Sudden Proclamations

[PrinceMyshkin]

for Ed and Lesley



Let's not haggle over madness.
The seed will grow up
or down, as it pleases.
The heart of calamity's not there
but in waiting for that stranger
who is here, already waiting.



Clasp hands and come to the mountain,
you've planned to say to her
(the female to your male half-nature),
Bring mustard seed, and salt wine.

A pinch of craziness
salts the brain
and brings up the flavour of it.
You've been tasting it, alone
and bland, until you want to go mad,
but only love will give permission for that,
the heart making mischief, lop-
sided dancing with destiny.


If she were to come (at last
and at last!) you'd speak to her
with the thoroughly reckless wit
of the formerly hopeful in love,
who've almost resigned themselves
to baking biscuits and winter bread.




Kings (you'd pronounce), have suffered
Because of the lack of love,
And queens
Have issued sudden proclamations.

To wit:



Gather the nursemaids
Of sorrow, the seven ladies of grief
And their hand-maidens, Lust
And Double Tongue and
Seeming Innocence, and all the others.

Bind up their tongues with bitter
Spice and lay sharp poultices
Against their eyes. I am going down
Where none of you can attend me
To find the bright, false heart
Implanted in me long ago
And root out suffering.


I, the Queen, hereby declare:
The Queen shall suffer no more.


The Queen shall suffer no more.


J. Newman Sudden Proclamations © 1992

[PrinceMyshkin]

I have seen the little foxes'
eyes
gleam beside the path, signals
of a world collapsed on ours,
and I know I've taken that path
too far, when terror,
like a fist, thuds against my heart. Behind
is a wall as near as in front.


The night pours down, sudden
as a bath in a world
overturned, where gravity
holds nothing in its place.
Lovers, and jagged rocks,
and the familiar smell of the world,
all tumble together.


I whisper into unknown ears, "Love me!
I've kept everything for you--"
--and draw back
to see fang-distended lips, eyes
filled with eager incomprehension.


Love waits in the dark.
The world that has collapsed
upon ours, its lung-walls
sighing hoarsely across each other,
random eye-gleams in the night, these
are suddenly all.


The stars doubt everything
you and I have begun.




J. Newman Sudden Proclamations © 1992
*

[firefangled]

I have seen the little foxes'
eyes
gleam beside the path, signals
of a world collapsed on ours,
and I know I've taken that path
too far, when terror,
like a fist, thuds against my heart. Behind
is a wall as near as in front.


The night pours down, sudden
as a bath in a world
overturned, where gravity
holds nothing in its place.
Lovers, and jagged rocks,
and the familiar smell of the world,
all tumble together.


I whisper into unknown ears, "Love me!
I've kept everything for you--"
--and draw back
to see fang-distended lips, eyes
filled with eager incomprehension.


Love waits in the dark.
The world that has collapsed
upon ours, its lung-walls
sighing hoarsely across each other,
random eye-gleams in the night, these
are suddenly all.


The stars doubt everything
you and I have begun.




J. Newman Sudden Proclamations © 1992
*

This has such wonderful imagery and such a poignant plea not to be included in the mad fray of the imbalance in which you find yourself by association.

The last two lines are so loaded with meaning for me...the stars, the kilns of everything we see, doubting (such a beautiful understatement) what we have done with what they gave us.

I would like to see some of your other Sudden Proclamations

[PrinceMyshkin]

This has such wonderful imagery and such a poignant plea not to be included in the mad fray of the imbalance in which you find yourself by association.

The last two lines are so loaded with meaning for me...the stars, the kilns of everything we see, doubting (such a beautiful understatement) what we have done with what they gave us.

I would like to see some of your other Sudden Proclamations

Much flattered. The book was still available last time I looked at Amazon under Jerry Newman or 2nd copies might be found at one or other of the 2nd hand internet booksites. All my copies were lost when I last moved otherwise I'd send you one. OR send me your home email address by private mail & I'd be glad to attach you a copy. WARNING: The poem in question and



INTIMATIONS


A shiver of something quick
goes through us now and then,
as if
the misaligned heart


were about to fracture under bone
or, far off in outer space,
a silent planet thinned itself
against the dark, unknown.

The rest are not always up to that.

[quasimodo1]

To PrinceMyshkin: In "Sudden Proclamations", you have a real gem here Prince. quasimodo1

[PrinceMyshkin]

To PrinceMyshkin: In "Sudden Proclamations", you have a real gem here Prince. quasimodo1

Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?

Many thanks!

[Adolescent09]

Yeah. It's greater than anything I've done. Keep at it.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Yeah. It's greater than anything I've done. Keep at it.

