I am

I had the opportunity to try and practice silent meditation over 11/17-18. Initially I researched meditation retreats. But the fact that I had to pay $100 or so for a room and the guided meditation would not be on my terms had me go back to the drawing board and wonder whether I could do this sitting in my own home. The advantage of going to a meditation retreat is that there are no distractions such as chores and the territory is neutral. Still, I felt I could give being in my home a shot and try it. Now, what I did should not be confused with any formal technique out there, although it has been likened to Vipaasana. I made up my own rules, chose what practice to follow, and threw away any guided form whether online or in person.

The rules I chose to follow were – no form of communication, no online interactions, no reading, no writing, no tasks, no external images to distract me, time bound to two days. Looking at these rules, it might as well have been solitary confinement, except of course that I have a get out of jail card which I can use at any time. I now have a much deeper understanding of what solitary confinement for what could be eternity must feel like.

In terms of the practice to follow, I have been reading bits and pieces over the course of some years and Ramana Maharishi’s path struck a chord in me. But his teachings seemed more abstract to me. I then stumbled upon Nisargadatta Maharaj and a recordings of his teachings “I am that”. This is roughly the practice I chose to follow – call it self inquiry, “who am I” or whatever you wish to call it. It is in rough form what I ultimately chose to focus upon.

About 1 week prior to my “Silence” and focusing on “I am” I started to have doubts. My brain started playing tricks on me. Conceptually if you divide the mind into two parts – the thinking mind and the working mind, you would say that my thinking mind started to play tricks with me. Or you could say that within me the devil and the angel had a wrestling match. I started asking myself questions – “Is it really worth it wasting two days on just silence and focusing on I am”, “What if at the end of two days I am no closer to anything deep or fundamental”, “There are a number of chores to attend to. Will I have the luxury to devote two full days to this exercise” and so on.

As the day drew near I added to the silent meditation another component – fasting. So naturally my thinking mind played tricks on me on that one too and I succumbed to it – I had pizza the evening of 11/16 and felt so full that I doubted the effectiveness of the fast once I had finished the pizza and a whole bunch of chocolate (now I even forget the name of the chocolate, such is the state of memory once you embark on meditation and focusing).

I had told myself that during the silent meditation the following would hold true – no iPhone, no TV, no going out and seeing other people, no reading, no listening to music, no writing. I added no eating to this list. The concept here was that I would not allow my senses any form of passive entertainment or be distracted by the images presented by any of my senses. Other than that I was allowed to sleep if I felt extremely tired and sleepy, but I would do my best to remain alert the rest of the time – by that I mean try my best to not go into dreamland which is essentially the same as being in a movie while awake. I allowed myself simple activities such as putting away items, cooking, cleaning during this time.

On the morning of 11/17, the start of my silent meditation, I dropped E off at the airport early in the morning, came back home around 7:45am and covered all the mirrors I would encounter. Again this is an attempt to not even be distracted by the image my face presented to me. I guess at this point you could say I was simply going back to a point in time when we humans did not have any modern techniques of consoling ourselves or being presented with images in a passive fashion. I then spent quite some time resting on the couch simply focusing on my body and engaging various muscles, also focusing on my breath and focusing on “I am”. I would get on the floor in a classic meditation posture – relaxed, cross legged, straight back, core engaged, and focus on “I am”. For now, this lasts only a few minutes before my muscles start to ache and I have to get back to a horizontal posture – but still focusing on exactly the same things as I would when in cross legged posture. For some time this worked quite beautifully. Btw, I am not keeping track of time, so even though I know that I started all this at 8:00am I dont know what time it is now. I know, not very scientific but I still need to keep in mind that this experience is for myself and not as an experiment to demonstrate any particular thing. I also started thinking about the thanksgiving menu and wrote that down as new thoughts entered. Then somewhere around some time my thoughts turned towards how musicians in India are able to sit cross legged for multiple hours and I wondered whether my learning how to sing would enable me to sit for longer hours in that posture. Then my thoughts turned towards Sanjay Subrahmaniam and how he comments on cricket and whether he would be chastised for that…while time had slowed down (the perception of time I mean) all along until the point where I lost track of everything, it was clear to me that my perception of time had sped up to an immense velocity during the time I was having images of the musicians in India.

My view is that scientifically we know that energy is constant in the universe, and it is this energy manifesting itself in all of us. The same energy. What I am trying to do is to get in touch with that energy, but that is not sufficient. I feel that it also needs to be directed. Otherwise it can be spent in misdirected endeavors. Well, it needs to be spent in some way and that is the point – what way does it get spent.

In any case, once I realized that the fantasizing impulse was a build up of energy in my body that needed to be spent, I deliberately went and started working on simple tasks (which as I have indicated I allowed myself). This started to dissipate the energy. But the question still remains – do I need to dissipate the energy by working on simple tasks involving manual labor or can I take that energy and focus it inwards.

This not keeping track of real time thing is interesting. Should I measure whether my perception of time is different from real time. In any case, I thought I would check emergency messages every afternoon – but how do I know when noon is. Should I just use my perception of time to decide that. How about once a day – any time. That works as well. Why precision in time keeping if it is once a day. Still, it would be very interesting to see if my current perception of time is accurate. I will note that I believe the time is now 10:30am( real time 11:30am). I will take a photograph of my watch and the first photo marks my current perception of time. How about that.

Ok, i messed up and looked at the watch. But fine. Next time I will be more careful not to look at what the current time. In any case, my perception of time has been reset at this point.

All my excess energy now is dissipated and I can go back to meditation. But my thinking mind is on fire and is going at 100 miles an hour. I will need multiple minutes to get it back to a calm state.

My fasting completely went by the wayside, because I had lunch. But…hopefully I can resume the fast now until Sunday morning which would be 56 hours.

As it is with any teaching, even though it is my experience, I need to read the words to try and emulate. And so I allowed myse;f the reading of “I am that” – the teachings of Nisargadatta Maharaj. I have to start at some concept somewhere before I can discard all concepts is it not?

After sleeping for some time (a few hours), I thought the time was 4:30pm, but it is actually 6:00pm. I put the trash and recycling outside and that took some time. When coming back in to the house, it was scary to feel that I had to be with my own thoughts – I badly wanted some book to read or TV or check my smartphone mindlessly. So, you could say this is hard work for the brain or my own feeling is that this is a stretching exercise for the brain. To me, one of the effects of doing this silent meditation is how much more I am getting done around the house in tiny little ways – organizing, cleaning and putting away things. I didn’t expect that at all.

I believe I ended up sleeping around 9:00pm because I checked the time. I had an excellent sleep and I do remember I had one very vivid dream, but somehow the dream was not an exhausting one. This morning I finally woke up when the light was out. So I dont know what time it is now, but I estimate the time to be about 8:30am (real time 8:10am). My brain feels refreshed and clear. The focus on “I am” and cumulatively the absence of all images has helped calm the brain greatly. Of course I have checked my iPhone for messages last night and this morning. Unfortunately, planning for thanksgiving dinner has meant that I need to send messages and respond to them but thats all I did and I dont think it affected this experiment greatly. Focusing on “I am” while doing simple tasks has been surprisingly beneficial. It has the effect of calming the thinking mind. So far, the focus on “I am” has led me to the epiphany that we are all manifestations of the same energy and therefore what is attached to the body is merely an ego. A glimmer of what universal love means (a mere glimmer) is starting to emerge and now I have found a different way of perceiving my mother and her works, as well as my father. I am aware that while i am in the moment of “I am”, every single passing moment has gone into the past right away. Even now, as I type, every single letter I type is already in the past. Recalling the past brings it back into the “now”. The future is merely the “now” that will happen, and I can neither anticipate nor change it. It will happen to me whether I like it or not and there is not much my thinking mind can do to change the future. When I am focused on “I am” all that matters is the present and the breath I take. The feeling right now is that the brain us uncluttered with any thoughts.

Now I have to reset my mind by reading “I am that” to reframe. Focusing on picking a place to meet for dinner with M on Saturday has again put my thinking mind to work with expectations for the future and trying to pick the best place for a good conversation.

After reading a little of “I am that”, I took a walk since it was sunny outside. When I came back I thought it was 11:30m (real time 10:10am). Thats the third picture I think. I am feeling slightly hungry and my deep sense of calm yesterday has been disturbed. I suspect all of it stems from reading text messages and mixing the thinking mind with the working mind. The working mind needed to plan, but I could not stop the thinking mind from getting involved in the planning. It just got involved and I became unaware of the present and my mind delved into the future – the possibilities of what would happen and it went so far as to get involved in next year planning as well. Can the thinking mind not be prevented from being involved with the working mind? We can now talk about real time elapsed and perception of time more clearly. Physics shows that children perceive time to move slowly and adults perceive time to move very quickly. We can now show that the more we calm our minds, the less information we absorb as we grow older, even our perception of time will also slow down. Thus the saying “ignorance is bliss” is true, It may actually be more difficult these days to get in touch with “I am” than ever before. Everywhere I am reminded of real time, and everywhere surrounding me are images of the world that do not correspond with the “now”. Thus it is difficult to arrive at an unchanging reality, a perception of the world in which all is energy and each distinct element is but a manifestation of the same energy. One can begin to glimpse the possibility that I am the same as an autumn leaf blown on the ground and that sympathy with the leaf arouses in me a profound sense of oneness, not with this world as I see it, but simply “oneness”. Again, just as “I am” can only be expressed in terms of negatives – “I am not this or I am not that, but simply I am”, “oneness” can also only be expressed in terms of negatives. “I am not different from the world, I am not different from the universe, I am not different from the multiple universe even if such a thing exists, I am just oneness”. The understanding that I am the whole, because even the part is the whole is just intellectual at this point for me. It has no basis in experience. But every once in a while I glimpse it – when I now perceive my mother, frail in her handicapped state, my ego trauma drops away and I realize I am and was always one with her. She is no different from me because she was my mother. Yes, in the world we perceive my body ego is different from hers and she gave birth to me and thus my ego has a role relation to her ego. But if we negate the ego, then my flesh is one with her flesh and her wrinkles are just my wrinkles, and her handicap is mine. Her orifices are used to intake and excrete just as mine are, and only the ego attaches some consequence, some altered state to a body that is frail and dependent for it to function. Her “I am” is exactly the same as my “I am”. This engenders a totally different state in the expression of the body ego that represents me. Somewhere “I am” can see the two bodies as being one. That reality is but one of many realities that I could have gone through and my ego went through a different reality – a reality in which I was angry at the body state of my mother and its relation to my body state. But all these realities are but manifestations of one unchanging reality of “I am” or energy. Its just that the energy in me expressed itself in the way it did. I am not good, I am not bad, I am not this, I am not that. I am.

