Nightbird nightsun nighttown

BLOOM

I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will then tomorrow as now was be past yester.

VIRAG

(Prompts into his ear in a pig's whisper.) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal verve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally.) They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. (He coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand.) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz!

Once again, Happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

Do you see that straw? That's a straw.

– There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he is sitting there The man that got away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best throw, citizen?

– Na bacleis, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow.

– Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better.

– Is that really a fact? says Alf.

– Yes, says Bloom. That's well known. Do you not know that?

So off they started about Irish sport and shoneen games the like of the lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all of that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady.

A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of Brian O'Ciarnain's in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under the auspices of Sluagh na h-Eireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The venerable president of this noble order was in the chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient panceltic forefathers. . . .

Once again, happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

Poem of the Week 2024/52

 On Christmas

With footstep slow, in furry pall yclad,

    His brows enwreathed with holly never-sear,

    Old Christmas comes, to close the waned year;

    And ay the shepherd's heart to make right glad;

Who, when his teeming flocks are homeward had,

    To blazing hearth repairs, and nut-brown beer,

    And views, well-pleased, the ruddy prattlers dear

    Hug the gray mongrel; meanwhile maid and lad

Squabble for roasted crabs. – Thee, Sire, we hail,

    Whether thine aged limbs thou dost enshroud,

    In vest of snowy white, and hoary veil,

Or wrap'st thy visage in a sable cloud;

    Thee we proclaim with mirth and cheer, nor fail

    To greet thee well with many a carol loud.

– John Codrington Bamfylde

This sonnet from 1778 comes by its antiquated language honestly. as well as its rustic presentation of Christmas, so different from the glittery festival we are maybe overly familiar with today: the holiday was often under Protestant suspicion, as being too pagan or too Popish; this poem dates from before the iconography of Santa Claus/Father Christmas was set, before the German Prince Albert popularized the Christmas tree in England, before Charles Dickens helped make the holiday a signal time of festive cheer, before Christmas became the linchpin of the capitalist year.

It does mark the closing out of one year, in the rural dead-time of winter; here, as so often with months, seasons, or holidays, the day is personified, as Old Christmas, & he does seem old, with his slow footsteps, wearing against the cold a furry pall (meaning a cloak or cloth covering, but the word is often associated with hearses & tombs, as well as with a feeling of gloom, or something that is losing its appeal), but also with evergreen (never-sear, that is, never browned) holly on his brow: an allegorical figure, & not just another old man suffering from the cold.

The close of the year is a time when farm-work is as much in abeyance as it's ever going to be, which is a good reason for the shepherd, his wandering sheep gathered safely home, to be glad. He has his roaring fire & his nut-brown ale (a type of brown ale made in northern England). One similarity with our current Christmas is that this is a family holiday; he watches his ruddy prattlers, that is, his children. Ruddy presumably because they are vigorous & healthy, prattlers because they are still young enough to speak in a childish, maybe even babyish, way. There is a young couple, or couple-to-be, flirting over roasted crabapples (the usual meaning of crab in early modern English). No sign of the shepherd's wife, who is possibly off somewhere keeping the household running, but otherwise a fun & festive holiday scene, though one devoid of our tinsel & the piles of presents.

The closing sestet hails Christmastime, vowing to greet it always with merriment & singing, no matter how it appears: in snowy white and hoary [frosty] veil, something like the White Christmas of our recurrent fantasies, even here in California, or wrapped in a dark cloud, preventing us from seeing his features. There's uncertainty here, as there always is about the future, but also a determination to greet whatever it is in an open spirit: not a bad resolution to keep, at any time of year.

I took this poem from A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic-Era Revival, edited by Paula R Feldman and Daniel Robinson.

humid nightblue fruit

    What did each do at the door of egress?

    Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his head.

    For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?

    For a cat.

    

     What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?

    The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

    With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his companion of various constellations?

    Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipent lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Major) to lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving from immeasurably, remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.

    Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?

    Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached.

Once again, Happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

what we ask ourselves in childhood

 . . . He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like John O'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as teh coat of arms he taodied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight, returning from Shottery and from her arms.

Once again, happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

His Appropriate Sun

 VIRAG

(Prompts into his ear in a pig's whisper.) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal verve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally.) They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. (He coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand.) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz!

BLOOM

Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I . . . 

VIRAG

(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key.) Splendid! Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles.) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! (He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the letters which he claws.) Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. I'm the best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. (He wags head with cackling raillery.) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular.

