Metaphors?

But metaphors are not merely things to be seen beyond. In fact, one can see beyond them only by using other metaphors. It is as though the ability to comprehend experience through metaphor were a sense, like seeing or touching or hearing, with metaphors providing the only ways to perceive and experience much of the world. Metaphor is as much a part of our functioning as our sense of touch, and as precious.

.Metaphors we live by

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Riemann’s cat

Painting by Katherine.Copyright

A

Two whole worlds.
One small cut.
One little chink.
Hard to find.
Very,very hard.
One small place
Where a very little cat
Could slip right through
The geometrician ‘s cut.
Cat could slip right through.
Just,slip straight through.
Joining it’s own reflection
On the opposite side.
The mirror’s other side.

And if I caught that tail,
If I caught her little tail,
She could pull me through,
She could pull me through,
So she and I too
We’d be on the other side,
The wrong way round,
On the opposite side.

So when you looked in,
If you looked in,
You would see me there,
Looking out at you,
From the opposite side.
From the opposite side.
And the cat beside
Looking very small,
Very,very small;
But very,very real.
How do you think you’d feel,
If I was looking out,
Staring at you
From the opposite side?

I can’t get back.
I can’t find Riemann’s cat
and without that pussy cat
I can’t find Riemann’s cut.
I think I’m in a trap.
I cannot find that cat.
So she can’t find the cut
To get me back,
She can’t bring me back
To where I was before.

Oh,how queer,
To have two of me in here.
I hope I’ll get on well
With my other self,
Behind the looking glass.
No one looking in,
But two are staring out.
From that other world.

I am looking out,
I’m looking out
To see if you are there.
One of you’s with me
That makes the total three.
Oh,dear me,
I should not have grabbed
Little pussy’s tail.
I didn’t really know
Where she meant to go.

“Where have you been?
Where do you think you’ve been
To get so filthy black,
And where’s your pussy cat?”
She never came back.
Never came back
From the opposite side.
Mammy thought I’d lied.
I don’t tell lies,
But I can see my cat
Staring out at me.
Staring out at me
From the other side.
From the opposite side
Of my looking glass.
My lovely looking glass
Has trapped my tiny cat
On the opposite side.
On the opposite side
On the other side

Helping others through the looking glass….

Homer’s tales were laced with important lessons for his contemporaries on the “proper” ways to think and behave. He taught (or reminded) them how to properly treat a stranger or a relative, face danger and hardship, worship, and so on. Similarly, the fables of Aesop and Da Vinci ranged in subject matter from comments upon the quirks of human nature to considering the meaning of existence.

From … Therapeutic metaphors :

Helping others through the looking glass”‘ by David Gordon

Beggar man

  • I saw you on the pavement
    with your old brown dog
    You were shabby,poor,ragged,
    Sat on your tartan rug.
    You had water for the dog,
    You hugged him and you sang,
    But the people walked on by,
    And no-one looked at you.
    No-one looked at you.

    But you still sang your song.
    And you sent me so much love
    It crossed from eye to eye.
    I felt it coming in.

  • I heard that you had died,
    Though you were only thirty three.
    Only thirty three.
    I wonder,where’s your dog?
    I felt our souls had touched,
    You gave to me so much
    As I wandered in my grief
    Through the roads and round the streets.
    In your glance, you touched my heart.
    I felt love swimming through,
    From you right into me.

    Will you come again?
    I see all these dim, grey men
    Who cut your benefits
    To give more wealth to few;
    So that the needle’s eye,
    which is waiting when we die,
    is forgotten, for they want
    protection for their wealth.

    I wish that beggar man
    would come back here again.
    I liked to hear his songs
    But I can’t recall the tunes;
    Maybe I’ll write songs myself,
    That’s the highest sort of wealth
    Our creativity
    Is a path to dignity.
    Come back.beggar man
    Wherever have you gone?
    Wherever have you gone?

The Vale of Soulmaking…John Keats

Photo0180_001https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/07/25/the-vale-of-soul-making/

“I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!” Keats

Keats and negative capability

autumn autumn colours brown countryside
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/63097/dalrev_vol61_iss1_pp39_51.pdf?sequence=1

