Secundus was a poet of the 16th century, one of many of the time that wrote his works in Latin rather than his own native tongue–a fact stemming from the reality that, in those days, “New Latin” was the language of all things scientific and scholarly. Though his work ran from elegies to epistles, his most prominent contribution to the literary is today known as the collection of Johannes’s kisses (Yes, you see how this is all tying in now, don’t you? Clever devils, you are…). The Kisses–19 poems in all–are all joined in that they explore various matters through the theme of the kiss itself. Fertility, death, healing…the poems run the gamut, just as the emotions they follow.

But I won’t be offering up all 19 today. That would probably be a slight bit of overkill. Rather, the spotlight’s swinging round to the translation of Kiss XII. It should give a fair taste of Secundus’s classic skill:

Kiss XII

Modest Matrons, Maidens, say,
Why thus turn your looks away?
Frolic feats of lawless love,
Of the lustful pow’rs above;
Forms obscene, that shock the sight,
In my verse I ne’er recite;
Verse! where nought indecent reigns;
Guiltless are my tender strains;
Such as pedagogues austere
Might with strict decorum hear,
Might, with no licentious speech,
To their youth reproachless teach.
I, chaste vot’ry of the Nine!
Kisses sing of chaste design:
Maids and Matrons yet, with rage,
Frown upon my blameless page;
Frown, because some wanton word
Here and there by chance occurr’d,
Or the cheated fancy caught
Some obscure, tho’ harmless thought
Hence, ye prudish Matrons! hence,
Squeamish Maids devoid of sense!
And shall these in virtue dare
With my virtuous maid compare?
She! who in the bard will prize
What she’ll in his lays despise;
Wantonness with love agrees,
But reserve in verse must please.

~Johannes Secundus

unfurled

where crime

is but a lime

tossed upon a dime,

there are no stars

save the bars,

no mission

save the fission

of mortality’s derision.

Ain’t no poet

without tears to show it.

Adversity is the constant–a fact of life. All men and women will face turmoil, will face suffering, will face opposition. It serves its purpose. It builds the will. It hones the mind. It presses us beyond ourselves. Those who don’t know the little pains will never know the value of the peaceful moments, of the beauties that lurk behind life’s shadows. Not everyone can, of course. Some break at the wall, but most press on. Not because they want to, or because they know there’s something better at the other side.

Because they have to. Because the world keeps moving, day after day, and so too must we. Prepare. Life is pain, but life is also what we make of it, so it need not always be agony.

“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

Will to power. Willpower. Do I have the will to achieve power? You must be the change you wish to see in the world. It would be hypocritical to have it any other way, yet the hypocritical is what we excel at. I should know. I’m just as human as anyone else.

It may be true, but can the truth be handled? The truth always has the potential for deeper harm than lies. Lies can be dismissed. Yet the truth, once known–inescapable, all-encompassing. Man comes to the crossroads: do I have the will? I have the longing–the dream, he thinks, but the will, well, I could say yes and the world would never be the wiser, I could say yes but I do think I would be lying. I would know that I was lying, even if the world doesn’t know.

History, after all, points to the contrary.

Man stands longing at the crossroads, mired in the wait, for a lack of perseverance to press forward. The easiest path is often the path that leads nowhere at all–the circular trail to nowhere.

I depend on my perceptions of reality–on the pre-conceived boundaries as set by society. Dwelling on this issue, no matter–trying to come to terms. I really on the work of others. I profess independence, yet I hide amidst the foundations of cozy uniformity. Go with the flow. Don’t think too hard, it will come in time.

Waiting, what is with all the waiting? Man can but shake his head.

Good things come to those who wait.

How cruel is that? Untrue as well–the world must be moved, and someone must take the courage to move it. So it always goes. The waiting is merely waiting for someone else to do what you might have done. Such a notion! Surely man recoils at the insinuation. Yet reality looms: I call myself free, he whispers, yet I am content to submissive docility, waiting for the changes I wish to see, writing about them, idolizing them, but never once myself for the doing.

Waiting on the world to change. Still waiting. As the song says, one day this generation is going to rule the population…and what changes?

The ultimate question put before man at that crossroads comes not long after this thought: am I weak, than? Is it a factor of strength and weakness, or do some people simply have this capability–this fortitude for change–and others inherently don’t?

All answers lie in the self. But how does one strengthen the self? Through will. How does one strengthen their will, their resolve? A much more difficult prospect altogether. The first step to believing, after all, is having the will to do so.

Public Domain portrait of Stephen Crane; image itself via Wikimedia Commons.

This week’s poetic spotlight falls on an ode to the changing of an age, to the death of the dream-like chivalry to which man once clung, and the rise of the horror of grim reality. “Fast rode the knight” is a famous work by one Stephen Crane, an American novelist, short story writer, poet and (this journalist’s heart be still) journalist. He was a hallmark of the late 19th century, and one of the foremost examples of the rise of the realist tradition in literature. He is perhaps best known, however, for his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, which is still wide-read in classrooms today.

But then, this little poem has a special place in my heart. This particular work, capturing as it does so perfectly the death of romanticism, once inspired and spawned from a more modern inspiration/incarnation by my own hand titled “Beside the Trenches,” a poem revolving around another great waking moment in man’s history: WWI. But now, without further adieu, I give you Crane’s original:

“Fast rode the knight”

Fast rode the knight
With spurs, hot and reeking,
Ever waving an eager sword,
“To save my lady!”
Fast rode the knight,
And leaped from saddle to war.
Men of steel flickered and gleamed
Like riot of silver lights,
And the gold of the knight’s good banner
Still waved on a castle wall.
. . . . .
A horse,
Blowing, staggering, bloody thing,
Forgotten at foot of castle wall.
A horse
Dead at foot of castle wall.

~Stephen Crane

Not mine, but all of ours in the poetic corner of the blogosphere, in its way.

“I’m a drinker with writing problems.” ~Brendan Behan

Yes, that’s right, you’ve seen these memes stalking facebook for days. Now you have one too, poets. You didn’t think the internet would forget about you did you?

Let’s be honest: the cat’s has a point. You’re not seeing too much of the poet locking himself away in the woods for months on end to tap into the secrets of nature these days. And given how many poems these days flare up on the societal or political topic, I’ve no doubt more than a few began with that glittering box we call the TV.

Aren’t the changing times fun?

Although also acceptable would have been said cat with  lounging in the grass of a backyard, staring at the skyline. Beer still mandatory, of course.

Related articles

• On Memes: An Observation (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• “What I Really Do” meme (holykaw.alltop.com)

Bind me the straps of soul

in cardboard disarray;

slip the demon under feathered lies,

mask the beast of flesh

men dare to call a world.

Hide the soil of me.

Hide from the weathered light

we drink.

Solace is the space between.

“If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, “Well, this isn’t too bad.  I don’t have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed,” but most of us would say something more along the lines of ‘Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!’”
~Lemony Snicket

He is, also, one of the more modern poets I’ve chosen to highlight here thus far, his life having ended as the turn of the century loomed.

Today I offer up a work of his that came to be dubbed a children’s classic in its own time. Published in 1974, “Where the Sidewalk Ends” is a real beauty, a good introductory piece for children, but with a lot of messages for adults, a verbal journey between the two worlds…

“Where the Sidewalk Ends”

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

I Rise

I Learn

I Know Life

But if

I Know Life

I Break

I Fall

I Am…

Breathing.