10.10.14

I am currently reading Russia at the time of the Revolution by Alan Moorehead. While the book focuses on the political and cultural forces surrounding the events of the time, I'm sure the effect on the fine arts was as strong a force as it was on the political and economic course of the country. While there is always difficulty and interest in poems that have been translated into English, I thought I'd give it a go.

One of the names that kept popping up in my searches was Alexander Blok. He was born into a well-off and intellectual family in St Petersburg, and married the daughter of famous chemist Mendeleev. His family had literary members, professors, lawyers, and aristocrats, and his early work was influenced by philosophy and 19th century poetry, but as his participation in the revolution occurred, his verse changed to a political and social theme (this all from Wikipedia). Apparently he was also a stenographer at the interrogations of those who personally knew Rasputin.

One of Blok's most famous poems is The Twelve, which describes twelve apostle-like revolutionaries led by a Christ-figure. At the time, his fans decried it as being unlike his previous lyrical, mystical work, although he credited it as his best work. Nerdpop has a translation by Alecksay Calvin and a good accompanying article. From Calvin's text:

Prior to the work’s publication, Alexander Blok’s reputation was of an ingenious but almost remarkably uncontroversial and undivisive poet. Much of his poetry was widely revered at the time by everyone and their babushka and could touch both an exiled princess and a peasant anarchist. Blok’s reputation as one of the most eloquent Russian poetic voices since Pushkin had long been secure. He was respected, widely published, rarely criticized and stood at the head of the many entwined Russian “Silver Age” poetic movements, though he was most associated with the romantic, mystical, and sometimes formally experimental Russian brand of Symbolism. But then “The Twelve” appeared and in a lightning flash undermined Blok’s easy position. He was attacked from all sides. The various causes of such an intense public reaction to the poem are fascinating in themselves, but I am not about to elaborate on them in this short text.

He draws symbolist parallels between The Twelve and T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, both in style and message. A short note from Calvin on the difficulty of translating poetry: "Though I believe that I was mostly able to effectively convey the basic flow, language-type, and the currents of meaning contained in the poem without too many sacrifices, any translation is a sketch compared to the original, or at best a reinterpretation. The context always slightly shifts. However, I am reassured by the fact that certain parts of the translation came to me very easily, as if by magic, just like – I imagine – they came to Blok". Since the poem is epic in scope, I will only reproduce a portion of his translation, but I encourage you to seek out the full work.




2


The wind strolls, flutters the snow.

There are twelve of them as they go.


Their rifles’ black belts,
And around them – flames, flames, flames…
Rolled cig in the teeth, a crumpled hat,
Gotta stick an ace of diamonds to the back!

Freedom, freedom,
Hey, hey, without a cross!

Tra-ta-ta!
It’s cold, comrades, cold!

- Ivan and Katya – in the drinking hole…
- Inside her sock she hides Kerensky dough!

- And Vanya’s gotten rich as well…
- Was once our boy, he’s now a soldier!
-Well, Vanya, bitch’s spawn, boughie-man,
Try and kiss my ass, if you can!


Freedom, freedom,
Well, well, well, without a cross!

Katya and Vanya are busy,
Busy doing what?..


Tra-ta-ta!

All around them – flames, flames, flames…
Upon the shoulders – rifle belts…

Keep up the pace with Revolution’s thunder!
Our tireless enemy never slumbers!

Hold up your rifle, comrade, don’t you cower!
Let’s lodge a bullet into Blessed Russia!
Into the hardy,
And the wooden-hutted,
Into the fat-assed Russia!
Hey, hey, without a cross!

3

How our guys at once went off
In the Red Guard went to serve –
In the Red Guard went to serve –
To lay down their stormy skulls!

Oh you, bitter-bitterness,
Oh, sweet life of fun!
A torn up little overcoat,
And an Austrian gun!

And for the bourgeois to cry
We will blow our fires worldwide,
Fire across the globe in blood –
Worldwide fire, so bless us God!

5


Katya, right there on your neck,
There’s a knife-scar that remains.
Katya, right beneath your breast,
There’s a scratch and it’s still fresh!