& once again, happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

in its own small way

 Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene – the homecoming to the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones –a rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece, by the way, of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way? Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grass widow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes me dead. Rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Boo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, post mortem child. With a high ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband, W. B. Murphy.

The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one of the jarvies with the request:

– You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you, do you?

And once again, happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

Your God was a Jew

Off with you, says Martin to the jarvey.

The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop, the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of their foam: and the bark clave the waves.

But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the citizen getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the dropsy and he cursing the curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish, spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him.

– Let me alone, says he.

And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he bawls out of him:

– Three cheers for Israel!

Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for Christ' sake and don't be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus, there's always some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob, it'd turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would.

And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and Alf and Joe at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a jew, jew, jew and a slut shouts out of her:

– Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!

And says he:

– Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.

– He had no father, says Martin. That'll do now. Drive ahead.

– Whose God? says the citizen.

– Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me.

Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.

– By Jesus, says he, I'll  brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here.

– Stop! Stop! says Joe.

Once again, a very happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

Hungry man is an angry man

His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink gripped his trembling breath : pungent meatjuice, slop of greens. See the animals feed.

Men, men, men.

Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round him shoveled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate : halfmasticated gristle: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chomp from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it all however.

– Roast beef and cabbage.

– One stew.

Smells of men. His gorge rose. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarette smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment.

Couldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork, to eat all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate, man! Get out of this.

Once more a very happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

Whan That Aprille Day 2019

A lyric for the annual celebration of ancient, archaic, and "dead" languages (the Middle English is in roman type and my "translation" is interleaved in italics):

I have a young suster
I have a young sister
Fer beyonden the see;
Far beyond the sea;
Many be the drowries
Many are the love-tokens
That she sente me.
That she sent me.

She sente me the cherye
She sent me a cherry
Withouten ony ston,
Without any stone (pit),
And so she ded the dove
And so she did the dove
Withouten ony bon.
Without any bone.

Sche sente me the brer
She sent me a briar
Withouten ony rinde;
Without any bark;
Sche bad me love my lemman
She bade me love my sweetheart
Withoute longing.
Without longing.

How shuld ony cherye
How could any cherry
Be withoute ston?
Be without a stone (pit)?
And how shuld ony dove
How could any dove
Ben withoute bon?
Be without bones?

How shuld ony brer
How could any briar
Ben withoute rinde?
Be without bark?
How shuld I love min lemman
How could I love my sweetheart
Without longing?
Without longing?

Whan the cherye was a flour,
When the cherry was a flower,
Than hadde it non ston;
Then had it no stone (pit);
Whan the dove was an ey,
When the dove was an egg,
Than hadde it non bon.
Then had it no bones.

Whan the brer was onbred,
When the briar was a sprout,
Than hadde it non rind;
Then had it no bark;
Whan the maiden hath that she loveth,
When the maiden has what she loves,
She is without longing.
She is without longing.

I was taught a version of this riddle song back when schoolchildren had music lessons; it's interesting to see how long it's been around in a very similar form – our fruit was also a cherry (still referred to as one of the stone fruits, that is, fruit with a pit or kernel in the center), but I think the boneless bird in our version was a chicken (I'm sure some clever or misguided child would these days offer "chicken tenders" as an answer). In the song I learned, it was the lover who was asking us the riddles; here it is, perhaps oddly, the lover's sister, who is for some reason far beyond the sea – is she at home, or is he? Is he a soldier, a pilgrim, a knight? Is she a pilgrim? I think we can rule out "nun in a convent" though . . . maybe not; after all, as Chaucer's Prioress tells us, Amor Vincit Omnia, or Love Conquers All. The mysterious love-tokens are explained, but not why this young woman is sending them to her brother; perhaps the clue is in the final lines: When the maiden hath that she loveth, / She is without longing: in other words, your sweetheart also wants you, so go ahead and . . . you know. In the springtime tradition of carpe diem poems, grab the cherry blossom before it falls, the dove (the traditional symbol of faithful love) before it hatches and flies away, the briar before it gets large and thorny, and the lover while he or she is willing.

I'm pretty pleased that I also worked two Latin tags into this! I took this lyric from the Norton Critical Edition of Middle English Lyrics, edited by Richard L Hoffman and Maxwell S Luria. The translation they give for rind is unborn, but this version offers bark, which I think makes more sense.

always the same, year after year

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silvered powdered olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still alive in Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in Citron's basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy sweet, wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high prices too Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them in soiled dungarees. There's whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like that Norwegian captain's. Wonder if I'll meet him today. Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.

A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far.

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's clutching a noggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.

Desolation.

