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Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Gift

Forgive us if we find it hard to imagine
that final country for which you’ve departed

except in terms of the one you left many years ago.
We want to think of heaven as a small village

where the houses stand close to each other,
where neighbors know each other by name

and by the names of their kin before them;
where the church and town square and fields

are quiet from holding their place, and the doves
come to shelter in the shadows at noon. The first

time you left, young in your prime to make your fortune,
the way was lit like windows looking out on a procession.

We followed in your wake, as we do again now.
At the end we watched you go, briefer than a wisp

of smoke, wordless as snow against the city skyline.
And this was how you taught us to grow—

A young man plucks a fruit, holds it in his hands
and offers it simply, as he would his heart. Nothing

in the world stands between your heart and this gift.
Nothing in the world tarnishes its sweetness or its gold.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Resistance

Up by candlelight, which I do not use to do, though it be very late, that is to say almost 8 o’clock, and out by coach to White Hall, where we all met and to the Duke, where I heard a large discourse between one that goes over an agent from the King to Legorne and thereabouts, to remove the inconveniences his ships are put to by denial of pratique; which is a thing that is now-a-days made use of only as a cheat, for a man may buy a bill of health for a piece of eight, and my enemy may agree with the Intendent of the Sante for ten pieces of eight or so; that he shall not give me a bill of health, and so spoil me in my design, whatever it be. This the King will not endure, and so resolves either to have it removed, or to keep all ships from coming in, or going out there, so long as his ships are stayed for want hereof.
Then, my Lord Sandwich being there, we all went into the Duke’s closet and did our business. But among other things, Lord! what an account did Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten make of the pulling down and burning of the head of the Charles, where Cromwell was placed with people under his horse, and Peter, as the Duke called him, is praying to him; and Sir J. Minnes would needs infer the temper of the people from their joy at the doing of this and their building a gibbet for the hanging of his head up, when God knows, it is even the flinging away of 100l. out of the King’s purse, to the building of another, which it seems must be a Neptune.
Thence I through White Hall only to see what was doing, but meeting none that I knew I went through the garden to my Lord Sandwich’s lodging, where I found my Lord got before me (which I did not intend or expect) and was there trying some musique, which he intends for an anthem of three parts, I know not whether for the King’s chapel or no, but he seems mighty intent upon it. But it did trouble me to hear him swear before God and other oathes, as he did now and then without any occasion, which methinks did so ill become him, and I hope will be a caution for me, it being so ill a thing in him.
The musique being done, without showing me any good or ill countenance, he did give me his hat and so adieu, and went down to his coach without saying anything to me. He being gone I and Mr. Howe talked a good while. He tells me that my Lord, it is true, for a while after my letter, was displeased, and did shew many slightings of me when he had occasion of mentioning me to his Lordship, but that now my Lord is in good temper and he do believe will shew me as much respect as ever, and would have me not to refrain to come to him. This news I confess did much trouble me, but when I did hear how he is come to himself, and hath wholly left Chelsy, and the slut, and that I see he do follow his business, and becomes in better repute than before, I am rejoiced to see it, though it do cost me some disfavour for a time, for if not his good nature and ingenuity, yet I believe his memory will not bear it always in his mind. But it is my comfort that this is the thing that after so many years good service that has made him my enemy.
Thence to the King’s Head ordinary, and there dined among a company of fine gentlemen; some of them discoursed of the King of France’s greatness, and how he is come to make the Princes of the Blood to take place of all foreign Embassadors, which it seems is granted by them of Venice and other States, and expected from my Lord. Hollis, our King’s Embassador there; and that either upon that score or something else he hath not had his entry yet in Paris, but hath received several affronts, and among others his harnesse cut, and his gentlemen of his horse killed, which will breed bad blood if true. They say also that the King of France hath hired threescore ships of Holland, and forty of the Swede, but nobody knows what to do; but some great designs he hath on foot against the next year.
Thence by coach home and to my office, where I spent all the evening till night with Captain Taylor discoursing about keeping of masts, and when he was gone, with Sir W. Warren, who did give me excellent discourse about the same thing, which I have committed to paper, and then fell to other talk of his being at Chatham lately and there discoursing of his masts. Commissioner Pett did let fall several scurvy words concerning my pretending to know masts as well as any body, which I know proceeds ever since I told him I could measure a piece of timber as well as anybody employed by the King. But, however, I shall remember him for a black sheep again a good while, with all his fair words to me, and perhaps may let him know that my ignorance does the King as much good as all his knowledge, which would do more it is true if it were well used.
Then we fell to talk of Sir J. Minnes’s and Sir W. Batten’s burning of Oliver’s head, while he was there; which was done with so much insulting and folly as I never heard of, and had the Trayned Band of Rochester to come to the solemnity, which when all comes to all, Commissioner Pett says it never was made for him; but it troubles me the King should suffer 100l. losse in his purse, to make a new one after it was forgot whose it was, or any words spoke of it.
He being gone I mightily pleased with his discourse, by which I always learn something, I to read a little in Rushworth, and so home to supper to my wife, it having been washing day, and so to bed, my mind I confess a little troubled for my Lord Sandwich’s displeasure. But God will give me patience to bear since it rises from so good an occasion.

