(no subject)

A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair, Baudelaire

Let me breathe in for hours and hours on end the odor of your hair, let me plunge my whole face into your hair as a thirsty man plunges into the water of a stream, let me wave your hair in my hand like a scented handkerchief, and shake memories into the air.

If only you could know all I see! all I feel! all I hear in your hair! My soul soars on perfume as the souls of other men soar on music.

Your hair contains an entire dream, full of sails and masts; it contains vast seas whose monsoons carry me towards charming climes, where space is bluer and deeper, where the atmosphere is full of the perfume of fruit and leaves and human skin.

In the ocean of your hair I can glimpse a port alive with melancholy songs, vigorous men of all nationalities and ships of all types, silhouetting their fine and complex architecture against a vast sky, where basks eternal heat.

In the caresses of your hair I rediscover the languor of long hours passed on a divan, in the cabin of a fine ship, rocked by the imperceptible swell of the port, between pots of flowers and jugs of refreshing water.

In the blazing hearth of your hair I breathe the scent of tobacco mingled with opium and sugar; in the night of your hair, I see the infinite expanses of tropical skies glittering blue; on the downy banks of your hair how intoxicating are the combined odors of tar and musk and coconut oil.

Let me bite your heavy black tresses. When I chew your elastic hair, your rebellious hair, I feel as if I am eating memories.

(Tr. Rosemary Lloyd)

(no subject)

To the Accuser Who Is the God of This World, Blake

Truly, My Satan, thou art but a Dunce,
And dost not know the Garment from the Man;
Every Harlot was a Virgin once,
Nor can'st thou ever change Kate into Nan.

Tho' thou art Worship'd by the Names Divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night's decline,
The lost Traveller's Dream under the Hill.


This is one that commits itself to your memory after a couple readings. The fourth line is the most poignant I've ever read.

The Traveller's Dream is, I take it, an anxious one; but something about the phrase always makes me think s/he's dreaming of home. Fits in well enough with Blake's nickname for the Accuser, Nobodaddy. Is dreaming of home then the problem, the one problem? Causing religion, jealousy, prejudice, smug pretension to knowledge? Son of Morn = Lucifer, but what is the weary Night's decline? The hour approaching dawn, one would think. The morning star is tugboat to the sun's rise. So, evil is the harbinger of good? That seems unBlakean but this was always his problem, accounting for the dirt on the toe. Misinformation isn't necessarily self-correcting.

Or could Son of Morn mean something different? Something useful, even glorious, earlier on, that no longer is but is still taken to be. Are these lines somehow recapping the close of Auguries of Innocence:

God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in the Night,
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day.

The world without Imagination is Night...whatever Imagination is. The power of the mind to brighten the world, I suppose. But surely this requires catalyst or agency in that world.

Son of Morn...the popular vision of God creates havoc when separated from the human imagination, when not recognized as a glory belonging to the mind. But is still a glory. Satan is a Kate./?/! Is Blake forgiving the Demiurge?

I'm musing aloud unhelpfully and clearly missing something crucial. This poem is right in the middle of just about everything.