And a very happy Bloomsday once again to my mountain flowers

Whan That Aprille Day 2018

Since Whan That Aprille Day coincides with Easter this year, here is a tender Middle English religious poem in honor of both days. It seems like the sort of simple lyric you would teach a child as a prayer. In addition to the repetitions of sweet, Jesus is addressed throughout with the intimate thou/thee, creating a kindly sense of deep and personal devotion. There is a lovely pun on springe at the end, meaning grow but also suggesting the season when the earth renews itself.

I've interleaved a crib in italics. I found this poem in the Norton Critical Edition of Middle English Lyrics, edited by Maxwell S. Luria and Richard L. Hoffman. I've used their annotations as well as the glossary in the Penguin Classics edition of The Canterbury Tales.

Previous entries for Whan That Aprille Day can be found here, here, here, and also here.

Swete Jhesu, king of blisse,
Sweet Jesus, king of bliss,
Min herte love, min herte lisse,
My heart's love, my heart's joy,
Thou art swete, mid iwisse:
You are indeed sweet:
Wo is him that thee shall misse.
Woe to him who shall fail to find you.

Swete Jhesu, min herte light,
Sweet Jesus, my heart's light,
Thou art day withouten night.
You are day without a night.
Thou geve me strengthe and eke might
You give me strength and also the power
For to lovien thee all right.
To love you completely.

Swete Jhesu, my soule bote,
Sweet Jesus, my soul's remedy,
In min herte thou sette a rote
In my heart you plant a root
Of thy love that is so swote,
Of your love that is so sweet,
And wite it that it springe mote.
And guide it that it might grow.

detail of The Resurrection by an unknown artist active in Aragon in the first half of the fifteenth century, at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco

The chap in the macintosh is thirteen

     Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I'd like to know? Now, I'd give a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.

                           O poor Robinson Crusoe,
                           How could you possibly do so?

     Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding let it down that way. Ay but they might object to be buried out of another fellow's. They're so particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The Irishman's house is his coffin. Embalming in catacombs, mummies, the same idea.

     Mr. Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel, that I'll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.

And once again a very happy Bloomsday to all my mountain flowers.

a poem for #WhanthatAprilleDay17

The first day of April is Whan That Aprille Day, a day celebrating "alle langages that are yclept ‘old,’ or ‘middel,’ or ‘auncient,’ or ‘archaic,’ or, alas, even ‘dead’" in the words of the day's founder, Geoffrey Chaucer Himself. Ignore all other holidays alleged to take place on this day. You may find the 2014 poem here, which has some internal linkage to other Middle English posts; check here for 2015, and here for 2016. I've posted Middle English poems a few other times; you can click the poesy label and read through all the poems, and honestly there are worse ways you could be spending your time.

In a further tradition, the Google machine is apparently unable to cope with the sophisticated typesetting I had in mind, in which the lines of the original Middle English, set in green and roman, are interleaved with a crib, set in black and italic. Only the color thing didn't quite work out and my attempts to fix it disappear no matter how many times I save, so: apologies for the confusion, but the lines in italic are my version of the lines above in roman. If any scholar wishes to dispute my interpretation, I will accept the rebuke gratefully and gracefully, as a true student should.

When the nightegale singes,
When the nightingale sings,
The wodes waxen grene:
The woods grow green:
Lef and grass and blosme springes
Leaf and grass and blossom spring
In Averil, I wene,
In April, as I expect,
And love is to min herte gon
And love goes to my heart
With one spere so kene:
With a sharp spear:
Night and day my blod it drinkes;
Night and day it drinks my blood;
Min herte deth me tene.
My heart grieves me so.

Ich have loved all this yer
I have loved all this year
That I may love namore;
So much that I can't love any more;
Ich have siked mony sik,
I have sighed many sighs,
Lemmon, for thin ore.
Sweetheart [leman], for your favors.
Me nis love never the ner,
But love has not come any nearer,
And that me reweth sore.
Which grieves me sorely.
Swete lemmon, thench on me:
Sweet sweetheart, think on me:
Ich have loved thee yore.
I have loved you for so long.

Swete lemmon, I preye thee
Sweet lover, I beg you
Of love one speche.
For one word of love.
Whil I live in world so wide
While I live in this big old world
Other nulle I seche.
I will seek no other but you.
With thy love, my swete leof,
With your love, my sweetest love,
My bliss thou mightest eche:
You would increase my happiness:
A swete cos of thy mouth
A sweet kiss from your mouth
Mighte be my leche.
Would be my doctor [leech, meaning doctor, as applying leeches was a frequent medical maneuver]

Swete lemmon, I preye thee
My beloved, I beg you
Of a love-bene;
For this lover's boon:
If thou me lovest, as men says,
If you love me, as men say,
Lemmon, as I wene,
Darling, then I expect,
And if it thy wille be,
And if you desire it,
Thou loke that it be sene.
That you shall see that it happens.
So muchel I thenke upon thee
I think about you so much
That all I waxe grene.
That my whole self grows green.

