Number 310: Miyazawa Kenji "Be Not Defeated by the Rain"

Be not Defeated by the Rain

Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better.
Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer.

Be strong in body. Unfettered by desire. Not enticed to anger. Cultivate a quiet joy.
Count yourself last in everything. Put others before you.
Watch well and listen closely. Hold the learned lessons dear.

A thatch-roof house, in a meadow, nestled in a pine grove's shade.

A handful of rice, some miso, and a few vegetables to suffice for the day.

If, to the East, a child lies sick: Go forth and nurse him to health.
If, to the West, an old lady stands exhausted: Go forth, and relieve her of burden.
If, to the South, a man lies dying: Go forth with words of courage to dispel his fear.
If, to the North, an argument or fight ensues:
Go forth and beg them stop such a waste of effort and of spirit.

In times of drought, shed tears of sympathy.
In summers cold, walk in concern and empathy.

Stand aloof of the unknowing masses:
Better dismissed as useless than flattered as a "Great Man".

This is my goal, the person I strive to become.

--by Kenji Miyazawa
Translated by David Sulz

Hap Notes: Miyazawa Kenji(1896-1933) –(Miyazawa is the family name which is often spoken first in Japan. Just like in China where film star Chow Yung Fat's name in America would be Yung Fat Chow. Chow is the family name)– was born to a well-to-do family in Hanamaki City in Japan. He studied agriculture in college and became interested in writing when he lived in Tokyo. He returned to the farming area where he was born and raised where he taught school, saved up his money and published his own poetry and collections of children's stories.

While his books were not particularly big sellers in his lifetime, he has come to be one of the most beloved Children's Literature authors of all time in Japan. If you are an anime fan you may know many of works. The anime films based on Miyazawa's stories include Night on the Galactic Railroad, The Acorns and the Wildcat, Matasaburo the Wind Imp, The Restaurant of Many Orders, The Biography of Budori Gusko, Kenji's Trunk, The Twin Stars, The Cat's Office, The Coat of a Glacier Mouse and the biographical Kenji's Spring.

Miyazawa was deeply interested in the natural world and was an authority in many of the sciences including biology geology and botany. He even learned Esperanto and translated his book into the "world language." He was an ardent believer in the value of all creatures, eschewed his family's business and inheritance and was integral in helping farmers from his local area understand newer agricultural methods. He was a staunch vegetarian and Buddhist and was one of those people who seem to live on the nourishment one gets from a good walk in the forest and healthy gulps of fresh air.

Today's poem, ("Ame ni mo makezu" in Japanese) used to be (and still may be) a poem all Japanese school children were required to memorize and speak in unison. It is said to be the most revered poem of the 20th century in Japan. It has many translations, so look around the web for your favorite one. I think this one does it justice. It is said this poem was one of the last he wrote and was found on his desk after his death from pneumonia at the young age of 37.

You can find more Kenji Miyazawa here: www.kenji-world.net/english/

Number 309: George Gordon, Lord Byron excerpt from "Childe Harold"

Excerpt from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.-

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since: their shores obey
The stranger, slave or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou,
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving; boundless, endless and sublime-
The image of eternity-the throne
Of the invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, ocean! And my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane - as I do here.

--- George Gordon, Lord Byron

Hap Notes: Well, to be honest, I was taking a week off of the blog for Thanksgiving and yesterday I was watching Turner Classic Movies (a constant at my house) and I saw Virginia Mayo in "The Girl From Jones Beach."

In the movie, Mayo plays a teacher in the film and Ronald Reagan plays a photographer/ad man. Reagan wants Mayo to pose for a fashion shoot (I'm truncating the plot) so he enrolls as a Czech foreign student in Mayo's American Citizenship class. Well, of course, Reagan asks her out (he's a handsome devil but his Czech accent is pretty horrible), snippets of Shakespeare quotes fly pretty thick and fast and as they are sitting on Jones Beach in the evening, Mayo quotes today's poem. As she recited it I thought,"Hey! Why haven't I ever used this poem before?" Answer: because it is an excerpt (which I tend to shy away from since it's not the entire poem) from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." What she says is "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean roll" and one supposes that the audience at the time (1949) knew what poem she was quoting... maybe.

Childe Harold is a long poem which is contained in four cantos. The whole poem is pretty wonderful in parts and you can read it here: www.archive.org/details/childeharoldspil05131gut
The poem gave rise to that mythic guy that all women want – that man who is handsome, dashing, sensitive, resourceful and a bit of a rebel. You know – fiction. Byron was worried about publishing it because he felt it was too autobiographical and this tells you worlds about Byron, his ego and his real life heroics.

Today's excerpt is particularly stirring. The ocean, the poet says, yields up both beauty and power. Byron compares the ocean to a beast and the almighty and tells us that man's might is a paltry thing when compared to the huge and powerful sea and gives us numerous stirring examples.

Here is where we have talked about Byron before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-9-george-gordon-lord-byron.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/05/number-159-george-gordon-lord-byron-so.html

(The picture in the masthead today is Virginia Mayo, just in case you did not recognize her.)

