Dream-Dram

Glenlivet: Founder’s Reserve

Almost as good as poetry
And far less labor.

I falter,
And drain the glass.

--MD

The Clay Waits

The clay waits
Life-mask
Death-mask
The sculptor can't decide
Drawing ragged breaths
This broken morning
Fixing memory in pieces
Mixing temerity with mortality
. . . .
The clay waits.

There was a crooked man
Who climbed a crooked hill
Who had been a broken child
Bound to a broken will . . . .
. . . .
Pottery unfired
Bowls unthrown . . .
The clay waits.

There is a frayed man
On a frayed course . . .
. . . .
Threadbare nerves
Nightmare curves
Vertiginous horse
Sweltering source
Fevered fear
Galloping near . . .
. . . .
The frayed man wakes . . .

The clay wakes.

--MD

slightly revised: 7/8/18
and again: 3/21/20
and again: 4/13/20

Robert Graves: Three Wanton Poems

THE KISS

Are you shaken, are you stirred
    By a whisper of love,
Spellbound to a word
    Does Time cease to move,
Till her calm grey eye
    Expands to a sky
And the clouds of her hair
    Like storms go by?

Then the lips that you have kissed
    Turn to frost and fire,
And a white-steaming mist
    Obscures desire:
So back to their birth
    Fade water, air, earth,
And the First Power moves
    Over void and dearth.

Is that Love? no, but Death,
    A passion, a shout,
The deep in-breath,
    The breath roaring out,
And once that is flown,
    You must lie alone,
Without hope, without life,
    Poor flesh, sad bone.



DOWN, WANTON, DOWN!

Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love's name,
Or Beauty's, presto! up you raise
Your angry head and stand at gaze?

Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reach
The ravelin and effect a breach--
Indifferent what you storm or why,
So be that in the breach you die!

Love may be blind, but Love at least
Knows what is man and what mere beast;
Or Beauty wayward, but requires
More delicacy from her squires.

Tell me, my witless, whose one boast
Could be your staunchness at the post,
When were you made a man of parts
To think fine and profess the arts?

Will many-gifted Beauty come
Bowing to your bald rule of thumb,
Or Love swear loyalty to your crown?
Be gone, have done! Down, wanton, down!


THE SNAPPED THREAD


Desire, first, by a natural miracle
United bodies, united hearts, blazed beauty;
Transcended bodies, transcended hearts.

Two souls, now unalterably one
In whole love always and for ever,
Soar out of twilight, through upper air,
Let fall their sensous burden.

Is it kind, though, is it honest even,
To consort with none but spirits-
Leaving true-wedded hearts like ours
In enforced night-long separation,
Each to its random bodily inclination,
The thread of miracle snapped?


---THREE POEMS BY ROBERT GRAVES

Dream: Out Into The Garden

Quite early yesterday morning I had one of those teaching dreams turn into one of those deceased-parent dreams.

I was helping a student, though I didn't have the right handouts on hand, in a lovely office: old wood and sunlit glass, more spacious and less cluttered than my actual office, with French doors to a most lovely rose garden.  Anyway, I am helping this student grapple with his research project when my father, many years dead but not in the dream, appears in the doorway.  He is dressed in a white shirt and khakis.  He gives me the barest of glances, but isn't rude, as he walks through my office to the French doors and out into the garden.  I tell the student that's my dad even as I realize--in the dream itself--that my father's dead.

Looking through the French doors, looking for my father, I awoke.

Shark Dream

A couple nights ago I had one of those dreams . . . . Keith was still alive, and we were free diving somewhere down south, for we had thin wetsuits and no hoods nor gloves. We were swimming about a quarter mile off-shore near a rocky reef that reached up to the surface in places, but not enough to count as an island. At some point, I realize a great white shark is swimming beside me, just appearing, as it were, not bent on attacking or feeding . . . yet. The shark swam beside me, or rather I swam beside the shark, kicking hard yet smoothly to maintain equal speed, not wanting to draw attention to myself by jerking or halting or anything, really. I wanted to warn Keith, to tell him to climb up onto the reef or something, to take care, but I was busy swimming and breathing, for I was using a snorkel, not a tank, and I was trying to keep my eye on the shark the whole time.

The shark leaned closer, swam closer, so I put my left hand out and touched the shark, holding it off, or attempting to, by pressing firmly and smoothly against the creature's side, though I ended up with my hand firmly against the creature's jaw just behind the teeth, the mouth. We swam like that, the shark effortlessly, me straining to maintain smoothness and speed, afraid to pull away, to make any sudden movements. This swimming, my hand against the shark, went on for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a minute or two. I wanted to warn Keith; I wanted to break away and climb up onto any protection I could; I wanted to kick and swim forever, for this shark was the most powerful creature I'd ever been so close to. Kicking and breathing, now holding my breath as the shark leaned in even further, pushing against my hand, bending my arm, and then my hand slid into the mouth of the shark, and I could feel the teeth tearing into my skin, the shark not yet even biting . . . .