Hey, hey, go on and dance!
Much too fine your little legs!

Strolled in lacy underwear –
Stroll-away-hey, stroll away!
With the officers you cankered –
Whore-away-hey, whore away!


Do you still recall the sergeant –
How the knife tore up his flesh…
Maybe, scum, you can’t remember?
Or is your memory not fresh?


Hey, hey, freshen up,
Let him sleep next to your lap!


Walked around in those gray gaiters,
Guzzled Mignon chocolates…
With the junkers promenanded –
Going out with soldiers now?


Hey, hey, sin along!
It will liberate your soul!

9

The city’s noise has melted down,
Around the Nevsky tower silence hangs,
Even the town guardsman’s gone somewhere.
So party without wine tonight, my friends!

The bourgeois man at a crossroad stands,
Inside the collar hides his nose.
Beside him, cringes its coarse fur
And hides its tail some lousy dog.

The bourgeois stands like a starving mutt,
Without a word stands, like a question mark.
And the old world, just like some mongrel dog,
Stands right behind him, tail pressed to its back.

11

…So they walk without a holy word,
All twelve – walk far along.
All ready for any thing,
All regretting nothing…

Aiming their darling rifles
At a ghostly foe…
Right into the voiceless alleys,
Where snowstorm dusts alone,
They go…
And into feathered snowbanks -
Where boots get stuck in snow…

Their scarlet flag
Strikes the eyes.
Their measured pace
Resounds.

Their ferocious enemy -
Soon enough will rise…

And the blizzard dusts their eyes
Days and nights
Away…


Forward, forward,
Working folk!
Forward and ahead!

Blok became disillisioned with the revolution, and stopped writing altogether, saying "All sounds have stopped. Can't you hear that there are no longer any sounds?" Rapidly thereafter he became sick, and was recommended ot leave the country to convalesce, but was not allowed to leave Russia. When he finally received a visa, it was too late and he was already dead. 

10.9.14

In light of the conversation of the other day regarding youth and nostalgia, here is a poem by A. E. Houseman:


To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl’s.

I chose this because its something that I remember from my youth, pouring through Norton's Anthology at home. (Yes, I had a Norton's Anthology, in fact, I had 3!) I think to an extent, for any person, there are things about your past that you'd like to bask in, even if for a short time. My friends who are athletes can sympathize, always agonizing over that goal un-scored or how close one had come to a personal record. It may contain some regret, in addition to reminiscence or nostalgia. I'm glad I'm a better athlete now than when I was a kid, so I can avoid this to some extent. The poem's speaker is concerned that their skill will fade, and how they are perceived by others will sour. Really, at the heart of this is the fear that one won't satisfy the breadth of their potential, even if it's size is overstated by the boundless conception of the young. In the same vein here is Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,



The night above the dingle starry,



Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.



And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.



All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.



And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.



And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace,



Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.




Aside from it's nice parallel to my topic, this poem is just wonderful. The repetition is catching without being a refrain, and its lyrical without the strict cadence of the Houseman poem. It's tremendously joyous and liquid, perfect for a late summer/early fall day like today. I also appreciate that, while Housman's subject is honored by his peers and countrymen, Thomas' subject is honored by his natural surroundings and livelihood, which has a different longevity to it than human opinions. 

10.7.14

This poem is called Nostalgia by Billy Collins:

Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”

Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.
Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.

These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.
The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.


Originally a medical term, nostalgia combines Greek roots, but isn't a Greek word, technically. "Originally in reference to the Swiss and said to be peculiar to them and often fatal, whether by its own action or in combination with wounds or disease. By 1830s the word was used of any intense homesickness: that of sailors, convicts, African slaves." (From the Online Etymology Dictionary) In the modern sense of a wistful yearning for bygone days, it wasn't seen until the 1920's in French literature. I am a person who struggles with nostalgia, especially in literature.


I enjoy history, and want to assign value to things that are past, because they often have value and something to teach. The trouble comes in not overstating that value, especially in our own memories. From the essay Nostalgia and its Discontents by Svetlana Boym, the following:

Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy. Nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship. A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images—of home and abroad, of past and present, of dream and everyday life. The moment we try to force it into a single image, it breaks the frame or burns the surface.

