Another treasure

[pjthompson]

Lines of poetry stick in my brain, little oddments that come out at the strangest times and places.  Two lines from this poem (by one of my favorite poets) often echo in my skull: the first being, “and now she thrives/Now is her time to thrive,” though I hardly understand why.  It’s a kind of encouragement in discouraging times for some idiosyncratic reason of my own.  The second line is the last line and a half, which I won’t ruin for you.  Discover it on your own.

 

Things
by Jane Kenyon

The hen flings a single pebble aside
with her yellow, reptilian foot.
Never in eternity the same sound—
a small stone falling on a red leaf.

The juncture of twig and branch,
scarred with lichen, is a gate
we might enter, singing.

The mouse pulls batting
from a hundred-year-old quilt.
She chewed a hole in a blue star
to get it, and now she thrives. . . .
Now is her time to thrive.

Things: simply lasting, then
failing to last: water, a blue heron’s
eye, and the light passing
between them: into light all things
must fall, glad at last to have fallen.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The whole thing was beautiful (never in eternity the same sound ... the juncture of twig and branch ... is a gate we might enter, singing)

But yes, those last line and a half. Brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Yes! Somehow I had an intuition as I was posting this that you would love it. :-D

I've got this old American song I want to post, too, when I get a chance, "The Lowdown Low" (also known as "The Golden Willow Tree" and "The Golden Vanity" and it has many, many versions) which made me think of you when I heard it. Copland used it in his "American Songs" and I heard a recording of it this weekend that captured me, made something wiggle in my imagination. It's such a strange song:

http://www.songofamerica.net/cgi-bin/iowa/song/29.html

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I do know this song! I have two versions of it--both with different melodies than the one Copland uses (and just now I checked YouTube, and I see Crooked Still, a band I love, has a version with yet another tune).

I do love it... The lowlands low beneath the waves/underworld/land of the dead makes me think of the end of Jean Ritchie's version of "The House Carpenter, where the doomed woman sings,

What hills what hill down in yonder sea
What hills so black as coal
Oh those be the hill of hell my dear
Where we must surely go.

**shiver**

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

I love Jean Ritchie.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Me too!! So much.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Her lyric for the West Virginia Mining Disaster often haunts me:

He was tall, he was slender, and his blue eyes so tender
His occupation was miner, West Virginia his home

One of those oddments sticking in my brain that I was talking about.