Kitano- Tenmangu

Tags

boussokusekika, geiko, Kitano-Tenmangu, maiko

(Creative Commons.  Photo by 663highland, 19/2/11)

 

Angry bureaucrat-

scholar and poet exile –

has to be appeased.

Geiko and maiko serve tea

beneath blossom and lanterns.

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Yasaka jinja

Tags

boussokusekika, Gion Matsuri, hoko, palanquins, yama, Yasaka jinja

(Photo: Creative Commons)

 

The gods’ palanquins

were paraded through the streets:

the epidemic

stemmed. Giant hoko and yama*

commemorate shown mercy.

 

• floats

.

 

Omiwa Jinja

Tags

boussokusekika, Kusuri ido, Omiwa Jinja, Yamato

(Wikimedia Commons – photo by Yanjin 33,

August 2012)

 

Kusuri ido,*

you healed those who drank

from your spring waters.

The Yamato line found strength

by worshiping here.

 

• sacred well

Protected Species

Tags

beaver lamb, Bhutan, bling, capybara, clutch purse, Everest, globetrotter, Goa, Guatemala, La Giocanda, leopardskin, Noel Coward, non-U, orang-utan, shagreen, shibboleths, Sikkim, tortoiseshell, wolverine

Re-blog

 

I am reminded of my encounter with a grande dame who had experienced the days of the Raj first hand.  She measured out her widowhood in coffee spoons and cigarettes. 

One lunchtime – (cloth: on ; dinner : cloth off)- she sat in a cloud of smoke, like mist rising from the Ganges, and I admired her leopard skin coat.  She minimally acknowledged my obeisance.

A few evenings later, she was leaving a drinks party to which I also had been invited.

By way of something to say, I asked her where her fur coat was, as she was being solicitously wrapped in a stole by a favoured minion who was to see her safely across the road.  She gave me a withering look and corrected my social solecism, resulting in this poem:

 

 

Protected Species

 

He placed the mink stole round her neck –

not the fur coat she’d worn on deck.

She saw my look and then observed

the riposte which I had deserved:

“You don’t wear leopard after dark!”

“Never? Not even for a lark?”

“Precisely. It’s not the done thing.”

“What about ocelot?”

“Too bling.

It’s like cloth for luncheon, but NOT

for dinner? One just never ought.”

“Is there any jurisdiction

on camel? Any restriction

on beaver lamb, cashmere, fox-fur? –

shibboleths on which They concur? –

a consensus aimed at non-U?”

“The proles took to fake kangaroo.

In crepuscular hours of dusk,

outrageously they sported musk

and, as far as Guatemala,

riff-raff lounged in capybara.

Minxes out in the Sahara

had bikinis of impala.

One can pose as La Giocanda

in a thong of rare red panda,

but animal right protesters

wanted bobbies to arrest us.

They showed chagrin; I owned shagreen:

clutch purses, belts in wolverine,

tortoiseshell compacts – what’s the fuss?

Darling, they’re just not one of us.

In Sikkim some said, “That’s Betty.

She’s the one who’s wearing yeti”

I would sip a margarita,

naked, on a rug of cheetah.

(I was pretty well devoured

by a rampant Noel Coward.)

He quipped, ‘Little looks much snazzier

Than zebra pants and brassiere.’

In the mountains of Bhutan,

my tippet was orang-utan

and my favourite windcheater

was two hides of tanned anteater.

(At altitude on Everest,

one needs an extra tiger vest.)

At a barbecue in Goa,

I singed my flamingo boa.

To meet the Queen, I wore a hat

and had it trimmed with a fruit bat.

There was a tiny rigmarole

when footmen took my corgi stole.

She said archly, ‘Is that dodo?’

I checked my heel: ‘Madam, no, no.

I’m sure your carpets are quite clean.’

She glared: ‘Your headgear’s what we mean.’

Though denied my decoration,

I still caused a huge sensation.

I’m a seasoned old globetrotter.

I wear stoat and I wear otter,

I’ve worn porpoise, whale and shark –

But NEVER leopard after dark.”

