Threescore and Ten Again*

Magnolia Blossoms & Panama Bag in Washington, DC,
Spring Break 2004
Thanks to my friend Elizabeth who shared with me her file of musical settings for a variety of poems, primarily 19th and 20th Century, and primarily about trees (e.g., "The Three Trees") -- a musical and literary theme so perfect for April, with all the flowering trees bursting forth, and Earth Day and Arbor Day soon approaching.

I particularly enjoyed selections by Emily Dickinson / Aaron Copeland, Robert Frost / Randall Thompson, and "Loveliest of Trees" by A. E. Houseman / John Duke.

More good news about this poem -- you can find these blossoms not only on the "woodland ride" but also along the city streets; not only when twenty years won't come again and you're left with a mere fifty or so springs, but also when the numbers are reversed. So, don't despair! The above photo, for example, was taken twelve springs ago! So many blooms we've seen since then!

Even if "of your threescore years and ten, fifty (or sixty!) will not come again," that still leaves you with ten or twenty springs (if you're lucky -- even more if you're luckier!) to go about the woodlands or the urban gardens and "see the cherry hung with snow."

In our case, that "snow" could be a metaphor for cherry blossoms, or it could be the real thing -- yes, even in April (right, Cate?!). Either way, get out and enjoy that walk . . . time's a - wastin'!

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Houseman (1859 - 1936)

Climbing the "Snowy" Hills of Seattle

* See also last week's post:
Threescore and Ten
"The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."
~ Psalm 90:10 (KJV) ~

Reality Check: "ALL of us will still die."

Threescore and Ten

"The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."
~ Psalm 90:10 (KJV) ~

Very truly I tell you, when you were younger
you dressed yourself and went where you wanted;
but when you are old you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will dress you
and lead you where you do not want to go.”
~ John 21:18 (NIV) ~

The Three Ages of Woman, 1905
by Austrian Painter Gustav Klimt, 1862 - 1918

"I am doing all I can now to be aware of my anxieties and bad habits. I am promising myself to continue to read and draw and write and keep my brain active. I am promising myself to always be with those younger than me (students, nieces, nephews)--to surround myself with a variety of age groups--to keep up with technology--to keep my heart and brain ready for risks and newness and change. . . . I do not want to age into some strange caricature of all my worst traits."

~ Jan Donley, writer, artist, teacher, friend

Why can't dying be more like being born -- a kind of gradual, comprehensible winding down over 9 months -- instead of never knowing how ugly it's all going to get and how long it's going to take and how much of a burden you'll have to be on your loved ones before you're allowed to go in peace? An intelligent designer would have made dying joyful in some way, the way birth is joyful; not make - believe joyful (as in we'll gain our reward in heaven and meet again on the other shore and understand it better by and by) but somehow biochemically naturally innately joyful. But it's not; it's just bad news for everybody.

If there's anything that totally shatters my faith, it's human aging, which is surely much more distressing than dying. What kind of a mean-hearted higher power could possibly dream up such a cruel and un-intelligent design? And by aging, I don't mean a bald spot or a double chin or the loss of youthful looks -- I mean losing your mind, losing your self, becoming less and less of who you ever were. What could be worse than that? It's bad enough to have your kids thinking you're just a little crazy, merely for the fact of being over thirty, let alone waiting for the real thing as the decades pass, threescore, fourscore.

Cafe (1949) ~ by Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1962)
Sometimes I feel like Biff Brannon at the end of
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter:

"The left eye delved narrowly into the past while the right gazed wide and affrighted into a future of blackness, error, and ruin. And he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith. Sharply he turned away."

American novelist Carson McCullers, 1917 - 1967

Or like Bix Constantine and Julie Katz from
Only Begotten Daughter:

"You're an agnostic . . . ?"

"Used to be . . Then one day . . . I picked up my cousin's new baby and realized how at any moment this pathetic, innocent creature might die in a car crash or get leukemia, and in that moment of revelation, my Road to Damascus, I went the whole way to atheism." [110]

*****************
" . . . Randy's illness was part of God's loving plan for us . . . the darkest tragedy becomes a gift, doesn't it . . . ?"

"It's wonderful you've conquered your grief . . . but I can't help suggesting that a God who communicates with us through leukemia is at best deranged.

