So
young and yet so grave,
Child,
what thoughts
Hold
you so still?
Upright,
your gaze far-seeing
Beyond
the frame
-
And the thoughts –
Which
hold you in a trance,
Is
it the slow-stepped dance
You
see, or the cortège?
RESPONSE
Child
am I no more, dear poet,
And
my gaze no more is distant.
Nor
does the dance, so lovely, fix my mind,
Nor
rites of death make me look grave.
Whate'er
the thoughts absorbed me once,
Eternity's
the one that hovers,
Ever
a slight distraction.
Whate'er
it was once held my glance,
Now
are my eyes fixed ever
On
where the Sun’s new risen,
And
light flows out the gates of heav’n.
© 21 May 2011 by Ruth Heredia; edited 5 August 2022 by Ruth Heredia
Infanta
Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress, 1659, by Velázquez. Born in 1651, married at 15, she died at
21, from 7 pregnancies in 6 years.
IN
CONCERT
They
walk in the Fortunate Isles,
The
ones who fashion the music:
Some
lucid as angels' minds,
Some
subtle most like Divinity's –
And
these are they whose breath
Stirs
in the strains of their music.
How
but by re-making –
Sinking
awhile the self
Into
the music's maker –
Can
streams be drawn from Elysium,
Magical,
clear and true?
When
maker, music and re-maker
Are
one enchanted dream,
Do
they smile, Liszt, Beethoven,
As
by the stream we linger,
That
flows from the Fortunate Isles?
© 14 May 2012 by Ruth Heredia
WANG
WEI REVISITED
(original text)
A
new-risen sun – unseen –
had
blue-washed the sky to moonstone softness;
silk
rolled the river, rippling grey,
shot
with flashes of silver and gold.
Small
ebony stick-men in small ebony boats
cast
nets she must imagine.
Distant
cliffs, picked out in malachite,
bowed
grotesquely to distant waves;
trees
carved in emerald, some in jade,
some
dressed in coral, jewelled the mountain.
There
mist lingered, or was it smoke
from
minute red-roofed houses?
On
a rock quite near, alighted a cormorant,
suspicious
bulge in his serpentine neck.
Under
filigree bridge, on rolled the river,
on
to the far-off shimmer of sea.
Like
flakes of pearl, seagulls dived
for
invisible fish. A miniature hawk
descended
in
slow concentric spiral.
She
mused on Wang Wei, who had passed through a door
in
one of his landscapes, to Those Above.
Behind
her doors opened – “Breakfast is served”
-
and she went through.
Behind
her the river scrolled on for ever,
li upon endless li.
~
E.M.R.H. 3 October 2012
My only excuse for tampering with your poem was that I liked
it so much that I couldn't resist rewriting it in the present tense and making
it lighter in tone by editing out tautologous expressions. I have also left out
the definite article 'the' with its heavy thud. I plead guilty of
unwarranted intrusion. I am assuming you know Ezra Pound's beautiful
translations from the Chinese. Especially 'The River Merchant's Wife.' Birje
Dear Birje, I feel
privileged! Thank you so much. You have lifted my poem to another level and
taught me much. Some teachers are born and never lose their 'magic'. Yes,
I had met Pound's translations before I met Wang Wei as painter. CHINOISERIE,
the story in which I found him, is so good I've attached it. It was copied in
1967 with a fountain pen into an exercise book, from a tightly bound volume of
Ellery Queen's Magazine. The ink has faded and the paper is brittle so I
transcribed the text to the comp - and being me, illustrated it.
grazie a J B-P
A new-risen sun – unseen –
washes
the sky to moonstone softness;
silk-roll
river, rippling grey,
flashes
of silver and gold.
Ebony
stick-men in ebony boats ('stick' takes care of small)
cast
nets, she imagines.
Distant
cliffs, picked out in malachite,
bow
grotesquely to distant waves;
trees
carved in emerald, some in jade,
some
dressed in coral, be-jewel the mountain.
lingering
mist. is it smoke
from
minute red-tiled houses?
On
a rock quite near, a cormorant alights,
suspicious
bulge in his serpentine neck.
Under
filigreed bridge, the river rolls
on
to shimmer of sea.
Flakes-of-pearl
seagulls dive
for
invisible fish. A miniature hawk descends
in
slow spiral. ( a spiral is
concentric)
She
mused on Wang Wei, who had passed through a door
in
one of his landscapes, to Those Above.
A
door opens behind her, “Breakfast is served”
The
river scrolls on (endless takes care of
'forever.')
li upon
endless li.
[In Ezra Pound style, Birje amends my poem [highlighting done by me], as Pound did with Eliot’s The Wasteland. In fact Pound’s corrections transformed Eliot’s poem in a way that is a huge surprise to anyone who has been taught to respect Eliot as a great poet!
Our correspondence was on the day of composition; poem published as amended by Birje.]
© 3 October 2012 by Ruth Heredia
My dear teacher at university, and later my friend, Dr. J. Birjepatil, particularly liked my poems inspired by art, and the one inspired by performers of music [see above]. Two memories produced the Wang Wei poem: the description in Chinoiserie by Helen McCoy, of a long-lost scroll painted by Wang Wei, and a morning at the Mangalore Club which overlooks the Netravathi River, with Debussy's solo piano music playing on a cassette in a little player. That was in the mid-1970s.
IN CONCERT was written, though two years later, in response to hearing a live recording of Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor; and live broadcasts, heard 'live', from the Proms of 2010, of Paul Lewis playing all five of Beethoven's piano concertos.
Life's exigencies have dimmed the first amazed and enthralled sense of being in the room as the composers themselves played their music.... But the gratitude remains, a perfume from that far-off time.
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