Towards the afternoon of the second day, after a small lunch I started craving two things. Actually three. No, scratch that – multiple. The first was chocolate. The second was to watch Kleo. The third was anticipation of the future. I asked myself – could I put off the cravings if I didn’t know when this meditation would end. What is this desire. I know its a manifestation of energy, but why does it take the form of this desire. With watching Netflix it is relatively easy to put it off until tomorrow since I know tomorrow will come eventually. Clearly for me, 2 days of self imposed exile from entertainment is not that big a deal. But what about 7 days. How about 14 days or a month. Well, lets go further – how about a year. Now the question then is how about to eternity – can I continue a life without desire of a personal nature. Where all my energy is spent in the greater good. When I visualize this it feels like a desert landscape – barren of any images except sand till the eye can see. On the other hand the other desires I can see are unquenchable. If I finish Kleo, then I will be left with a sense of emptiness. We move from one desire to the next, one anticipation to the next, one craving to the next. The mind latches on to whatever it can in an effort to get away from the emptiness.

Ultimately, my experiment ended at 4:30pm on Friday. It taught me that what my ego/body has started is something that has genuine rewards. I dont know if rewards is the right word…perhaps it should be … is something that is a worthwhile journey. There was a deep sense of calm for most of the time and I got surprising insights into my relationships both with people I like and people I cant get along with. For I realized that within “I am” is contained everyone – people I like, people I dislike, people I dont care about, squirrels, dogs, leaves. This realization is a fleeting one for sure…I still desire to possess some people and still desire to get away from others, but contained in here are the seeds for perceiving the world from a depth of calm eternity, unchanging nature. On the surface my body ego might be changing, transitory, but when I focus on “I am” i can perceive that beyond that there is a vast unchanging eternal timeless “I am” that is beyond life and death, beyond aging, beyond anything we can conceive of, let alone verbalize.

Backpacking the Triple Crown, Virginia

Triple Crown Backcountry

Basic stats – Day 1 – 4.5 mi, Day 2 – 9.1 miles, Day 3 – 9.2 mi

We left DC around 3:30pm and drive all the way to Salem VA in about 4 hours (229 miles). The drive was fairly uneventful and had a good conversation with Aaron.

Arriving in Salem around 7:30pm we had dinner at El Jefe. The first appetizer – a nacho with queso was really really good. The beer – a Vienna lager produced by Devils Backbone located in Lexington VA was also very good. The quesadilla was average, but the taco was also very good.

After that we headed to the Beaumont Inn in and got to bed around 9:30pm. The hotel smells of old cigarette smoke, chemicals, musty, decay, pura/febreeze. In the lobby are Art Deco couches in red and black with rounded arm rests and bulging seats with rounded and fat neck rests which are too low. Fake flowers adorn the table. There are slot machines that say “this is not a skill game. This is not a game of chance. This is a no chance game”. On the front it says “Virginia problem gambling Helpline”. In a room there is an arcade game with guns and a pinball machine. The TV screen is showing snow and red cherry trees. The breakfast room has 4 different families. One has a service dog. One woman’s hair is painted blue. Three of the women are grossly overweight. The food itself consists of bagels, doughnuts, waffles, cornflakes, eggs, coffee, orange juice and apples. Almost nobody takes an Apple except two children (and that includes me because I don’t trust that Apple as much or at least that’s my rationalization). The sign on the breakfast room says “Breakfast Corner” and it is quite cheery. I step outside and the air is crisp and fresh. I am eager to leave this place. It is probably the most stressful hotel I have been in emotionally where everyone looks like a walking zombie – lifeless, emotionless and just moving on from one second to another in anticipation of something down the road. I am checking out. We want to be at Andy Lane TH by 9:00am.

We arrived at Andy Lane TH by 9:30am, but had difficulty getting cell phone reception about half way there. So Uber confirmations were not getting through and at Andy Lane TH, there was only limited phone service. We called Four Pines Hostel and they put us in touch with Michael who said he would be right over in a few minutes. But by then a Uber driver came over saying he was our ride. Quandary. Well, we took the Uber and had to pay the full fair to Michael since he had essentially made a trip all the way from Dragon’s tooth TH over to meet us. We got to Dragons Tooth TH by about 10:00am and started that portion of the hike. We made a decision to visit Dragons tooth even though it was an extra 1.4 miles since we would have to double back to get back on the AT to Andy Lane TH. Its a tough scramble to get to Dragons Tooth. I doubt the vista is worth it, but the scramble is really fun and quite doable, except not with backpacks with 30lbs. I left my backpack roughly about .4 miles from Dragons Tooth and felt it was a reasonable decision since I thought it was risky to carry a backpack on some of the scrambles. My friend thought otherwise and later I came to know that he had taken a fall which could have been serious.

At this time of the year, the leaves are turning color and the weather is crips and cool. Nights are round about in the low forties and day time averages hover in the upper sixties. It is almost perfect weather for hiking. The hike to our first campsite which was just about .1 mi short of a water source turned out to not be a regular campsite. Along this route of the Triple Crown [people are only allowed to camp at designated sites unlike other portions of the AT where camping is generally allowed. In any case, we needed a water source and the next water source was a good 8 miles away. So we camped the night there and it turned out to be a wonderful camping spot. I found that my Sawyer water filter hardly squeezed any water out and was quite surprised. Then I realized I had to backwash it almost about 8 times in order to get a good flow going again. I have had the Sawyer now for about a year and used it on two camping trips. I had known vaguely about backwashing and also knew I had to do it to keep the Sawyer in good condition. Yet, I kept procrastinating and procrastinating until I finally ended up on a trek. If I had not brought the syringe with me, I would have been out of luck for a water source. I tend to put things off that I don’t know about for too long and then end up in a sticky situation as a result. Having secured the water, we returned to the campsite, made ourselves a dinner. I thought that one Nesbit would be more than enough to boil water for two dinners. Again a miscalculation. From now on I know that I will use the Nesbit only as a backup when fire wood is wet due to a recent rain. The esbits do work very well as a fire starter and can be cut up into smaller pieces as well. The dinner was excellent – dehydrated beans, rice and vegetables stewed in hot water. Got to bed by about 8:00pm, read a little on my kindle and then slept a good sleep to wake up at about 7:00am the next morning.

On day 2, we got a somewhat late start of about 9:30am. It took a little time to tear down and get the hot chocolate/coffee going. The body was quite sore since it had been my first day of hiking with a fully loaded backpack after a very long time. I noticed I had a number of thoughts all along the way of three days but not one comes to mind now. Thoughts do tend to be utterly irrelevant even if they seem absolutely crucial at the time I think them. Facts seem to be much more relevant and of course the feeling. Once I had started the hike everything else seemed to drop away. Just being in nature refreshes and resets me to a great extent. I lost a considerable amount of weight in the three days – when I first started the hike my stomach bulged well above the backpack straop. By the end of the trek, I was feeling much fitter and leaner and the backpack strap did not cut into my stomach so much. Incredible, how a simple hike can reset the body to such a great extent.

My feelings during the hike were also dramatically different from my feelings when I am back home. There was absolutely no stress on the hike. Just a clarity of vision and a sense of overall silence and peace. Over the last few months I have steadily been deteriorating in terms of my physical health and my mental outlook. For a period there I felt detached/disconnected from the world, I had no idea what was happening. My relationship had also been suffering and stress from that was evident in my daily life. I didn’t know whether I wanted to continue in the relationship and that caused a lot of stress as well. On top of that I was feeling this sense of meaninglessness of everything. I was steadily gaining weight, throwing my energy into cooking and eating everything that I cooked and also other unhealthy processed food. Driving a lot of coffee with a lot of sugar. Always telling myself that I would change the next week, or the week after and so on. To top it, we took two vacations during which it was impossible to control my diet and every time I would try to stem the tide, it was one step forward, two steps backwards. This hike has reset things again for me. Both at the mental and physical level.

Day 2, we planned to get McAfee Knob done and then camp at Pig Farm Campsite. McAfee knob was hard, very hard. The entire stretch was 9.1 mi and it was a hard day of hiking. In addition there were tons of day hikers on Sunday and that made it feel less like being on a solitary hike and more like being in a crowded trail. As a PSA I also want to make people who read this article know about hiking etiquette (which apparently a lot of people don’t seem to know) – uphill climbers get right of way. This is because uphill climbers have a smaller field of vision and have to sustain their momentum against the force of gravity. Downhill climbers can simply use gravity to restart their momentum after they are stopped. So, please, if you read this post and don’t know this etiquette, try to follow it in future. It will make the trail a much more enjoyable experience for all when rules of etiquette are followed. We got to camp much earlier this time and I set up tent immediately and got to work collecting firewood for my stove. I find my stove performs very very well with small pieces of wood and realize now that I need to use it exclusively as such except if there has been a rain and its difficult to find dry pieces of wood in which case I will resort to the Esbit. In addition my Zippo lighter again failed me, having run out of fuel. But my storm proof matches did not fail me and did their job thoroughly. I will always hike with storm proof matches.

In terms of food I found the best food that I always went for were spicy salted nuts, then date/walnut. The processed food was too much for me, but I did like the banana chips, sesame sticks and wasabi peas. Next time I think I will take some Indian snacks as a treat – like that tai and murukku. I didn’t like the crackers so much because they got all soggy, but I did like the cheese. I need to find a better way to combine cheese next time. Of course I did like the dehydrated beans, vegetables and rice.

