I traced the line of the horizon, thin and fine
Friday, May 18, 2018
 |
| On the ferry to Port Townsend, Washington |
While I was
born in Buenos Aires, lived and Mexico and now live in Vancouver, my education
has been thoroughly American.
In Buenos
Aires and in Mexico City I went to American schools. I attended a two-room
school house in Nueva Rosita that followed an American program. My mother (who steered me toward British authors) was
the teacher. I went to a Catholic boarding school in Texas and then to an
American university in Mexico City.
While my
reading habits in the last 30 years have gravitated to reading in Spanish
authors who wrote in Spanish, it is thanks to my American education that today,
Wednesday 16, 2018 I read about Edna St. Vincent Millay here in the New York Times and not only did I know
who she was but I remember some of her work. And there is Robert Frost, James
Thurber, E.B. White, O’Henry, Emily Dickinson, Williams Carlos Williams, Ezra
Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley, Kurt Vonnegut and scores of other American writers that I have seemed
to grow up with.
I have no
idea if this American background has served me well. My knowledge of Canadian
letters is still sparse. I have a better knowledge of the literature of Mexico
and from the very beginning of my later youth the works of Jorge Luís Borges
and Julio Cortázar have always been near my bed table.
The article
in the New York Times is about St. Vincent Millay’s home in Austerlitz, New
York and how funding to keep it open to interested tourists is in jeopardy. The piece
finishes with this poem commissioned by The Saturday Evening Post in 1950 to commemorate
Thanksgiving:
From the
apprehensive present, from
a future
packed
With
unknown dangers, monstrous
terrible
and new –
Let us turn
for comfort to this simple
fact;
We have
been in trouble before…and
we came
through.
The piece
mentions her first published poem (she was 20) called Renascence. I looked it
up, fell for it and I knew that I had a couple of photographs that could illustrate
it.
Renascence
By Edna
St. Vincent Millay
All I
could see from where I stood
Was
three long mountains and a wood;
I turned
and looked another way,
And saw
three islands in a bay.
So with my
eyes I traced the line
Of the
horizon, thin and fine,
Straight
around till I was come
Back to
where I'd started from;
And all
I saw from where I stood
Was
three long mountains and a wood.
Over
these things I could not see;
These
were the things that bounded me;
And I
could touch them with my hand,
Almost,
I thought, from where I stand.
And all
at once things seemed so small
My
breath came short, and scarce at all.
But,
sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles
and miles above my head;
So here
upon my back I'll lie
And look
my fill into the sky.
And so I
looked, and, after all,
The sky
was not so very tall.
The sky,
I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure
enough!—I see the top!
The sky,
I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most
could touch it with my hand!
And
reaching up my hand to try,
I
screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I
screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came
down and settled over me;
Forced
back my scream into my chest,
Bent
back my arm upon my breast,
And,
pressing of the Undefined
The
definition on my mind,
Held up
before my eyes a glass
Through
which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it
seemed I must behold
Immensity
made manifold;
Whispered
to me a word whose sound
Deafened
the air for worlds around,
And
brought unmuffled to my ears
The
gossiping of friendly spheres,
The
creaking of the tented sky,
The
ticking of Eternity.
I saw
and heard, and knew at last
The How
and Why of all things, past,
And
present, and forevermore.
The
Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open
to my probing sense
That,
sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But
could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the
great wound, and could not pluck
My lips
away till I had drawn
All
venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my
omniscience paid I toll
In
infinite remorse of soul.
All sin
was of my sinning, all
Atoning
mine, and mine the gall
Of all
regret. Mine was the weight
Of every
brooded wrong, the hate
That
stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine
every greed, mine every lust.
And all
the while for every grief,
Each
suffering, I craved relief
With
individual desire,—
Craved
all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a
thousand people crawl;
Perished
with each,—then mourned for all!
A man
was starving in Capri;
He moved
his eyes and looked at me;
I felt
his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew
his hunger as my own.
I saw at
sea a great fog bank
Between
two ships that struck and sank;
A
thousand screams the heavens smote;
And
every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt
I did not feel, no death
That was
not mine; mine each last breath
That,
crying, met an answering cry
From the
compassion that was I.
