Ay waukin O

 

Ay Waukin, O

Robert Burns

1.
Summer's a pleasant time:
Flowers of every colour,
The water runs owre the heugh,
And I long for my true lover.

Chorus

Ay waukin , O,
Waukin still and weary:
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.

2.

When I sleep I dream,
When I wauk I'm eerie,
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.

Chorus

3.

Lanely night comes on,
A' the lave are sleepin,
I think on my bonnie lad,
And I bleer my een wi' greetin.

Chorus

Ay = always, ever

Waukin = waking, awake

Heugh = hollow

Nane = none

Lanely = lonely

Lave = the others

Bleer = blur

Greetin = weeping

Back to Earth

Melancholy is knowing the pain that love brings, and doing it anyway.

Willie Nelson is the world’s foremost troubador of falling in love again, despite what it did to you last time, and the time before.

In Back to Earth, he achieves a little bit of insight. He realises that he’s been here before, only last time he was the disappointment, and his Beloved was the victim.

The song is addressed to an old love, who’s been through with him what he’s going through now. It’s nice to think she’s still there for him to confess to, although she may just as easily not be. Which of us hasn’t addressed our thoughts on love to someone who is no longer listening?

The words are by Willie, but since I’m not a great fan of Willie’s singing, I’ve chosen to include a video of the song as sung by my old friend Eddi Reader. First the words:

Back to Earth

I guess my heart
Just settled back to Earth
I rode a dream so wild and free
For all that dream was worth
But true love
Can be a blessing and a curse
I guess my heart
Just settled back to Earth
And now I know just how
You felt so long ago
When the dream for you had ended
And you let me know
So I rode from sky to sky
Tryin' to keep the dream alive
But everything
I did just made it worse
I guess my heart
Just settled back to Earth
Love created songs
That I still sing
Love we knew
Still makes the rafters ring
Tonight I'll sing
For everything I'm worth
For all the hearts
That settle back to Earth
Love created songs
That I still sing
Love we knew
Still makes the rafters ring
Tonight I'll sing
For everything I'm worth
For all the hearts
That settle back to Earth
Our song will never have
A final verse
Our hearts just finally
Settled back to Earth

That line:

Our love will never have a final verse

is the essence of melancholy: sorrow plus resignation.

Here’s Eddi Reader singing it, (no embedding, sadly) and if anyone thinks a lassie frae Glasgow can’t sing country, check this out. Country was our folk music. It speaks to white trash everywhere, whatever the continent.

And we fall in love too.

Drenching

Image by .mands. via Flickr

Same as the fact of my own death, my love for you is always with me.
But after the initial intensity of discovery, the knowledge recedes.
Periodically it cycles up and gives me a drenching. "Oh!" I say. "This is what it's like. Yes. How could I have forgotten?" But soon I fail
to remember yet again. Life intervenes: it needs to stay separate from love, and death, while simultaneously requiring both.

But unlike love, which often ends, death is steadfast. "Hullo," it says cheerily one day. "I have not forgotten you."

"Anna Louise"

Honesty

Image via Wikipedia

The phone conversation that hasn’t happened yet:

- I guess I dropped the bomb on you, huh.

- You can say that again.

- I thought it was time to be honest. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.

- I appreciate your honesty.

- Good.

- But

- But what?

- I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do about this. I wish you hadn’t said anything.

Lovers talk as if they believed others were listening in. Their conversations cannot be deciphered unless you’re the Lover, or the Beloved. And even they miss half of what’s going on.

The email referred to:

It's funny that you got all shocked when I flippantly asked, "What are you wearing?" It was out-of-character, and it was is inappropriate.

We're not lovers, and no matter how good friends we ever become, we can never be lovers. I once dreamed I was kissing you, and it was so vividly real it woke me with the force of the feeling. Yet even in my dreams I couldn't go further than that. No matter how much my heart is in love with you, my head reminds me: we can never be lovers.

That's one of the saddest thoughts I've ever had to express. The tears are on my face now, even though I've known it all along. It's not what you need from me, and it never will be. You need to find happiness, and if there's anything I can do to make life more cheerful for you in the meantime, that's what I'm there for.

But not for that.

The comment that kicked it all off:

 

BEGIN

(23:47:52) b...@gmail.com you there

(23:48:08) n...@gmail.com no!

(23:48:10) n...@gmail.com :-)

(23:48:16) n...@gmail.com hi

(23:48:18) b...@gmail.com i can see you

(23:48:29) n...@gmail.com peek-a-boo

(23:48:52) b...@gmail.com what are you wearing? (nerd)

(23:49:18) n...@gmail.com fully dressed. why? (you really are!)

(23:49:45) b...@gmail.com i really am what? a nerd?

(23:49:56) n...@gmail.com a nerd, yes.

(23:50:03) b...@gmail.com no way

(23:50:10) n...@gmail.com for asking things of this sort.

