DEATH IN AUTUMN

“My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.” - Robert Frost

The prompt from “Poets and Storytellers United” this week is t write a poem in a formal, traditional form. I have chosen the villanelle. (A villanelle is a 19-line poetic form with a specific structure of five tercets (three-line stanzas) and a concluding quatrain (four-line stanza). It features a strict rhyme scheme (ABA, ABA, ABA, ABA, ABA, ABAA) and two repeating lines, called refrains, that alternate as the last lines of the tercets and appear together as the last two lines of the quatrain.) It can be quite tricky to write...

Autumn Evening

As evening falls so softly, cold
Memory’s scent I follow,
And life grows dark and old.

Leaves die, as they turn to gold
The sound of voices hollow.
As evening falls so softly, cold

I try to break its stranglehold;
My spirits fall and ebb, so low – 
And life grows dark and old.

I try to be so resolute and bold
To make my song again to flow
As evening falls so softly, cold…

The wood attacked, consumed by mould
Decay eats into it so slow,
And life grows dark and old.

My dreams to highest bidder sold
Love’s ghosts in sadness wallow:
As evening falls so softly, cold
And life grows dark and old.

Here’s the poem set to music, and you can find all my music in my “Otidorchestre” channel or listen to it on YouTube, Spotify,  Amazon, Deezer, Flo, Pandora, and other music sharing sites.

ART SUNDAY - HUGO VAN DER GOES

“Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.” - Gautama Buddha

Hugo van der Goes, (born c. 1440—died 1482, Roode Kloster, near Brussels [now in Belgium]) one of the greatest Flemish painters of the second half of the 15th century, whose strange, melancholy genius found expression in religious works of profound but often disturbing spirituality.

Early sources disagree about van der Goes’s birthplace, with Ghent, Antwerp, Bruges, and Leiden mentioned as potential candidates. Nothing is known of his life before 1467, when he was accepted as a master in the painters’ guild in Ghent. From then until 1475 he received many commissions from the town of Ghent and provided decorations (heraldic shields, processional banners, etc.) for such occasions as the marriage of Charles the Bold in Bruges (1468) and the transference of the remains of Philip the Good to Dijon (1473). In 1474 he was elected dean of the guild, but the following year (when he was at the climax of his career) he decided to enter Roode Kloster, a priory near Brussels, as a lay brother. There he continued to paint and received distinguished visitors; he also undertook journeys.

In 1481 a tendency to acute depression culminated in a mental breakdown during which he tried to kill himself. An account of the artist’s last years at Roode Kloster, written by a monk, Gaspar Ofhuys (who apparently resented some of van der Goes’s privileges), has survived. Van der Goes’s masterpiece, and his only securely documented work, is the large triptych usually known as the Portinari Altarpiece (c. 1474–76 - see illustration above) with a scene called The Adoration of the Shepherds on the centre panel. The work was commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, agent for the Medici in Bruges, who is portrayed with his family on the wings.

It is one of the greatest of the early examples of northern realism, yet it subordinates this quality to spiritual content, uses still-life detail with symbolic intent, and shows unprecedented psychological insight in portraiture, especially in the faces of the awe-struck shepherds and the Portinari children. It achieves an emotional intensity unprecedented in Flemish painting. Soon after its completion it was taken to Florence, where its rich colours and careful attention to detail impressed many Italian artists.

Van der Goes’s earlier and more tentative style shows that he had studied the leading Netherlandish masters of the first half of the 15th century. A diptych (begun about 1467) in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, reflected an awareness of the Ghent Altarpiece of Jan van Eyck in the Fall of Man, while the Lamentation is reminiscent of Rogier van der Weyden. A comparison between the large Adoration of the Magi and The Nativity reveals the direction in which van der Goes’s later works were to evolve. The Adoration is spatially rational, compositionally tranquil, and harmonious in colour. By contrast, the Nativity (also called Adoration of the Shepherds), a later work painted on a curiously elongated panel, is disturbing even in its format—an emotionally charged supernatural drama on an uncomfortably low stage revealed by the drawing of curtains.

This exploitation of space and colour for emotional potentiality rather than rational effect characterises van der Goes’s later works. It appears in the Holy Trinity Adored by Sir Edward Bonkil and The Royal Family of Scotland, panels that were probably designed as organ shutters (c. 1478–79), and culminates in the Death of the Virgin, executed not long before van der Goes’s death. The unearthly colours of this work are particularly disturbing, and its poignancy is intensified by the controlled grief seen in the faces of the Apostles, who are placed in irrationally conceived space. Van der Goes’s art, with its affinities to Mannerism, and his tortured personality have found a particularly sympathetic response in the 20th century.

POETRY JAM - BARRIERS

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.” - Coco Chanel

Poetry Jam  this week has a theme comprising two options: “Baseball and Barriers”. I have chosen the latter, with the barriers I wrote about being walls. Walls enclose, protect, keep out, but also keep in. They can delimit, cut off, secure, imprison and separate. Walls are more than supports for a roof, as they can be free-standing and serve a purpose of isolating the thing enclosed. Walls can be built around us by others, but how often is that we knowingly and willingly build our own tall walls around ourselves? Here is my offering.

Walls

The walls around me keep standing tall,
They close in, stifling all my sighs,
Their chains keeping me in thrall.

Silence covers me with its deathly pall
Each evening as my icy heart dies,
The walls around me keep standing tall.

My lonely prison drips black, bitter gall,
As walls grow higher, obscuring skies
Their chains keeping me in thrall.