Bitwene Lincolne and Lindeseye,
Between Lincoln and Lindsey,
Norhamptoun and Lounde,
Northhampton and Lound,
Ne wot I non so fair a may
I do not know of so fair a maiden
As I go fore ibounde.
As the one I am bound to.
Swete lemmon, I preye thee
Sweet sweetheart, I beg you
Thou lovie me a stounde.
To love me, at least for a moment.
     I wole mone my song
     I will moan my song
     On wham that it is on ilong.
     To the one who inspired it.

Anonymous, Harley 2253

The speaker goes right from the lovely springtime renewal of the natural world into his (or her; I don't want to rule out that possibility) world of love-pain, though he (or she – from here on I'll stick with the masculine adjective but feel free to supply any other one you want) cleverly brings the waxe grene back in the end, this time in reference to his whole self: does this mean that thinking about love renews him? or that it makes him jealous (was green already the color of envy at this time?)? or sick, with the greenish tinge of anemia, hence the term green-sickness? I am utterly charmed by the declaration that the beloved is the fairest maiden between Lincoln and Lindsey, Northhampton and Lound – so much more discreet, sensible, and provable than proclamations about your beloved being peerless in the world.

This poem is from the Harley Lyrics, a manuscript now in the British Library and dating from the middle of the fourteenth century containing poems in Middle English, Middle French, and Latin. You may read more about it here, and you may see some pages of the manuscript here.

The Middle English text is taken from Middle English Lyrics: A Norton Anthology, selected and edited by Maxwell S. Luria and Richard L. Hoffman.

Friday photo 2017/1

downtown San Leandro, California, December 2016

Refuge of sinners (Jacky! Tommy!)

Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. Ora pro nobis. Well has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can never be lost or cast away: and fitly is she too a haven of refuge for the afflicted because of the seven dolours which transpierced her own heart. Gerty could picture the whole scene in the church, the stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue banners of the blessed Virgin's sodality and Father Conroy was helping Canon O'Hanlon at the altar, carrying things in and out with his eyes cast down. He looked almost a saint and his confessionbox was so quiet and clean and dark and his hands were just like white wax and if ever she became a Dominican nun in their white habit perhaps he might come to the convent for the novena of Saint Dominic. He told her that time when she told him about that in confession crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could see, not to be troubled because that was only the voice of nature and we were all subject to nature's laws, he said, in this life and that that was no sin because that came from the nature of woman instituted by God, he said, and that Our Blessed Lady herself said to the archangel Gabriel be it done unto me according to Thy Word. He was so kind and holy and often and often she thought and thought could she work a ruched teacosy with embroidered floral design for him as a present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the mantelpiece white and gold with a canary bird that came out of a little house to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers for the forty hours' adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a present to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or some place.

The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Jacky threw the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them a good hiding for themselves to keep them in their places, the both of them. And Cissy and Edy shouted after them to come back because they were afraid the tide might come in on them and be drowned.

– Jacky! Tommy!

Once again, a very happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

Poem of the Week bonus: #whanthataprilleday16

Welcome to the third annual Whan That Aprille Day, a celebration of all languages called Middle, Old, Ancient, Archaic, or even Dead. Go here to read a full statement on the celebration by the founder of the feast, the Internet's own Geoffrey Chaucer. You know it's official because the day has its own hashtag: #WhanthatAprilleday16.

You may go here to read the 2014 entry, here to read the 2015 entry, and I'm surprised to realize this is the first year I've used an excerpt from Chaucer (though he has been featured twice before in Poem of the Week; go here to read an excerpt from The Second Nun's Prologue and here for the opening of The Canterbury Tales; the latter entry also has a link to a Middle English pronunciation guide.)

This is an excerpt from the Nun's Priest's tale in The Canterbury Tales. He starts with a description of the small farm of a poor widow (the she of the first line of the excerpt), to which the richly jewel-like appearance of her glamorous rooster provides an ironic contrast. This charming and gently satirical beast fable has always been one of the most popular of the variegated Tales of Canterbury. In an amusing touch in this excerpt, you'll note that the justifiably smug rooster among his harem of hens displays his swete acord by singing a song about how his love has gone away. (Perhaps the rooster surrounded by his hens is a gently self-mocking image by the Nun's Priest himself?)

