Saturday, September 11, 2010

This Sadness, by Susan Goyette


Pyotr Iliych Tchaikovsky - Pezzo Capriccioso
with Mstislav Rostropovich

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
and tire my useless sadness.
                                        - Anna Akhmatova
If I could change this sadness,
learn the touch of a potter,
I'd coax it into a thing of beauty,
something serviceable.

I imagine throwing it, wrapped in burlap,
into the harbour. Some unwanted cat
that will haunt me, one of its lives
as my grandmother, with fingers like pine roots
dropping dead needles into my eyes,
in another as my father with his hair on fire
and his steel-wool tongue.

But it's an alluring sadness
that calls with the wordless song of a child
and fills these nights with all the names
I can give to it.



from The True Names of Birds (Brick Books, 2000)

5 comments:

Lydia said...

I saw a statue of a little girl frolicking today, and this poem reminds me of it.

Beautiful

Lydia said...

Hello again, friend. There is a blog award for you over at my blog. I'm trying to keep these memes to a minimum, and if you are also then please do not feel any pressure to "play." Just wanted you to know how much I appreciate your beautiful blog.

Manuela said...

Thank you Lydia! - you know, that image of the statue of a little girl frolicking, it has really stayed with me! Beautiful.

And thank you so much for the award, this is a low volume and low interaction blog and it feels good to hear how you feel about it.

Because of the simple format of the blog, without any personal posts, I can only acknowledge your kind words and the award here in the comments - but I do really appreciate it!! In fact, I believe this may be my very first ever blog award :) - thank you!!

livia Zafiriou said...

I have visited your blog and would like to enquire if you'd be interested in a link exchange with our platform www.ysp-zine.com



Our blog chronicles the progress of eleven young singers who have been chosen to take part in a program called the Young Singers Project. The program operates as a platform to support young rising stars and takes place as part of the prestigious Salzburg Festival, the pinnacle of the classical music calendar.



I was hoping to ask you whether we could link with you and add your page to our ‘Links we Love’ page and whether you could perhaps add us to your list of sites?



Many thanks in advance and kind regards,



Livia Zafiriou
email: editor@ysp-zine.com
​​

manuela said...

Dear Livia,

thank you so much for wanting to add my blog to your list of links you love, I am very touched! Please feel free to do so. Your project sounds wonderful.

However, I will understand if you decide not to link to my blog in the end, given that I cannot link to yours since I do not actually have a blog roll on this blog.

If you will look at all the links on the left hand side, they all go back to a post on the blog, either through the music or through the author of the poem. And then each blog post might have one or two more links to where the poem can be found.

So you see I do not actually have where to link to your blog. I do wish you all the best in your project, I wish I could visit Salzburg for the festival - I was there a few years ago and absolutely loved it!