536 Philosophy poems

In heaven I mean to go and talk to Pythagoras and Socrates and Valerius Publicola. I shan’t care a bit for Rosie there, she needn’t think it. What will grey eyes and red cheeks be good for there? — John Ruskin, letter to Susan Beever, from Assisi, Sacristan’s Cell, June 25, 1874 To-day, being my sixty-first birthday, I would ask leave to say a few words to the friends who care for me, and the readers who are anxious about me, touching the above-named illness itself. For a physician’s estimate of it, indeed, I can only refer them to my physicians. But there were some conditions of it which I knew better than they could: namely, first, the precise and sharp distinction between the state of morbid inflammation of brain which gave rise to false visions (whether in sleep, or trance, or waking, in broad daylight, with perfect knowledge of the real things in the room, while yet I saw others that were not there), and the not morbid, however dangerous, states of more or less excited temper, and too much quickened thought, which gradually led up to the illness, accelerating in action during the eight or ten days preceding the actual giving way of the brain. — John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera Letter 88 (February 8, 1880) Too fast and far again! by much; the impetus of phrase running away with me. — John Ruskin, additional note no. 54 to Modern Painters Vol. 2 (1883 revised ed.) My dear little birds, before me on my desk this morning where I sit preparing tomorrow’s lesson lies a copy of The Witches’ Rout by Agostino de’ Musi — Agostino Veneziano your teachers will call him — wherein a carriage made of dragon bones and drawn by two naked figures is depicted making topsy-turvy progress through a jungle scattering goats & geese & winged skeletal reptiles and there, look now, there atop it all the witch squats as one at stool — manly forearm, muscular shoulder,pendulis mammis— the narrow dugs it is her business to possess — filthy hair streaming contra natura— out in a headwind of mephitic vapors    ... Time out of mind such creatures have impressed the dreams of those who live, as it were, by watchfires, fearful of neighbors, fearful that the law they hammered into whatsoever shape as pleased them may yet prove versatile — their sensual rites & ceremonies, novelties & conceits; their pharisaical holiness    ...    — and this is but a scholar’s imitation you will say, rude work though of  a fine school — a fine school be it allowed, and good enough to lose itself  beside the master’s — & yet & yet steady the hand that hovers over the acid-bitten cliché steady the elbow behind this engraving on paper Fro spot my spyryt þer sprang in space so now Piazza Sta Maria del Pianto, Rome (1840). A pensive study of old clothes sun-sipped dry in the Jews’ quarter, hanging out of a marble architrave smashed & built into a piece of Roman frieze moldering into broken brickwork projected over wooden windows propped on gray entablature. A vestige of yet-legible inscription: nomine fortuna .No important lines, no beauty of object. A pendent hodgepodge of contrasted feeling cheesecaked into picturesque febrility. An episode. A grief in, as it were, parenthesis. A match without a marriage, as after news of an engagement. A church embedded sans façade among the common sort of houses. A succor from St. Peter’s mere bewilderment & worry. Graphite heightened w/ touches of white body color on gray-green paper. Beresford Chapel, Walworth: a bare, oblong, low-ceilinged barn, each brick-arched window filled with small-paned glass requiring iron bars threaded like halves of cobweb to stay true. No traceries, no clustered shafts, no vaulting. No fantasies. No perpendicular flights of aspiration. Clean lines, and severe. Pews shut-in with partitions of plain deal and neatly brass-hatched doors. No pulpit, merely a stout, four-legged box of well-grained wainscot, but decorated with a velvet cushion — crimson, with golden tassels at the corners — which formed my one resource, for when I tired of Dr. Andrews’s sermon I could watch the colors texturing the folds & creases each time he thumped it. Beresford. That’s where we worshipped: Papa, Mama, and I. Poor preparation, this, for Rouen! Rouen wardered by groups of solemn statuary clasped by stems of sculpted leafage crowned by fretted niche & fairy pediment like inextricably meshed gossamer; Rouen with her surge & foam of pious chivalry breaking on crystal cliffs to stand revealed as every hidden thing shall be, insatiable at prayer or pillage, lending grace to English rudeness, venom to Italy’s cunning    ...    