Number 308: Anonymous "Thank God For Dirty Dishes"

Thank God For Dirty Dishes

Thank God for dirty dishes

They have a tale to tell

While other folks go hungry

We’re eating very well.

With home and health and happiness

We shouldn’t want to fuss

For by this stack of evidence

God’s been very good to us.

-- Anonymous

Hap Notes: Thought this was apropos for the day. For years I thought my Grandpa, Frank Mansfield, wrote this. He said he did. He could recite it and did at almost every meal. He even had it written down in his own beautiful cursive hand-writing on a piece of paper, framed and hung by the sink. I truly believed he wrote the poem until I ran into a woman from Peoria, IL (just across the river from Pekin, where I was born) who claimed that HER grandfather wrote the poem. Hmmm. Must be something about that area that breeds tale-tellers.

My grandpa also told me he was married to a Navajo princess (he owned a gas station in New Mexico at one time) and that a blanket I often napped with was a gift from her people. My grandma responded to this with, "Franklin Mansfield! You know I crocheted that blanket!"

He also told me that he hated coconut because of his days as a hobo. According to him, he and a bunch of his hobo companions, once raided a box car full of coconuts while the train was stationed close to a hobo junction. He said they all ate so much coconut he couldn't look at the stuff without getting sick. I still believe that one.

I am so very full of thankfulness today that I feel like Millay in yesterday's poem. One of the many reason I am thankful is due your kind attention to this blog. So, many many thanks to you.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

By the way, another fine poem to consider today is Charles Causley's "Timothy Winters" which we have already covered here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-191-another-charles-causley.html

Number 307: Edna St. Vincent Millay "God's World"

God's World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hap Notes: There is nothing to compare with the awe-struck terrifying feeling of being in love with the universe and all that reside within it. Millay is not just talking about thinking things are beautiful. She is talking about finding a religious ecstasy in the common uncommon gorgeousness of the world. She almost seems to be channeling Gerard Manly Hopkins here, doesn't she?

Millay swoons over her desire to be one with the universe like a Romantic poet in this poem. (Almost like Shelley's "Serenade" of yesterday.)She is swept away by the grandeur of creation, she is faint with the magnificence of nature.

I hope you, also, experience or have experienced this for yourself. There is no feeling that is more wonderfully scary and nothing will ever seem as important again compared to this universal magic.

Here is where we have talked about Millay before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-11-edna-st-vincent-millay.html

The masthead is a painting, "Bungalow Evening", by Kathleen Eaton, of whom I am an unbridled admirer. Here is her website: eatonart.com/ke/ke-intro-frm.html

Number 306: Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Indian Serenade"

The Indian Serenade

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream—
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The Nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;—
As I must on thine,
Oh, belovèd as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;—
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hap Notes: Of course this is a poem of a spellbound captive of love and sex. Some speculate that the narrator is a woman, some argue that it is a man. There are no particularly direct hints here– people fainted all the time in Shelley's era, both man and woman, must've been all the mercury in the water or something. The singing Nightingale is male, obviously. I tend to favor that the narrator of the poem is a male.

The Champack is a fragrant small tree of India and a relative of the Magnolia. The Champack is often called the white jade orchid or the "Joy" tree because the world famous perfume Joy is made from the flowers. It is said that Joy smells exactly like Champack the way that Chanel #5 is reputed to smell exactly like it's botanical source, Ylang-Ylang. Joy used to be called the most expensive perfume in the world and Chanel #5 is the best selling perfume of all time.

In point of fact there is no creature within a few feet of the Champack that does not get inebriated with the scent. Insects of all kinds career drunkenly around its flowers, banging into each other and falling to the ground. Humans are known to swoon around its intoxicating scent.

My take on this poem is that the narrator could be an Indian Mayfly– besotted with the fragrance of the tree, it searches wildly and passionately for a mate before it dies. And Shelley liked insects, you know. He once said in a letter to a friend, "I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity."

And you know, Shelley mentions 22 different kinds of insects in his works. The worm and the bee get the most references. Okay, it's not likely that this poem is actually about insects but, still, it could happen.

Those familiar with the paintings of Georgia O'Keefe will immediately recognize the sexuality in the flower of the Champack, as did Shelley, I am sure.

The masthead is a picture of the Champack. And here's a quote of Shelley's from his prose work, In Defense of Poetry, that is worth considering, "“A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”

Here is where we have talked about Shelley before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-48-percy-bysshe-shelley.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/numbers-59-and-60-keat-shelley-hunt.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-210-percy-bysshe-shelley-cloud.html

Number 305: Charles Causley " My Mother Saw A Dancing Bear"

My Mother Saw a Dancing Bear

My mother saw a dancing bear
By the schoolyard, a day in June.
The keeper stood with chain and bar
And whistle-pipe, and played a tune.

And bruin lifted up its head
And lifted up its dusty feet,
And all the children laughed to see
It caper in the summer heat.

