Louise Gluck's "The Mountain"

THE MOUNTAIN

My students look at me expectantly.
I explain to them that the life of art is a life
of endless labor. Their expressions
hardly change; they need to know
a little more about endless labor.
So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,
how he was doomed to push
a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing
would come of this effort
but that he would repeat it
indefinitely. I tell them
there is joy in this, in the artist’s life,
that one eludes
judgment, and as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself,
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain. Why do I lie
to these children? They aren’t listening,
they aren’t deceived, their fingers
tapping at the wooden desks—
So I retract
the myth; I tell them it occurs
in hell, and that the artist lies
because he is obsessed with attainment,
that he perceives the summit
as that place where he will live forever,
a place about to be
transformed by his burden: with every breath,
I am standing at the top of the mountain.
Both my hands are free. And the rock has added
height to the mountain.

--Louise Gluck


Thank you, AB, for the gift.

Robert Graves: Ghost Stories

Here are five more poems from the incomparable Robert Graves:

A RESTLESS GHOST
Alas for obstinate doubt: the dread
Of error in supposing my heart freed,
All care for her stone dead!
Ineffably will shine the hills and radiant coast
Of early morning when she is gone indeed,
Her divine elements disbanded, disembodied
And through the misty orchards in love spread--
When she is gone indeed--
But still among them moves her restless ghost.


TROUGHS OF SEA
'Do you delude yourself?' a neighbor asks,
Dismayed by my abstraction.
But though love cannot question love
Nor need deny its need,

Pity the man who finds a rebel heart
Under his breastbone drumming
Which reason warns him he should drown
In midnight wastes of sea.


SHE IS NO LIAR
She is no liar, yet she will wash away
Honey from her lips, blood from her shadowy hand,
And, dressed at dawn in clear white robes will say,
Trusting the ignorant world to understand:
'Such things no longer are; this is today.'


A LOST JEWEL
Who on your breast pillows his head now,
Jubilant to have won
The heart beneath on fire for him alone,

At dawn will hear you, plagued by nightmare,
Mumble and weep
About some blue jewel you were sworn to keep.

Wake, blink, laugh out in reassurance,
Yet your tears will say:
'It was not mine to lose or give away.

'For love it shone--never for the madness
Of a strange bed--
Light on my finger, fortune in my head.'

Roused by your naked grief and beauty,
For lust he will burn:
'Turn to me, sweetheart! Why do you not turn?'

I'D DIE FOR YOU

I'd die for you, or you for me,

So furious is our jealousy--

And if you doubt this to be true

Kill me outright, lest I kill you.

--Robert Graves

Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn?

I love my alma mater, warts and all.  And, to keep with that metaphor, she'll bewitch you if you give her half a chance.  Half-Circe, half-Sibyl of Cumae?

Whenever I approach that gate, I hear Virgilian echoes; I just do.

(Homeric resonances too: Holy moly, Hermes!)


Let's hear it, especially, for Latin Summer Workshop '88!
"O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem."  --Virgil, The Aeneid, from Book I.