Add to Anti-Banner

Age Barrier

Tags

Beijing, dowager, eunuch, Prospect Hill, Time, Willow Pattern, wings of a dove

( A very old one which I have not published before.  Not a real romance.

Imagined ones are perhaps more thrilling.)

 

 

Where should we meet, except on Prospect Hill?

(Anticipation feeds sublimity).

Wan ray of hope gilds the smog-bound tiles. Thrill

of assignation’s anonymity

lifts me beyond pagoda roofs, above

blurred Beijing skyline. If by fate,

I flew with wings of that proverbial dove,

I’d soar forever on a Willow plate.

With brandished whip Time sets off in pursuit,

but cannot bring me down to earth. This day

forbidden cities and illicit fruit

seem tangible and not mere fantasy.

But you are many years too late. Oh, why

am I so punctual, self-aware and old?

You might well be eunuch; dowager I:

for while you’ve kept me waiting, I’ve grown cold.

 

 

(zh.wikipedia)

 

Cor Cordium Post 2

Tags

Angelus, curfew, Falls of Clyde, gargoyles, Immanence, Inglesham, Isis, Lechlade, Lycidas, Mary Shelley, Narcissus, New Inn, Severn, T L Peacock, Windsor Great Park, Wordworth

For introduction, see previous post.

(Photo: by Ballista at English Wikipedia, May 2006)

 

COR CORDIUM

(a monologue, as spoken by Mary Shelley…)

 

I remember he called me his veiled maid

and said I had a voice like his own soul.

Up what he termed the watery staircases,

we rose, emerging under a humped bridge.

Ostensibly, we sought the Isis source,

but were we really looking for the fount

of Inspiration… Imagination?

 

All the while, like Narcissus, he just stared;

reflected on the depths, till weeds choked us,

at Inglesham.  We lodged at The New Inn.

Peacock encouraged us to eat some chops.

Thus fortified, we strolled before the curfew,

through the ancient churchyard, which seemed to rouse

the Muse in him, for he became withdrawn

and it was only his echoing cough

which disturbed our tranquility.  The spire

pointed heavenward, as if to raise heads

cast down by the dejection of their pasts.

I thought of Clara- and mother also-

and dwelt awhile on my estranged father.

Well, Wordsworth was quite right- the good die first.

 

What strange visions and dreams I’d had before:

my babe resurrected, but then more deaths.

Suicides ensued.  Yet on that still night,

we watched the moon; heard the Angelus

and felt a kind of divine Immanence.

 

I wanted to drift forever on streams;

to exorcise my deep melancholy.

Harriet had threatened to prosecute:

she made his ‘atheism’ a pretext,

citing elopement and abandonment.

But he was only in love with loving:

like Augustine, he was not yet in love,

though he claimed to reject Beauty, Nature,

seeking to find full truth in a woman.

All that free love was, at times, fatiguing.

 

Why did I always have to share his love?

He even shared his father’s allowance.

We never made it to The Falls of Clyde,

for he could not produce the Severn fee

and Charles and Peacock could not contribute.

 

So, while he spoke of Lycidas and death,

I felt that I was drowning in sorrows.

Suddenly his ‘airy scheme’ seemed grounded.

I longed to return to Windsor Great Park,

but the gargoyles seemed to mock my desires.

So, what was I left with?

 

I edit work

and open the pages of ‘Adonais’,

gazing at that once strongly beating heart;

mummified now; wrapped around in white silk.

Is that all that remains of burning love?

 

No, for even among the crumbling tombs,

verse was produced on that late summer night

and his very heartbeat was metrical.

 

Now I hold the rhythms of his life- here-

not between the pages, but within them.

 

Cor Cordium

Tags

Adonais, Charles Clairmont, cor cordium, Cricklade, Douglas, dramatic monologue, Holamn Hunt, Isabella and pot of basil, Keats, Lechlade, Mary Shelley, Monty Don, Percy B Shelley, Protestant Cemetery, Robert the Bruce, Rome, Severn Canal, skiff, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Love Peacock, Tripadvisor, Valentine's Day, Walter Raleigh

(P B S’s gravestone in The Protestant Cemetery, Rome.

