Rough draft.Broken mermaid.
Clumsy maker; broken piece.
Should I fear a curse?
I'd meant well, meant better, meant best . . . but couldn't quite pull that off.
I felt regret; I feel regret.
Nick Drake plays in my head.
If you don't know, well, check out Nick Drake's "Five Leaves Left" and Sinead Lohan's "No Mermaid." Both albums, both CDs, should astound you.
Old rhyme:
"The head understands
What the heart won't.
Which is wiser?"
(Actually, I made that up in 2008, but it feels old, feels like an echo, feels dependent on my own antecedents, my own past reading.)
Older rhyme (and this is truly old, no rhetorical trick):
"Mind must be the firmer, heart the more fierce,
courage the greater, as our strength diminishes."
--"The Battle of Maldon" . . .
The Anglo-Saxon heroic poem, Crossley-Holland translating.
And, yes, I connect such a passage, such a poem, to efforts in clay, to efforts in the studio, to efforts in the classroom, to efforts in life, life itself. And, like the doomed warriors of the poem, I have my faith in perseverance.
So far, I've never quite succeeded at conveying or in capturing the beauty before me, in holding such beauty firmly enough to present it to you, or to anyone, at least not in clay, and that saddens me.
And so, in a melancholy mood, I replay Drake's "Five Leaves Left," and I try harder, the next time clay is at hand.