 There is a lot I like in this essay, especially this passage (sorry for the strange formatting, having some issues with cut and paste and spacing):

While many nineteenth-century thinkers believed progress and enlightenment would cure nostalgia, they have exacerbated it instead. Technology that once promised to bridge modern displacement and distance and provide the miracle prosthesis for nostalgic aches has itself become much faster than nostalgic longing. More precisely, technology and nostalgia have become co-dependent: new technology and advanced marketing stimulate ersatz nostalgia--for the things you never thought you had lost--and anticipatory nostalgia--for the present that flees with the speed of a click.

What do we do with this strange feeling of our own making? While I know things weren't necessarily better in the past, there is something cultural that wants us to return to something even if it never was there. I wonder if this is similar to the west's cultural obsession in parenting with freaking out over their kids growing up. It's not like its a surprise, but we are so attached to it. Is it youth/innocence? Interestingly, here is my poem of the day from poets.org:

Afterwards

by Phillip Schultz

Suddenly
everything feels afterwards,
stoic and inevitable, 
my eyes ringed with the grease of rumor and complicity,
my hands eager to hold any agreeable infatuation
that might otherwise slip away.
Suddenly
it’s evening and the lights up and
down the street appear hopeful,
even magnanimous,
swollen as they are with ancient grievances
and souring schemes. The sky,
however,
appears unwelcoming,
and aloof, eager to surrender
its indifference to our suffering.
Speaking of suffering,
the houses—our sober, recalcitrant houses—
are swollen with dreams that have grown opaque with age,
hoarding as they do truths
untranslatable into auspicious beliefs.
Meanwhile,
our loneliness,
upon which so many laws are based,
continues to consume everything.
Suddenly,
regardless of what the gods say,
the present remains uninhabitable,
the past unforgiving of the harm it’s seen,
while
the future remains translucent
and unambiguous
in its desire to elude us.

Weekend Words

Some words from me for your weekend.

10/22/09

I listen to the unpatterned pinpoints

lacing the slate and the pane.

Their stuttered staccato does not unearth or decrypt

Words or the semblance of words.

It would be hard to imagine a message

That juts out like typeface or Braille

In the spidery fire that brands sleep,

Like it’s analog in the brain.

10.4.14

I saw some people celebrating Rosh Hashanah on Friday, the Jewish new year. I thought I would share something from local poet Dana Kuttler since it was timely. 



The Shofar Breaks your Heart

When you give a girl a shofar – 
no, not a proper instrument of G-d,
but a rough-cut horn with no real mouthpiece
her aunt brings back from a trip to Jerusalem,
don’t make it easy.

Put it up on the shelf in the living room
where its curled promise of a shout
will tempt her until she can reach it on tiptoe.

Tell her no one has ever found its voice,
that she will only make it grunt, bray and sputter
like the animal it came from.

Then give her a few years.

Give her an empty garage and a neighborhood
Jewish enough to understand what it’s hearing
so she can practice until
tiny tekiot burst forth from the scrap of ram.

She will be the only one who can ever shape its sounds,
can bend the call to tekiah, round off nine drops of t’ruah wailing,
fling the anguished cry of a sh’varim from its mouth.

Let her brag about this.  Remember that children
are not humble creatures, that the simple act of being heard
is their great triumph.  Let her be heard.

Bring her to Hebrew school.
Teach her the story of the rabbi
who told his students that he would put the words of Torah on their hearts;
that the words would only find their way in when the students’ hearts broke.
Let her sit with that tale for as long as it takes
for her own heart to shatter, for torah and poetry and forgiveness 
find their way inside,

play her Leonard Cohen. Let him croon about the cracks in everything,
that’s how the light gets in, let her begin searching for light,
ask her where she thinks the cracks come from,
give her Auschwitz, give her Torquemada, give her pogrom and
quota and blacklist, the ashes of all her burnt bridges,
give her avinu malkenu, ashamnu, ashamnu, ashamnu, 

watch her break 
her heart
with her fist.