to inconvenience an enemy
I will not remove my own head

people pray
for a head with good countenance

a light head
ordinary as a horse

but a foot
committed to ignorance

does as much good as
a burning head

but I make new words
of ash and trouble


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 14 December 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

All or nothing

In a room filled with straw
I eat nugget after nugget
of salt. I work all night
to fill the urns with corn.
I was promised deliverance
and if not, my undoing.
Wasn’t it the same
for my forbears?
O daybreak, and the constant
putrefaction made by cows
in the field. I am wide-
eyed. I get by on four
hours of sleep and swigs
of hard black coffee.
A door opens when they
remember to check if I
am still in here, still
alive; if there is anything
I’ve made that might be
worth trading. And I’m
a genius— But when did my
opinions ever matter? TBH
I prefer living by myself.
I think of the industry
of bees and what they know:
culling every last bit
of sweetness from unseemly
sources, carefully hoarding
their one barbed sting.

 

In response to Via Negativa: In absentia.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Consilience

(Lord’s day). Up and made me ready for Church, but my wife and I had a difference about her old folly that she would fasten lies upon her mayds, and now upon Jane, which I did not see enough to confirm me in it, and so would not consent to her.
To church, where after sermon home, and to my office, before dinner, reading my vowes, and so home to dinner, where Tom came to me and he and I dined together, my wife not rising all day, and after dinner I made even accounts with him, and spent all the afternoon in my chamber talking of many things with him, and about Wheately’s daughter for a wife for him, and then about the Joyces and their father Fenner, how they are sometimes all honey one with another and then all turd, and a strange rude life there is among them.
In the evening, he gone, I to my office to read Rushworth upon the charge and answer of the Duke of Buckingham, which is very fine, and then to do a little business against to-morrow, and so home to supper to my wife, and then to bed.

her lies sing of wheat and honey
and then all turd

a strange rude life there is
among them


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 13 December 1663.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

In absentia

Up and to the office where all the morning, and among other things got Sir G. Carteret to put his letters to Captain Taylor’s bill by which I am in hopes to get 5l., which joys my heart. We had this morning a great dispute between Mr. Gauden, Victualler of the Navy, and Sir J. Lawson, and the rest of the Commanders going against Argier, about their fish and keeping of Lent; which Mr. Gauden so much insists upon to have it observed, as being the only thing that makes up the loss of his dear bargain all the rest of the year.
At noon went home and there I found that one Abrahall, who strikes in for the serving of the King with Ship chandlery ware, has sent my wife a Japan gowne, which pleases her very well and me also, it coming very opportune, but I know not how to carry myself to him, I being already obliged so far to Mrs. Russell, so that I am in both their pays.
To the Exchange, where I had sent Luellin word I would come to him, and thence brought him home to dinner with me. He tells me that W. Symon’s wife is dead, for which I am sorry, she being a good woman, and tells me an odde story of her saying before her death, being in good sense, that there stood her uncle Scobell.
Then he began to tell me that Mr. Deering had been with him to desire him to speak to me that if I would get him off with these goods upon his hands, he would give me 50 pieces, and further that if I would stand his friend to helpe him to the benefit of his patent as the King’s merchant, he could spare me 200l. per annum out of his profits. I was glad to hear both of these, but answered him no further than that as I would not by any thing be bribed to be unjust in my dealings, so I was not so squeamish as not to take people’s acknowledgment where I had the good fortune by my pains to do them good and just offices, and so I would not come to be at any agreement with him, but I would labour to do him this service and to expect his consideration thereof afterwards as he thought fit. So I expect to hear more of it.
I did make very much of Luellin in hopes to have some good by this business, and in the evening received some money from Mr. Moore, and so went and settled accounts in my books between him and me, and I do hope at Christmas not only to find myself as rich or more than ever I was yet, but also my accounts in less compass, fewer reckonings either of debts or moneys due to me, than ever I have been for some years, and indeed do so, the goodness of God bringing me from better to a better expectation and hopes of doing well. This day I heard my Lord Barkeley tell Sir G. Carteret that he hath letters from France that the King hath unduked twelve Dukes, only to show his power and to crush his nobility, who he said he did see had heretofore laboured to cross him. And this my Lord Barkeley did mightily magnify, as a sign of a brave and vigorous mind, that what he saw fit to be done he dares do.
At night, after business done at my office, home to supper and to bed.
I have forgot to set down a very remarkable passage that, Lewellen being gone, and I going into the office, and it begun to be dark, I found nobody there, my clerks being at the burial of a child of W. Griffin’s, and so I spent a little time till they came, walking in the garden, and in the mean time, while I was walking Mrs. Pen’s pretty maid came by my side, and went into the office, but finding nobody there I went in to her, being glad of the occasion. She told me as she was going out again that there was nobody there, and that she came for a sheet of paper. So I told her I would supply her, and left her in the office and went into my office and opened my garden door, thinking to have got her in, and there to have caressed her, and seeming looking for paper, I told her this way was as near a way for her, but she told me she had left the door open and so did not come to me. So I carried her some paper and kissed her, leading her by the hand to the garden door and there let her go. But, Lord! to see how much I was put out of order by this surprisal, and how much I could have subjected my mind to have treated and been found with this wench, and how afterwards I was troubled to think what if she should tell this and whether I had spoke or done any thing that might be unfit for her to tell. But I think there was nothing more passed than just what I here write.