28/8/04 Author: carptrash  Einar Einarsson Kvaran

transferred from en wikipaedia)

‘Cor Cordium‘ was inscribed on Shelley’s grave and means ‘heart of hearts.‘

Valentine’s Day  seemed an apt time to look into what happened to his

physical heart.

Apparently Mary Shelley kept it wrapped up in white silk and it was

placed between the pages of a book, at her husband’s poem on

Keats: ‘Adonais.‘  It can’t have been the whole organ, so must have been

a sliver which was saved from immolation on the beach at Spezia.

It reminded me of Robert the Bruce’s heart being encased in a lead

casket. It was meant to be taken to The Holy Land, but Douglas failed to

dispose of it there, so it returned to Scotland.

Hearts were often removed and, like Thomas Hardy’s, were buried

separately from the rest of the remains.

It is rather ghoulish to ponder on what Isabella had in her pot of basil,

or what Walter Raleigh’s widow carried around with her in a leather bag.

Yes, sometimes it was a head and not a heart.  People can be weird.

(I don’t know what you have to feed basil, the herb, with, but I never

seem to  have any luck with growing it in a pot.  Isabella seemed to be

quite successful, judging by Holman Hunt’s painting, but I don’t think

Monty Don would prescribe such an extreme compost.)

Anyway, my next dramatic monologue references Mary, in later life,

meditating on their September voyage up the Thames, in the

company of Charles Clairmont and the novelist Thomas Love Peacock.

They failed to reach Cricklade and the source of the river and, in any

case, did not have the £20 to pay the navigation fee for their skiff to

enter The Severn Canal.  So, they stayed two nights in Lechlade and

P B S ( pernicious bowel syndrome- not) wrote a poem in the

churchyard there.

Peacock called the inn ‘comfortable‘ so it would have had a good review

on ‘Tripadvisor,’ had such a site had been in existence.

The day before yesterday I traced the hostelry in which they stayed and

viewed a bedroom which MIGHT have been the one in which they lodged.

Then I walked through the churchyard of St Lawrence’s Church to admire

the snowdrops, which they certainly would not have done, their visit

having been in late summer, 1815.

My poem:

Cor Cordium  (a poem on Valentine’s Day)

see next post…

Up Yonder/ Down Under

Tags

Abbots of Unreason, altruism, boy bishops, conceptual socialism, Dame Edna, damnatio memoriae, Dolce & Gabbana, Down Under, empathy, Francis Rossi, Gunnamatta Beach, Heliogabalus, Kylie, Lagerfield, Lee Mingwei, Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Mao, Melbourne, Mis-Rule, Moonee Ponds, NGV, Point Leo, Prince des Sots, Rick Parfitt, Saturnalia, The Moving Garden

Photo: Fir 0002/ Flagstaffotos

G’day, possums!

Still haven’t achieved my ambition to bump into Edna Everage,

in, or around, Moonee Ponds.

That great Lord (or Dame) of Mis-Rule should re-appear, as

we all have need of an indigenous stalwart of comedy, a she-oak

of satire, in these topsy-turvy times, when the rule-book has been

torn up.

Yes, I am no longer Up Yonder, but am Down Under, escaping the

status quos in Europe and the USA, which seem to be presided*

over by Abbots of Unreason, Princes des Sots and other anti-

experts, who seem to be having a field day.  We might as well be

governed by the likes of Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, as our theme

tune seems to be ‘Whatever You Want.’

(* note the spelling, Donald.)

Bring back Boy Bishops!

Yet, this is no restricted time of daft usurpation, lasting till the 28th of

the month, when metaphorical steam would be released cathartically

and order restored – granted by some Saturnalian blood-letting of the

temporary ‘ruler.’

Yes, slaves becoming masters is no new concept. If you think nepotism

is novel, refer to Heliogabalus, who raised the women in his family to

senatorial titles.  He used cosmetics to enhance his appearance and

saw himself as the sun god, before he was eclipsed from public memory-

damnatio memoriae.  So perish all with such a degree of hubris!

But what to do while the black farce plays itself out?

Walk on Gunnamatta Beach, or Point Leo?

