my head, but remembering that it was washing and that there was no place else with a fire for him to be in, it being also cold weather, I was at ease again. He dined with us, and after dinner took coach and carried him with us as far as my cozen Scott’s, where we set him down and parted, and my wife and I staid there at the christening of my cozens boy, where my cozen Samuel Pepys, of Ireland, and I were godfathers, and I did name the child Samuel. There was a company of pretty women there in the chamber, but we staid not, but went with the minister into another room and eat and drank, and at last, when most of the women were gone, Sam and I went into my cozen Scott, who was got off her bed, and so we staid and talked and were very merry, my she-cozen, Stradwick, being godmother. And then I left my wife to go home by coach, and I walked to the Temple about my law business, and there received a subpoena for T. Trice. I carried it myself to him at the usual house at Doctors Commons and did give it him, and so home and to bed. It cost me 20s., between the midwife and the two nurses to-day.
At the office, all
hunt for ash—no fire.
The company is
another gone god.
I receive a subpoena for it,
give it a bed
between the midwife and the day.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 19 November 1661.
Once I saw a wishbone
that someone had taken
out of the body of a bird—
She rubbed it clean,
stripped it of any
reminder of flesh,
dipped its ends in gold.
Only the hinge that flew
like an arrow in two
directions remained
unvarnished, lacking
in luster— I loved
that part immediately:
I lavished on it my most
extravagant hopes.
This is the 6000th post at Via Negativa — and also, by a strange coincidence, the fourth anniversary of Luisa’s incredible poem-a-day project! I had to do something by way of commemoration, so I made this video. The haiku (technically, a hokku — and one that was used to lead off a 36-poem linked verse sequence with Basho in 1682) is difficult to translate because much is alluded to rather than stated outright. But with the help of Earl Miner’s notes from The Monkey’s Straw Raincoat and Other Poems of the Basho School (Princeton, 1981), I gave it my best shot. Kikaku was arguably Basho’s greatest disciple.
詩あきんど年を貪ル酒債哉
we’re poetry vendors
life’s too short to worry about money
let’s drink the year out宝井其角
Takarai Kikaku (1661-1707)
Miner says that Kikaku was alluding to a verse from the famous Chinese poet Du Fu:
I leave debts for drink wherever I go
Since few in any age live to be seventy.
So let us pay homage to the ancient masters who, just like us, longed to live in the moment but worried about money, and diverted themselves with poetry and alcohol as best they could. The footage is from Berlin, but what could be more Japanese than a vending machine or a solar-powered animatronic toy?
“That’s me in the picture. I’m the diversity.” ~ Morgan Parker
Everyone just loves
those beaches of white
sand, your skin the color
of ripe mangos flecked with
the sun’s old gold— And
everyone says Your people
have such admirable industry!
I’m always amazed at how much
you can do with so little!
By the way there are a few
misplaced commas in your
essay. Did you actually
write it all yourself?
Someday you must explain
to me how a writer from
your country can have
not one or two but four
national awards
to his name. Are you
all right, my co-workers ask
the day after Typhoon Haiyan,
lowered voices tiptoeing
around my cubicle. How are
your family? It must break
your heart. It does, it always
does, though I may not be
personally implicated.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
By coach with Sir W. Pen; my wife and I toward Westminster, but seeing Mr. Moore in the street I light and he and I went to Mr. Battersby’s the minister, in my way I putting in at St. Paul’s, where I saw the quiristers in their surplices going to prayers, and a few idle poor people and boys to hear them, which is the first time I have seen them, and am sorry to see things done so out of order, and there I received 50l. more, which make up 100l. that I now have borrowed of him, and so I did burn the old bond for 50l., and paying him the use of it did make a new bond for the whole 100l. Here I dined and had a good dinner, and his wife a good pretty woman. There was a young Parson at the table that had got himself drunk before dinner, which troubled me to see.
After dinner to Mr. Bowers at Westminster for my wife, and brought her to the Theatre to see “Philaster,” which I never saw before, but I found it far short of my expectations. So by coach home.
the light is going
a few idle boys burn a table
for the heat
Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 18 November 1661.
(Lord’s day). To our own church, and at noon, by invitation, Sir W. Pen dined with me, and I took Mrs. Hester, my Lady Batten’s kinswoman, to dinner from church with me, and we were very merry. So to church again, and heard a simple fellow upon the praise of Church musique, and exclaiming against men’s wearing their hats on in the church, but I slept part of the sermon, till latter prayer and blessing and all was done without waking which I never did in my life. So home, and by and by comes my uncle Wight and my aunt and Mr. Norbury and his lady, and we drank hard and were very merry till supper time, and then we parted, my wife and I being invited to Sir W. Pen’s, where we also were very merry, and so home to prayers and to bed.
A simple church:
men in hats blessing
without waking.
I bury my pen
and pray to Bed.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 17 November 1661.
At the office all the morning. Dined at home, and so about my business in the afternoon to the Temple, where I found my Chancery bill drawn against T. Trice, which I read and like it, and so home.
Ice all about.
In the temple, I found Chance
drawn like a home.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 November 1661.
So much that’s hidden away
in every room: drawers full,
boxes crammed, each years’
store of all the things
at which the heart at one time
pointed, saying Please,
I need, I want—
And I want to lighten
what weights the skiff,
what slows the quaver in
the sparrow’s song, hurling
itself above the corded wave.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
At home all the morning, and at noon with my wife to the Wardrobe to dinner, and there, did shew herself to my Lady in the handkercher that she bought the lace for the other day, and indeed it is very handsome. Here I left my wife and went to my Lord Privy Seal to Whitehall, and there did give him a copy of the Fees of the office as I have received them, and he was well pleased with it. So to the Opera, where I met my wife and Captain Ferrers and Madamoiselle Le Blanc, and there did see the second part of “The Siege of Rhodes” very well done; and so by coach set her home, and the coach driving down the hill through Thames Street, which I think never any coach did before from that place to the bridge-foot, but going up Fish Street Hill his horses were so tired, that they could not be got to go up the hill, though all the street boys and men did beat and whip them. At last I was fain to send my boy for a link, and so light out of the coach till we got to another at the corner of Fenchurch Street, and so home, and to bed.
all morning in her hands
a sea with one fish
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 15 November 1661.