Good afternoon. It'a pleasure to join with the Docent Council members and staff to support and assist in the things that the Haggin Museum does. I'll look forward to your posted items and I'll try to follow Janet's example of interesting offerings. Talk to you soon.
BRUEGHEL'S TWO MONKEYS --A Poem
ReplyDeleteSince this new blog has practically nothing on it, I thought I'd post 3 poems that I really like. I wrote one of them. I'll give an interpretative remark at the end of each one:
BREUGHEL'S TWO MONKEYS
This is what I see in my dreams about final exams:
two monkeys, chained to the floor,
sit on the windowsill, the sky behind them flutters,
the sea is taking its bath.
The Exam is History of Mankind.
I stammer and hedge.
One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain,
the other seems to be dreaming away---
but when it's clear I don't know what to say,
he prompts me with a gentle
clinking of his chain.
[Interpretation: The monkeys are forever bound by their ignorance. They prompt the student with clinking chains, "Learn, or end up like us."]
THE RIVER - by James Estrada
ReplyDelete[By the way that first poem about the monkeys was written by Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish Poet now in her 80s. The won The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996 for a body of work much like what you saw here. Now for one by me. Hope you like.]
THE RIVER
Ascending up the high mountain range,
When suddenly, coming 'round the bend,
He saw that River,
The one he always knew,
Would be there in the end.
[Interpretation: The River is the river Styx or the equivalent departure point from all of this loveliness. The point of grace here is that the river is far off in the distance and it is hoped that the departure is quite some time away from today.]
NOTES FROM A NONEXISTENT HIMALAYAN EXPEDITION
ReplyDelete-by Wislawa Szymborska Polish Nobelist
So these are the Himalayss.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo--a white mute.
Quiet.
Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.
Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there,
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.
We've inherited hope--
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.
Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire,
we turn lights on. Yeti.
Up here it's neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again !
I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.
[Interpretation: This is the poet's ardent plea for more of all the loveliness down there on earth. She acknowledges that the ultimate end of all this cannot be escaped, but she writes with desire nevertheless.]