PAVANE, and RESPONSE; IN CONCERT; WANG WEI REVISITED

 

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?

 © 21 May 2011 by Ruth Heredia

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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