Leaves lit green

Leaves lit green
swayed by a blue cool breeze
bright and round and
rustling applaud to
the morning

The sea, and do things change?

The tides ebb and flow, but the sea is all ways there. 

The sea has a beautiful, paradoxical character when it floats the imagery of change. Certainly, its depth, weight and vast horizon evoke powerful notions of constant and immutable existence. But the tides, the storms, the currents, push an equally powerful image of change and chaos. So the character of the seas is wrapped around the paradox of dynamic equilibrium. Constant change, unchanging constants. Part homeostatic, part stable state.

Like all good imagery, the connotations which the sea brings say more about us than anything else. I am always struck by how much our affairs change and how much they stay the same. Just today I learnt Margaret Atwood is on twitter.

I think the following two pieces demonstrate the point in a surprisingly coherent way. Both deal with change, constants, the sea and what it means about human nature. But, when looked at side by side, these two works really rub the kernel of the dynamic equilibrium paradox. Separated by medium and time, they jointly show how the changes in our activity are a function of our constant human nature.

That they do it with the sea seems even more appropriate.

Firstly a poem:

Cargoes - John Masefield

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Secondly an article from The Telegraph:

Container shipping: the secretive industry crucial to our existence

Rise

I rise, white eyes
blaze glazed dazed.

Horns ring out sheer
shrill trills. With each
breath flooding blooding
lungs like wings.

I rise, full flight across
the grey morning clouds
tinged with the eager light
of the sun.

Warmth

It wasn't mine, the warmth I felt,

It was their's,

Some hotel staff, tired in that good way

Gathered in the hotel bar,

And laughed together at their exploits,

Their labours. 

One was a young woman, at the cusp of things,

I suppose,

She waxed, a little hesitant, about the university she was going to,

Close to home, close to dad.

Another, a young man, adopted,

He mentioned,

Laughed loud, told his stories louder,

That brash, strident, smiling rise of effortful entrance.

I knew hims, versions of him,

I was him sometimes.

An elder woman was in their party

A whiskey, clinking irreverent in her hand,

Offering up warm laughs,

A little advice, an easy ear.

With a glow of pride, just hinting through,

 She told of her nieces and nephews who

had studied the best and worked the top.

And her own children? no mention.

As missing as the band on her right hand,

A different life perhaps.

One of them must have been a handy man,

Or some such, honest work.

He only spoke once, and simply,

With a curl and lilt in his voice.

A folding optimism that

Could only come from making

Things work

A couple joined them, guests.

"Newlyweds", It was bandied out, a little lurid.

They all smiled,  washed in that hope

we have for everyone.

Almost drunk, the couple chatted freely,

He worked with grease it sounded,

She as a p.a.

This weekend, the next drinks

All they could afford,

All they wanted.

I sat away from the fire,

Warmed, alone with a laptop,

A bank of numbers flashing across my screen.

Likelihoods, weren't matching up,

Parameter estimates were good though.

Voltage

Voltage

A shock shot and sheared the air
all blue, it severed through,
frazzled his blood,
dazzled his breath.

The charge had grown, suddenly,
rubbed and stroked
stoked in the erratic static
of wandering lives.

Hair raised and eyes dazed,
days splayed out,
Stretched taut by electric torque

Her shock shot and sheared the air
all blue, it severed through,
frazzled his blood,
dazzled his heart.

Let sleeping embers lie

Waiting to leave for my old home,
that warm and safe place between
the folds of embrace and easy smiles,
I looked up to clouds, now slipping cold and wet
down the rocks and bushes of Devil's peak.

Never before has the rankled hand of
obsession gripped around my thoughts
and steered me towards the fire.

That burning heat
enticing, enflamed with the promises
of a love lost.

In those curls and curves
of flame I see flashing
ecstasy, the writhing
red of joy

A spatter of rain brings me back,
It is still dark green and grey outside.
let sleeping embers lie.

Hyena

John Burnside is one of my favourite poets. He creates a measured furiosity,  an even psychosis to his poems which is both entrancing and discordant. His works are often steeped in literary and artistic reference, with the influence and interpretative inspiration forming part of his authentic expression and artistic response.

I recently bought his award winning anthology "Black Cat Bone" and came across his gripping poem "Hyena".

Hyena

Like something out
of Brueghel, maned in white
and hungry

like the dark, the bat

ears pricked, the face

a grey

velour, more cat

than dog, less

caracal

than fanalouc

or civet -

here is the patron beast

of all

who love the night:

waking at dusk

to anatomy's blunt hosanna,

the carrion daylight

broken

then picked to the bone

while the radio dance-band fades

to a slow alleluia,

and far at the back

of the mind, the perpetual

frenzy; eye-teeth

and muzzle

coated with blood

with matter,

as every mouth 

digs in,

for fair, or foul,

a giggle in the bushes,

then a shudder.

__

I found a painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder (there are four Dutch painters by the name Brueghel) which depicts a host of wild animals; "Earth Or The Earthly Paradise". It includes what looks like a hyena in the bottom left corner. 

Its interesting to note the elements of a dark psychological edge in the close-up around the Hyena. Don't the flowers remind you a bit of Van Gough? Also note the teeth, the intent of the gaze.

Something I found particularly evocative as a counterpoint to what Burnside and Brueghel have to say about Hyenas are the series of photographs by Pieter Hugo. Hugo is South African photographer who did a series “The Hyena & Other Men”. The series follows a group of Nigerians who have Hyenas and Baboons as pets. In these almost surreal and evocative photos he captures these men and their hyenas in a background of urban decay and dust. Well worth a look:

http://www.emptykingdom.com/featured/pieter-hugo-the-hyena-other-men/

For some more Burnside read the article form The Gaurdian where he writes about some of the inspiration for the poem

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/20/author-author-john-burnside

This is a live recording of a recital of his own poems, of which "Hyena" is one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2012/jan/16/ts-eliot-prize-john-burnside-podcast