I've put a crib in italic black text below each of the Middle English lines.* As for the lines about the celestial equator, I have to admit that, in a shameful and unscholarly way, when it comes to technical descriptions of medieval science I am sometimes content with comprehension that is "vague but close enough". The basic sense is that the rooster knew exactly when it was the moment to crow, more precisely than any timepiece. Speaking of timepieces, they were fairly new and expensive technology when Chaucer wrote these lines – an abbey clock-tower might be the only clock for miles around.

The text I used is the Penguin Classics edition of The Canterbury Tales (which they call, rather oddly, an "original spelling" edition), edited by Jill Mann, whose notes bravely explain all about the celestial equator as well as medieval clocks.

* For some reason the Google Machine is unable to handle the text colors I've now carefully put in at least three times; either that, or it's playing an April Fool's joke on me. Apologies for the way this looks but I think it's clear which lines are Middle English and which are not.

The rooster Chauntecleer & his beloved Pertelote

. . . 
A yeerd she hadde, enclosed al aboute
She had a yard, enclosed all around
With stikkes, and a drye dich withoute,
With stakes, and a dry ditch around it,
In which she hadde a cok heet Chauntecleer.
In which she had a cock named Chauntecleer;
In al the land, of crowing nas his peer;
In all the land, he had no peer for crowing;
His vois was murier than the mirye orgon
His voice was merrier [happier, sweeter] than the merry organ [music]
On masse-days that in the chirche gon.
That went on in the church during a feast-day.
Wel sikerer was his crowing in his logge
More certain [reliable] was his crowing in his coop
Than is a clokke or an abbey orlogge.
Than is a clock or an abbey clock-tower.
By nature he knew ech ascencioun
By nature [instinctively] he knew each ascension
Of th'equinoxial in thilke toun;
Of the celestial equator in that town;
For whan degrees fiftene were ascended,
For when fifteen degrees were ascended,
Thanne krew he, that it mighte nat ben amended.
Then he knew [to crow], so that it could not be improved upon.
His comb was redder than the fin coral,
His comb was redder than the finest coral,
And batailled as it were a castel wal.
And crenelated like a castle wall.
His bile was blak, and as the jeet it shoon;
His bill was black, and shone like jet;
Lik asure were hise legges and his toon;
Like azure [lapis lazuli] were his legs and his toes;
Hise nailes whitter than the lilye flour,
His claws whiter than the lily;
And like the burned gold was his colour.
And like burnished gold was his color [the color of his feathers];
This gentil cok hadde in his governaunce
This gentle [noble and refined] cock had in his care
Sevene hennes, for to doon al his plesaunce,
Seven hens, to obey his commands [do his pleasure],
Whiche were hise sustres and his paramours,
Which were his sisters and his paramours,
And wonder like to him, as of colours;
Wondrously like him as to colors;
Of whiche the faireste hewed on hire throte
Of which the fairest hued on her throat
Was cleped faire damoisele Pertelote.
Was called the fair lady Pertelote.
Curteis she was, discreet, and debonaire,
Courteous she was, discreet, and gentle and refined,
And compaignable, and bar hirself so faire
And sociable, and carried herself so beautifully
Sin thilke day that she was seven night oold,
Since that day that she was seven nights old,
That trewely she hath the herte in hoold
That truly she held fast the heart
Of Chauntecleer, loken in every lith.
Of Chauntecleer, locked in every limb.
He loved hire so that wel was him therwith.
He loved her so much that all was well with him because of it.
But swich a joye was it to here hem singe,
But it was such a joy  to hear him sing,
Whan that the brighte sonne gan to springe,
When the bright sun began to rise,
In swete acord, "My leef is faren in londe".
In sweet accord [harmony], "My love has gone away".
– For thilke time, as I have understonde,
– For at this time, as I am given to understand,
Beestes and briddes kouden speke and singe.
Beasts and birds could speak and sing.
. . . 

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, from The Nun's Priests's Tale, ll 2847 - 2881

Friday photos 2015/51

San Francisco City Hall lit up in red & green for Christmas; 10 December 2015. The second picture was taken a few minutes after the first; you can see how the colors became brighter and deeper. The colors kept pulsing like that.

Friday photo 2015/50

random Rudolphs in a drugstore window, December 2014

for my feelings about Rudolph, check here

Friday photo 2015/27

on Jackson Street, San Francisco, July 2014