Give her the shofar.  
Let the horn steal her breath,
let her begin to understand that she’s not holding a dead piece of animal,
but a living prayer.

Teach her: after every blast
you can hear the echo
of the still small voice.

If you listen for it,
you can hear the calls for the wild cries they are;
salute them with a straight back when they yank you from your amidah;
and should you hear a shofar blower struggle and gasp and strain for each call,
imagine yourself a trapped animal, desperate to be heard.

When it’s over,
Close your eyes.

Be. Broken. Here.  Before G-d and your people. Be. Cracked.

feel the light
and the words
come
in.

10.2.14

It can feel very lonely in web-space sometimes, especially when you are not connecting via social media. I thought I would try and explore other writers who do what I am trying to, or other platforms that bring writers together.

The first I found was the Valparaiso Poetry Review, from the University with the same name in Indiana. Sometimes I miss being in a University atmosphere from a writing perspective, since there is always something new and interesting going on, and enough turnover in atmosphere to keep things fresh. Just in my scanning I found several pieces that I liked. Here's The First Law of Thermodynamics by Michael Meyerhofer:



Dig too far and you’ll find the shards
of something ancient, stacked like Rome
and San Francisco on the crust
of ancestors: streets capping ruins,
ziggurat plus bazaar equals taco stand.
Sooner or later, all the cloisters
in your abbey become eligible
for an upgrade. All you have to do
is peel back your bedroom wallpaper
and you’ll find a whole tiramisu
of lost history. Remember, 
atoms are just bags of cowbells—
electrons, leptons, quarks,
the sparkler lifespan of the mayfly.
How many cowbells in a tulip,
a woolly rhino, a taxidermist, cowbells 
sloughing through the pastures 
of Tel Aviv, tin song that used to be
my mother now recycling that anthem
of hay and flies and runaway sun.


I have to admit, I was drawn to this one at first because it sounds like something I would write. I am fascinated by archaeology, and the idea that just by looking below, or beyond, or just inside, you could find a piece of another time. I often have dreams of finding hoards of coins, or a priceless old photo, or something exciting in a thrift store purchase. I also find a smile in comparing Rome and Tel Aviv to San Francisco and bedroom wallpaper. 

Can I just say, I am totally surprised by the number of "formalist" poems in this issue? So far I have found a ghazal, formalist rhythm, some terza rima, and other rhyming forms. Obviously there is a ton of variety, but it makes me excited to see all these forms in one place! A few were amateurish, but that's kind of the idea of a University Review, right? You gotta start somewhere. This next one is called Winter Solstice by Catherine Champion:


In early winter, the waves of Lake Michigan
clap against the mouth of the Black River

and surge up past the height of the lighthouse.
The surf freezes in reefing ice along the shore.

South Haven is dead long before this time;
the dark storefronts of the ice cream parlors

are locked in seasonal slumber. Two warm lights
remain in the newsstand and the town bar

where televisions flash a more present world.
This is my father’s favorite time of year—

once, he gathered us and announced a drive
to the lake, to celebrate the year’s shortest day.

We were never sure why the briefness of light
gave him such cause, but we knew its rareness;

a midday silken twilight shawled the horizon
and he took the car to a highpoint overlooking

Lake Michigan’s icy shore, silenced the ignition.
We could feel something solidify inside him

as he sat there, fixed in the mauve of evening,
the stir of lake-effect moving the sky closer,

the waves frozen in such an impossible moment
of freezing; rising over the beach, never breaking.


I really liked "midday silken twilight shawled", but that could just be the knitter in me. I also liked how we began with waves moving, and ended with them ceasing/freezing. I imagine our human ancestors may have felt this way about the solstice, and thus its (and its counterpoint's) celebration. Just one more that I liked the feel/color of; Rubies in her Ears by Chantel Acevedo:


Four weeks old, the needle, rum-dipped,
           held fast between the pads of her
           father’s fingers—
her mother could not keep her hands
           still enough, palsied by her animal
           need to shield—
his paw heavy on her tiny forehead, fingers
           so long they spanned her whole face—
           hand filling the universe, hand holding
the needle, threaded with red string, also rum-
           soaked. Thin aguja, thin as a fish bone,
           thrust through the baby’s
delicate earlobe, piercing a tender morsel of flesh.
           She cried. Twice for each jab—twice more
           when the thread was pulled through days
later—the abscinded flesh ready for the next 
           violation—a pair of rubies—little pinprick 
           gems, such brilliant wounds.