I have no other choice but to stumble, fall
As brick by brick, barriers ever higher rise;
The walls around me keep standing tall.

I feel defeated, powerless and small
As walls around me grow in size,
Their chains keeping me in thrall.

Your name without effect I call,
You left me with unanswered whys;
The walls around me keep standing tall,
Their chains keeping me in thrall.

SADNESS, AGAIN

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As the year draws to its close, I find myself in a melancholy mood. “Dark biliousness” – so did the ancient Greeks call this excess of negative humours that manifests itself as a feeling of glumness with a sad mien and lack of energy, propensity to tears, a depression. It is a mood that makes one particularly selfish. One stays inside and pulls the blinds down – staying in at home is optional.

With lots of thoughts. So many thoughts that one’s head threatens to burst asunder. “What if…”; “Maybe…”; “Had things been different…”; “If so-and-so had said this, done this…”; “If only…”; “All would be different now…” – so many alternative universes that my head will surely explode. Parallel realities, all unreal. How can one escape from this dark, deep pit that saps one’s life?

Another year draws to a close. Where did all that time go? What happened? How did all those days and nights rush by? Even with a few hours sleep a night every night, the year rushed by as if I were on an express train, seeing all the brightly-lit stations flit by, and only now, I am stopped still in a dark tunnel. The train has stopped, no lights, no lights at the end of the tunnel. And yet my destination awaits me – who knows how far ahead, but it’s there. That is the only certainty.

Clutching the darkness, I feel the palpable black bile that surrounds me with its glutinous, suffocating texture. Searching for something substantial to hold on to. A hand? No, it could clutch a dagger. A rope? No it could strangle me. A chain firmly fixed? No it could fetter me. A piece of wood? No, a crucifix to crucify me. Maybe just a warm embrace that I could sink into and be rescued by. Even if it stifles me…

And yet I go on, I invent my own rescue. I move on pulling myself forward with invisible threads, each strand attached to each of my cells. I follow a faint glimmer of hope in the darkness. A tiny, pale, blue little light. Hope is a lambent blue butterfly invented to rescue me from madness. So insubstantial and yet its wings strong enough to pull the invisible threads upwards and lift me out of my dark pit.

Another year waits in the wings, ready to come on stage upon hearing its cue. We shall travel together you and I. You, young and golden-haired, and I, well I am old and old enough to know better and be strong and go forward. I pull myself up and will manufacture a light at the end of the tunnel. We must hope otherwise we shall die at once. Death will come soon enough, no need to invite him before his time. This too shall pass.

ART SUNDAY - MEMENTO MORI

“No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.” - Euripides

For Art Sunday today, a painting by an American contemporary artist, Sean Delonas. He is a cartoonist, illustrator and talented artist, with some beautiful works in his oeuvre, as well as many humorous and quirky ones. He is best known for his cartoons that appear daily on page six of the New York Post.

The painting I have selected for today, is a typical “memento mori” work, which in the past was an extremely common and morally edifying genre of painting. “Memento mori” means in Latin “remember that you will die”. Its purpose was to remind the onlooker that whatever your present happy state, your death is inescapable. The art may convey the message “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you will die”, however, in most Christian art, in which the theme is seen often, it is more of a reminder of the vanity of earthly glory and pleasure. For this reason, these still life paintings were also known as “Vanitas” (vanity).

Typical symbols that are used in such paintings include skulls, hourglasses, snuffed candles, wilting flowers or fruit past their prime, and insects. Anything related to the passage of time can be a memento mori, and many public clocks once included memento mori phrases such as “tempus fugit” meaning “time flies”, or used an automated figure of Death to strike the bell on the hour. Personal watches were also often adorned with symbols of death, such as skulls. Other small memento mori objects were intended to be carried on one’s person as a reminder of mortality. For example, a coffin that opens on a scene of a rich man, in Hell.

Delonas’ painting is a typical vanitas, with numerous symbols of memento mori. The obvious skull, which is the face of death; the watch signifying the passage of time; the cracked egg indicating the fragility of our existence; the stack of old books, meaning that not even knowledge or wisdom will help one evade death. The painting also has elements of “trompe l’oeil” or a visual illusion as used to trick the eye into perceiving a painted detail as a three-dimensional object.

MY BITTER BLOOD

“If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Our lives are a curious mixture of the external and internal, the things that we experience from without, and what we are within. We process and we balance, we mix and try to make of the mixture happiness, even in adversity. The measurements need be accurate for one drop too much or too little will make the mixture spoil and our world collapses around us. This is a poem I wrote as I recovered from my black mood of late…

My Bitter Blood

My blood is bitter, and it percolates though my flesh,
Making me twisted, rancorous, acrid;
My words astringent spilling from my dry mouth
Like falling, wilted autumn leaves.

My blood is acid, burning and eating my tissues,
Making of me an empty, burnt out husk;
My feelings ashes, my emotions charcoal
Like the forest devastated by a wild fire.

My blood is salty, and it hardens my body,
Drying me out, parching me, desiccating me;
My eyes unseeing, blinded, destroyed,
Like a withered mummy in a sarcophagus.

My blood is sour, and it makes my bones brittle,
Crushing, making them acerbic, dissolving them;
My resolve exhausted, my fortitude weakened,
Like a pearl melting in vinegar.

My heart only stays sweet,
Its dulcet beating unaffected
By bitter, acid, salty, sour blood.
Love still nourishes it, saves it from adversity,
And makes me live, still;
Even if my blood is poisoned from without…


Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday