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Welcome to MORNING OPEN THREAD, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day's posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
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In the United States December 7th is forever the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, a defining moment in our history. Many pens more eloquent than mine have told that story.
Yet the 7th of December, like all other days of the year, has seen many other events, including the births of these four poets. They hail from Scotland, Japan, South Africa, and America.
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Sea Song
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by Allan Cunningham
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A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast—
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While, like the eagle free,
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.
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"O for a soft and gentle mind!"
I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the snoring breeze
And white waves heaving high—
And white waves heaving high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free;
The world of waters is our home,
And merry men are we.
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There's tempest in yon hornèd moon,
And lightning in yon cloud;
And hark the music, mariners!
The wind is piping loud—
The wind is piping loud, my boys,
The lightning flashing free;
While the hollow oak our palace is,
Our heritage the sea.
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Last Words
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by Allan Cunningham
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Gane were but the winter cauld,
And gane were but the snaw,
I could sleep in the wild woods,
Where primroses blaw.
Cauld's the snaw at my head,
And cauld at my feet,
And thy finger o' death's at my een
Closing them to sleep.
Let nane tell my father,
Or my mither sae dear:
I'll meet them baith in Heaven,
At the spring o' the year.
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“Sea Song” and “Last Words” are in the public domain.
Allan Cunningham (1784-1842) Scottish poet and author. His family lived near Robert Burns, and as a boy Cunningham attended his funeral. He was apprenticed to a stonemason but spent his free time reading, and writing imitations of old Scottish ballads. In 1813, he published Songs, Chiefly in the rural dialect of Scotland. Cunningham moved to London in 1814, where he was a parliamentary reporter for The London Magazine. He also became assistant and secretary to the sculptor Sir Francis Chantry, until Chantry's death in 1841. Cunningham continued to pursue literary interests when time permitted, writing three novels, a series of stories printed in Blackwood's Magazine, biographies, and many songs. He was a part of a circle of writers that included Charles Lamb, Thomas DeQuincey, William Hazlitt, and Thomas Hood. He married a woman who worked as servant in the house where he was lodging, and they had six children, several of whom also became writers. His work includes: Traditional tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry; Songs of Scotland Ancient and Modern; Lives of The Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects; and The Works of Robert Burns.
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Tanka
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by Yosano Akiko
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Tanka are Japanese five-line poems, of alternating 5- and 7- syllable lines, totaling 31 syllables (which do not always scan in English – these translations are more concerned with meaning than with form)
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Left on the beach
Full of water
A worn out boat
Reflects the white sky --
Of early autumn.
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Swifter than hail
Lighter than a feather,
A vague sorrow
Crossed my mind.
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Feeling you nearby,
how could I not come
to walk beneath
this evening moon rising
over flowering fields.
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It was only
the thin thread of a cloud,
almost transparent,
leading me along the way
like an ancient sacred song.
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I say his poem,
propped against this frozen wall,
in the late evening,
as bitter autumn rain
continues to fall.
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What I count on
is a white birch
that stands
where no human language
is ever heard.
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A bird comes
delicately as a little girl
to bathe
in the shade of my tree
in an autumn puddle.
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Even at nineteen,
I had come to realize
that violets fade,
spring waters soon run dry,
this life too is transient
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He stood by the door,
calling through the evening
the name of my
sister who died last year
and how I pitied him!
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The Day the Mountains Move
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by Yosano Akiko
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The day the mountains move has come.
I speak, but no one believes me.
For a time the mountains have been asleep,
But long ago, they all danced with fire.
It doesn’t matter if you believe this,
My friends, as long as you believe:
All the sleeping women
Are now awake and moving.
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The Tanka are from River of Stars; Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko,
translated by Sam Hamill & Keiko Matsui Gibson, © 1997 by Sam Hamill – Shambhala Publications
“The Day the Mountains Move” from Feminist Theory Reader,© 2016, edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim – Routledge Books
Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) born as Shō Hō, Japanese author, poet, pioneering feminist, and social reformer. Published in 1901, Midaregami (Tangled Hair), her first of several collections of tanka, a traditional Japanese poetry form, contained around 400 poems, the majority of them love poems. It was denounced by most literary critics as vulgar or obscene, but was widely read by freethinkers, as it brought a passionate individualism to this traditional form, unlike any other work of the late Meiji period. The poems defied Japanese society’s expectation of women to always be gentle, modest and passive. In her poems, women are assertively sexual. She frequently wrote for the all-woman literary magazine Seitō (Bluestocking.) Yosano disagreed with many Japanese feminists of her time that the government should provide financially for mothers, saying dependence on the state and dependence on men were really the same thing. Even though she gave birth to 13 children, 11 of whom survived to adulthood, she rejected motherhood as her main identity, saying limiting a sense of self to a single aspect of one’s life, however important, entraps women in the old way of thinking.
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Nothing’s Changed
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by Tatamkhulu Africa
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Small round hard stones click
under my heels,
seeding grasses thrust
bearded seeds
into trouser cuffs, cans,
trodden on, crunch
in tall, purple-flowering,
amiable weeds.