“When we look into Keats’s expressions of conflict between
imagination and reality we can see the roots of this conflict in the
problem of identity. Keats wrote about the sunset, the sparrow, the
mythological figure as if he had lost his identity in the object. He
experienced these identifications sometimes with a sense of discovery
and sometimes with fear or irritability. Eventually, Keats began to see
that his identity would not be maddened by his imagination and could
be strengthened by it. He realized, in other words, “that a not inconsiderable increase in psychical efficiency” can result “from a disposition
which in itself is perilous.” In-the four years we know Keats as a letter
writer and a poet, we can see the development of his capacity for
retaining a sense of identity even when seized by powerful or seductive
visions. This is the development–the turning of a weakness into a
strength, both as artist and as man-that accounts for many apparent
contradictions in Keats’s thought. The language of negative capability
has been difficult because it suggests a puzzling oxymoron- a negative
and a positive. The figure presents two aspects of a dual process, the
first part of which, in its partial renunciation of control, can be felt as a
negative, while the second, or alternating, state recreates and is felt as a
capability. The creative process in some of its operations posed
dangers for Keats’!; identity. But by the spring of 1819, the period of the
great odes, there appears a new strength in the second aspect of
negative capabilily imagination”

Don’t lie so still

Ah,brother I don’t want you to lie still

No blood to circulate,no thoughts,no will

No help,no humour.jokes no

sharp true eye

From our old shared pram,to live, to die.

I used to do your homework

late at night

Abstract thought to you was no delight.

You wondered over X and y and z

Preferred the shapes of Nature in your head.

I shall retain the memories of the good

You who taught me speech and hate and love

Fear of writing sonnets

I’d love to write a sonnet but I  daren’t
For in this steamy heat it’s much too hard
So please don’t send me messages that taunt
Nor with disdain compare me to our bard.

.For  not all people have poetic skill
And  what I have will sometimes fall to dust
Like virtue  writing’s not made by the will
Await the grace ,as saints and mystics must

In  the mind an empty bowl of space
We keep to catch the offerings of the gods.
It’s more like contemplation than a race;
For freely, quietly we receive the good.

The lady’s not for   turning words to gold
But with a  chosen few she loves to mould

Courage

From time and place and season I am lost,

Disorientated ,missing tracks well worn

Do not suppose I’m unaware of cost

Nor label me with epithets of scorn

For usual paths lead to the usual place

The safest way to live and perhaps to die

But wandering through the woods I find new space

and in wild grasses with the fox I lie.

Through distant trees, i see a way to go

as narrow as a slit in pallid stone

This is my destined way, I seem to know

And courage rises even as I moan.

Remember when we’re lost ,we may then find

Another way,a place,another mind

He isn’t here

The air rippled like sea

Niarbyll bay and butterflies

I caught a glance

In water

Shining

He isn’t here

Waves blind me

With white heads

Sunlight in the morning

Hit the fridge door

He isn’t here

The teapot glinted

An eye,perhaps.

The warmth is unusual for February

I went to the hospital again

He wasn’t there

He wasn’t there

He wasn’t there

How much beauty?

Posted on February 19 2017

This music does caress my inner ear
Takes me to my childhood joy and love
How much beauty can a human bear?

The vision of the lighted candles here
A symbol of the starlight far above.
Beloved music will caress my inner ear

And God does dwell in those who sense him near
But overlooked , he’s but a clear grey dove
How much beauty can a human bear?

And see, God laughs to be revered
As she enjoys the flutter of my glove,
While music does caress my inner ear!

The God who’s true does not depend on fear
But holds the soul as it allows their love
How much beauty can a human bear?

God is here and not at one remove.
And in his grace we each can gently bathe
This music shall caress my inner ear
How much beauty can a human bear?

When children bleed

When the fruit has rotted on the stalk
Bruised and broken like the lost in need
When  leaders meet  but rarely truly talk
When children caught in gun fire lie and bleed

Don’t we see God’s Kingdom is a joke?
One hundred million deaths in two world wars
Not quick death but tortured bodies broke
They lost their lives and  love died in their gore

Utopia, evolution, grandiose plans
Sacrifice yourself for those to come
We saw  the  little children hand in hand
Ground mines blew them up, they could not run

One thing’s clear, God’s here or not at all
The  future’s fiction, theatre   forms  the soul

In the silence, trembling

Freed from her trap
Bird soared into air,and hovered
And floated, resting;
And flew higher, singing as she flew,
And higher again,
Till there was only her song,
Left in the silence,
Trembling.

Up on the wide,stump topped hill,
I felt the lark inside my heart
And heard her singing.
And flying up with her,
I saw gold sun and silver moon,
Moors of heather ,and sheep grazing
Green hills,
And shimmering lakes,
Clouds ,sun and sky in watery mirrors.
And sang ,and dipped,and dropped,
And curled
Up the blue
Bright heaven, and rested
On the wind.
All that day
I was a lark singing.

I shall always have a vision of
A bird
That flew upwards,
Rejoicing and free
Into a deep blue sky, and high
And higher
Beyond high
Into a place, beyond eye even,
But music still sending.