And I woke up, lurching upright, dragging in that lungful of air as if I'd been holding my breath for too long, fully alert, fully freaked, happy to be alive, and unhappy in that dream-way that the long moment with that shark was over already.

A dream, as I said. Anxiety-expression? Longing? Power -- in part?

Navarro Beach & Rivermouth

Checking out a future paddling and fishing spot.

Bedside Reading

I think I had Byron's Don Juan in my hand.

Clay Figures: Dancers, Echoes, Dreams

Clay figures:
exercises in 20 - 30-minute increments.

That's Chloe: The Dancer in front
(sculpture mix; copper cobalt oxide; copper wire);
I can't recall the name of the pit-fired dancer behind her.
Maybe I didn't feel I could give her a name, for she has one of her own that she may not have shared with anyone, frankly.

I do recall the exact session at the ASUC Berkeley Art Studio with the art teacher having us work on with a specific model, and then we had to turn and put the head of the person to our left on top of the figure.  Funky exercise.

Such exercises always reminded me of Charles de Lint's stories about Jilly Coppercorn, but specifically about that story in which she's painting from a "pochade box" outside to remind herself about perspective, to remind herself not to get too immersed in the details.  De Lint offers up -- through the character of Jilly Coppercorn -- a quotation from Monet that I've never tracked down (in terms of authenticity, for I trust de Lint) but that I hold dear, allegedly from Monet to Clemenceau at Giverny:

"Your mistake is to want to reduce the world to your measure, whereas by enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged."

And isn't that such a common mistake?

But -- if we want to shift to beauty -- what are those lines from Elvis Costello's "Ghost Train"?

"Look at the way she dances --
One foot speaks,
The other answers."

Lyricism of a different sort than wry puns and such.
______________

Myself: unsettled, or itching to get some work done.
Something like that.
______________

"Hampered by the clothes she wore,
By the dirty looks they kept in store"
--old song circling in my head.

Dream: Office Exile?

The other night, I had one of my recurring dreams that I have a secret office at Berkeley, usually a closet of a space that locks, which somehow is always overlooked, and I just work there or ruminate there or drink there. I only have the dream once or twice a year, but I've visited that office off and on for, oh, 20 years now.

(Back in the early 1990's, for a few scattered semesters, I had solo-access to a quite nice office in Wheeler Hall due to the kindness of my dissertation director, but the dream-office is never quite that space, not usually quite that nice either.)

In this latest episode, the usual closet-office had morphed into a suite that I (a not-quite-me -- you know: dreams) . . . that I was squatting in, only to get busted out when a new hire showed up expecting to inhabit the place. She was not very happy about yours-truly, and as I was throwing books and clothes and gear into a rollie, I woke up.

I wonder if that's my last visit to campus.

It's A Devil-Duck World . . . .

(Sand and pebbles from Monastery Beach.)

Motley Dream

Sleeping hard.

Dream: Wave-Crash

Kelp-time. Slightly disturbing, disorienting dream last night (among many) about free diving off a rocky shoreline just down the coast. I was distracted and checking out a circular "tide pool" out near the impact zone. A surfer stopped to give me the heads-up the tide was changing, the swell was rising, and the waves were getting closer and closer, ready to take me out. I thanked him, wondered how I could have gotten so focused on the shellfish and such in the crater-like collection of rocks, and started checking my exits. The waves were indeed crashing closer and closer, and the dusk was falling hard. Where had the time gone? Suddenly I was cold to the bone and tired. I went to the shoreward side of the rocks, and there was a twelve-foot drop to water and rocks (a completely unrealistic effect, but it was a dream). I'd have to time my getaway dropping over that side. I'd need water on the rocks to cushion my fall, but I wouldn't want to be caught in the crater for a full-on wave strike. Suddenly, in a rush of thick, thick water and thick foam, I was over the edge and getting rolled deep. I came up gasping. A very odd dream, but the cold water, the salt, and the kelpiness pleases me, despite the rough handling.

Crossley-Holland: "Comfort"

COMFORT

Who said anything about comfort?
Those syllables do not rhyme
with zinc slakes or ice-bright sky.
The sea is grinding her spears.
Up creeks and gullies, over groynes
the black tide surges
and the hag wind rides her.
In the bleak forest on the staithe
rigging clacks and chitters.

Little but memory for company,
wild geese, swans whooping,
but no urbanity no
gossip prejudice bitterness sham.
In London I dream of these harsh folds,
the sea's slam, the light's eagle eye,
and here again I draw
this place -- hair-shirt, dear cloak --
around such infirmities.

--Kevin Crossley-Holland

Twigs and Visions

The Sleeper, Green: 
sculpture mix; copper carbonate oxide and clear glazing.

(30-minute exercise with model.)

Printer's Devil

One of my poems in print.