I usually can't abide run-ons, but this one made having 3 sentences work. Also, "Rum and Rubies" sounds like the title of a mystery novel. That's all for today. 

10.1.14

Clive James recently hove into my consciousness because of the stunning and sad personal elegy he created in the poem Japanese Maple that was featured in the New Yorker. It is more stunning and sad because it's true, the Australian poet is terminally ill. 

Japanese Maple 

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

Slate's "Culture Blog" has a thorough analysis, and I think Katy Waldman does a better job than I could.  His website features more of his work, and I wanted to share just a little more of his time on earth. As you could imagine, death is the salient theme of his recent poems. Winter Plums shares the poetic perspective of the speaker looking out on his surroundings and shading them against his days and his days against them. Today I learned this style is called "Valedictory" poetry, from the Latin for farewell (that puts our graduation addresses in new light)

Two winter plum trees grow beside my door.
Throughout the cold months they had little pink
Flowers all over them as if they wore
Nightdresses, and their branches, black as ink
By sunset, looked as if a Japanese
Painter, while painting air, had painted these

Two winter plum trees. Summer now at last
Has warmed their leaves and all the blooms are gone.
A year that I might not have had has passed.
Bare branches are my signal to go on,
But soon the brave flowers of the winter plums
Will flare again, and I must take what comes:

Two winter plum trees that will outlive me.
Thriving with colour even in the snow,
They’ll snatch a triumph from adversity.
All right for them, but can the same be so
For someone who, seeing their buds remade
From nothing, will be less pleased than afraid?

I am attracted to this work because of the consistent rhythm, and the tonic of rhyme. The mere presence of rhyme seems to be controversial today (it certainly seems rare), and I imagine some critics would toss a piece offhand if it had such consistent dedication to rhyme, but James' work is a great resolution for the ear without being heavy-handed or too directed by where the rhyme needed to go. Since he is speaking to endings, it seems meet that the sonic resolution to satisfy the ear would be a feature of his work. 

In addition to poetry, Clive wrote literary criticism, essays, appeared on television programs, wrote non-fiction works, translated The Divine Comedy, produced shows for radio, and collaborated with musicians. Our society has a bit of trouble dealing with death (perhaps artists have less trouble?), perhaps James' contributions can help with that conversation. 

Event Horizon

For years we fooled ourselves. Now we can tell
How everyone our age heads for the brink
Where they are drawn into the unplumbed well,
Not to be seen again. How sad, to think
People we once loved will be with us there
And we not touch them, for it is nowhere.

Never to taste again her pretty mouth!
It’s been forever, though, since last we kissed.
Shadows evaporate as they go south,
Torn, by whatever longings still persist,
Into a tattered wisp, a streak of air,
And then not even that. They get nowhere.

But once inside, you will have no regrets.
You go where no one will remember you.
You go below the sun when the sun sets,
And there is nobody you ever knew
Still visible, nor even the most rare
Hint of a face to humanise nowhere.

Are you to welcome this? It welcomes you.
The only blessing of the void to come
Is that you can relax. Nothing to do,
No cruel dreams of subtracting from your sum
Of follies. About those, at last, you care:
But soon you need not, as you go nowhere.

Into the singularity we fly
After a stretch of time in which we leave
Our lives behind yet know that we will die
At any moment now. A pause to grieve,
Burned by the starlight of our lives laid bare,
And then no sound, no sight, no thought. Nowhere.

What is it worth, then, this insane last phase
When everything about you goes downhill?
This much: you get to see the cosmos blaze
And feel its grandeur, even against your will,
As it reminds you, just by being there,
That it is here we live or else nowhere.