"In my view, it's time we stopped having lower standards for God than we do for the postal service. Suppose the doctor had cured your son. Then that would have proved [God's] infinite goodness too, wouldn't it? Follow my reasoning? Heads, God wins. Tails, God wins." [116]

American novelist James Morrow, b 1947

*****************

Not to mention the many flaws of
medical intervention: help or hindrance?
"Modern medicine is helping people live longer with complex conditions - often involving round - the - clock care, complicated equipment and high - frequency medication management. . . . Many of us will have our last days extended by hospitals, devices, and drugs, but ALL of us will still die."

Very unclear whether or not these devices and drugs and even surgeries -- so glibly offered, administered, and performed by health care professionals -- add any quality of life at all or merely prolong highly compromised health and inevitable death. Extremely stressful and unhelpful for both the dying patient and the survivors.

Apply Your Heart to Wisdom

Psalm 90
Lord, you have been our refuge

from one generation to another.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or the land and the earth were born,

from age to age you are God.

You turn us back to the dust and say,

"Go back, O child of earth."

For a thousand years in your sight

are like yesterday when it is past

and like a watch in the night.

You sweep us away like a dream;

we fade away suddenly like the grass.

In the morning it is green and flourishes;

in the evening it is dried up and withered . . .

all our days are gone;

we bring our years to an end like a sigh.

The span of our life is seventy years,

perhaps in strength even eighty;

yet the sum of them is but labor and sorrow,

for they pass away quickly and we are gone. . . .

So teach us to number our days

that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.

To go along with the existential message
of the above Psalm is this tender yet cynical passage
from Super Sad True Love Story
by Gary Shteyngart:

But what are our children? Lovely and fresh in their youth; blind to mortality; rolling around . . . in the tall grass with their alabaster legs; fawns, sweet fawns, all of them, gleaming in their dreamy plasticity, at one with the outwardly simple nature of their world.

And then, a brief almost - century later: drooling on some poor Mexican Nursemaid in an Arizona hospice.

Nullified.
(p 4)

Hear the Voices Singing

Cover art designed by Beverley Coulson
Thanks to Ben McCartney
for uploading our St. Peter's ~ Choir CD ~ to YouTube
Click to Hear All Tracks
My favorites:

#6.
Christmas Lullaby
Lyrics from Laurie Lee: "Christmas Landscape" & "Twelfth Night"
Music by Gerry McCartney

#8.
Hear the Voices Singing
Music & lyrics by Gerry McCartney

#12.
Peter the Rock
Music & lyrics by Gerry McCartney

#13.
Ave Verum
Lyrics: 14th Century hymn, attributed to Pope Innocent VI
Music by Mozart
Performed on the piano by Ben McCartney

#14.
Saints of God
Lyrics: Traditional Prayer for the Deceased
Music by Gerry McCartney

#22.
The Lord Hath Been Mindful of Us

The Lord hath been mindful of us,
and he shall bless us:
He shall bless the house of Israel,
he shall bless the house of Aaron.
He shall bless them that fear the Lord:
both small and great.
Ye are the blessed of the Lord:
you, you, and your children.
Ye are the blessed of the Lord:
who made heaven and earth.
Lyrics from Psalm 115: 12 - 14
Music by Samuel Sebastian Wesley

Taste & See

O Taste and See
by Denise Levertov(1923 - 1997)
British-born American Poet

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

Verbs: active and ambitransitive. Levertov's list of verbs -- "To breathe them, "bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform" -- reminds me of what Terry Tempest Williams calls a "faith of verbs":

"This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers."
Terry Tempest Williams (b 1955)
American author, naturalist and environmentalist
Nouns: abstract and concrete. We are separated from Nature: "tangerine, weather . . . plum, quince." And also from Imagination: "grief, mercy, language." But we needn't be. We can open our senses, take the time to taste and see, cross that busy street, visit the orchard, retrieve our hearts. Levertov suggests an alternative version of Communion and Paradise: "living in the orchard and being hungry and plucking the fruit." It seems so straightforward, yet we have so often been warned against it that we must retrain our senses in order to embrace the world enough.

For more on this poem and others, see
THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER
my fortnightly literary blog
of connection and coincidence
www.kitticarriker.blogspot.com