dead before her death
hands as spare as any in a compass

at her own dark burial
finding nobody

paper looking for paper
a door open to a door


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 12 December 1663.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Hibernal

Up and abroad toward the Wardrobe, and going out Mr. Clerke met me to tell me that Field has a writ against me in this last business of 30l. 10s., and that he believes he will get an execution against me this morning, and though he told me it could not be well before noon, and that he would stop it at the Sheriff’s, yet it is hard to believe with what fear I did walk and how I did doubt at every man I saw and do start at the hearing of one man cough behind my neck. I to the Wardrobe and there missed Mr. Moore. So to Mr. Holden’s and evened all reckonings there for hats, and then walked to Paul’s Churchyard and after a little at my bookseller’s and bought at a shop Cardinall Mazarin’s Will in French. I to the Coffeehouse and there among others had good discourse with an Iron Merchant, who tells me the great evil of discouraging our natural manufacture of England in that commodity by suffering the Swede to bring in three times more than ever they did and our owne Ironworks be lost, as almost half of them, he says, are already. Then I went and sat by Mr. Harrington, and some East country merchants, and talking of the country about Quinsborough, and thereabouts, he told us himself that for fish, none there, the poorest body, will buy a dead fish, but must be alive, unless it be in winter; and then they told us the manner of putting their nets into the water. Through holes made in the thick ice, they will spread a net of half a mile long; and he hath known a hundred and thirty and a hundred and seventy barrels of fish taken at one draught. And then the people come with sledges upon the ice, with snow at the bottome, and lay the fish in and cover them with snow, and so carry them to market. And he hath seen when the said fish have been frozen in the sledge, so as that he hath taken a fish and broke a-pieces, so hard it hath been; and yet the same fishes taken out of the snow, and brought into a hot room, will be alive and leap up and down. Swallows are often brought up in their nets out of the mudd from under water, hanging together to some twigg or other, dead in ropes, and brought to the fire will come to life. Fowl killed in December (Alderman Barker said) he did buy, and putting into the box under his sledge, did forget to take them out to eate till Aprill next, and they then were found there, and were through the frost as sweet and fresh and eat as well as at first killed. Young beares are there; their flesh sold in market as ordinarily as beef here, and is excellent sweet meat. They tell us that beares there do never hurt any body, but fly away from you, unless you pursue and set upon them; but wolves do much mischief. Mr. Harrington told us how they do to get so much honey as they send abroad. They make hollow a great fir-tree, leaving only a small slitt down straight in one place, and this they close up again, only leave a little hole, and there the bees go in and fill the bodys of those trees as full of wax and honey as they can hold; and the inhabitants at times go and open the slit, and take what they please without killing the bees, and so let them live there still and make more. Fir trees are always planted close together, because of keeping one another from the violence of the windes; and when a fell is made, they leave here and there a grown tree to preserve the young ones coming up. The great entertainment and sport of the Duke of Corland, and the princes thereabouts, is hunting; which is not with dogs as we, but he appoints such a day, and summons all the country-people as to a campagnia; and by several companies gives every one their circuit, and they agree upon a place where the toyle is to be set; and so making fires every company as they go, they drive all the wild beasts, whether bears, wolves, foxes, swine, and stags, and roes, into the toyle; and there the great men have their stands in such and such places, and shoot at what they have a mind to, and that is their hunting. They are not very populous there, by reason that people marry women seldom till they are towards or above thirty; and men thirty or forty years old, or more oftentimes.
Against a publique hunting the Duke sends that no wolves be killed by the people; and whatever harm they do, the Duke makes it good to the person that suffers it: as Mr. Harrington instanced in a house where he lodged, where a wolfe broke into a hog-stye, and bit three or four great pieces off the back of the hog, before the house could come to helpe it (it calling, and that did give notice to the people of the house); and the man of the house told him that there were three or four wolves thereabouts that did them great hurt; but it was no matter, for the Duke was to make it good to him, otherwise he would kill them.
Hence home and upstairs, my wife keeping her bed, and had a very good dinner, and after dinner to my office, and there till late busy. Among other things Captain Taylor came to me about his bill for freight, and besides that I found him contented that I have the 30l. I got, he do offer me to give me 6l. to take the getting of the bill paid upon me, which I am ready to do, but I am loath to have it said that I ever did it. However, I will do him the service to get it paid if I can and stand to his courtesy what he will give me.
Late to supper home, and to my great joy I have by my wife’s good advice almost brought myself by going often and leisurely to the stool that I am come almost to have my natural course of stool as well as ever, which I pray God continue to me.