Rouen with all her avarice & intricacies, gargoyles open-mawed, molten, drenching ornament down spires vertiginously pinnacled — insanae substructiones! Inutiles domos! — yet piping pastoral songs of innocence — The Palazzo Contarini-Fasan, Venice (1841). Higgledy terraced structures the colors of ice creams & sorbets w/ no bland tinting. No calligraphic decoration. Graphite, watercolor & body color. A thorough spell in the vernacular. Stone filigree spidering rhythmic tessellations w/ some scratching out. Details that become a refuge. Detail that becomes a refuge. A long-drawn replica in which new life may even now be in the offing. A sulky grandeur, by the bye. A naughty jailer. A determined postulant. A barber-pole mooring post. A dipped oar tilting  for trouble. The Doge’s tottering state stepping off on gray paper. Worn somewhat, and not a little weary, Sandro’s uncommon Fortitude, in this his first recorded work. Consider it a moment, if you please, before you pass hurriedly on to see The Birth of  Venus next door, and notice that Sandro began where you perhaps will end: with weariness. Would you have guessed that Fortitude allows (allows? approves of!) reverie? See how her fingers play in restless idleness or nervousness about her sword hilt (sword or mace? I’ve lost my notes about her    ...    ). She is no match, it may be, for the trials that are to come, yet see her armor shine in readiness, her gentle fingers apt to grip her sword (or mace) should she be called. Lips pursed and eyes averted, she has smiled, and not a little ruefully, at her fate from time to time. She has no smile today. Her quality must be borne daylong, lifelong. To flaunt it ever is not to possess it quite. See Pollaiolo’s Virtues pose and attitudinize: thus they perform their various meanings. Fortitude must contain — must be— all that she stands for. Go, see whatever the Uffizi has to tempt you; but remember Fortitude whose battle did not begin today, nor yesterday, nor on the Sunday last. Many a day has passed since it began. They are so wedded to their righteousness, those lesser Virtues, quite incapable of  being tempted. They would not dare risk complacency. She would be lost without it. But sword or mace? Go now. It is no matter. I will not need you until tomorrow morning. Ravine at Maglans (1849?). Deeper brown on brown. A limestone precipice stepped with horizontal cleavages to overlook the void. No water but a dream of water years back, far down, running harum-scarum strong enough to turn a mill. A spate become a thread. A visit out of season. A torrent bed of what must have been snow-melt now entirely dry. No stones crumble but flow, subside, rhythmic as cloud, as high-built, as unsubstantial over the long haul. Quartz strips ribboning a treed crevasse fringed w/ curled & unfurled fronds. Leaves shook to palsy by the noon wind’s spite. A rock fissured. A great fault. A graphite rock fissured in brown ink & ink wash heightened w/ flesh-toned body color on white paper. Last night St. Ursula sent me her dianthus out of her bedroom window, with her love — living dianthus, and a single dried sprig of  her other window flower, vervain    ... how many flowers are named in Genesis? Good answer! Not one. Plenty of trees, however. It was a poet planted flowerbeds that Eden might be filled with tremulous, frivolous petals — I dare say he was right, they were made to be noticed! And to see a poppy husk fall from a bursting flower is to know something of the life to come once the body has turned to dust & ashes, even as our dying breath aspires toward our Father’s house    ...    as for the trees, what can we learn of noble constancy more than we find in the pure laurel leaf, so numerable, so sequent and serene? open the envelope petals & may spill on the table where I remain preparing the lesson bruise-edged rose petals cling to my fingers dust motes dancing gnats in a sun-shaft myrrh, or a snuffbox? write to me, tell me who do you dance with oftenest, often? gray eyes & red cheeks useless in heaven undowered, garlanded with no forget-me-nots: compassed about with the forgetfulness of all the world honor unwon kind words unsaid good deeds undone: none of these, none touch me more nearly Now, if  I say “St. Ursula has sent me a pot of pinks!” some will say I have gone heartily, headily mad, but all it means is that the flowers I received of  late (from the hand of whatsoever friend or stranger) helped greatly in my work, and afterward reproved me in their own way for its failure. But how much love of mine have others lost because one poor sick child would not receive the part of love that yet belongs to her! Think now, sweet milkmaids of Albion whose face is your fortune, think of one lying still there, nearly a skeleton, and ask yourselves:We have a little sisterand she has no breasts: what shall we do for our