(23:50:17) b...@gmail.com nerds don't go out with beautiful women

(23:50:21) n...@gmail.com yes way

(23:51:13) n...@gmail.com ... ohh. -- so?

(23:51:55) b...@gmail.com i'm a renaissance man, not a nerd

(23:52:10) b...@gmail.com i guess that smiley didn't turn out right

(23:52:31) n...@gmail.com I see. - Ren. men are vulgar, then?

(23:52:43) b...@gmail.com was it so vulgar?

(23:53:14) n...@gmail.com nooo, but a bit. Unexpected at any rate.

(23:53:27) b...@gmail.com i was playing off the "I can see you" comment.

(23:53:42) b...@gmail.com I get a notification when any of my contacts comes online

(23:53:47) b...@gmail.com i can't really see you

(23:53:55) n...@gmail.com !!!! ohhhh! --- I didn't get that.

(23:54:07) n...@gmail.com then it's not vulgar, really.

(23:54:14) b...@gmail.com i wouldn't mind being able to see you

(23:54:28) b...@gmail.com but a gentleman would be obliged to let you know in advance

(23:54:36) n...@gmail.com :-)) that's not always practical.

(23:54:54) b...@gmail.com maybe i could get a notification about that as well

(23:55:00) n...@gmail.com a quick rise from nerd to gentleman, then!

(23:55:04) n...@gmail.com :-))

(23:55:22) b...@gmail.com i'm always a perfect gentleman, aside from the confusion about doors

(23:55:27) b...@gmail.com going in and coming out

(23:55:43) n...@gmail.com :-)) and steps going up and down

(23:55:49) b...@gmail.com it's a minefield

(23:56:17) b...@gmail.com sometimes i get so scared of committing a faux pas i can hardly take a step

(23:57:31) b...@gmail.com anyway it's been nice chatting, but i said i was going to bed, and i like to think i'm a man of my word

(23:57:56) n...@gmail.com ohh. under all circumstances.

(23:58:17) b...@gmail.com here's a kiss for you, on the end of your nose: x

(23:58:25) n...@gmail.com anyway, you are not a nerd, I won't have you insulting my friends!!!

(23:58:58) n...@gmail.com :-) thanks for the kiss on nose. And a big hug back to you! -- sleep well!

(00:01:05) n...@gmail.com xx

(00:01:14) b...@gmail.com xx

END

So you see how easily things can escalate.

Lost on the way

"Say say my playmate
Won't you lay hands on me
Mirror my malady
Transfer my tragedy

When it comes, it's in a wave. You cannot hide. No mantras will dispel it. Like an old friend, you say, I haven't seen you in a while."

Zen is speaking here of his melancholy, or depression, if you prefer. Later in the post, he makes another observation, which returns to the idea of exile:

I feel like I will never sit in my walled garden, with bees in my pear tree. I will not grieve for what I should have had, or could have had. I will grieve only for the tousle-haired boy who ran on Hayle beach, the wind in his hair, salt in his eyes, free, because he got lost in this world, and once you are lost, it seems, there is no way home.

yeah whatever: Lost on the way

The triple fool

 

THE TRIPLE FOOL.
by John Donne

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry ;
But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny ?
Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain ;
And, by delighting many, frees again 
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.
Both are increasèd by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

 

Donne thinks there’s what we would call a therapeutic advantage in forming his melancholy into verse in order to restrain it. I wonder if he really believed that.

The advantage is lost, however, he says, when someone else comes along and turns his verse into a song, which I suppose often happened. Because the people listening are pleased by the songs, Donne says, the chains which held the pain and grief in check are removed, and they’re once more free to wreak their harm.

The latter claim is certainly true, you have to admit: a song multiplies with music the melancholy of its lyrics alone. A sad song does publish the pain and grief of the one who wrote it. That is what attracts us to them in the first place.

Love is sadistic

I’ll be sitting doing something distracting, designed to take my mind off you for a few minutes, when all of a sudden I can smell your skin, and I feel as if all the breath has been sucked out of me. This can happen at any moment.

Love is sadistic, and tortures you like this even though there’s no possible gain.

Point of departure

Image via Wikipedia

Railway Station. Point of arrival. Point of departure. A transit zone. How light she looked, with just a suitcase she could carry in one hand. Inside that suitcase was a marriage, America, a life of which I knew nothing. Inside that suitcase were doors I had never opened into rooms I wouldn’t recognise. The suitcase was stuffed with letters and an address book and a store card for a shopping mall, and dinner parties I had never been to, and wouldn’t go to now. In that suitcase were invitations from friends and pre-sets on a car radio tuned to stations I had never heard. In that suitcase were bad dreams and secret hopes. The dirty linen was in a special nylon compartment. Her childhood was in there - the awkward child with rough plaits who grew into a beautiful heavy-haired woman, who never quite believed the compliments of the mirror. Her husband was in there, or maybe he was strapped to the side, where you usually keep the lifeboats.

