Santoka Taneda – The Sound of Waves…

I stumbled upon this poem by Santoka Taneda and it struck a chord with me because it is profound and touches on the topic of transience. The poet compares the constancy of the waves, caressing the sandy shore then withdrawing again, in an everlasting rhythm, with the fleeting nature of our human life and the lyrical subject wonders: how much of his life remains? Santoka Taneda (1882-1940), an eccentric drunkard turned Zen priest, wrote many meditative poems and remains famous for writing in a free verse haiku style. Regardless of Taneda’s innovative haiku style “far more important are the special Zen qualities of simplicity (wabi), solitude (sabi), and impermanence (mujo) conveyed in a modern setting by his haiku.” (Mountain Tasting, Poetry of Santoka Taneda, translated by John Stevens) I think these elements make the poem so deep and I look forward to reading more of his poetry.

Paul Gauguin, La Vague, 1888

“The sound of waves
Now distant, now close;
How much of my life remains?”

Miklós Radnóti: You held me, my love, and then went on dreaming, of perhaps a different kind of death…

One of my recent poetic discoveries is a Hungarian Jewish poet Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944) who died very young in sad circumstances as a victim of Holocaust. During his lifetime he worked as a teacher and translated into Hungarian some works of Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean de La Fontaine. Reading Radnóti’s many lovely poems leaves a taste of sweet memories, promises and hope on my tongue. His verses are covered with a thin dusty pink veil of melancholy, a sense of transience lingers through them, and they reveal a deeply sensitive soul and gentle nature. Many of his poems were inspired by his childhood sweetheart and later his wife Fanny. It’s interesting to see the dates of the poems, written near the end of his life, in 1941 … 1943 etc. and how unburdened they are with the events of the time. One can sense death and the ending in his verses, but the themes that occupied him poetically are of a gentle introspective nature: mostly love, kindness, hope. The war and the political situation didn’t make him bitter, as it made Georg Trakl decades before, but rather it awoke the humanity inside him. His love poems such as this one seem to say “let’s love each other while we still can, come into my arms, my sweet darling, lets sink into a sweet dream until the whirlwind of horrors and change is over, lest it should sweep us away too…” But Radnóti never saw the end of horrors, having died in November 1944. As he went into death, into a long sweet dream, he left his beloved in the wasteland of this world, and a little fragment of his soul in the verses he wrote.

Laura Makabresku, Winter sleep

***

With your right hand on my neck

 

With your right hand on my neck, I lay next to

you last night,

and since the day’s woes still pained me, I did

not ask you to take it away,

but listened to the blood coursing through your

arteries and veins,

 

Then finally around twelve sleep overcame me,

as sudden and guileless as my sleep so long ago,

when in the downy time of my youth it rocked

me gently.

 

You tell me it was not yet three when I was

startled awake

and sat up terrified and screaming.

muttering strange and unintelligible words,

 

then spread out my arms like a bird ruffled with

fear

flapping its wings as a dark shadow flutters

through the garden.

Tell me, where was I going? And what kind of

death had frightened me so?

 

And you held me, my love, as I sat up half-asleep,

then lay back in silence, wondering what paths

and horrors awaited me.

And then went on dreaming. Of perhaps a

different kind of death.

Miklós and his darling wife Fanny in 1937

Anna Akhmatova – I rarely think of you now

One of the most beautiful and fascinating poems I’ve read in a while:

Walter Richard Sickert, Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford, 1892

I rarely think of you now,

Not captured by your fate,

But our insignificant meeting’s trace

Has not vanished from my soul.

 

I purposely avoid your red house,

That red house on its muddy river,

But I know I bitterly disturb

Your sunlit heart at rest.

Marc Chagall, Rain, 1911

Marc Chagall, The Flying Carriage, 1913

Though you never bent to my lips,

Imploring love,

Never immortalised my longing

In verse of gold –

 

I secretly conjure the future,

When evening shines clear and blue,

And foresee the inevitable meeting,

A second meeting, with you.

John Everett Millais, Caller Herrin’