Crocodiles - Stoned to Death
David Baker: You’ve said now two or three times, as a poem comes to you, that you will hear the poem. What do you hear?
W. S. Merwin: At some point Yeats one day heard, “That is no country for old men.”
David Baker: He heard it intact.
W. S. Merwin: Yes, just like that. And they were words which he’d used all his life. He may have even heard that phrase all his life. Never thought anything of it, but all of a sudden the light went on. And he thought — well, he spent the next two and a half years writing that poem. And it is one of the great poems, I think, in modern English. To me, poetry is physical, it is hearing, and we hear it and the charge, the power, the hypnotic power or grasp of poetry is there, just as it is in music. I mean, there is a musical side to poetry, and I’m not talking about how lovely Swinburne sounds or something like that. I mean that thing — what Yeats heard when he heard that phrase — that is all the way through the poem. It’s a great, great poem. I realized years later that I’d had that poem memorized for twenty years and I’d never stopped to think what it meant. I went back and I picked it apart, looked at it carefully, and it was absolutely wonderful.I didn’t even need to know that because I knew it from hearing it.
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
by William Butler Yeats
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
“Regardless of his age or experience, a true teacher is simply one who has apprehended the true teaching and attained the authentic teacher’s seal of realization. He does not put texts first or understanding first, but his capacity is outside any framework and his spirit freely penetrates the nodes in bamboo. He is not concerned with self-views and does not stagnate in emotional feelings. Thus, practice and understanding are in mutual accord.
This is a true master.”
| — | Dogen, from Guidelines for Studying the Way |
No comments:
Post a Comment