sisterin the day of  her espousals? South Side of the Basilica of St. Mark’s, Venice, from the Loggia of the Ducal Palace (c.1851). An eerie vantage. A capricious helter-skelter variety of application, quickening details of watercolor passing  for time-veined marble scaled-up from a daguerreotype. An echo’s volume. Shadows lilt & flourish over chessboard floor tiles. A kind of hectic color. Disallowance of perspective. Sculpted relief without recession. Megrims & mysteries; conceits & divertisements. The uncapped St. Jean d’Acre’s pillar giving on to the southern portico. A Byzantine capital. A sonata on a virginal. Graphite & watercolor heightened w/ white on three jointed pieces of paper. Up my spirit leapt, so glad to shed this gross flesh and have done! My ghost, given up by the grace of God, was led where marvels are counted common. I climbed to where cliff-top meets cloud — vertiginous heights no man has known — my soul drawn on toward a wood decked with countless jewels & stones. It is hard to credit a sight so fine as the wash of  light in which they shone: woman never wove a gown so dearly adorned, so lit with splendor. In splendor, cliffs of crystal stood crisp as ice, clear & clean. At their foot, a forest spread: the trees were touched with a red-blue sheen and leaves of  burnished silver slid quivering to & fro between limbs that shimmered like blue jade each time a light-gleam touched the scene. The gravel underfoot was strewn with gems, and the sun seemed quite outshone by those precious, oriental stones so dearly adorned, so lit with splendor. The splendor of the grove was such that my grief left me — it lifted clear; the fragrance of the fruit so fresh, I found I needed no other fare. Birds flew together, branch to branch like flecks of flame — now here now there; no human symphony can match, nor voice nor string delight the ear with such a song: they blessed the air with a sweet accord that swooned & shone with harmonies you will never hear but there where all is lit with splendor. So adorned in splendor was that forest where I met my fate, a cunning man could not devise a fitting way to tell of it. Climbing pear trees, apple trees; browsing wonders — pretty sport! And soon the flowers & fields & hedgerows turned beautifully intricate with burns & water gardens. Bright as burnished gold the fellside shone where I trailed a stream that ran with light, dearly adorned & lit with splendor. But a greater splendor was yet to come: a riverbank of  beryl ablaze where water swept & swirled in a foam of  hurrying murmurs & confused airs. The stream bed glinted with a gleam like sunlight filtered through stained glass or winter starlight, when it may seem we’re all alone when the clouds pass. Each pebble bright as Hesperus: sapphire, emerald — each one shone with a light too bright for similes, dearly adorned & lit with splendor. Study of Gneiss Rock, Glenfinlas (1853–54). A living witness. A verticality more smooth than the water over wch it rears. Glib-channeled water rushing; dry rock dripping — fluid, labial rock, less still than the wildflowers & feathered grasses that cling in unguessed cracks & overhang. Mapped lichens. Lampblack, body color. A cumbrous slab. An unobtrusive majesty. A happenstance long sought before seen, loved long before understood. A lesson of devotion to be found always, found but once. An obstinacy gladdened by the river’s flux, the ice floe’s pluck & laving. Pen & ink over graphite on wove paper w/ some scratching out. In Santa Croce, here we are well quit of restoration, for who cares about this slab with its poor bit of sculpture? An old man in the deeply-folded cap worn by the scholars & gentlemen of  Florence c.1300–1500, dead, a book upon his breast, and over it his hands lie folded. At his feet, the legend: .bordered { width: 500px; height: 200px; padding: 20px; border: 2px solid black; } temporibvs • hic • svis • phylosopye • atq • medicine • cvlmen • fvit • et magister galilevs • degalileis • olim • bonaivtis • qvi etiam • svmmo • inmagistratv • miro • qvodam • modo • rem • pvblicam dilexit cvivs • sancte • memorie • bene acte • vitepie • benedictvs • filivs • hvnc • tvmv lvm • patri • sibi • svis • & • posteris • edidit The worn face, still the old man’s perfect portrait — though one struck out by a master’s chisel at a venture, just so, with a few rough touches; the falling drapery of  his citizen’s cap subtle beyond description, with the choice of folds exquisite in its ornamental pattern; the carpet he lies on almost uninjured, elaborate with fringe & frond relieving the severity of the figure    ... and see now, see how the cushion’s nearly-perfect tassels balance to fill the angles of the stone — Study of a Peacock’s Breast