At the campsite we met a young man named Jacob. Very sweet young chap, but he did not know too much about camping, having decided to give it a whirl for the first time. We got to chatting with him and helping him out with tent setup, stove setup and bear bag setup. When I asked him what his expectation of the world for the future looked like he said he would be happy if he just turned thirty. It started raining around 7:30pm and never let up till about 4:00am in the morning. There was one extremely loud thunder clap and a violent lightning strike and the ground shook for a few seconds after that. Very scary indeed. It became super cold and wet very shortly thereafter and I spent the whole night shivering. I am glad I had my sleeping pad with me otherwise it would have been extremely uncomfortable. I also learnt a new trick – I simply used the sleeping bag as a comforter and that worked out very well. The sleeping pad as a mattress and the sleeping bag as a cover. I had started reading “The Constant Gardener”, but it proved too cold to even hold the book with one hand. So I gave up.

The morning dawned nice and chilly. We quickly heated up water for coffee and hot chocolate. I gave REI scrambled eggs and beans a try – it was reasonably tasty. We thought we would do Tinker Hill and then stay at Lambert Meadows Shelter, but once we got to the split of Andy Layne Trail and the AT around 2:00pm we just decided to do the last 3.2 mi segment of Andy Layne trail straight away that day, essentially turning a 4 day hike into a 3 day hike. I believe this Triple Crown is essentially a 3 day hike, but it was worth it giving the extra day in case of adjustments that needed to be made.

By the end of the trek my feet and shoulders were really sore. I may need to look into a pair of boots that work for my feet. The shoulders being sore can be handled by carrying less weight in future.

We got to the car quite sore but at the same time with a good sense of a journey well undertaken. The weather was absolutely wonderful and the fall colors were amazing. I am glad I did this particular portion of the AT. I certainly wish I had a pen and paper to take notes as and when we were hiking, but that’s for next time. I was craving to write and that felt very very good. I had decided on this hike to not take any photos and almost fully stuck by it. In the future I plan to not take any images except the starting and ending points and maybe a couple of shots of myself. I plan to commit all other images to memory via writing.

Hiking/Trekking Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park

First our background – we are two 52 year old men who are average fitness for our age, perhaps a little under average. So far our major achievement has been to hike Sandakphu/Phalut which goes to an elevation of about 11000 feet and a distance of over 100km in 6 days, but this is a relatively easy trek. While it pushed us, we didn’t feel it stressed our limits in any way. We are both vegetarian. We don’t smoke. We have lived at sea level for the last 25 years plus. We are not technical climbers. We have a reasonable fear of heights. The goal of this post is to explore hiking one of the most well known 14ers in Colorado – Longs Peak from our point of view, a POV we have not found anywhere else on the web.

[Mohan]It was almost a year since we (Krish and me) finished the Sandakphu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandakphu) hike (2019 December). That was around 12000 feet and we have always wanted to go higher than that to see whether our bodies can take it. I was planning a trip to Grand Canyon in Spring of 2020 early in the year without knowing much about how this whole year will be wasted away. Around that time, I see this message from Krish about the plans for a hike that we can do later in the year. That’s when I mention Longs peak (randomly) for the first time to Krish (Feb 2020). In a month or so, my Grand canyon trip was cancelled due to the pandemic and we were hoping that the summer of 2020 would be a good time for the rocky mountains. Finally we ended up doing this in September 2021 Labor day weekend.

The decision to try Longs Peak was made round about March of 2020, just as COVID was beginning to hit and we knew we would have to do it somewhere in summer since Colorado turns icy in winter. We chose Longs Peak purely for the elevation of 14000 feet since we wanted to do a trial run before Annapoorna Base Camp which is just short of 14000 feet.

Once we had made the decision to hike Longs Peak, we let the whole thing subside because there was no chance of travel in 2020. We revived the topic again sometime in February of 2021 when it was known that vaccines would be available by June of 2021 which would make travel a possibility in summer. We booked all the logistics immediately. Then started our research.

[Mohan] We booked our tickets in March of 2021 for being in the Rockies between Sep 2 and Sep 7. As much as we discussed about Longs Peak in the first month or so after booking the tickets, it sort of died off and we never discussed again up until August. Krish did some research on how we can acclimatize to the heights when we land there leading up to the Longs Peak hike. The goal is to gradually increase the altitude so that the body can get used to the higher altitudes.

Our research was to go through multiple websites on 14ers, Longs Peak, youtube videos gaining information on some key details. In the process we realized that after the keyhole, the route was such that we had never done such a thing and hence we may have to turn back at that point. Since the chance of a thunderstorm after 12pm on Longs Peak is very high, and lightning on an exposed mountain is almost surely fatal, we knew we had to be off the peak by 10 am based on our research. As you will see down the road, this is not necessarily the case, but is a good heuristic to live by.

[Mohan] Both of us started learning about Longs peak. We watched several videos some of which were scary and some looked okay and doable. We wanted to understand the elevation spread. I remember sending this in an email:

Hike to the Keyhole on Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park

Trail Features: Outstanding views, Fall Aspens Trailhead Elevation: 9405 Feet The hike to the Keyhole on Longs Peak…

www.rockymountainhikingtrails.com

Longs Peak – Keyhole Route | Route

From the Ranger Station, start up the East Longs Peak trail. Hike 0.5 miles to a signed trail junction and stay left on…

www.14ers.com

Elevation gain:

0 Miles — 9405 feet

2.2 Miles — 10750 feet

2.5 Miles — 11000

3.4 Miles — 11540

4.5 Miles — 12080 feet

6.2 Miles — 13200 feet (Keyhole)

7.5 miles — 14276 feet (Summit)

This seems to be an accurate description based on my experience. Both of us started reading several blogs to understand the difficulty and how we should go about doing this. Several questions from the number of days in Colorado, the place of stay, day hike vs camp overnight, weekday or weekend etc.

By the time we flew to Colorado, we knew for certain that we would have to make a go/no-go decision at the top of the keyhole based on ground reality. This was quite a surprise since so far neither of us has ever experienced a hike where we have been forced to turn back before completing it for safety reasons. In general, I have always been able to sufficiently prepare for the worst case. But when it came to Longs Peak I knew that there was no way to prepare for the worst case. Definitely then, I knew this was going to be an interesting experience for me – a guy who generally hates to quit, who has been taught that quitting is a sign of weakness. But…just in June I had already had an experience in quitting. I had planned an AT trail 5 day hike of 55 miles with a back pack and had to quit about 5 miles short of the destination. So quitting ceased to have that badge of failure for me and it also taught me that simply forging towards a destination without stopping to enjoy the journey would be a waste of an experience.

We gave ourselves 3 days to acclimate to the altitude of Denver and higher elevation. This was still insufficient and at keyhole I had a slight headache already. So…ymmv, but you have to learn to notice the signs of altitude sickness and make that a factor in your go/no-go decision. Because altitude sickness after keyhole can be almost certainly fatal.

[Mohan] We spent three days of acclimatization and also talked to several people during those days to gather the exact details on what we should take on the trip.

How much water should we take with us ?

Is there any water stream available en route that we can depend on ?

When should we start the hike in the morning so that we have sufficient time to return ?

How much food should we take with us ?

What sort of layers and clothing should we take ?

View from our room

We lodged at YMCA Estes Park. We don’t know how other lodgings are in Estes, but we were quite happy with YMCA. My friend did say that the rooms in Emerald Mountain were too warm. I did notice that my nose dried up and I had trouble breathing. But its unclear whether that was because of central heating (my friend is used to about 65F normally and I am used to natural air) or the excessive dryness of RMNP. The breakfast at YMCA was definitely a treat because they have hard boiled eggs and fruit that you can take to go and that’s a huge boon for having some lunch during a hike. Other than that YMCA is situated beautifully, but we were hiking or sleeping so I would say the view of YMCA went pretty much unnoticed.

In our reading we didn’t see much in the way of preparation for Longs Peak in Estes Park itself. All recommendations were to try the easier 14ers like Quandary, Grays etc – but they are all quite far away from RMNP. What about hikes in RMNP itself as training? there was no info on that. On this point I got lucky because I knew a veteran of RMNP and she recommended Bluebird Lake trail which is about 12.8 miles and 2500 feet elevation gain. We started with that on day 1 out of 4 and it helped warm us up, unstiffen the muscles of the leg and in general do an acclimatization and warmup. For that purpose, bluebird lake was exactly the right choice. But after that we didn’t know what he should do. A ranger kindly provided the answer – he suggested hiking Mount Ida to get a feel for conditions on Longs Peak above the treeline.

[Mohan] I have never done 4000+ feet elevation gain in one day before this planning. Even if we did one, would this be the same as starting at 9000 feet and gaining 4000 feet. How do you train for the higher altitude ? Denver is around 5280 feet, Estes park where we stayed is around 7500 feet and most of the hikes start around 8000 feet. It looks like there is no easy way to train for higher altitude if you don’t live in such places.

If I can ignore the altitude and focus on the elevation gain, how can I prepare for that ? The nearest one at my place was Mount Diablo (an hour away from where I live). That is about 3300 feet but you can gain 4000+ if you do the North face also. Check this one out 14.3 miles, 4600 feet in elevation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPsLew85qTc&t=7s . I took about total 7 hours to finish this including several breaks on way and the lunch break at the top of the Diablo. It was a strenuous trip and gave me an idea of what to expect. I also did the Black Mountain (https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/black-mountain-via-pge-quarry-and-black-mountain-trail) a few times which is about 11+ miles and 3000+ feet elevation gain. This was core part of my Longs Peak preparation.

Next day we hiking Mount Ida and I dressed in shorts and short sleeve t’shirt with a light fleece and rain jacket in my pack as well as gloves and hat. By the time we crossed above treeline of Mount Ida the wind was severe and it got really cold. I had the fleece, rain jacket on and my gloves but still felt cold in the legs. That clued me in to the Longs Peak experience and helped me prepare my clothing gear appropriately. We didn’t end up finishing Mount Ida and turned back because gray clouds were threatening in the sky.

For the day before Longs Peak, we wisely chose to do a relatively less strenuous hike. We chose Deer Mountain for this purpose and it was a wonderful mild hike. Couldn’t be any better. We returned to the room by about 6:30pm, fully packed our bags for the next day and went to bed by 7:00pm. We had scouted Longs Peak this day as well (day 3) so we knew the route. Initially we thought a start time of 3:00am would be sufficient to get to the peak by 10:00 am – assuming that we could do a mile an hour and 7.5 miles in 7 hours. I wasn’t so sure about that pace:-) The we talked to multiple people about start times, how cold it would be and so on. From all that information, we had a pretty fair idea that the parking lot would be full by 2:00 am. But there is parking along the road, so that should not be the factor in deciding when to start. For me the need to start at 2:00 am arose from the fact that I suspected that our average pace would lag well behind a mile an hour. So, I suspected that a 2 am start time would be better. How right I was going to be proved was quite prescient.

So…in summary here are the logistics for the hike itself. Wake up at 1:30am, be at the parking lot by 2:00am, start the hike at 2:05am, hope to be at keyhole by 7:00am and at the peak by 10:00 am and back at keyhole by 12 noon. I started off with a full base layer (pant and shirt), wool socks, Salomon Ultra 3 (i would say the best shoe for this hike – totally grippy), a hiking pant, a long sleeve wool, a down puffy. In my pack were a ziplock of fruits, 3 hard boiled eggs and salt/pepper, vegetable biryani from Nepals Cafe, cashews, peanut butter biscuits, 3 liters of water(of which one liter was electrolytes – LMNT + salt), one rain jacket, one short sleeve wool t’shirt, first aid kit, water filtration system, gloves, hat, lip balm, head lamp. Make sure you are comfortable with all the gear you are taking, because this is not a hike you want to be figuring out stuff on!!

In summary, our planning so far had been near perfect. We were about as well prepared as could be and only the stuff that was our nature and unchangeably out of our control could change things. As it turned out, this was exactly what left us short.

On the day of the hike, Labor day, September 6 2021, the weather was as perfect as it could be. In essence, everything was setup to be perfect for this hike and if we couldn’t do it in these conditions, then we would simply have to improve our own selves before attempting it again. The sky was predicted to be a clear blue and the chance of thunderstorms was negligible.

Dawn

We started the hike as planned – at 2:05 am. We hiked at a relatively moderate pace – its an ascent all the way, no flat areas along the way. The path is mostly rocky with small pebbles which can place a fair amount of stress on the legs. We did find water sources along the way, so water is not a problem here if you have a water filtration system. [Mohan] Sometimes there are no clear answers as people are not sure. As for the water stream en route, people don’t want to commit. But when we met someone the previous day who just finished the trip, he said that one could rely on a couple of streams up until the Boulder creek (near the Keyhole). The clothing was spot on. I felt totally comfortable, maybe a little warm at the start, but after treeline nice and comfy. The journey is to be done to be believed. As dawn slowly emerges, the mountain silhouettes start to take shape and the city of Estes shines down below. Up above the stars are clearly visible and so so much closer. The big dipper and the belt of orion are so clearly visible and the night air is crisp and cold. Down below hikers headlamps cast an eerie glow, looking like glow worms moving in a snake like line. Hikers that pass you are invariably kind, nice and pleasant. The hue of the horizon starts to change colors – turning a pink then an orange and slowly the sun comes out, looking like a orange globe hung out – simply wonderful. We took quite a few breaks just to sit back and enjoy this portion of the hike. It was a fortunate decision since the journey was simply splendid. We were on top of the world and dawn was emerging. I was in awe at this majesty of the universe. There is an infiniteness to this that scales me down to nothing.

[Mohan] We felt that we could not be more ready to take on Longs Peak. It was 1.30 AM on a Monday morning. September 6th. When we reached the parking lot, it was around 2.00 AM and we left the car around 2.15 AM or so. We did not want to rush ourselves. It was pitch dark. We started slowly and the darkness sort of helped us as we did not know where we were going. We had two bottles of water bottle in the back pack and one water bottle in my hand. The water was mixed with Oral Rehydration Salt before we left the room. After about a mile and half, the sky opened up to the bright stars. Around 6 AM, we witnessed the sunrise. We took several breaks and reached the Boulder creek around 9 AM. You can see the Keyhole from there very clearly. We were pretty much exhausted around that point. It is a combination of altitude, elevation gain, distance and the rocky terrain that made the hike difficult up until this point. It took us another 45 minutes to complete the hike up the Keyhole. We reached the Keyhole at 10 AM, which is 8 hours since our start from the base. The last step to the Keyhole was scary where you can feel the steepness looking down from the Keyhole. It was very windy up there and peeped into what we have to do next. There is a ledge with a steep drop off that we need to traverse to go further. Another mile or so left with 1000 feet elevation gain. We heard that it is Class 3 climbing/scrambling. We did not have sufficient energy to take our journey further. We turned around. That took us another 6 hours to return with all the breaks en route.

View from Keyhole

By the time we reached Boulderfield it was already 9:00am roughly. At that time I was 80% no go. Ascending to the top of key hole took another hour. We reached the top of keyhole by 10:00am. If you remember, we were supposed to be off longs peak by 10:00 am, and based on our average pace, it would seem that it would take another 4 hours to do 1.2 miles (the hardest part was ahead of us). That put us at 2 pm on the peak, and a journey of another 8 hours down making it an 20 hour hike. In this regard, the weather was perfect and there was relatively no danger of thunderstorms. But…

One of my main criterions on this hike was safety. Musashi Miyamoto says to treat ones life as if it were a precious diamond and to not throw it away easily. At the same time, to not hold an overly deep attachment to living to the point that one loses the way. Thus, i had decided that I wanted to hike for as long as I could and summiting a peak would not be prioritized higher than my ability to hike for a few more years. I didn’t want to sprain an ankle at best – how would I get back down to base? how much trouble it would be for a rescue team to carry me down if I was that badly injured. So getting up to keyhole was a superb exercise in concentration because, while it was relatively easy, it was also relatively easy to make a mistake and get hurt (not fatally, but sufficiently to cause a lot, lot of trouble). Thus all my mental focus was drained by the time I reached the top of keyhole.

So, at the top of keyhole 4 factors came into play. My mental focus was already drained. I was at about 70% mentally. I knew that the next 4 segments would require 100% mental focus. Strike 1. Then, the fact that we took 8 hours just to get to the top of keyhole meant that my physical ability was not as good as it should have been. Strike 2. Next, I have a mild form of vertigo – when I looked over keyhole down below I had a slight anxiety, which I knew would only grow as I moved past the narrows. Strike 3. Finally, I had the beginnings of a head ache – the start of altitude sickness – very bad. Strike 4. Given all this I made the decision to stop at that point and turn back. All other conditions were as perfect as you can imagine – weather, water, food, clothing.

So, we turned back and enjoyed the journey down, enjoying a nice lunch along the way and finally returning to the car at 3:45pm. That was about 13 and a half hours of trekking, incessantly up, incessantly down. Just hiking to keyhole was magnificent. I would do it again. It also showed us our own limits – they were tested on this hike.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable journey and I would highly recommend it. I believe that getting to keyhole can be done slowly in good weather. We had many enjoyable conversations with other hikers. There were people who did the whole hike in 8 hours (up to the peak and back);-)

If you decide to do this hike, you will be rewarded one way or the other. Our own goal was not so much as to summit as to try to make the journey as rewarding as possible and to really savor the journey, not the end. Detaching ourselves from the final summit was the best decision we made because it was so easy to call it off at keyhole. We did not experience any sense of failure. I would recommend the same to you – the mountain will always win in one way or the other – some mountain will ultimately, maybe just not Longs Peak. So, try not to get attached to summiting and enjoy the journey is my advice.

[Mohan] If I do Longs Peak, would I do it differently ? Here are some things to think about

Trekking poles would help a lot for the first 6 miles. This would save a lot of energy on the legs

Water is important. But don’t get too much worked up about it. At least in the month of September there are streams and a good filter system should keep your bottles filled up. A water reservoir in the backpack might also be a good option. Hydrate well the day before. 3 litres of water should be enough to go to Keyhole and be back.

We took eight hours to go up to keyhole. But it could have been done in 6 to 6.5 hours if we took fewer breaks. It is important to reach the Keyhole in 6 hours if you want to finish the last mile also. Experienced hikers take 2 hours to finish the last mile.

If your goal is to reach higher altitude, there are other 14ers in Colorado that are less complex (Class1) than Longs peak. If you are looking for a challenging one, then Longs peak is a real good one.

Though I had good layers to cover my body, it was pretty cold up at the top when we sat at the Keyhole. My beanie and the gloves was a little on the lighter side to keep the cold air out. I would prepare better next time.

On the whole, this experience gave us an understanding on what your body can do. We were glad that we turned around at the Keyhole as you need to be clear headed and not feeling tired when you want to finish the next mile. It is important that you finish the hike without becoming a burden on someone else. We heard stories about needing rescue when we were there. Accidents happen but you are a better judge of your limits.

Happy hiking !

We (my friend Mohan) and I wish you the best of luck if you decide to hike Longs Peak. And I hope this post provides some form of planning if you do decide to go on this journey.

Addendum : A lot of uncomfortable actions we take in life are not without a purpose. When I took on Longs Peak I knew going in that it would be uncomfortable. I had a deep fear of heights going in that I had traced back to early childhood. I have this memory when I was perhaps 2 years old of being perched up high on a wall and no one to hold on to and this feeling of total fear and crying. Since then I have tried to push myself to conquer this fear, but no matter what I do, I get vertiginous when I encounter heights without any support to hang on to. The uncomfortable action in going to Longs Peak was not about conquering the fear of heights. It was about giving myself the freedom to quit when I encountered something that was too difficult for me. For a long time I have tried to push past healthy apprehensions beyond the point of where it actually made sense for me to do so – staying in situations I should have quit a long time ago because it made no sense to keep trying or going. Quitting was simply not an option. Now, after planning something for many months, giving it my best possible shot, devoting and investing countless hours in preparation for something I gave myself the freedom to quit at the last moment and not accomplish the goal. And I have not regretted that. From here on I give myself the freedom to quit any time I have the feeling that nothing is really going to change materially by continuing down the path I am going.

The Old Fools – Phillip Larkin

The Old Fools

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there’s really been no change,
And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don’t (and they can’t), it’s strange;
Why aren’t they screaming?

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It’s only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can’t pretend
There’ll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they’re for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines –
How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun’s
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction’s alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.

Philip Larkin

Adjunct Poem
When I am Dead, My Dearest
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Christine Georgina Rossetti

Commentary :
The first verse is scornful. A reaction. A deliberate set of sentences
that seeks to somehow rationalize the condition. Then I get gems of
lines. “And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower Of being here.”
They retreat to “A known book from the shelves”.
And finally he lays right into me “Well, we shall find out”.

I have also included another poem on dying or death.
This one came to me from a friend who recited it out of his notebook.
It is a little more gentle in nature and does express a view of death that
may be more in tune with the agnostics.

Technical Notes :
Are embedded in the Bio.

Bio :
After graduating from Oxford in 1943 with a first in English language
and literature, Larkin became a librarian. It was during the thirty
years he served as university librarian at the Brynmor Jones Library
at the University of Hull that he produced the greater part of his
published work. His poems are marked by what Andrew Motion calls a
very English, glum accuracy about emotions, places, and relationships,
and what Donald Davie described as lowered sights and diminished
expectations. Eric Homberger called him “the saddest heart in the post-war
supermarket” Larkin himself said that deprivation for him was what daffodils
were for Wordsworth. Peter Riley, a key player in the British Poetry Revival,
which was a reaction against The Movement’s poets, has also criticised
Larkin for his uncritical and ideologically narrow position: “What after
all were Larkin and The Movement but a denial of the effusive ethics of
poetry from 1795 onwards, in favour of ‘This is what life is really like’
as if anyone thought for a second of representing observable ‘life’.
W.S. Graham and Dylan Thomas knew perfectly well that ‘life’ was like that,
if you nominated it thus, which is why they went elsewhere.”…but his
strengths as a craftsman have increasingly come to be regarded as one
of the hallmarks of his talent. Those strengths of craftsmanship and
technical skill in Larkin’s mature works receive almost universal approval
from literary critics. London Sunday Times correspondent Ian Hamilton
writes: “Supremely among recent poets, [Larkin] was able to accommodate
a talking voice to the requirements of strict metres and tight rhymes,
and he had a faultless ear for the possibilities of the iambic line.”
Indeed in the poem above there is a rhyme scheme. The four stanzas of
the poem are comprised of 12 lines, eleven of which follow a loose
pentameter and the last of which is written in trimester. And each
stanza rhymes following this scheme: A-B-A-C-B-D-C-E-D-F-E-F
(from : http://jmww.150m.com/Gylys.html).
He was the recipient of many honours, including the Queen’s Gold Medal
for Poetry. He was offered, but declined, the position of poet laureate
in 1984, following the death of John Betjeman.
Note :
From http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/poems-on-aging-not-for-sissies/
“Mr. Larkin, the man, was not noted for his sympathetic nature, but
this poem, written in his early 50s, goes with unflinching understanding
to the bitter heart of aging and its deprivations.
Why aren’t we screaming, indeed?”
And from http://everything2.com/title/Philip+Larkin
“The Old Fools is about senile dementia, and begins rather
cruelly. When Larkin wrote this, he would have known all
about dementia, with an 89-year-old mother to look after
(I don’t think he did look after her, but he would have
at least visited her, on the occasion, out of a sense of duty).”

To Whom It May Concern – Adrian Mitchell

To Whom It May Concern
I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I’ve walked this way
So stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain,
Couldn’t find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames.
Made a marble phone book and I carved out all the names
So coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

I smell something burning, hope it’s just my brains.
They’re only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the Cenotaph drinking slime
So chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Adrian Mitchell

Commentary :
This is the first poem about war that struck me as being an expression of succinctness. With this poem, I was able to summon at will a reminder of the pain of war even in times when I felt justified and self righteous. The words have been chosen very carefully. One can imagine that all the anger contained in those who were anti-vietnam war would have been more suitably expressed perhaps with “gouge my eyes”, “burn my tongue”, “smoke my nose” and so on. But the poet chooses to be passive even in his distaste for the double talk that surrounded that war and every war that has been fought before and since. He chooses to use words that evoke a sense of desperation to shy away from the truth, to drown out the reality, to look the other way, to not see and be ignorant. Or perhaps this is what I see in this poem. Whatever we choose to see in it, it is a hauntingly beautiful poem that doesn’t descend into a nursery rhyme with the repetition of the lines. Some key words used are “peppermints”, “daisy chain”, “cenotaph”, “garlic”, “silver”, and “butter”. While I have not found anything on the internet that analyses the use of those words, from my understanding of the images they bring to mind, I cannot but help imagine the poet used them for a specific purposes of evoking some kind of image tied to those words.
I am also including a poets reading of the poem by Adrian Mitchell in 1965 : http://youtu.be/FmMCObgu_jc.
It seems to me that hearing a poet reading his work gives a different dimension to the poem and generally this can be achieved only with poetry.

Bio :
Adrian Mitchell (1932 – 2008) was a hugely prolific writer, the author of a great number of novels, plays and poems, for adults and, increasingly, for children – he wrote that “more and more of my time is spent writing for children. This is partly because I have six grandchildren.” He started his own literary career as a child, writing his first play at the age of ten, and went on to be Chairman of the University Poetry Society while studying at Oxford. He has also worked as a journalist – the first one to print an interview with the Beatles – and a screenwriter for film and TV, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Mitchell was committed to a form of poetry that welcomes as many people as possible – he was, perhaps, best known for saying that “Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.” Thus his work deals with recognisable subjects in clear, modern language, and can revel in strong rhythms, drawn as often from the blues and pop music as from the poetic canon. ‘In My Two Small Fists’, for example, makes a litany of remembered treasures that include “prickly heather / cowrie shells / and a seagull’s feather”.

His commitment to pacifist politics was equally strong; he first came to public attention as a poet during protests against the Vietnam War, and was appointed by Red Pepper as the Shadow Poet Laureate – poems such as ‘Playground’ and ‘Roundabout’ were written in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, which took place only weeks before this recording was made. The small human story of the first of these poems and the big-picture take of the second demonstrate the range of his vision, and the sardonic rhymes of ‘Playground’ show his ability with humour as a weapon against oppressive forces. Ted Hughes described him as “a voice as welcome as Lear’s fool… Humour that can stick deep and stay funny.”

Years of public protest and performing his work honed his performance, so that he rails, cajoles and sometimes comes close to song in these poems, all in the service of making them as open as possible, and to be, as Angela Carter described him, a “joyous, acrid and demotic tumbling lyricist Pied Piper determinedly singing us away from catastrophe.”

His recording was made on 3 June 2003 at his home in London and was produced by Richard Carrington.

Adrian Mitchell was born in 1932 and educated at Oxford. After coming down in 1955 he worked for some years on the staff of the Oxford Mail, and subsequently with the London Evening Standard. Mitchell’s early poetry showed a fondness for tight stanzas and a use of myth, but there was always a kind of agonised human concern about his writing which marked him off sharply from his more tight-lipped contemporaries. This concern has developed over the years into a full-fledged political commitment, and there is no other poet in England who has more steadily focussed his aesthetic aims through his social ones. It would not be too much to say that a poem such as ‘To Whom It May Concern’ altered the conscience of English poetry, and for many younger writers Mitchell is already the elder statesman of literary protest. He has made enemies through this, and there are still critics who refuse to accept his importance. But there are few poets now writing who can command a wider general audience, and none who can swing such an audience more effectively from public laughter to near tears.

Bird

It was passed from one bird to another,

the whole gift of the day.

The day went from flute to flute,

went dressed in vegetation,

in flights which opened a tunnel

through the wind would pass

to where birds were breaking open

the dense blue air –

and there, night came in.

 

When I returned from so many journeys,

I stayed suspended and green

between sun and geography –

I saw how wings worked,

how perfumes are transmitted

by feathery telegraph,

and from above I saw the path,

the springs and the roof tiles,

the fishermen at their trades,

the trousers of the foam;

I saw it all from my green sky.

I had no more alphabet

than the swallows in their courses,

the tiny, shining water

of the small bird on fire

which dances out of the pollen.

           Pablo Neruda

 

Commentary :

This is a poem of the immediate present and yet of imagery that moves and works its way into memories fragment by fragment. One can see the sweeps of flights of a bird in each and every line, each line conveying a soar, a dip, a floating on the dense blue air.

“When I returned from so many journeys,

I stayed suspended and green”

Here we see again the notion of a bird suspended high in the air. The poem is breathtakingly beautiful and Neruda a highly evocative poet.

 

Bio :

Neruda was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto on July 12, 1904, in Parral,

Chile. His mother died soon after. He completed his secondary schooling in

1920, the year he began using the name Pablo Neruda. In 1921 he went to

Santiago to continue his education but soon became so devoted to writing

poetry that his schooling was abandoned. Neruda’s first book,

`Crepusculario’, was published in Spanish in 1923. The next year he

published `Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair’.

 

Early in life he took an interest in politics. He was for a time an

anarchist but later became a Communist. His government service began in 1927

and ended only shortly before his death on Sept. 23, 1973, in Santiago. From

1927 to 1933 Neruda represented Chile in South Asia–in Burma (now Myanmar),

Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Java (now part of Indonesia), and Singapore. In

1933-34 he was Chilean consul in Buenos Aires, and while there he met the

great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. From Argentina he went to Spain,

where he served through the early part of the Spanish Civil War. His `Spain

in the Heart’ was published in 1937 during the war.

 

Over the next decades Neruda traveled widely and continued writing poetry.

Among his other books were `Residence on Earth’ (1933), written while he was

in South Asia; `General Song’ (1950), one of the greatest epic poems written

in the Americas; and `One Hundred Love Sonnets’ (1959). During the Marxist

regime of Salvador Allende, Neruda was Chile’s ambassador to France

(l971-72).

 

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 for, in the words of

the awarding committee, “for a poetry that with the action of an elemental

force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams”.

 

He died in Santiago on Sept. 23, l973.

 

                                 – Compton’s Living Encyclopedia

 

“Neruda’s body of poetry is so rich and varied that it defies classification

or easy summary. It developed along four main directions, however. His love

poetry, such as the youthful Twenty Love Poems and the mature Los versos del

CapitE1n (1952; The Captain’s Verses), is tender, melancholy, sensuous, and

passionate. In “material” poetry, such as Residencia en la tierra,

loneliness and depression immerse the author in a subterranean world of

dark, demonic forces. His epic poetry is best represented by Canto general,

which is a Whitmanesque attempt at reinterpreting the past and present of

Latin America and the struggle of its oppressed and downtrodden masses

toward freedom. And finally there is Neruda’s poetry of common, everyday

objects, animals, and plants, as in Odas elementales.