what fear at every cough
in the coffee house

the poorest body
must be a winter

made of a hundred fish
with snow at the bottom

the dead come to life
flesh hollow as wax

they inhabit
the violence of the winds

and no dog but a wolf
could help us take joy


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 11 December 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Dust and Ashes

We’re told a plot can take two, at most three members;
that we can buy into a family plan that accommodates
up to a certain number of cremains to be interred

under a common monument. According to the Vatican,
ashes may be buried only in cemeteries, mausoleums,
columbariums— Not scattered in the air, not thrown

into a mountain pool or from a bridge into a pond
with lotus flowers and koi. Not fired as artful
swirls of color into a glass paperweight,

nor snorted into your own body as one would
a hit of cocaine. Unless you become a saint,
it’s into an urn then in the earth

that you go: all parts together, all last
remaining ground-down bits the undertaker sifts
into a basket after the furnace cools, kept

in one place— so when the golden
trumpet sounds, the body re-conjured
for the afterlife might not find

with dismay a missing hand or leg,
a misplaced ear or socket. But I admit
I’m curious about green alternatives,

among them the chance to deposit my ashes
in a pod with a tree seed of my choice,
to plant thereafter in a sunny

meadow or a shady hillside— Perhaps
a spoonful of me that might travel thus
back to the city of my childhood,

though the rest of me can go in the crypt
reserved by the family I’ve married into.
The River-Merchant’s Wife says in her letter:

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours.
Inside the chamber, the years’ long echo

will be that long Forever and forever and forever.
Not being saints, unlike Anthony of Padua, our jaws
and tongues won’t glisten or travel the world

in ornate reliquaries. Think of exiles
like Chopin, whose sister smuggled his heart,
after death, back into Poland, in a wax-

sealed jar of cognac. Think of how eternity seems
such a large and alien place— and wouldn’t you much
rather be in all the places you’ve ever loved?

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Nominations (and mini reviews) wanted for best poetry books of 2016

What was the best book of poetry you read this year, and what did you like about it? I’d like to do a crowd-sourced list here at Via Negativa, in lieu of the more typical kind of end-of-year lists where the editors choose everything themselves. It doesn’t have to be a book published this year, or a book you’ve never read before, just a book that you read in its entirety this year and found exceptional. You don’t have to be a poet yourself; anyone who loves poetry and regularly reads it for pleasure is welcome to take part. Please EMAIL ME (bontasaurus at yahoo dot com) with “Best poetry book” or something similar in the subject line.

The fine print: You can write anything from a few words to a short paragraph extolling the book. Only one book, please—no ties! It can be a book of any length (including chapbooks/pamphlets), with single or multiple authors, up to and including anthologies. Translations are fine, as are books in languages other than English. If you include the full title and author’s name I can probably find a link on the publisher’s website, or elsewhere if it’s out of print. But if you have a blog or website that you’d like me to link to, please include that URL in your email. Let’s make the deadline Thursday the 15th.