Feather (1873). A single plume, painted of its natural size. One iridescent throb transitioning from the active plume’s obliquity to the decorative’s dualed symmetry. An uncertain correspondence w/ a heart-shaped flower petal. A cold thrill: a pang as of a nice deep wasp sting. Moss green moving via jade to emerald, indigo to lapis lazuli: as much as is allowed, having neither hocus-pocus nor heaven to dip a brush in. A heraldic emblem; watch & ward against incipient commodity. A lost key to a blue box for blue girls w/ gray eyes. Watercolor & body color on paper. whirrrrrrr-r-r-r-r-r-r pink! pink! pink! cherry-erry-erry pew-pew-pew-pew-poor-pew-pew the chaffinches chirp but feebly; this June snow discomposes them Coniston bright as glass ill-cast by an undiscerning hand wave-lines showing like flaws in planes of fine crystal unsteady, unstill troubling & troubled What is it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven? Child, according to this morning’s Spectator ’tis nothing but the filtration of money from above downwards — an oft-observed phenomenon concessum propter duritiem cordis a thing allowed and properly recorded in our holy book of double entry I mean St. Usura’s Gospel of  Filth wherein we learn his doctrine of arithmetic that 2 + 2 = 5    ... O we are so humane, forsooth, we are so wise, that whereas our ancestors had tar barrels for witches we have them for everybody else — and we will have our cauldrons cooled, please Hecate, after Mr. Darwin’s theory with baboon blood! Occulted by daylight we will drive the witches’ trade ourselves as, once, I saw a boy with his basket of rotten figs poor little costermonger before the south façade of the Ducal Palace stooping to cry Fighiaie! Fighiaie!Inibito a chiunque il vendere frutti cattivi 19th June, 1516 (i.e. before that nobody thought of doing so) as, more than once, I have seen the girls at the windows: poor girls at the windows, in the alleyways, in the slums by the Euston Hotel, by the railway lines, take Camden Rd. toward the canal basin, lift your eyes, do but lift your eyes as you leave the hall, gentlemen, and you will mark them, they hold themselves liberally, knowing our likings, poor girls, nothing to sell but everything; nothing to sell but themselves I dewyne, fordolked of luf-daungere too fast & far, boiled to rags by morbid violence — No they cannot touch me for coyning me so misby — so misby — so misby me wish me was a clergyman tellin lies all day & Flint — & Tukup — & But — cujus sancte memorie those rich-left heirs Fighiaie! O Love, sane as the proud flesh about a healing wound in the side of my nation that yet may pass at a crisis into morbific substance, let this man work. O Love, give us work and set us to it, for we are corrigible: O fettle us for we are not after all entirely corrigible & stay our hand when we would set our soul upon a cast: teach us how to give & hazard all we hath upon your coming, for the soul cannot be bargained otherwise — only lost. Impregnable to our economies whatever the deceiver promises, the soul is not for sale. And now, the cost diligently accounted for, the sum entered in the ledger, see this bound and shelved in sequence where it may be found by any who enquire, should any come    ... Love sets no term. Love schedules its appearances according to no clock of ours: to moon-bewildered waves we each of us receive our summons, unreluctant. Let walk upon them all who can. ...    came Phaedra then, and Procris, next Ariadnè, fairest of all, whose daddy’s mind was a slaughterhouse bright Ariadnè whom Theseus once from Crete to the tilled acres of sacred Athens led — nor had he the joy of  her, his heart’s desire, poor Ariadnè fair, moon-bewildered — false Dionys̄us witnessed against her; Artěmis slew her    ... O, feed her with apricocks & dewberries, with purple grapes, green figs & mulberries Is she not with me here among the hawthorn blossom? Diodati, a year with no summer, and the world was void — þe fyrre in þe fryth — she was the Universe At dusk pipistrelles flit like black rags torn at the edge bonfire cinders riding the vortex spiraling circuits all round the terrace all day have I sat here preparing the lesson My dear little birds, did you not see the gleam of sunshine yesterday? Hadst thou but seen her in it bareheaded, barefoot between the laurels & the primrose bank Moss & Wild Strawberry (1873). Gentle, hesitant line. A suggestion in the genitive. A secret in midsummer. A slackening deft moss nested in cleaved stone. Traces of body color on gray-blue paper trefoiled w/ dewy sequins. Seekings. Rooting a subtle declivity in the rock revealed now by a berry’s posture. A gaze darkening where lines triangulate palely. A beckoning. A suggestive gesture.

