The Time Being

~~ Reminds Gerry of his grandfather's "Old House" in England ~~
Urban Garden Under Snow
by Douglas Percy Bliss (Scottish Painter, 1900 - 84)
*******************************************

"But while we often like to comfort
or flatter ourselves with the thought that the future is now,
the brute truth is, the future is not now. The present is now.
The future is later -- in some cases much later."

quotation from the humorous little book,
Santa Lives! Five Conclusive Arguments
for the Existence of Santa Claus
by wry humorist Elllis Weiner (b 1950)
Coauthor of Yiddish with Dick and Jane and The Joy of Worry
*******************************************
Similarly the poet W. H. Auden writes:

"But, for the time being, here we all are . . .

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all . . .

In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance."

lines from
For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio
by W. H. Auden (1907 - 73)
Anglo-American poet
Born in England, later an American citizen
******************************************

The theme of Auden's poem is just right for "The Quotidian Kit." The Time Being is just so daily, so commonly thought small. William F. French explains it very well in his analysis of the poem, concluding that we

" . . . are so accustomed to thinking of the moral life in the flash-and-bang terms of dramatic decisions and heroic choices that our daily routines and quiet virtues are regarded as morally insignificant.

"But Auden is no fool. His humor is designed to remind us that our attitude to our own limitations may govern how we respond to the harsh times of tragic choices. Auden’s comic voice reminds us that patience may well be a quiet form of courage, and self-awareness and humility contain a silent power all their own. In redeeming the everyday, he reminds us that moral heroism need not always be dramatically displayed."

concluding paragraph from
"Auden’s Moral Comedy: A Late-Winter Reading"
by ethics professor William F. French (click to read)
******************************************
CLICK TO READ ADDITIONAL
POST - CHRISTMAS POETRY
BY W. H. AUDEN & STEVE TURNER
DAVID AXELROD & SAM POTTLE

ON THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER:
LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE

Lazy Hazy Days

Photos by Jay Beets
End of July & Beginning of August

Ah, yes, "the winds must come" --
a poem for the passing summer days . . .

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

Now & Then Post
Huckleberry Summertime

May the summer reverie
continue through August & September!

I hope you will enjoy the remains of summer
while I take a break from Quotidian Posts.
See you in the Fall -- sometime after Labor Day!

Before the trees change, I'll be back . . .

Thanks to my friend Jay Beets
for the heart-stopping seasonal photos,

and to my friend, author and artist Jan Donley
for reminding me that Auden's poem
is a villanelle -- not a pantoum.

You can check above
for these specific characteristics:

A villanelle = 19 lines
5 tercets (3-line stanzas) and a final quatrain (4-line stanza)

it uses two rhymes (A & B)
and two repeating lines:

the first line of the 1st stanza becomes
the last line of the 2nd and 4th stanzas;

the third line of the 1st stanza becomes
the last line of the 3rd and 5th stanzas.

These two repeated lines
form the final two lines of the concluding quatrain.

Departmental [From my collection:"A Poem for Every Poem"]

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN

(To JS/07 M 378

This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

by W. H. Auden



DEPARTMENTAL

OR,

THE END OF MY ANT JERRY

An ant on the tablecloth
Ran into a dormant moth
Of many times his size.
He showed not the least surprise.
His business wasn't with such.
He gave it scarcely a touch,
And was off on his duty run.
Yet if he encountered one
Of the hive's enquiry squad
Whose work is to find out God
And the nature of time and space,
He would put him onto the case.
Ants are a curious race;
One crossing with hurried tread
The body of one of their dead
Isn't given a moment's arrest-
Seems not even impressed.
But he no doubt reports to any
With whom he crosses antennae,
And they no doubt report
To the higher-up at court.
Then word goes forth in Formic:
"Death's come to Jerry McCormic,
Our selfless forager Jerry.
Will the special Janizary
Whose office it is to bury
The dead of the commissary
Go bring him home to his people.
Lay him in state on a sepal.
Wrap him for shroud in a petal.
Embalm him with ichor of nettle.
This is the word of your Queen."
And presently on the scene
Appears a solemn mortician;
And taking formal position,
With feelers calmly atwiddle,
Seizes the dead by the middle,
And heaving him high in air,
Carries him out of there.
No one stands round to stare.
It is nobody else's affair
It couldn't be called ungentle
But how thoroughly departmental

by Robert Frost

*Photographs taken yesterday near S. Las Vegas Blvd.

Happy Bat - stille Day!

Pere Lachaise Cemetery Bat*

Private rites of magic . . .
An imaginary friend . . .
the Ancient Disciplines . . .

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds [and bats?] with scarlet legs . . .

~ W. H. Auden ~
from "The Fall of Rome"

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

Montmartre Grave Diggers*

"The woman named Tomorrow . . . takes her time . . .
and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead."

~ Carl Sandburg ~
from "Four Preludes On Playthings of the Wind"

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

You can read the complete text of these
"Two Poems for Bastille Day"
on the
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A fortnightly [every 14th & 28th]
literary blog of connection & coincidence; custom & ceremony

*Thanks to my friend Steven La Vigne
for sharing his Paris photography
~ Summer 2012 ~

"Altogether elsewhere . . . "

Taking the Tree Down

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school.
from "Christmas Oratorio"
by W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973
Anglo-American Poet
Small White Angel On Top Of Small White Tree

UNTRIMMING THE TREE

Now all that scintillation is a chore.
What they so recently assembled
Piece by piece in imitation
Of every year for twenty years ago

Each day became more everyday.
The delicate contrivances ignored,
This clutter in a corner of the eye
Now is an hour on the stepladder

And woman's work. This afternoon,
The sunlight brave and January thin
Reflecting on her, she sets down
Lightlier than they lifted them

Angel and orb and cardboard cornucopia,
The candy cane old as the eldest child.
Once she has packed away the annual farm
(Each cotton sheep plump as a thumb),

Hanging the glassy surface of the lake
Up on its hook in the back bedroom,
She sends the snowy field out to the laundry.
Arms full of a great weightlessness she arises

Toward the airless year in the black attic.
The Season's Greetings flutter in the trash
Out in the alley and the tree,
Naked, imitates mere nature.

All's done but this -- that at the last she blind
The windows of the Advent Calendar
From which next year again shall stare
The forest animals as day by day,

As the great Day approaches
Until the Manger stands revealed,
Husband and child and wife, restored
Out of the storm, once more shall be assembled.

by John N. Morris, 1931 - 1997
American author and educator [more on Morris]

New Millennium Advent Calendar

The Peacemaker's Time

6 year old Ben explains Hanukkah
#philadelphiapublicschools

Light one candle for the wisdom to know
when the peacemaker's time is at hand . . .

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Rowan Williams (b 1950)
104th Archbishop of Canterbury, 2002 - 2012

IV
Chorus from For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio

He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

W. H. Auden / see also

Keep Christmas Cards With You

"Snow Cat" Christmas Card by Robert Guy
Another Snow Cat

"I hate these days immediately following the holidays. Emptying the house of Christmas trees, decorations and children is like emptying a home of warmth. But at least there’s the pile of Christmas cards to be looked through again before you do whatever you do when done with them. They serve as a cheerful handshake during the uncheerful letdown after Christmas. Don't stop sending them. Christmas cards are worth all the bother. In fact, the bother’s a good part of the pleasure." ~ Malcolm S. Forbes (1919 - 1990)

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

"Urban Garden" Christmas Card
by Douglas Percy Bliss

FIRST FORTNIGHTLY POST OF THE NEW YEAR!

ON THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER:
LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE

"KEEP CHRISTMAS WITH YOU"

FEATURING FAVORITE SONG FROM SESAME STREET
"Keep Christmas With You All Through the Year"

AND

POST - CHRISTMAS POETRY
"For the Time Being" by W. H. Auden
"Christmas is Really for the Children" by Steve Turner

You can also keep Christmas Cards with you all through the year.

I just ordered these designs
from the post - holiday sale at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art:

"Red Row House" by Eyvind Earle &
"The Tame Deer" by Andre-Edouard Marty.

I can save them for next year, or
-- since they're blank inside
and because they feature a lot of pink and red --
start using them right away as Valentines!


NEW FORTNIGHTLY POST TOMORROW!
"January: Forward Vision, Backward Glance"

The Mourning After

Halloween ~ Just Before Midnight
Downtown Chicago 
Photo by Sam McCartney

Last night, a happy haunted Halloween; this morning, a blustery All Saints Day. We awake in mourning -- for Halloween, for October, for Daylight Saving Time. As of today, it's all over, and the bleak mid - autumn is upon us. In fact, we are precisely in the middle of autumn, at the magical half - way point between the Autumnal Equinox (Mabon) and the Winter Solstice (Yule), which is what all the Samhain and Dia de los Muertos celebrations are all about.

As a special bonus, the hour that we sacrificed back at the beginning of Daylight Time is restored to us, but still, despite that extra slice of light on the sundial, it seems to have have grown darker out and I cringe to "always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near." Why is that?

Thoughts from friends and poets:

"Time has come today! Time!"
Thanks Rita Burrell

"Do not let yourself be deluded by anyone;
this is all I teach." ~Rinzai
Thanks Michael Lipsey

"Take pity on time ." ~Edward Lucie - Smith

" . . . our pitiful share of time . . ." ~X.J. Kennedy

"Do not pity the dead, Harry.
Pity the living . . . " ~ J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (722)

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

And, finally, this poem, which you might remember
was recited in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral
-- that's how I first learned about it.
In connection with the above passages, I think it explains why
the custom of mourning for an entire year makes a lot of sense:

Funeral Blues
(Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

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

Need something to fill that extra hour?
In addition to contemplating our mortality
and that of our loved ones, past and present,
check out my book blog & get some reading done!
Current post: "The Jeweled Books in the Shelves"

Keep Christmas With You

Presents From A Friend!
FIRST FORTNIGHTLY POST OF THE NEW YEAR!
NOW AVAILABLE ON
THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER:
LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE
"KEEP CHRISTMAS WITH YOU"
Feeling blue? A few unexpected presents might cheer you up, along with some excellent post-seasonal advice from Sesame Street. If you're not familiar with this song already, perhaps from watching Christmas Eve on Sesame Street a couple hundred times with your kids, then you are in for a treat. Click on the title to view the children's surprising and touchingly rendered sign language presentation:

Keep Christmas With You All Through the Year
When Christmas time is over
and presents put away,
don't be sad
There'll be so much to treasure
about this Christmas day
and the fun we've had
So may happy feelings to celebrate with you
And, oh, the good time hurry by so fast,
But even when it's over
there's something you can do to make
Christmas last:

Keep Christmas with you
All through the year,
When Christmas is over,
You can keep it near.
Think of this Christmas day
When Christmas is far away.

Keep Christmas with you
All through the year,
When Christmas is over,
Save some Christmas cheer.
These precious moments,
Hold them very dear
And keep Christmas with you
All through the year.

Christmas means the spirit of giving,
Peace and joy to you,
The goodness of loving,
The gladness of living;
These are Christmas too.

So, keep Christmas with you
All through the year,
When Christmas is over,
Save some Christmas cheer.
These precious moments,
Hold them very dear
And keep Christmas with you
All through the year.

lyrics by David Axelrod (b. 1936)
American lyricist,composer, and producer

music by Sam Pottle (1934 - 78)
American composer, conductor, musical director

from Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

Which one should I open next?
CLICK TO READ ADDITIONAL
POST - CHRISTMAS POETRY
BY W. H. AUDEN & STEVE TURNER

Let's Hope It's a Good One

"Please Play on the Grass"

Thank You Dallas, Texas, for being so User Friendly!
31 December 2012

None of us are as young
as we were. So what?
Friendship never ages.
~ W. H. Auden ~
Another year older . . . another year over. John and Yoko's Christmas song is also one of the most hopeful New Year song's that I know . . .

Happy Xmas (War is Over)
by John Lennon & Yoko Ono, 1971

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear [emphasis added]

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
For weak and for strong (if you want it)
For rich and the poor ones (war is over)
The world is so wrong* (if you want it)
And so happy Christmas (war is over)
For black and for white (if you want it)
For yellow and red ones (war is over)
Let's stop all the fight (now)

A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
And what have we done (if you want it)
Another year over (war is over)
A new one just begun (if you want it)
And so happy Christmas (war is over)
We hope you have fun (if you want it)
The near and the dear one (war is over)
The old and the young (now)

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

War is over over
If you want it
War is over

*or "the road is so long"
or "the war is so wrong"
or "the war is so long"