Here's a great poem, written by America's greatest poet, who was an eyewitness to what he writes about.

The ArtillerymanÂ’s Vision

While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me:
The engagement opens there and then, in fantasy unreal;
The skirmishers begin—they crawl cautiously ahead—I hear the irregular snap! snap!
I hear the sounds of the different missiles—the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of the rifle balls;
I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds—I hear the great shells shrieking as they pass;
The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick, tumultuous, now the contest rages!)
All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again;
The crashing and smoking—the pride of the men in their pieces;
The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the right time;
After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the effect;
—Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging—(the young colonel leads himself this time, with brandish’d sword
I see the gaps cut by the enemyÂ’s volleys, (quickly fillÂ’d up, no delay
I breathe the suffocating smoke—then the flat clouds hover low, concealing all;
Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side;
Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of officers;
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout of applause, (some special success
And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, (rousing, even in dreams, a devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my soul
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions—batteries, cavalry, moving hither and thither;
(The falling, dying, I heed not—the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not—some to the rear are hobbling;
Grime, heat, rush—aid-de-camps galloping by, or on a full run;
With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these in my vision I hear or see,)
And bombs busting in air, and at night the vari-colorÂ’d rockets.

Yesterday in the comments to my post about Shelby Foote's death i mentioned how i am fascinated by the differences between our own time and the way people lived in the time of the Civil War.

We all have a pretty good idea of how soldiers fight today. Heck, we've grown up watching war on tv. But it's almost impossible for most of us to imagine how men fought during the Civil War. It must have taken a special kind of courage and discipline to march side by side with a bunch of other men towards a line of cannon and guns.

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i had been planning to do a parody of the whole Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes nonsense by altering the words to T.S. Eliot's Song of the Jellicles. But i couldn't get it to work; the meter was all wrong and "Tomicle Kats are not too bright" was about the best line i could come up with. Not very good at all, especially compared to the original, so i abandoned the idea.

What a coincidence that Mark Nicodemo (a brand new Munuvian btw, congratulations) would reference another poem from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in my comments section. Great minds, i guess. So, i decided this week i'll post the Song of the Jellicles, unaltered of course.

The Song Of The Jellicles

Jellicle Cats come out tonight,
Jellicle Cats come one come all:
The Jellicle Moon is shining bright--
Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,
Jellicle Cats are rather small;
Jellicle Cats are merry and bright,
And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul.
Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces,
Jellicle Cats have bright black eyes;
They like to practise their airs and graces
And wait for the Jellicle Moon to rise.

Jellicle Cats develop slowly,
Jellicle Cats are not too big;
Jellicle Cats are roly-poly,
They know how to dance a gavotte and a jig.
Until the Jellicle Moon appears
They make their toilette and take their repose:
Jellicles wash behind their ears,
Jellicles dry between their toes.

Jellicle Cats are white and black,
Jellicle Cats are of moderate size;
Jellicles jump like a jumping-jack,
Jellicle Cats have moonlit eyes.
They're quiet enough in the morning hours,
They're quiet enough in the afternoon,
Reserving their terpsichorean powers
To dance by the light of the Jellicle Moon.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,
Jellicle Cats (as I said) are small;
If it happens to be a stormy night
They will practise a caper or two in the hall.
If it happens the sun is shining bright
You would say they had nothing to do at all:
They are resting and saving themselves to be right
For the Jellicle Moon and the Jellicle Ball.

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The bawdy dictator:

I Wish I Had A Candle And A Fine Woman

I wish I had a candle and a fine woman.
These finer things are meant for men like me.
Not meant for kurd-man, shiite or the jew-man,
whom i buried in mass graves oÂ’er by that tree.
You understand what women give to me,
but wherefor say I candle? Do you ask?
To know how waxen tapers meet my need,
picture me, Uday, and my friend monsieur Jacques.
TÂ’was many years ago, on a debauch
in LondonÂ’s town or was it AmsterdamÂ’s?
We caught a sex show -- wonderment to watch.
This chick had knockers like two great big hams.
Now what I’m ‘bout to tell you, keep hush-hush.
She did things with that candle made me blush.

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A Perfect Woman, My Sons

not too smart
not too dumb
not too old
not too young
not too pretty
not too skank
find such a girl
no need to wank

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You're like sons to me
so i give you this advice:
don't eat with wipe hand.

Posted by: annika at 10:12 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Susie Susie Sue
Sue Sue Susio Susie
See See Susie See

hehe!