I looked at the suitcase, suddenly heavy, too heavy to carry, and I realised that she could never drag it with her. She was right - it would have to be let go, or taken home and unpacked again.

from The Power Book, by Jeanette Winterson

One of the aspects of the Lover’s plight that’s rarely touched upon is retrospective jealousy, in which he begrudges the Beloved everything and everyone that ever happened to her Before She Met Me – the title of a novel by Julian Barnes on this subject which turned out to be a better idea than it was a book.

Every minute you’re away from me makes me feel robbed, and that includes all the minutes before we knew each other. I’m jealous of the whole world. If I can’t have you, no-one can.

 

Washing a shirt

Image via Wikipedia

 

From the pain of lost love and the pain of exile, to the pain of bereavement, which is considered the summum of all losses, an idea I think debatable. It’s no more permanent that losing a love; no more complete than losing one’s homeland. And unlike those two, when a person dies, we don’t have to suffer the additional pain of knowing they exist somewhere, and are prospering without us.

The poem is by Anna Swirszczynska (1909-1984), who has been translated by Jo Govaerts, about whom I spoke yesterday. I took Jo’s translation into Dutch, and translated it in turn into English. Don’t panic, it’s how a lot of translation is done.

The poem not only penetrates right to the heart of what missing a loved one comes down to (a fugitive odour), it also acts as a counterpoint to the usual view that a man may live on in his works. Not, it appears, for everyone.

Stupidly, I never thought to see if an English translation already existed, which it does, here, by the distinguished poet and translator Czeslaw Milosz (with Leonard Nathan).

Sorry, but I think my version is better, for a couple of reasons. You may not agree.

I’m washing a shirt

For the last time, I’m washing the shirt
of my dead father.
The shirt smells of sweat. I remember
that sweat from when I was a child;
all those years
I washed his shirts and underwear
and dried them
on the iron stove in his studio.
He put them on unironed.

Of all the bodies in all the world,
of animals and men,
only one gives off this sweat.
I breathe it in
for the last time. By washing this shirt
I’m destroying it
for good.

Now
all that remains of him are his paintings,
which smell of paint.

Anna Swirszczynska (1909 - 1984)

 

 

The death of love

Only two things cure the melancholy of love.

One is when love dies.

Night’s horizon

Image by john curley via Flickr

I’m alone in the house, looking across the vast empty expanse of the day to night’s horizon. I’m resisting the urge to call you, or send you an email, an SMS.

This is how it will be when everything ends for us, or when you leave – whichever is the sooner. I may as well get used to it now.

Beim schlafengehen | On going to sleep

The third of the four so-called Last Songs by Richard Strauss (not to be confused with the Strausses of Vienna), this is a setting of words by Hermann Hesse, and quite possibly the most beautiful song ever written. The words, which I’ve translated below with the help of Google, speak of falling asleep, but they are also about dying. Strauss wrote the Four Last Songs in 1948, when he was 84. He died in 1949.

The video is one of several available, and features Lucia Popp.

 

Nun der Tag mich müd' gemacht,
soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.
Hände, laßt von allem Tun,
Stirn, vergiß du alles Denken,
alle meine Sinne nun
Wollen sich in Schlummer senken.
Und die Seele unbewacht,
Will in freien Flügen schweben,
Um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
tief und tausendfach zu leben.

 

On going to sleep

Now the day has wearied me
My eager desire is to be received,
Welcomed by the starry night
like a tired child.
Hands, leave everything;
Mind, forget all thought.
All my senses now wish
Is to sink into slumber.
And the unfettered soul,
Floats in free flight,
To live deeper, a thousand-fold
In the magic circle of the night.

Stripped bare

Image by ____federico____ via Flickr

Falling in love is like having your skin stripped off, so you feel everything many times more intensely. Not always in a good way.

I had believed that at my age, after at least ten years of no love, that my skin had grown over, a hard, horny plate which no sensation could penetrate. Then you came, and picked the scab right off the wound, then held a flame to it. I’m feeling now, all right.

Love is pain, and melancholy is the longing to have the wound stripped bare.

Simple observation

Melancholy is sorrow you have to accept.

We can never be lovers.

Goodbye kiss

Image via Wikipedia

When I was a child, I fell in love as a child.

But when I became a man, I put away childish things, though I never stopped falling in love. Now the time is shorter between falling in love, and realising it’s over, and cannot be saved. Now I see through a glass, clearly.

At the beginning of David Copperfield, we read, of his mother:

Can I say of her face – altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is – that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a crowded street?

Later:

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.

When I had read that, under the impression that David's mother was about to die before he could see her again, I slept and dreamed I kissed you, and no dream-kiss has ever been more vivid. So intense was that kiss that it awoke me, and I knew immediately that Clara's kisses for David had inspired the dream. And I knew immediately that this could never happen in life, just as David was never to kiss his mother again.

I was wrong about the second part, but not about the first.

Melancholy is sadness you have to accept. David's mother does eventually die. You're still here, yet you seem more far away than she does.