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unapparentdeep
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Name: Katherine
Birthday: 4/22/1983
Gender: Female
Interests: social justice, poetry, Milton, Sufjan Stevens, sunlight, fractals, fugues, organic coffee, Thailand, ethnic conflicts (a la Andrea), movies, Jesus, *interesting* books, Tracy Chapman, feminism.
Expertise: Jonathan Safran Foer, the Christy awards, university lunches, crazy schedules, idealism, applying to graduate schools, half-writing.
Occupation: Other
Industry: Other
Message: message me
Member Since:
10/8/2003
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| So, back at Christmas, I said I would start posting again. Apparently, I lied.
*edit: Joy, if you still read this, there's a major spoiler coming: this is why I've been leaving persistent messages on your phone....*
But here's to new beginnings, and here's to chronicling the summer's adventures, which have thus far included finishing the second year of grad school/first year teaching freshman composition, my cousin's wedding, my wedding planning (not that there's been *very* much of that recently), moving all of my stuff to a friend's basement, and coming back to Michigan. The forseeable future will include a trip this week to San Diego/Phoenix, much more wedding planning, wedding showers, and trips to Chicago, Tennessee, and South Carolina.
In the meantime, I'm looking forward to catching up on summer reading, and hope to post about it, but here's another poem I've been thinking about:
The Country Of Marriage by Wendell Berry
I.
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.
III.
Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.
IV.
How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.
V.
Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.
VI.
What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.
VII.
I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.
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| Well. I've decided to start posting again, if only because I'm at paper-writing time again, and somehow I've gotten bad at journaling these days, and I'm thinking a lot of things that I'd like to note somewhere, and my friends have been posting really interesting things and I'd like to comment on them. So there.
I've taken down my other posts for now, to have the clean-slate feel. As I reread them, I was reminded of how much my life has changed since I started on xanga as a senior in college. I feel like, in many ways, I'm nearing a few more points of crucial decisions, so it was a good reminder that change has always been difficult for me, yet always exciting, too.
Here is an Advent poem I've been thinking about this week:
The Slip
by Wendell Berry
The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.
Where the great slip gave way in the bank
and an acre disappeared, all human plans
dissolve. An awful clarification occurs
where a place was. Its memory breaks
from what is known now, begins to drift.
Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness
widens the air for birdflight, wind, and rain.
As before the beginning, nothing is there.
Human wrong is in the cause, human
ruin in the effect--but no matter;
all will be lost, no matter the reason.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon
passeth it away. And yet this nothing
is the seed of all--the clear eye
of Heaven, where all the worlds appear.
Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect
begins its struggle to return. The good gift
begins again its descent. The maker moves
in the unmade, stirring the water until
it clouds, dark beneath the surface,
stirring and darkening the soul until pain
perceives new possibility. There is nothing
to do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.
Off to read for a pre-paper consultation this afternoon, and work on grading my students' papers for Friday's final grades review...
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