They watched as for the Queen it died.
They watched it march. They watched it halt.
They heard the keeper as he cried,
`Now, roly-poly! Somersault!'

And then, my mother said, there came
The keeper with a begging-cup,
The bear with burning coat of fur,
Shaming the laughter to a stop.

They paid a penny for the dance,
But what they saw was not the show;
Only, in bruin's aching eyes,
Far-distant forests, and the snow.

-- Charles Causely

Hap Notes: Performing bears used to be a regular part of entertainment all throughout Europe in the 13th century. The place they were most common was India. A dancing bear does not actually dance, by the way (although who knows, they may do it in the wild...).

Usually the "dancing bear's" nose is pierced, a ring is put through it and a metal muzzle is put on the bear. The "dance" comes from the trainer's stick which is attached to the ring. You'll be happy to know that this practice has ceased most everywhere. Here is a news report talking about the release of the last of the dancing bears in India: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8421867.stm

I know the "dancing bear" is a sad and stupid entertainment but no more so than cock-fighting or dog-fighting which still takes place in America.

Causley's mother and her schoolmates have a typical reaction– first, delight in seeing a bear, then, sadness at seeing how out of place it was, then shame for their part in the process.

Captain Kangaroo used to have a character named "Dancing Bear" but I believe all of us knew it was a person in an exaggerated, almost stuffed animal-like costume.

Here is where we have talked about Causley before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-190-charles-causley-green-man-in.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-191-another-charles-causley.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-213-charles-causley-eden-rock.html

Number 304: Billy Collins "Forgetfulness"

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

-- Billy Collins

Hap Notes: Again, this deceptively casual, conversational Collins poem holds a wealth of depth. On the surface, the poet is talking about the loss of memory, particularly as one ages. One can block things in the memory that are painful or traumatic but this poem deals with regular memory loss, which is usually associated with aging.

The description of memories retiring to a warm climate is amusing. It reminds one of older parents who retire in Florida or Arizona. Even more telling is the thought that one may often wish to be somewhere that has no phones, no stress. It's a picture of frustration for those trying to contact the phoneless residents, though. Note the use of the words "harbor" and "fishing village." The poet says he was the harbor for the memories, now it's somewhere remote.

The nine muses and the quadratic equation are somewhat obscure to most folks who don't spend time reading Greek poetry and literature or working on univariate polynomial equations (equations that have one variable with an infinite length as opposed to a linear equation which forms a straight line. That's enough math for me, now, otherwise I'll have to go lie down for a while until my brain stops smoking.) Suffice it to say that the quadratic equation is not a straight line- a lot of different variations exist. It is complex.

The muses inspire music, literature, history, dance, science and art. What would it mean to "kiss the names goodbye"?

It's amazing to count the things you had to know at one time, a state flower or the capitals of countries or information about your relatives and find that you no longer remember them. Some call much of this "useless information," a term I find particularly irritating. Most people don't use a hammer every day, some may have used one only a few times, some not at all – this does not make knowing what a hammer is to be useless information does it?

The spleen is an interesting organ to use for several reasons. First off, it stores blood for emergencies in the body. Baudelaire used the term "splenetique" to mean melancholy. However in English it usually refers to anger, as in "to vent one's spleen." In the four humours ( the Greek and Roman classification of the fluids of the body corresponding to illness and temper) the spleen is "Black Bile" or melancholy and crabby. [The other ones? Yellow Bile (choleric/bad tempered), Blood (sanguine/hopeful, happy and brave, Phlegm (unperturbed and unemotional. This is not to be confused with the four temperaments which are somewhat similar.]

Ah, now we get to the dark mythological river that starts with "L" which you should know from this blog is the river Lethe. Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology (breaking off briefly to point out there's a lot of Greco-Roman stuff in this poem, yes?) which flowed through the underworld. Virgil said that the dead may not be reincarnated until they have had a drink from the river Lethe which would erase all their memories. [The underworld has five rivers: Lethe (forgetfulness), Styx (hate), Kokytos (lamentation), Akheron (sorrow) and Phlegethon (fire). Always good to store this for future memory- until the forgetfulness sets in...]

In fact, Lethe is the name of the Greek spirit of oblivion and forgetfulness.

See how this Collins poem has a good deal of meaning on many surfaces?

Just a bit more fuel for thought– remember how people always say, "It's like riding a bicycle –you never forget"? And what would happen to one who forgot how to swim? How many times have you gone to look some fact up because you forgot it? Why is it so important that you find it again? What is the fear/irritation in this?

What does it mean when the moon reminds you of a love poem-–so familiar that you memorized it –but one that you cannot recall now? (There's a melancholy to this, too, yes?)

If all of this information has not made it clear– this poem is about the approach of death which follows all the loss of memories. Collins does not hit us over the head with it, but the melancholy one feels for one's own demise is solidly in there amidst the good-natured joking.

Here's where we have talked about Collins before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-29-billy-collins-i-chop-some.html

The masthead today is Pollock's "Autumn Rythym" because I just didn't want to forget to use it.