 

These four trends correspond to four aspects of Neruda’s personality: his

passionate love life; the nightmares and depression he experienced while

serving as a consul in Asia; his commitment to a political cause; and his

ever-present attention to details of daily life, his love of things made or

grown by human hands. Many of his other books, such as Libro de las

preguntas (1974; “Book of Questions”), reflect philosophical and whimsical

questions about the present and future of humanity. Neruda was one of the

most original and prolific poets to write in Spanish in the 20th century,

but despite the variety of his output as a whole, each of his books has

unity of style and purpose.”

 

 – Encyclopedia Britannica

 

 

We Should Talk About This Problem – Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Shīrāzī

 We Should Talk About This Problem

 

 There is a Beautiful Creature

 Living in a hole you have dug.

 

 So at night

 I set fruit and grains

 And little pots of wine and milk

 Beside your soft earthen mounds,

 

 And I often sing.

 

 But still, my dear,

 You do not come out.

 

 I have fallen in love with Someone

 Who hides inside you.

 

 We should talk about this problem—

 

 Otherwise,

 I will never leave you alone.

 

                                   Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Shīrāzī

 

Commentary :

I made the mistake. I asked the Iranian woman whether she knew of Khalil Ghibran. Quick came the reply – he is Lebanese. Oh! My mistake. Name me an Iranianpoet. And thus landed Hafiz in my lap and really has not left since. He writes lyrically. And. of course, one can only wonder how much better it must be to read in the original Persian. In this poem he talks about the person within the person. But more importantly, he connects that person within to a beautiful creature, perhaps a small animal. And in doing so, he makes us feel a tenderness for that fear that is visually striking. But enough of my commentary. Here is another commentary that does far more justice to the poem than mine.

“Such a beguiling poem. It calls out to you with such patient, laughing

tenderness that the proud and frightened creature somewhere inside lifts its

small head in helpless confusion and wonder – this then the beginning of the

end – of glittery-eyed guardedness and a long lack of faith. A fierce

loneliness that must finally give way to love’s kindness too sweetly

intentioned to be condescension. How scandalously fond I have grown of this

Sufi poet-saint whose name is Hafiz – and to think we only just met. I like

his willingness to confront the seeming stuck-ness of the situation with

such a sly, reproachful twinkle. I like the gentle humour of the understated

title suggestion: ‘We should talk about this problem.’ …And I

particularly love the conclusion – for the caressing determination of its

exquisite threat.”

 

Bio :

        b. 1325/26, Shiraz, Iran

        d. 1389/90, Shiraz

 

in full MOHAMMAD SHAMS OD-DIN HAFEZ one of the finest lyric poets of Persia.

 

Hafez received a classical religious education, lectured on Qur’anic and other

theological subjects (“Hafez” designates one who has learned the Qur’an by

heart), and wrote commentaries on religious classics. As a court poet he enjoyed

the patronage of several rulers of Shiraz.

 

About 1368-69 Hafez fell out of favour at the court and did not regain his

position until 20 years later, just before his death. In his poetry there are

many echoes of historical events as well as biographical descriptions and

details of life in Shiraz. One of the guiding principles of his life was Sufism,

the Islamic mystical movement that demanded of its adherents complete devotion

to the pursuit of union with the ultimate reality.

 

Hafez’s principal verse form, one that he brought to a perfection never achieved

before or since, was the ghazel, a lyric poem of 6 to 15 couplets linked by

unity of subject and symbolism rather than by a logical sequence of ideas.

Traditionally the ghazel had dealt with love and wine, motifs that, in their

association with ecstasy and freedom from restraint, lent themselves naturally

to the expression of Sufi ideas. Hafez’s achievement was to give these

conventional subjects a freshness and subtlety that completely relieves his

poetry of tedious formalism. An important innovation credited to Hafez was the

use of the ghazel instead of the qasida (ode) in panegyrics. Hafez also reduced

the panegyric element of his poems to a mere one or two lines, leaving the

remainder of the poem for his ideas. The extraordinary popularity of Hafez’s

poetry in all Persian-speaking lands stems from his simple and often colloquial

though musical language, free from artificial virtuosity, and his unaffected use

of homely images and proverbial expressions. Above all, his poetry is

characterized by love of humanity, contempt for hypocrisy and mediocrity, and an

ability to universalize everyday experience and to relate it to the mystic’s

unending search for union with God. His appeal in the West is indicated by the

numerous translations of his poems. Hafez is most famous for his Divan; Eng.

prose trans., H. Wilberforce Clarke, Hafiz Shirazi. The Divan (1891, reprinted

1971). There is also a translated collection: A.J. Arberry, Fifty Poems of Hafiz

(1947).

 

P.S : “There is as much sense in Hafez as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.” – From “A Case of Identity”, Sherlock Holmes.

 

Sandinista Avioncitos – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

             Sandinista Avioncitos

 The little airplanes of the heart

 with their brave little propellers

 What can they do

 against the winds of darkness

 even as butterflies are beaten back

 by hurricanes

 yet do not die

 They lie in wait wherever

 they can hide and hang

 their fine wings folded

 and when the killer-wind dies

 they flutter forth again

 into the new-blown light

 live as leaves

          Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 

Commentary :

I first came across this lovely little gem 12 years ago. It has stuck with me since. There is something about it that speaks. The image “The little airplanes..” brings to mind those propeller seeds of the maple tree (http://www.ehow.com/info_7930473_long-maple-trees-shed-seeds.html). And the idea that the airplanes of the heart are not great big boeing 747s. That they are delicate like butterflies, twinkling like gold in the sun. Perhaps I prefer this imagery to that of great big steel monsters. There is very little we can create that matches the finest of natures creations, whether they be the hurricanes or the lovely little many-hued butterflies.

Bio :

Born March 24, 1919 in Yonkers, New York, Lawrence Ferlinghetti earned a doctoral degree in poetry at the Sorbonne in Paris with a dissertation entitled ‘The City as Symbol in Modern Poetry: In Search of a Metropolitan Tradition’. In fact he was about to become part of a metropolitan tradition himself, because after leaving Paris he moved to San Francisco, which was about to discover the Beat Generation.

Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin started a magazine there called ‘City Lights,’ named after the Charlie Chaplin movie. He and Martin established their offices on the second floor of a building on Broadway and Columbus in North Beach. They decided to open a bookstore on the floor below as a side venture, naming it after the magazine. The City Lights Bookstore became one of the most famous bookstores in the world, and still stands proudly in its original location. 

Doing double-time as a businessman and a poet, he began publishing original books by himself and others under the City Lights name, most notably the ‘Pocket Poets Series.’ The idea of Pocket Poets was to make poetry books easily affordable, and the small attractive paperback volumes are still a common sight today. Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg‘s ‘Howl‘ as Pocket Poets Number Four, and was tried on obscenity charges for this. He was declared innocent, a landmark victory for free speech. 

Ferlinghetti’s own poems are simple and speak plainly, and they remain popular with a wide range of readers. In 1958 he published a volume with one of my all-time favorite titles, ‘A Coney Island of the Mind’ (and in 1997 published a follow-up volume named after a beach town in south Queens, not far from Brooklyn’s Coney Island, ‘A Far Rockaway of the Heart.’)

In the early 60’s Ferlinghetti owned a rustic cabin in Bixby Canyon, Big Sur that became the focal point ofJack Kerouac‘s 1962 novel ‘Big Sur.’ Ferlinghetti appears in the book as the sensible Lorenzo Monsanto, who urges the drunken celebrity author based on Kerouac to go on a nature retreat to stop drinking, with terrible results. 

Ferlinghetti was one of the more politically-minded of the Beats, and has been continually active on behalf of liberal causes. He attributes his pacifist consciousness partly to his wartime experiences: he had been sent to Nagasaki, Japan six weeks after the city was destroyed by the world’s second atomic bomb. 

Ferlinghetti is still active today as a poet and as the proprietor of City Lights. Two of his poems can be readhere and here. I hope I won’t seem politically incorrect for saying this, but after immersing myself in the writings of the guilt-obsessed asexual Jack Kerouac, the ridiculously horny Allen Ginsberg and the just plain sordid William S. Burroughs … it’s nice to read a few poems by a guy who can get excited about a little penny candy store under the El or a pretty woman letting a stocking drop to the floor. 

(taken from http://www.litkicks.com/LawrenceFerlinghetti#.U1z-pl6Kxg0)

 

    Nothing Gold Can Stay

 Nature’s first green is gold,

 Her hardest hue to hold.

 Her early leaf’s a flower;

 But only so an hour.

 Then leaf subsides to leaf.

 So Eden sank to grief,

 So dawn goes down to day.

 Nothing gold can stay.

    Robert Frost

 

Commentary :

And to complement the poem of choice, another tiny little gem by Frost. Frost manages to capture in 8 lines the essence of magic being deconstructed. The line “leaf subsides to leaf” leaves indelibly the image of beauty layering itself one on top of another. He manages to capture the grandeur of a giant redwood leaf by single leaf, cell by single cell.

There are a few analyses done of the poem.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gold.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Gold_Can_Stay_(poem)

Bio :

I have already provided an extensive biography of Frost. I will merely repeat it here.

Taken from (http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/1999/04/road-not-taken-robert-frost.html) since I am not sure I can contribute further details to this.

b. March 26, 1874, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.

  d. Jan. 29, 1963, Boston, Mass. in full ROBERT LEE FROST American poet

  who was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New

  England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic

  verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

 

  Meanwhile, Robert continued to labour on the poetic career he had begun

  in a small way during high school; he first achieved professional

  publication in 1894 when The Independent, a weekly literary journal,

  printed his poem “My Butterfly: An Elegy.” Impatient with academic

  routine, Frost left Dartmouth after less than a year. He and Elinor

  married in 1895 but found life difficult, and the young poet supported

  them by teaching school and farming, neither with notable success. […]

 

  Frost became an enthusiastic botanist and acquired his poetic persona of

  a New England rural sage during the years he and his family spent at

  Derry. All this while he was writing poems, but publishing outlets showed

  little interest in them.