I wish I were back on that heathery moor,
With the nibbling sheep and the bees sweetly humming,
Hearing again
The poignant song
Of the skylark,
A prisoner,freed by a magician,
From her trap,
So happy to be free,
So wonderful to see.
Do it again,
For me.

In my dream, I gave birth to a child

In my dream, I gave birth to a child
The doctor said that he would die quite soon
My feelings overwhelming made me wild

The Nazi doctor threw him on a pile
I lay nearby unmoving as I keened
In my dream,I gave birth to a child

A week passed by,I knew that death beguiled
Frozen lips made no sound, song or tune
My feelings overwhelming made me wild

I had to rise and say my black goodbye.
My baby with the others;horror loomed
In my dream I gave birth to a child

I picked him up , when suddenly he smiled
I held him to my breast, my songs I crooned
My feelings overwhelming drove me wild

I had to carry him, the landscape gloom
A desert grey aand rocky like some moon
In my dream I gave birth to a child

In terror I had walked yet love consoled

Imagine you’re  a spy and see our plight

The sun  enfolds me  in its wealth of  light
Caressing eyes and making  love seem right
Forgot,the  lonely darkness in a trance
When spring begins its equinoxal dance
Forgotten too is  how the frost can bite
And how warm lethargy  turns day to night
As we lie indoors like parasites
Into  lighted windows, I will glance
A minor crime when  brightness   draws my sight
Here’s a drying rack with clothes  mutant
Here’s a sill entirely filled with plants
Imagine you’re  a spy and see our plight
The mirror crackles, full of long-held spite

This variegated colour

In between the darkness and the bright,

Graded shades of grey and lilac lie.

These variegated colours give delight.

And from my soul, I hear a gentle sigh.

As we live, we dwell in mysteries;

Must take decisions based on various views.

And unknown memories from our history

Emphasis the old , see not the new.

For true perception, we must humble be.

Not for moral reasons but for sight.

The emptiness lets flood creative seas.

Allows bright rays of loving, guiding light.

We need to know we do not know at all.

And, trembling, hold the doors of vision wide.

So gentle should be judgements when we fail.

Then errors we’ll appreciate, not hide.

We must deal with life unknown, unclear;

Perception is a better guide than fear.

Speech! Speech! | Poetry Magazine

Next door

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/74587/speech-speech

On our expedition through the magazine, we wondered whether all poems—whether or not they cross linguistic boundaries—are inherently efforts at translation. In a prose snippet rendered into English by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva writes:

My difficulty (in writing poems—and perhaps other people’s difficulty in understanding them) is in the

impossibility of my goal, for example, to use words to express a moan: nnh-nnh-nnh. To express a sound using words, using meanings. So that the only thing left in the ears would be nnh-nnh-nnh.

Tsvetaeva, several of whose poems……..

Does it matter that we are?

Can we change the world we see

Does it matter what we do?

Oh what we are innstructs the eye

As on this world we humans spy

We create the world anew

With every contemplative view.

But if we hurry to our goals

So creation duly fails.

We see the world in coloured light

When we see the world aright

Russia-Ukraine war live: Alexei Navalny death ‘murder’, says Nobel prize winner

This is just so sad and so terrible….

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/16/ukraine-war-live-russia-avdiivka-assault-continues-as-zelenskiy-set-to-visit-europe?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats – Scottish Poetry Library

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/he-wishes-cloths-heaven/

Thank you for your funny face

Thanks for all those calls and letters
Thanks for caring that I’m here.
In my darkest, lonesome moments
These replies will keep you near.

Thanks for answering all my emails
Thank you for the hours you give.
Thanks for sharing heartfelt thoughts
And being so generous with your love.

Thank you for your wit and grace,
Thank for your funny face.
Thank you for your deep blue gaze and
Thank you for your warm embrace.

Thank you,thank you,thank you,thank.
Love you,love you,love you,Love.
Thank you,thank you,thanks to you,
Because,because,because,Because

Writing makes me breathe differently

Sometimes writing makes me breathe differently.
I can feel the silence settle around me,
Like a prayer shawl.
i accept it gratefully.
There’s a thin feeling to the day
As if the sun might have tried harder
to come through
But it had a blue feeling
And the clouds were greedy,
Wanting too much to melt
And shed their moisture.
Some perfume please.I think it was £27.99
Yes,I like that one even more than jasmine oil.
Pour it down over London
Like a blessing.
A black woman laughed and patted my arm,
You’re so funny, she cried.
And I smiled coyly
As if someone hidden was taking my photograph.
Sometimes life’s too sweet
And needs a little pepper.
The chair creaks as I lean forward
Trying to see everything at once
As if it all happened now, not yesterday.