(You could still be sprayed by effluent from the discharge of over 40%

of Melbourne’s sewage from a nearby pipe.  The surfers don’t seem to

mind.)

You could eat wallaby on South Bank- surprisingly delicious with a confit

of beetroot and pickled red cabbage.

You could gawp at what I call Vulgari jewels at the NGV.  Or enjoy a

confection of Kylie’s stage costumes by Dolce & Gabbana and Lagerfield…

There are plenty of distractions, I assure you. One can emulate Nero and

fiddle while everything is incinerated in a global bushfire to end all

international  infernos.

On the other hand, you might enjoy participating in Lee Mingwei’s The

Moving Garden, a curiously apt installation and piece of conceptual

socialism which takes you out of yourself and reminds you of the intrinsic

hope of human altruism and expressions of empathy.

The cynic in Candia has to overcome alarm bells at the memory of

Mao’s Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom.  Self-expression can be dodgy.

However, I felt constrained to write you a poem about this

meaningful experience, so be sure to read the next post!

Maybe there is hope for the future, possums.

Travelling from Zhaoqing to Hong Kong, via The Pearl River Estuary- Feb. 1997

Tags

Ansel Adams, Dim sum, El Capitan, foreign mud, Hong Kong, Jetcat, kitchen god, Kung Fu, lai see, Lion Dance, lotus, Mongkok, opium, Pearl River, sampan, Tsao Wang, Winna Lodge, Yosemite, Zhaoqing

Found this period piece in the garage:

(View of Zhaoqing- 7 Stars by Antoine Mouquet,

23/7/2005)

It’s just as well there are no Pearly Gates

in Spring Festival iconography,

such is the push to be the first one through.

Being British, we naturally wait,

believing that the last shall be first.

Chinese courtesy proves just as ‘Christian’

and stewards show tourists to the best seats-

or is it that we have a group booking?

Further enigmas for us to ponder.

From the Jetcat we hear the deep drum beats

of a Lion Dance; then we are whisked away

from Zhaoqing to Hong Kong, through a grey mist,

as dreich as any Calvinist devil

trafficking in foreign mud* could invoke,

to cover up his nefarious deeds.

Sampan fishermen float among lotus,

seeking a catch of mercury-tainted fry,

while passengers gorge pre-ordered noodles,

violent videos, or gawp at old films

of Yosemite’s winter wonderland,

with El Capitan’s giant monolith

more enduring than Communism.

I feel guilt, having experienced both:

the luxury of Winona Lodge and

mainland China’s dire sanitation.

My eyes stray to a peeling pagoda

while chipmunks skitter through the pristine snow

on screen.  The only wildlife that I saw

in town was a dangling, threaded turtle

and two spiny creatures gnawing through mesh,

in adjacent cages outside a shop,

while all the little yellow trapped birds sang,

to celebrate the British Handover.

By the time we had reached the neon bay,

the children had grown bored by loud Kung Fu

and animal tracks in Adams country.

They were focusing on their next Dim Sum

and whether the Kitchen God, Tsao Wang,

would report favourably about them,

on his annual journey to Heaven

(which might have seemed like the United States

to those who had no hope of travelling there.)

Clutching their scarlet Lai See envelopes,

they sought Mongkok, their Chinese Paradise,

to eat mushrooms of opportunity

with relatives who must have pushed harder.

We waited politely and then disembarked.

The Star Ferry turned around and sailed back.

* opium

Chipping Snodbury

Tags

Absent Freinds, aperro, bachaqueros, Bolivar, Chipping Sodbury, Corbyn, Deist, Embers, Farrow and Ball, Ford Pinto, gloaming, Indian Summer, Malapropism, Pele Tower, River Camel, Sandor Marai, Snodland, The Cotswolds, Venezuela, Voltaire

Great-Aunt Augusta: RIP

 

Mrs Connolly, the housekeeper at Murgatroyd Syylk’s pele tower,

was exhausted.  She had overseen the triple marriages- well, dual

marriages and one re-espousal- of Augustus and Virginia, Drusilla

and Nigel and her employers: Diana and the aforementioned Murgatroyd.