 

  By 1911 he was fighting against discouragement. Poetry had always been

  considered a young person’s game, but Frost, who was nearly 40 years

  old, had not published a single book of poems and had seen just a

  handful appear in magazines. In 1911 ownership of the Derry farm

  passed to Frost. A momentous decision was made: to sell the farm and

  use the proceeds to make a radical new start in London, where

  publishers were perceived to be more receptive to new talent.

  Accordingly, in August 1912 the Frost family sailed across the

  Atlantic to England. Frost carried with him sheaves of verses he had

  written but not gotten into print. English publishers in London did

  indeed prove more receptive to innovative verse, and, through his own

  vigorous efforts and those of the expatriate American poet Ezra Pound,

  Frost within a year had published A Boy’s Will (1913). From this first

  book, such poems as “Storm Fear,” “Mowing,” and “The Tuft of Flowers”

  have remained standard anthology pieces.

 

  In London, Frost’s name was frequently mentioned by those who followed

  the course of modern literature, and soon American visitors were

  returning home with news of this unknown poet who was causing a sensation

  abroad. The Boston poet Amy Lowell traveled to England in 1914, and in

  the bookstores there she encountered Frost’s work. Taking his books home

  to America, Lowell then began a campaign to locate an American publisher

  for them, meanwhile writing her own laudatory review of North of Boston.

 

  Without his being fully aware of it, Frost was on his way to fame. […]

  Frost soon found himself besieged by magazines seeking to publish his

  poems. Never before had an American poet achieved such rapid fame after

  such a disheartening delay. From this moment his career rose on an

  ascending curve.

    — EB

 

Criticism:

 

  Frost was the most widely admired and highly honoured American poet of

  the 20th century. Amy Lowell thought he had overstressed the dark

  aspects of New England life, but Frost’s later flood of more uniformly

  optimistic verses made that view seem antiquated. Louis Untermeyer’s

  judgment that the dramatic poems in North of Boston were the most

  authentic and powerful of their kind ever produced by an American has

  only been confirmed by later opinions. Gradually, Frost’s name ceased

  to be linked solely with New England, and he gained broad acceptance

  as a national poet.

 

  It is true that certain criticisms of Frost have never been wholly

  refuted, one being that he was overly interested in the past, another

  that he was too little concerned with the present and future of

  American society. Those who criticize Frost’s detachment from the

  “modern” emphasize the undeniable absence in his poems of meaningful

  references to the modern realities of industrialization, urbanization,

  and the concentration of wealth, or to such familiar items as radios,

  motion pictures, automobiles, factories, or skyscrapers. The poet has

  been viewed as a singer of sweet nostalgia and a social and political

  conservative who was content to sigh for the good things of the past.

 

  Such views have failed to gain general acceptance, however, in the

  face of the universality of Frost’s themes, the emotional authenticity

  of his voice, and the austere technical brilliance of his verse. Frost

  was often able to endow his rural imagery with a larger symbolic or

  metaphysical significance, and his best poems transcend the immediate

  realities of their subject matter to illuminate the unique blend of

  tragic endurance, stoicism, and tenacious affirmation that marked his

  outlook on life. Over his long career Frost succeeded in lodging more

  than a few poems where, as he put it, they would be “hard to get rid

  of,” and he can be said to have lodged himself just as solidly in the

  affections of his fellow Americans. For thousands he remains the only

  recent poet worth reading and the only one who matters.

 

    — EB

 

  When he was (supposedly) twenty, Frost first realized that real artistic

  speech was only to be copied from life. He never claimed to be the first

  poet to arrive at this understanding, but found that “where English poetry

  was greatest it was by virtue of this same method in the poet” and “he

  illustrated it in Shakespeare, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Emerson” (Lathem and

  Thompson 259). Frost explained his method as follows:

 

    What we do get in life and miss so often in literature is the sentence

    sounds that underlie the words. Words themselves do not convey meaning,

    and to [. . . prove] this, . . . let us take the example of two people who

    are talking on the other side of a closed door, whose voices can be heard

    but whose words cannot be distinguished. Even though the words do not

    carry, the sound of them does, and the listener can catch the meaning of

    the conversation. . . . [T]o me a sentence is not interesting merely in

    conveying a meaning of words. It must do something more; it must convey a

    meaning by sound. (Lathem and Thompson 261)

 

  What Frost strove to achieve was what he called “sound posturing,” or

  “getting the sound of sense” (Lathem and Thompson 259). As for his language,

  Marie Borroff argues in her essay, “Robert Frost’s New Testament: The Uses

  of Simplicity,” that Frost manages to use “simple” words in order to achieve

  “high style.” Borroff analyzes certain of his early poems and discovers a

  statistically low content of both Romance and Latinate words, and a high

  content of words of native derivation–not to mention a preponderance of

  one- and two-syllable words. The effect of this is to lend Frost’s poetry an

  apparently “simple” and informal speech.

 

  But Borroff maintains that writers and speakers adopt different modes of

  discourse for different purposes, and that diction and vocabulary are

  selected as appropriate for a particular occasion, from the “distinctly

  formal” to the “distinctly colloquial” (69). Between the two extremes,

  however, lies “the ‘common’ level to which most words belong.. Such words

  are ‘common’ to literary and colloquial use alike. . . . They are

  chameleon-like, standing out neither as conspicuously folksy or talky in

  literary contexts nor as conspicuously pretentious in colloquial contexts”

  (69). Such words take on a particular “air” of formality, or of informality,

  in a particular context. “[A] number of Frost’s best-known early lyrics are

  made of a language from which distinctively formal words are largely

  excluded. But it is equally true and important . . . that the language of

  these poems is lacking in words and expressions of distinctively colloquial

  quality” (70). In addition, Borroff notes that in its Biblical allusiveness,

  Frost’s language acquires a “high formality” that can be attributed to the

  dignity of tone which is imputed to religious subject matter in our cultural

  tradition (73).

 

  Frost’s language, therefore, cannot be adequately described as “simple” or

  as merely “common.” Rather, “it dips occasionally to the distinctively

  colloquial level of everyday talk, as in the remark ‘Spring is the mischief

  in me” . . . . It is embellished with an occasional poetic or biblical

  archaism of native derivation (o’er night and henceforth in “The Tuft of

  Flowers”), or archaic construction (“knew not” in “Mowing”) or inversion of

  word order (“something there is” in “Mending Wall”) (Borroff 72).

 

      — Susan Siferd,

      <[broken link] http://www.wmich.edu/english/tchg/640/papers/Siferd.Frost.dev.html>

 

  The sign that he is at home is that his language is plain; it is the human

  vernacular, as simple on the surface as monosyllables can make it. Strangely

  enough this is what makes some readers say he is hard–he is always

  referring to things he does not name, at any rate in the long words they

  suppose proper. He seems to be saying less than he does; it is only when we

  read close and listen well, and think between the sentences, that we become

  aware of what his poems are about. What they are about is the important

  thing–more important, we are tempted to think, than the words themselves,

  though it was the words that brought the subject on. The subject is the

  world: a huge and ruthless place which men will never quite understand, any

  more than they will understand themselves; and yet it is the same old place

  that men have always been trying to understand, and to this extent it is as

  familiar as an old boot or an old back door, lovable for what it is in spite

  of the fact that it does not speak up and identify itself in the idiom of

  abstraction. Frost is a philosopher, but his ideas are behind his poems, not

  in them–buried well, for us to guess at if we please.

 

    — Mark van Doren, in The Atlantic Monthly

    <http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/frost/vand.htm>

 

If You Forget Me and Sonnet XVII : Love – Pablo Neruda

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists:
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

—Pablo Neruda— ((translated by Donald S. Walsh))

 

Sonnet XVII: Love

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

—Pablo Neruda— ((Translated by Stephen Mitchell))

Commentary :
One would think that “If you forget me” was written for a woman. Think again! Just like Agha Shahid Ali writing about his native land Kashmir, this is vintage Neruda writing about Chile, the country that exiled him for his Marxist tendencies. Putting that into context, here we are looking at a poem written for a land that did not reject him, but whose people did and yet the poet accuses the land. Land and people are inextricably linked as we have seen and will surely see again.

The poem “If you forget me” was selected as counterpoint to “Love Sonnet XVII”. A poem that speaks simply and directly. And there is no mistaking that earthiness and tonality that is so surely Latin American in form – one can almost picture the dance styles in the poetry as well as the tropical nature of the words used to describe the love in the initial stanza. However the last two stanzas are the clearest depiction of a certain kind of utopia of love. Its a love that one doesn’t normally associate with humanity, but in doing so it elevates the two human beings participating. There is a simple purity to it.

Technical Notes :
Love Sonnet XVII” represents a sonnet composed in the 8 (octave) + 6 (sestet) form. This is a Petrarchan form. There is also a representation of an Anaphora here.

Sonnet – Classically fourteen iambic pentameters, although the rhyme scheme can vary. Some recent ‘sonnet’ writing adopts different line lengths and metric patterns.
The Petrarchan/Italian version is divided into an octave (eight lines) and sestet (six lines), between which there is traditionally a break.
a b b a a b b a c d e c d e
a b b a a b b a c d c d c d
The Elizabethan/Shakespearean version has three quatrains and a concluding or summarising couplet.
a b a b c d c d e f e f g g
The Spenserian sonnet uses fewer rhymes.
a b a b b c b c c d c d e e”
Typically composed in Iambic Pentameter. Iambic describes the type of foot that is used (In English an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) and Pentameter indicating the number of such “feet”.

Anaphora – The term “anaphora” comes from the Greek for “a carrying up or back”, and refers to a type of parallelism created when successive phrases or lines begin with the same words, often resembling a litany.

It is brilliant how the octave starts to go through all the ways in which one can love and at the sestet gives it up as a never ending exercise and demolishes the conceit swiftly. This poem resembles a classically constructed Capablanca chess end game – the opening and the middle game setup the end for a pleasing finale. One senses that the poet is toying with the reader, offering further little lines to burnish the imagination and then flatly bursts the bubble just as we are expecting a crescendo in the sestet. The bubble though is burst in that most wonderful of manner.

And now compare that sonnet with a famous Shakesperean one :
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? (Sonnets XVIII)
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
—William Shakespeare—
The above has been praised as one of Shakespeare finest and best known sonnets. And yes he too gives up towards the end and in the last two lines resorts to more timeless phrases.

