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A Poet's Journal: February 26th, 2015

  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
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A Poet's Journal: August 23rd, 2014


August 23rd, 2014
Sometimes we recognize the problem squarely in front of us, but take hold of it awkwardly; or sometimes we hold with a genuine hand that which needed not our guidance; and of the many other ways we may circle around the matter, it all comes down to aligning our perception with our intelligence, thereby forcing the former to perceive something that we have made ourselves believe, finding the solution inexistent, but nonetheless created by our own troubles.  Certainly problems exist and certainly solutions as well, but there is a point at which the mind is dulled and goaded into drudgery by them.  This derangement becomes a romantic illusion, which seems enviable and necessary to take after if we are to attain a somewhat unattainable goal--it is never taken for the stale nature it turns out to be.  For this very reason, confusion is cultivated because it is exciting and yields a chance to bring order, whereon solution becomes an end and not a means to create.

Douglas Thornton

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NEWLY PUBLISHED TRANSLATIONS!!

Newly published at the Society of Classical Poets:   Translations of André Chénier’s Poetry, by Douglas Thornton The Flute Douglas Thornton Ever tender and touching the moment, When pressing himself the flute to my mouth, Laughing and pulling me close to his breast, He named me his rival and soon to be Master.  My stiff and timid lips were shown To breathe an air pure and harmonious, And my young fingers, by his practiced hands, Being raised and lowered a hundred times, Though ever so trying, were taught to close The different holes of the sonorous wood. La Flûte André Chénier Toujours ce souvenir m'attendrit et me touche, Quand lui-même, appliquant la flûte sur ma bouche, Riant et m'asseyant sur lui, près de son coeur, M'appelant son rival et déjà son vainqueur, Il façonnait ma lèvre inhabile et peu sûre A souffler une haleine harmonieuse et pure; Et ses savantes mains prenaient mes jeunes doigts, Les levaient, les baissaient, recommençai
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A Poet's Journal: September 23rd, 2013

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