She had given Dru a lace-trimmed hankie when her mascara had

threatened to run, as the bride had welled up at the thought that dear old

Aunt Augusta would not be with them.  The old curmudgeon had loved a

good wedding, funeral or general family crisis.  She had been sorely

missed.

Gus had raised a toast to ‘Absent Friends‘ at the end of his father-of-the-

bride speech, by way of respect.

Curiously a feather had floated down onto the top table at this very point.

It was black, but was nevertheless pronounced a good omen as it

appeared to be exactly like one from Aunt Augusta’s feather boa which

she always wore- even in Snodland Nursing Home for the Debased Gentry, at

‘aperro-time‘ as she was wont to call that crepuscular, inebriation

time-zone.

Clearly, she was with them in spirit, if not spirits.

They had left a place at the top table for her, or for The Grey Lady whom

she had conversed with, though nobody else had had direct

communication with the resident phantom.

Mrs Connolly had kept a lid on the petulant Mrs Milford-Haven, mother

of Nigel, who had been confused by her lengthy, Corbynesque train

journey from Cornwall.

She had scarcely been over The Camel in her lifetime, but was naturally

acquainted with the concept of a hump.  This was no crude allusion, but

merely indicative of her tendency to sulk when she was not the centre of

attention. Maybe it was some kind of physiological Radon effect.

Mrs Connolly had handled her robustly.

Whit’s the matter with yon wifie?  she had enquired.  Has she peed on a

thistle?

Soon she had calmed the situation down by introducing her to a Farrow and

Ball paint chart, which gave the peevish guest big ideas for Nigel’s post-

honeymoon guilt trip, to finish off the decoration of her bathroom.

Even Gus had been a tad emotional about his more-or-less step-brother,

Hugo, who was stranded in Venezuela.  He had been unable to leave the

country to take up his proffered teaching post at St Birinus Middle, even

after all the hard work Virginia had put in with visa application and so on.

A black market hawker was unlikely to be able to afford a trip to The

Borders.

Bachaqueros was a romantic collective noun, but everyone knew that it was

euphemistic.

Dru had been exasperated: Why doesn’t he just add billions of zeros to a

Bolivar note and turn up at the airport with a wheelbarrow of them?

It’s not that simple, darling, sympathised Diana.  We should have opened a

‘Generosity’ site to raise funds for him, I suppose.

Oh, I hadn’t thought of crowd-funding, Dru sighed.

Or he could have sold his Ford Pinto, muttered Gus.  Though we have lived to

see Voltaire’s comments on paper currency come true.

The Rev Finlay Armstrong had been aroused at the mention of this notable

Deist.

Yes, it returns to its intrinsic worth, Snod explained, as if he was back in the

classroom.

Flickr-Voltaire (marble) by Houdon. Nat Gallery Art, Chester Dale,

  1963)

Author: Sarah Stierch

 

But he was not back in the classroom.  He was now to be a married man

and Virginia had suggested that he burn all his old teaching notes in the

new trendy, fire pit which Murgatroyd had installed so that his guests

could sit al fresco in the midge-ridden gloaming on the few Indian

summer evenings which were dry.

That was quick! she had remarked.  There was a few singed curls of paper.

Where is all the rest?  Had you shredded them?

No, Snod replied.  I am of the old school.  All my lessons were, and indeed still

are, in my head.

At least she was assured that there had been no incineration of erstwhile

love letters.  She still had a little explorative rake-through with

Murgatroyd’s self-wrought poker.

She was right about the non-incineration of the amatory epistles. Diana

still possessed them- including the Valentine card which had gone astray

like many a Messianic sheep, all those years ago and which had led to the

current denouement.

But this seemed to be all in the past.  Virginia had been reading Sandor

Marai’s book Embers and an apposite quotation from it had come to mind:

Time is a purgatory that has cleansed all fury from my memories.

We shall subsequently see whether this is indeed the case.

Meanwhile Mrs C was showing her fatigue in her usual Malapropistic

manner: So, when will you be back from Chipping Snodbury? she asked

Murgatroyd and Diana, who had planned a little antique-hunting

expedition in The Cotswolds.

Sodbury! they had exclaimed.