Craving Knowledge
“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
— William Butler Yeats, 1927
Among School Children
“Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love’s pleasure drives his love away,
The painter’s brush consumes his dreams;
The herald’s cry, the soldier’s tread
Exhaust his glory and his might:
Whatever flames upon the night
Man’s own resinous heart has fed.”
— Yeats, 1927
2 Songs from a Play
I am awake early this morning, untired, and craving knowledge, as well as food, so I turned to Yeats and Nutri-Grain — Now I have the night in the palm of my hand — I want to be able to memorize and recite poetry. I will work on my German reading and vocabulary — I hope to work steadily on it for the next year — including every day for the rest of this summer — I must select my grad courses soon — my mind is clear as it was nights I woke when I was with Helena in the Bill — and I could make good poetry — I am thinking of reading mainly prose my first semester: Renaissance, British Victorian, Critical Theorists — But I am wondering — shouldn’t I take Shakespeare — Rilke Lorca Stevens and Auden — Whitman Dickinson and Melville — Poetry — Or should I try this new range of prose — and learn what I can about prose style — from these masters — Poetry I read anyway —
I think of the oral reports and I think I should
be able to do them if I prepare well in advance —
I think my study habits must be impeccable —
I think I must make literature the main thing
I still wonder about the critical theory course —
but think it would be a good base — a firm
base — eventually in methods —
working critical tools —
It is hard to get an A there and anywhere
on the grad level —
What in Literature, am I and have I been interested in?
English
German
Portuguese
Italian
Spanish
I’m lucky to learn German in time — the days seem short.
I’m young, but then I’ll be thirty, forty, and fifty —
and these and those fumblings
will seem the main thing, will
be the unfinished things that
make my heart sing with a
fine pure pain — that cannot
be diluted or offset.
the walks to Portuguese class in Saô Jose
The Sunshine of Rio.
Why are you so mean to me?
Why did you decide to leave me?
I want to live new brave days on the road — again unfinished and unformed but beautiful
“I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.”
— Camilo, The Winter’s Tale
“And I wondered, Why am I here, on this ridge of the Alps, in the lamp-lit, wooden, close-shut room, alone? Why am I here?”
— D. H. Lawrence
“The Return Journey”
Vision without present love — as distant as the sea is deep. Along the beach in the cold rain. Trying to reclaim images from Brazil, a country I left (never to return?). Grant me those places not well known; give me the fresh turf that pleases me.
Reversing the process, going back and doing things differently, though I couldn’t.
I can’t be sure how I will behave with my next lover — on what shores we will walk and what the surf will feel like on our feet.
I am better for going to Brazil — but at the beginning of my trip — before I taught — I was going crazy with rage and feelings of unchanging despair — oncoming distraction — alienation — then the chore of my classes covered that — I have not felt it since — I got through it on my own — Helena was not an integral part of the solution for the first time since I was with her.