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The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.

     --Dickinson

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily:
     Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
     Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

     --Shakespeare

Burly, dozing humble-bee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines;
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines.

     --Emerson

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Another favorite poem by one of my favorites poets, Frank O'Hara:

Why I Am Not A Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

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As i did last year, in honor of Cole Porter's birthday on June 9th, today's poem is a song lyric.

Paris Hilton's sexy new commercial for Carl's Jr. restaurants features the heiress washing a car to the music of Cole Porter's famous "I Love Paris."

Everyone knows the words to that song, written in 1952, for the musical Can-Can, which ran at Broadway's Schubert theater for 892 performances.

That song always reminds me of one night in Paris a few years back, stumbling back to my hotel in the Latin Quarter after a great drunk, smoking a Gitanes and mumbling the words in order to keep awake and upright.

"God... Oh God... do i love Paris... Because my room is near..."

But the same man who wrote I Love Paris, also wrote the following lyric, which i quote for you all as you try to decide where to spend your summer vacation this year.

See America First

Of European lands effete,
A most inveterate foe,
My feelings when my camp I greet
Are such as patriots know.
Condemning trips across the blue
As dollars badly dispersed,
I hold that loyal men and true,
Including in the category all of you,
Should see America first,
Should see America first.

All hail salubrious sky,
All hail salubrious sky.
Observe when I invoke the sky
It echoes reassuringly
That one should try to see America first,
To see America first.

Of course it's really not the sky,
But just a repetition of his battle cry,
To see America first,
To see America first,

So ev'ry true American,
Whether right or red or black or tan,
Should push this patriotic plan
To see America first.

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Shamseddin Mohammad was a great Persian mystic and poet of the fourteenth century. He is known as Hafiz, which was a title given to one who had memorized the entire Koran. Hafiz wrote something like 800 ghazals (long time Poetry Wed readers may remember this post, about a García Lorca ghazal) and much of his work explored the subject of spiritual love. That means God's love for us, and our love of God. The Ladinsky translations are very good and seem to preserve a lot of the humor that is supposedly in the original Persian.

I Know the Way You Can Get

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!

[O]ne day at the bakery, one of the workers who delivered the bread was sick, and Hafiz had to deliver the bread to a certain quarter of Shiraz where the prosperous citizens lived. While taking the bread to a particular mansion, Hafiz's eyes fell upon the form of a young woman who was standing on one of the mansion's balconies. Her name was Shakh-i-Nabat which means 'Branch of Sugarcane'. Her beauty immediately intoxicated Hafiz and he fell hopelessly in love with her. Her beauty had such a profound effect on him that he almost lost consciousness. At night he could not sleep and he no longer felt like eating. He learnt her name and he began to praise her in his poems.

Hafiz heard that she had been promised in marriage to a prince of Shiraz and realized how hopeless was his quest for her love. Still, the vision of her beauty filled his heart, and his thoughts were constantly with her. Then one day he remembered the famous 'promise of Baba Kuhi'. Baba Kuhi was a Perfect Master-Poet. . . . The promise that Baba Kuhi had given before he died was that if anyone could stay awake for forty consecutive nights at his tomb he would be granted the gift of poetry, immortality, and his heart's desire. Hafiz, interested in the third of these three, vowed to keep this vigil that no one had yet been able to keep.

Every day Hafiz would go to work at the bakery, then he would eat, and then walk past the house of Shakh-i-Nabat, who had heard some of the poems that he had composed in praise of her. She had noticed him passing her window every afternoon, each day more weary, but with a fire in his eyes that had lit the lamp of her heart for him. By this time Hafiz was in a kind of a trance. Everything that he did was automatic, and the only thing that kept him going was the fire in his heart and his determination to keep the lonely vigil.

Early the next morning the Angel Gabriel (some say Khizer) appeared to him. Gabriel gave Hafiz a cup to drink which contained the Water of Immortality, and declared that Hafiz had also received the gift of poetry. Then Gabriel asked Hafiz to express his heart's desire. All the time that this was happening, Hafiz could not take his eyes of Gabriel. So great was the beauty of the Angel that Hafiz had forgotten the beauty of Shakh-i-Nabat. After Gabriel had asked the question, Hafiz thought; 'If Gabriel the Angel of God is so beautiful, then how much more beautiful God must be.' Hafiz answered Gabriel: 'I want God!'

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