And now with the Elizabeth Barrett Browning version (apparently chosen as the greatest love poem of all time in a reader poll) :
How do I love thee?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning —

Elizabeth Barrett Browning does not give up – in fact she never even starts with earthly comparisons which is surely a testament to woman’s wisdom over mans – after all she was married to Robert Browning and died before Browning did.

If You Forget Me (in the original Spanish) :
“Si Tu Me Olvidas”
Quiero que sepas
una cosa.

Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe:
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.

Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.

Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.

Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en esa día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.

Pero
si cada día,
cada hora,
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable,
si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos.
— Pablo Neruda—

Bio :
From The Nobel Prize in Lietrature 1971
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), whose real name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was born on 12 July, 1904, in the town of Parral in Chile. His father was a railway employee and his mother, who died shortly after his birth, a teacher. Some years later his father, who had then moved to the town of Temuco, remarried doña Trinidad Candia Malverde. The poet spent his childhood and youth in Temuco, where he also got to know Gabriela Mistral, head of the girls’ secondary school, who took a liking to him. At the early age of thirteen he began to contribute some articles to the daily “La Mañana”, among them, Entusiasmo y Perseverancia – his first publication – and his first poem. In 1920, he became a contributor to the literary journal “Selva Austral” under the pen name of Pablo Neruda, which he adopted in memory of the Czechoslovak poet Jan Neruda (1834-1891). Some of the poems Neruda wrote at that time are to be found in his first published book: Crepusculario (1923). The following year saw the publication of Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada, one of his best-known and most translated works. Alongside his literary activities, Neruda studied French and pedagogy at the University of Chile in Santiago.

Between 1927 and 1935, the government put him in charge of a number of honorary consulships, which took him to Burma, Ceylon, Java, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Madrid. His poetic production during that difficult period included, among other works, the collection of esoteric surrealistic poems, Residencia en la tierra (1933), which marked his literary breakthrough.

The Spanish Civil War and the murder of García Lorca, whom Neruda knew, affected him strongly and made him join the Republican movement, first in Spain, and later in France, where he started working on his collection of poems España en el Corazón (1937). The same year he returned to his native country, to which he had been recalled, and his poetry during the following period was characterised by an orientation towards political and social matters. España en el Corazón had a great impact by virtue of its being printed in the middle of the front during the civil war.

In 1939, Neruda was appointed consul for the Spanish emigration, residing in Paris, and, shortly afterwards, Consul General in Mexico, where he rewrote his Canto General de Chile, transforming it into an epic poem about the whole South American continent, its nature, its people and its historical destiny. This work, entitled Canto General, was published in Mexico 1950, and also underground in Chile. It consists of approximately 250 poems brought together into fifteen literary cycles and constitutes the central part of Neruda’s production. Shortly after its publication, Canto General was translated into some ten languages. Nearly all these poems were created in a difficult situation, when Neruda was living abroad.

In 1943, Neruda returned to Chile, and in 1945 he was elected senator of the Republic, also joining the Communist Party of Chile. Due to his protests against President González Videla’s repressive policy against striking miners in 1947, he had to live underground in his own country for two years until he managed to leave in 1949. After living in different European countries he returned home in 1952. A great deal of what he published during that period bears the stamp of his political activities; one example is Las Uvas y el Viento (1954), which can be regarded as the diary of Neruda’s exile. In Odas elementales (1954- 1959) his message is expanded into a more extensive description of the world, where the objects of the hymns – things, events and relations – are duly presented in alphabetic form.

Neruda’s production is exceptionally extensive. For example, his Obras Completas, constantly republished, comprised 459 pages in 1951; in 1962 the number of pages was 1,925, and in 1968 it amounted to 3,237, in two volumes. Among his works of the last few years can be mentioned Cien sonetos de amor (1959), which includes poems dedicated to his wife Matilde Urrutia, Memorial de Isla Negra, a poetic work of an autobiographic character in five volumes, published on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Arte de pajáros (1966), La Barcarola (1967), the play Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta (1967), Las manos del día (1968), Fin del mundo (1969), Las piedras del cielo (1970), and La espada encendida

Auguries of Innocence – William Blake

 

 

Auguries of Innocence

 

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm’d for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf’s and lion’s howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand’ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus’d breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher’s knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won’t believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever’s fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov’d by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov’d
Shall never be by woman lov’d.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider’s enmity.
He who torments the chafer’s sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar’s dog and widow’s cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer’s song
Poison gets from slander’s tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy’s foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist’s jealousy.

The prince’s robes and beggar’s rags
Are toadstools on the miser’s bags.
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro’ the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return’d to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven’s shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar’s rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm’d with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer’s sun.
The poor man’s farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric’s shore.

One mite wrung from the lab’rer’s hands
Shall buy and sell the miser’s lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant’s faith
Shall be mock’d in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne’er get out.

He who respects the infant’s faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar’s laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour’s iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket’s cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation’s fate.
The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave old England’s winding-sheet.

The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse,
Dance before dead England’s hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro’ the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

 

             — William Blake —

 

Commentary :

 

I had been fascinated with this poem since I saw Silence of the Lambs in which it occurs as a side quotation. Upon researching the reference I stumbled on to William Blake and have not looked back since. Blake is predominantly ssociated with romanticism, mysticism, individualism and visual poetry. The period of romanticism was around mid 1700s till about the early to mid 1800s. Romanticism turned out to be a reaction against the classicism of poetry earlier to that, a period in which poetry turned towards nature and individuals. The most famous poets of this period are also the poets the world at large tends to associate with simple poetry (understandable). Poets who fell into Blake’s league were Wordsworth, Shelley (shudder!), Byron (double shudder!), and Keats (not naming a few here). In addition there were other notable inclusions from America including Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe. However Blake is in a class of his own. He fairly screams a kind of language definitely not found in the more laid back poetry of his peers. The imagery in his poems is striking. It is true that almost all of poetry consists of imagery. So what is special about Blake’s work. It is probably the period he is set in and his relation to his contemporaries. He did not content himself with depicting nature as well as he possibly could, but chose to take on subjects that we would now well consider to be in the domain of intelligent design. A rather more famous poem “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright” exemplifies his stark fascination with simple and straightforward muscles and sinews, stuff that any ordinary medical practitioner these days could describe in far more detail than he possibly could. While we have moved on from the fascination of being unable to readily comprehend the natural world, it is truly wondrous to hear the emotion of a capable man of letters describe the wondrousness of infinity in such extraordinary terms. The poem goes on to describe all of Blake’s complaints with man’s interference in the natural order of things. Complaints that are being renewed on a regular basis in the modern times we live in. Curiously enough, Blake’s poems more than any of his contemporaries seem relevant to our current modern state.  While his contemporaries were content to paint pretty pictures of peaceful days (excepting Whitman and Poe), Blake seemed to have ridden on the waves of discontent, stuff which humankind never seems to have enough of. Nevertheless he is lucky to have lived in a time where belief in the spiritual came easily and could sufficiently separate humankind’s ills from the wondrous beauties of nature he saw everywhere around him.

 

Technical Notes :

 

The poem employs a very nice and simple a a b b scheme. There is also a definite cadence to each two line stanza that makes it very much a “pit a pat a pit a pat, di da ta ta ta di da ta”, although I have not been able to find a reference to the meter or cadence.

 

Bio:

"I do not behold the outward creation... it is a hindrance and not
action." Thus William Blake--painter, engraver, and poet--explained why
his work was filled with religious visions rather than with subjects
from everyday life. Few people in his time realized that Blake expressed
these visions with a talent that approached genius. He lived in near
poverty and died unrecognized. Today, however, Blake is acclaimed one of
England's great figures of art and literature and one of the most
inspired and original painters of his time.

Blake was born on Nov. 28, 1757, in London. His father ran a hosiery
shop. William, the third of five children, went to school only long
enough to learn to read and write, and then he worked in the shop until
he was 14. When he saw the boy's talent for drawing, Blake's father
apprenticed him to an engraver.

At 25 Blake married Catherine Boucher. He taught her to read and write
and to help him in his work. They had no children. They worked together
to produce an edition of Blake's poems and drawings, called Songs of
Innocence. Blake engraved both words and pictures on copper printing
plates. Catherine made the printing impressions, hand-colored the
pictures, and bound the books. The books sold slowly, for a few
shillings each. Today a single copy is worth many thousands of dollars.

Blake's fame as an artist and engraver rests largely on a set of 21
copperplate etchings to illustrate the Book of Job in the Old Testament.
However, he did much work for which other artists and engravers got the
credit. Blake was a poor businessman, and he preferred to work on
subjects of his own choice rather than on those that publishers assigned
him.

A follower of Emanuel Swedenborg, who offered a gentle and mystic
interpretation of Christianity, Blake wrote poetry that largely reflects
Swedenborgian views. Songs of Innocence (1789) shows life as it seems to
innocent children. Songs of Experience (1794) tells of a mature person's
realization of pain and terror in the universe. This book contains his
famous `Tiger! Tiger! Burning Bright'. Milton (1804-08) and Jerusalem
(1804-20) are longer and more obscure works. Blake died on Aug. 12,
1827.

 - Mark Harden and Carol Gerten-Jackson, WebMuseum

Blake was a Certified Poetic Genius - equal parts visionary, mystic,
revolutionary, romantic, eccentric and lunatic. Early on in his career
as a printer, he rejected the methods and models of fashionable painting
and created, alongside many highly competent commissions (mainly
illustrations), an art of his own: fusing poetry, engraving and
book-binding into a single expression. Yet his wonderfully produced
books and prints (now greatly treasured as works of art), were always
merely vehicles for his intense, sometimes apocalyptic visions.

Through it all, though, his poems remained uncompromisingly 'true' in
thought and description - Blake could be bitterly critical of what he
saw as wrong with his beloved England. It was this harsh, almost
Puritanical criticism, coupled with his joyful and curiously childlike
visions of heaven, that inspired him to his greatest flights of lyricism

As usual, the Bard puts it best:

"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
 Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
 More than cool reason ever comprehends.
 The lunatic, the lover and the poet
 Are of imagination all compact:
 One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
 That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
 Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
 The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
 And as imagination bodies forth
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
 Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
 A local habitation and a name."

from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.