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District Six.
No board says it is:
but my feet know,
and my hands,
and the skin about my bones,
and the soft labouring of my lungs,
and the hot, white, inwards turning
anger of my eyes.
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Brash with glass,
name flaring like a flag,
it squats
in the grass and weeds,
incipient Port Jackson trees:
new, up-market, haute cuisine,
guard at the gatepost,
whites only inn.
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No sign says it is:
but we know where we belong.
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I press my nose
to the clear panes, know,
before I see them, there will be
crushed ice white glass,
linen falls,
the single rose.
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Down the road,
working man's cafe sells
bunny chows.
Take it with you, eat
it at a plastic table's top,
wipe your fingers on your jeans,
spit a little on the floor:
it's in the bone.
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I back from the
glass,
boy again,
leaving small mean O
of small mean mouth.
Hands burn
for a stone, a bomb,
to shiver down the glass.
Nothing's changed.
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Dark Where Loneliness Hides
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by Tatamkhulu Africa
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Cat’s small child cries
in the dark where loneliness hides.
Cat’s small child beats
its breast in the soft
furriness of its need.
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Cats don’t beat their breasts,
cats yell with lust
in the dark where loneliness hides?
Is it I, then, that cries,
mad child running wild?
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Is it I that lies
in the dark where loneliness hides,
that listens as the wild geese wing
past short of the stars,
rime my roof with their dung?
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Cat’s mewling, sky’s
sibilances, these
are the thieves of my ease?
What else waits
in the dark where loneliness hides?
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My song has a crooked spine.
Should I break a bone
as I straighten it?
Or birth its crookedness in
the dark where loneliness hides?
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“Nothing's Changed” and “Dark Where Loneliness Hides” are from Nightrider: Selected Poems, © 2000 by Tatamkhulu Africa – NB Publishers
Tatamkhulu Afrika (1920-2002) born as Mogamed Fu’ad Nasif in Egypt to a Turkish mother and Arab father. He was a South African poet, author, and anti-apartheid activist, coming to the country as a very young child, then fostered by family friends after his parents died. He was a soldier in the WWII North Africa Campaign, and was captured at Tobruk. His experiences as a prisoner of war are prominently featured in his writing. In the 1960s, he was a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) the armed wing of the ANC. In 1987, he was arrested for terrorism and banned from speaking in public or publishing his work for 5 years, but continued writing under the pen name Tatamkhulu Afrika. He served 11 years in prison until his release in 1992. Just after the 2002 publication of his final novel, Bitter Eden, he was run over by a car, and died of his injuries two weeks later.
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from: We Speak Your Names
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by Pearl Cleague
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Because we are free women,
born of free women,
who are born of free women,
back as far as time begins,
we celebrate your freedom.
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Because we are wise women,
born of wise women,
who are born of wise women,
we celebrate your wisdom.
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Because we are strong women,
born of strong women,
who are born of strong women,
we celebrate your strength.
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Because we are magical women,
born of magical women,
who are born of magical women,
we celebrate your magic.
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My sisters, we are gathered here to speak your
names.
We are here because we are your daughters
as surely as if you had conceived us, nurtured us,
carried us in your wombs, and then sent us out
into the world to make our mark
and see what we see, and be what we be, but better,
truer, deeper
because of the shining example of your own
incandescent lives.
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We are here to speak your names
because we have enough sense to know
that we did not spring full blown from the
forehead of Zeus,
or arrive on the scene like Topsy, our sister once
removed, who somehow just growed.
We know that we are walking in footprints made
deep by the confident strides
of women who parted the air before them like the
forces of nature that you are.
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We are here to speak your names
because you taught us that the search is always for
the truth
and that when people show us who they are, we
should believe them.
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We are here because you taught us
that sisterspeak can continue to be our native
tongue,
no matter how many languages we learn as we
move about as citizens of the world
and of the ever-evolving universe.
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We are here to speak your names
because of the way you made for us.
Because of the prayers you prayed for us.
We are the ones you conjured up, hoping we
would have strength enough,
and discipline enough, and talent enough, and
nerve enough
to step into the light when it turned in our
direction, and just smile awhile.
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We are the ones you hoped would make you
proud
because all of our hard work
makes all of yours part of something better, truer,
deeper.
Something that lights the way ahead like a lamp
unto our feet,
as steady as the unforgettable beat of our collective
heart.
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We speak your names.
We speak your names.
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“We Speak Your Names” from We Speak Your Names: A Celebration, © 2005 by Pearl Cleague – One World/Ballantine Books
Pearl Cleague (1948- ) African-American prolific playwright, essayist, poet, novelist, and political activist. She was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and is currently Playwright in Residence at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. Cleague is known for tackling issues at the crux of racism and sexism. Her works include the plays Good News, Blues for an Alabama Sky, and Bourbon at the Border; the novels What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day,Babylon Sisters, and Till You Hear From Me; thepoetry collections One for the Brothers, and We Speak Your Names: A Celebration; and an Essay collection, Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot.
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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