The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Six (Rumi)

Photo by Josep Renalias

It's the 9th of April, which means that anyone participating in NoPoWriMo is on their 9th poem of the month. In honor of your simultaneous exhaustion and exhilaration, and my own, I've chosen an incredibly beautiful and delightfully short poem for this week, an untitled snippet from the Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Rumi. This ecstatic  celebration of creativity will wake us back up to all that is alive in poetry, and it will give us the second wind we need to continue to write through the month.

Please keep making comments in the sections under the postings. I enjoy hearing your experiences of the poems as much as I enjoy memorizing them. I'm keeping my own comments about the poems restricted to these sections, as well, so that we can approach the new poems with clean, fresh, beginner's minds each week. 

Here is last week's posting, if you want to leave comments about Rich's "What Kind of Times Are These ": The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Five. Also, if you're new to the blog, you might want to look at the first Mnemosyne Post to find out what this project is all about. 

Here ya go. Enjoy!

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don't open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

*Translated by Coleman Barks.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Five (Rich)

I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I've chosen to honor Adrienne Rich with my selection of the fifth poem of The Mnemosyne Weekly. In the wake of Rich's death last week, an outpouring of poems, blog posts, articles, and newscasts have graced the cyber-waves with memories of Rich and her powerful words. If you would like to contribute, Jewish Voice for Peace has started a site for reminiscences.

Please keep making comments in the sections under the postings. I enjoy hearing your experiences of the poems as much as I enjoy memorizing them. I'm keeping my own comments about the poems restricted to these sections, as well, so that we can approach the new poems with clean, fresh, beginner's minds each week. One thing I would love to hear from you this week is if or how any of the poems we've memorized have found their way into the poems you've been writing lately. 

Here is last week's posting, if you want to leave comments about Oliver's "How Would You Live Then?": The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Four. As well, if you're new to the blog, you might want to look at the first Mnemosyne Post to find out what this project is all about. 

Our poem for the week comes from Rich's collection Dark Fields of the Republic and alludes to several lines from the Bertolt Brecht poem "For Those Born Later": "What kind of times are these/ When it's almost a crime to talk about trees/ Because it means keeping still about so many evil deeds?"  As well, we are fortunate enough to have access to a video recording of Rich reading this poem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/27

What Kind of Times Are These

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.