All
suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine,
pity like the pity of God.
Ah,
awful weight! Infinity
Pressed
down upon the finite Me!
My
anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating
against my lips I heard;
Yet lay
the weight so close about
There
was no room for it without.
And so
beneath the weight lay I
And
suffered death, but could not die.
Long had
I lain thus, craving death,
When
quietly the earth beneath
Gave
way, and inch by inch, so great
At last
had grown the crushing weight,
Into the
earth I sank till I
Full six
feet under ground did lie,
And sank
no more,—there is no weight
Can
follow here, however great.
From off
my breast I felt it roll,
And as
it went my tortured soul
Burst
forth and fled in such a gust
That all
about me swirled the dust.
Deep in
the earth I rested now;
Cool is
its hand upon the brow
And soft
its breast beneath the head
Of one
who is so gladly dead.
And all
at once, and over all
The
pitying rain began to fall;
I lay
and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my
lowly, thatched roof,
And
seemed to love the sound far more
Than
ever I had done before.
For rain
it hath a friendly sound
To one
who's six feet underground;
And
scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave
is such a quiet place.
The
rain, I said, is kind to come
And
speak to me in my new home.
I would
I were alive again
To kiss
the fingers of the rain,
To drink
into my eyes the shine
Of every
slanting silver line,
To catch
the freshened, fragrant breeze
From
drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon
the shower will be done,
And then
the broad face of the sun
Will
laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until
the world with answering mirth
Shakes
joyously, and each round drop
Rolls,
twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can
I bear it; buried here,
While
overhead the sky grows clear
And blue
again after the storm?
O,
multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved
beauty over me,
That I
shall never, never see
Again!
Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I
shall never more behold!
Sleeping
your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred
away from you!
O God, I
cried, give me new birth,
And put
me back upon the earth!
Upset
each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let
the heavy rain, down-poured
In one
big torrent, set me free,
Washing
my grave away from me!
I
ceased; and through the breathless hush
That
answered me, the far-off rush
Of
herald wings came whispering
Like
music down the vibrant string
Of my
ascending prayer, and—crash!
Before
the wild wind's whistling lash
The
startled storm-clouds reared on high
And
plunged in terror down the sky,
And the
big rain in one black wave
Fell
from the sky and struck my grave.
I know
not how such things can be;
I only
know there came to me
A
fragrance such as never clings
To aught
save happy living things;
A sound
as of some joyous elf
Singing
sweet songs to please himself,
And,
through and over everything,
A sense
of glad awakening.
The
grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering
to me I could hear;
I felt
the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed
tenderly across my lips,
Laid
gently on my sealed sight,
And all
at once the heavy night
Fell
from my eyes and I could see,—
A
drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last
long line of silver rain,
A sky
grown clear and blue again.
And as I
looked a quickening gust
Of wind
blew up to me and thrust
Into my
face a miracle
Of
orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know
not how such things can be!—
I
breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then
from the ground sprang I
And
hailed the earth with such a cry
As is
not heard save from a man
Who has
been dead, and lives again.
About
the trees my arms I wound;
Like one
gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised
my quivering arms on high;
I
laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at
my throat a strangling sob
Caught
fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent
instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I
cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er
hereafter hide from me
Thy
radiant identity!
Thou
canst not move across the grass
But my
quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor
speak, however silently,
But my
hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know
the path that tells Thy way
Through
the cool eve of every day;
God, I
can push the grass apart
And lay
my finger on Thy heart!
The
world stands out on either side
No wider
than the heart is wide;
Above
the world is stretched the sky,—
No
higher than the soul is high.
The
heart can push the sea and land
Farther
away on either hand;
The soul
can split the sky in two,
And let
the face of God shine through.
But East
and West will pinch the heart
That can
not keep them pushed apart;
And he
whose soul is flat—the sky
Will
cave in on him by and by.
Source:
Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
I found another poem that delighted me.
First Fig - Edna St. Vincent Millay
My candle burns at both ends;
It will
not last the night;
But ah,
my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives
a lovely light!
Somehow it reminded me of Emily Dickinson and I smiled.
