poetry survival guide - #3

William Stafford

Sometimes

When they criticize you how do you
hold your wings? I hold mine out
and down, descend a little, then more.
Cool air comes. Nobody cares how low
I descend, and the way my eyes close
makes me disappear. They have their sky again.

So thin a life I have, scribbling dust
when I turn, trailing as if to follow
something inside the earth, something beyond
this place. If I accept what comes,
another sky is there. My serious face
bends to the ground, the dust, the lowered wings.


*


Izumi Shikibu

"Should I leave..."

On the night of the sixth, the sound of the night monk's
voice reciting the Sutras mingled with the sound of
incessant rain, and truly this seemed to be a world of
dreams...

Should I leave this burning house
of ceaseless thought
and taste the pure rain's
single truth
falling upon skin?

            (Trans. Jane Hirshfield)

*

Stafford's concern in this piece is to allow the writer's wild nature coming out of the writer: “scribbling dust / when I turn.” The beautiful part for me is “trailing as if to follow / something inside the earth, something beyond / this place.” An opening out is a common occurrence in a Stafford poem. Accepting what comes – and that's Stafford absolutely in tune with the self's centered place – allows the individual to find another sky. There are no limits.

*

Shikibu, while not exactly in contrast, certainly offers a different approach. In her work the writer brings in the wilderness to “taste the pure rain's / single truth / falling upon skin.” I like her use of taste, connecting notions of speech with the nature of life.

With the poem's introductory note, Shikibu creates a soundtrack from the natural world, the blended sounds of “incessant rain” and the monk's voice, for her own poem. She questions if she should leave her own solitude, her own musings, allowing the universe – allowing the poetry – to come in. A powerful and compressed example of how poetry comes to the poet.