A certain Rabbi Shmuel died and was being examined as to his fitness to enter heaven.

Being a scrupulous man and aware of the solemnity of the occasion, he tried to give a meticulous account of his failings.

“I was not as courageous as Moses was,” he began, “nor as learned as the Rambam. I lacked the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel--“

At which point the examining angel interrupted him: “You will not be judged by comparison with any other men but as to whether you were the best Rabbi Shmuel you could possibly be.”

[Pendragon]

A certain Rabbi Shmuel died and was being examined as to his fitness to enter heaven.

Being a scrupulous man and aware of the solemnity of the occasion, he tried to give a meticulous account of his failings.

“I was not as courageous as Moses was,” he began, “nor as learned as the Rambam. I lacked the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel--“

At which point the examining angel interrupted him: “You will not be judged by comparison with any other men but as to whether you were the best Rabbi Shmuel you could possibly be.”
This one post, mon ami, does more to make me love your poetry and the man that writes it than anything else I have ever seen you write. You are quite correct. Even in poetry, we should not judge if the writer compares favorably to our favorite poet, but if they have done a worthy job of showing us who they are. All my best

Pen, much humbled,

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/Peace.gif

[PrinceMyshkin]

This one post, mon ami, does more to make me love your poetry and the man that writes it than anything else I have ever seen you write. You are quite correct. Even in poetry, we should not judge if the writer compares favorably to our favorite poet, but if they have done a worthy job of showing us who they are. All my best

Pen, much humbled,

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/Peace.gif



Do not go gentle into the love that burns in you
but give it to all as open-heartedly
as you have given it to me.

Though cynical and frightened men
fear to love lest they not be loved in return
you and I, dear Pen, know that love is never wasted.

It renews itself in the giving.
It shrinks and dies when it is held,
unspent, in some dark corner of our hearts.

Look! There’s a lonely man over there.
An embittered woman next to him.
Let us love them, you and I,

And if they make fools of us,
why, fools, perhaps,
are the ones whom God loves best!

With apologies to Dylan Thomas

[ktd222]

for Ed and Lesley Pechter



Let's not haggle over madness.
The seed will grow up
or down, as it pleases.
The heart of calamity's not there
but in waiting for that stranger
who is here, already waiting.



Clasp hands and come to the mountain,
you've planned to say to her
(the female to your male half-nature),
Bring mustard seed, and salt wine.

A pinch of craziness
salts the brain
and brings up the flavour of it.
You've been tasting it, alone
and bland, until you want to go mad,
but only love will give permission for that,
the heart making mischief, lop-
sided dancing with destiny.


If she were to come (at last
and at last!) you'd speak to her
with the thoroughly reckless wit
of the formerly hopeful in love,
who've almost resigned themselves
to baking biscuits and winter bread.




Kings (you'd pronounce), have suffered
Because of the lack of love,
And queens
Have issued sudden proclamations.

To wit:



Gather the nursemaids
Of sorrow, the seven ladies of grief
And their hand-maidens, Lust
And Double Tongue and
Seeming Innocence, and all the others.

Bind up their tongues with bitter
Spice and lay sharp poultices
Against their eyes. I am going down
Where none of you can attend me
To find the bright, false heart
Implanted in me long ago
And root out suffering.


I, the Queen, hereby declare:
The Queen shall suffer no more.


The Queen shall suffer no more.


J. Newman Sudden Proclamations © 1992

The heart is source of insanity(I wonder what the scientific community would think about this poem;) ). This poem has so many twists. First I thought insanity came from lack of love, then from love, and finally from the misconceptions in the idea of love itself. I think one also undergoes twists as well, in tracking the source of insanity. You’ve definitely got a singular theme moving through(at least from the poems of yours’ I’ve read) your poems from Sudden Proclamation.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Some background to "Sudden Proclamations": I received a letter from Lesley whom I didn't know all that well. In it she wrote that she felt a depression coming on and remembered that in a previous depression, she had been afraid that she might go crazy. She mentioned this to her husband, who replied, "Well, go crazy if you have to."

I was horrified at first. In my birth family, as I remembered, we seemed to have spent a lot of time warning each other not to be or act or go crazy, but after a while I came to understand what a loving thing that had been for Ed to tell her.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Are you the man
who knew the man
who’d heard from a man
who thought he had seen
the death of a hero?

Did he go up in flames?
Was there a smile on his face?
Oh, what was the last
word he said?
And is he dead?
Really and truly,
now and forever
dead?


Jerry Newman © July 28, 2007

[CdnReader]

That's better. NOW it's FINISHED! And I like it.... :D