for Wendell Berry Each face in the street is a slice of bread wandering on searching somewhere in the light the true hunger appears to be passing them by they clutch have they forgotten the pale caves they dreamed of hiding in their own caves full of the waiting of their footprints hung with the hollow marks of their groping full of their sleep and their hiding have they forgotten the ragged tunnels they dreamed of following in out of the light to hear step after step the heart of bread to be sustained by its dark breath and emerge to find themselves alone before a wheat field raising its radiance to the moon

Grasping for straws is easier; You can see the straws. “This most excellent canopy, the air, look you,” Presses down upon me At fifteen pounds per square inch, A dense, heavy, blue-glowing ocean, Supporting the weight of condors That swim its churning currents. All I get is a thin stream of it, A finger’s width of the rope that ties me to life As I labor like a stevedore to keep the connection. Water wouldn’t be so circumspect; Water would crash in like a drunken sailor, But air is prissy and genteel, Teasing me with its nearness and pervading immensity. The vast, circumambient atmosphere Allows me but ninety cubic centimeters Of its billions of gallons and miles of sky. I inhale it anyway, Knowing that it will hurt In the weary ends of my crumpled paper bag lungs. July, 1988

Fish always accurately know where to move and when, and likewise birds have an accurate built-in time sense and orientation. Humanity, however, lacking such instincts resorts to scientific research. Its nature is illustrated by the following occurrence. A certain soldier had to fire a cannon at six o’clock sharp every evening. Being a soldier he did so. When his accuracy was investigated he explained: I go by the absolutely accurate chronometer in the window of the clockmaker down in the city. Every day at seventeen forty-five I set my watch by it and climb the hill where my cannon stands ready. At seventeen fifty-nine precisely I step up to the cannon and at eighteen hours sharp I fire. And it was clear that this method of firing was absolutely accurate. All that was left was to check that chronometer. So the clockmaker down in the city was questioned about his instrument’s accuracy. Oh, said the clockmaker, this is one of the most accurate instruments ever. Just imagine, for many years now a cannon has been fired at six o’clock sharp. And every day I look at this chronometer and always it shows exactly six. Chronometers tick and cannon boom.

The past will overtake alien force our house formed of my mind to enter explorer in a forest of myself for all my learning Solitude quiet and quieter fringe of trees by a river bridges black on the deep the heaving sea a watcher stands to see her ship winging away Thick noises merge in moonlight dark ripples dissolving and defining spheres and snares Place of importance as in the old days stood on the ramparts of the fort the open sea outside alone with water-birds and cattle knee-deep in a stream grove of reeds herons watching from the bank henges whole fields honeycombed with souterrains human bones through the gloom whose sudden mouth surrounded my face a thread of blue around the coast feathery moon eternity swallows up time peaceable as foam O cabbage gardens summer’s elegy sunset survived

—retracing

Our storm is past, and that storm's tyrannous rage, A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth 'suage. The fable is inverted, and far more A block afflicts, now, than a stork before. Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us; In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus. As steady'as I can wish that my thoughts were, Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there, The sea is now; and, as the isles which we Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be. As water did in storms, now pitch runs out; As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout. And all our beauty, and our trim, decays, Like courts removing, or like ended plays. The fighting-place now seamen's rags supply; And all the tackling is a frippery. No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday. Earth's hollownesses, which the world's lungs are, Have no more wind than the upper vault of air. We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover, But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover. Only the calenture together draws Dear friends, which meet dead in great fishes' jaws; And on the hatches, as on altars, lies Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice. Who live, that miracle do multiply, Where walkers in hot ovens do not die. If in despite of these we swim, that hath No more refreshing than our brimstone bath; But from the sea into the ship we turn, Like parboil'd wretches, on the coals to burn. Like Bajazet encag'd, the shepherds' scoff, Or like slack-sinew'd Samson, his hair off, Languish our ships. Now as a myriad Of ants durst th' emperor's lov'd snake invade, The crawling gallies, sea-gaols, finny chips, Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships. Whether a rotten state, and hope of gain, Or to disuse me from the queasy pain Of being belov'd and loving, or the thirst Of honour, or fair death, out-push'd me first, I lose my end; for here, as well as I, A desperate may live, and a coward die. Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies, Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies. Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay A scourge, 'gainst which we all forget to pray. He that at sea prays for more wind, as well Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell. What are we then? How little more, alas, Is man now, than before he was? He was Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit; Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it. We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie, I should not then thus feel this misery.

Happens this time in answer to indecency Lit by the yellow shop windows cast Unkind to you, that light You say, Sit, Ubu, sit, or Hey, I like your weave This avenue for instance Gateway to escapade You can see from the beginning to its end All-embracing greed Distracting appliqués of altruism Small pomme de terre Can you tell whose hand on the basinet and that does what for you Warmth all in the light Sight all in garage park hallway Morning's dusk on pause You stand body in profile What you don't fill in the doorway stays empty More than overcome I know you're there and unseal my lips

We are always really carrying a ladder, but it’s invisible. We only know something’s the matter: something precious crashes; easy doors prove impassable. Or, in the body, there’s too much swing or off- center gravity. And, in the mind, a drunken capacity, access to out-of-range apples. As though one had a way to climb out of the damage and apology.

Banish Air from Air - Divide Light if you dare - They'll meet While Cubes in a Drop Or Pellets of Shape Fit - Films cannot annul Odors return whole Force Flame And with a Blonde push Over your impotence Flits Steam.