February 26th, 2015 How rare to have body and mind on the same page! It is not easy to do the things we want when we want to; the auspicious moment always seems to grow from inability and our inability from a desire for something more. Imagination drags us through this lonely field, giving us our tasks, our worries, making the distance around us insufferable. And so whenever I have something to do, it is very difficult not to get caught up in the imagination of doing it before it is actually done, working through it a hundred times. I am not speaking of preparation or details here, but the simple idea of a future to come, and what that future might bring, and how we might handle that--this is the imagination, this is the gateless gate, firmly shut and too defiantly high to look over; this is the gate that never was nor ever has been a gate. Yet it is richly adorned and so much a part of our inability that it seems better to look at and keep closed rather than pass right through
We have left the solstice behind and our days are now guided by declining light and the heat of summer. Let us take a moment then to step toward the pleasures of another world and warm ourselves with poetry. Please scroll down or click on the following link to read the new translation: A Translation of André Chénier’s ‘Elegy XX’ by Douglas Thornton Art, feeble interpretation Of the soul! Art and only verse, While the heart alone is poet! Oppressive to the fruitful mind Are those adornments, which despite Themselves, hide within such words As truth and surety commit To thought, the loss of thought itself. The heart speaks, genius writes: master To obey, his hand turns divine, But only if loved and happy, Freed of torment, only if joy Light-hearted and ardent youth spread Across his face their beaming glow, Will his verse, as clear as amber, Or as flowers blush, find renewed With their fairest looks, a sweetness To the world, and in ripe old age A guide. But m