hall of lost footsteps
fugitive hot whispered words
scabrous ancestral songs
*
judgments from the court
of love whose lust-drunk troubadours
inspire my spirit:
*
a joy for living
a past that never passes
a loss yet unlost
*
in this hallowed space
– oak beams, flagstones, marbled walls –
still footfalls echo
***
I long for you much
as I listen to music
whose sadnesses touch
*
my heart still aching
from madnesses and rage that
haunt this rabid present –
*
let’s celebrate life
in songs of now, here, as in those
footfalls of the past
*
we find in absence
a beauty missing in presence
sometimes, timeless love
*
**
*
Omm
1 january 2019
Excellent poem expressing a most moving meditation, atmospheric and deep.
In this haiku chain, as in its predecessor, you have become the poet of Now and Nowness, and not just in its “mindfulness” aspect.
I have greatly enjoyed 2018’s crop of Ommian poetry, and this New Year‘s offshoot bodes well for 2019.
Thank you, James, that is very good and heartening to hear.
Eroticism embroils all who enjoy entanglements as elusive yet ineluctable as those engaged in – and ebriously (whilst soberly!) elegized by William the Troubadour of Aquitaine!
This poem is enigmatic, etymologically elastic, effortlessly effulgent, excitingly evanescencent, albeit explosively, extravagantly earthy, explosive and effervescent in its ecstasy.
Enough.
Thank you for sharing and for combining, as always, the erotic with the cerebral, the historic with the now.
Thank you for writing poetry which connects so much, joining up so many varied aspects of our lives – our souls, our thoughts, our hearts and bodies.
Thank you very much, Camilla.
One interpretation of that fine, final haiku is that the beauty of „timeless love“ must be at least partly „absent“ in the sense that it cannot be exclusively „present“, because if it were, it couldn‘t be „timeless“.
There’s no arguing with that interpretation, Scarlett!
Although some (me, for one) would say that all time is contained in what I’d call the Now (James Wood put me up to it by callng me “the poet of Now and Nowness” but I’m partial to “poet of the Now”, too…).
T. S. Eliot famously riffed on a similar trope in Burnt Norton although (perhaps curiously) his formulation puts present and past in the future, while the future’s in the past.
So by that reckoning Eliot is certainly not a poet of Now, which is entirely apt as, according to James, there is only One Poet of the Now, and that is Me 😉
At any rate, I’m not sure I agree with Eliot’s formulation anyway, even if he put in the tentative “perhaps”, which is a bit mealy-mouthed, and so I have quite fortuitously put in the word “sometimes” in my haiku, which is more scientifically and poetically accurate, in the context, don’t you think?
@Freddie – It‘s my fave haiku now! The final haiku in the chain, I mean, it is awesome!
It works really well as a stand-alone haiku, too.
Thanks, Scarlett – each individual haiku in the chain should make sense, of itself – in isolation, standing alone – where appropriate.
When they don’t, that’s driven by the semantic demands of the chain at that point.
Another beautiful and uplifting poem!
@James – mindfulness may appear faddy to you, as seems to be suggested by your use of those quote marks, but it is an important method for getting a grip on a person’s life, too! In fact, even when many consider it to be about Now and Nowness, it can just as well find its initial spark in the past, as Freddie does in this haiku chain.
I do, however, approve of your epithet for Freddie as the new poet of Now and Nowness! 😀✍️😀
I had no intention of denigrating mindfulness, Yu.
My point is that the poem’s portrayal of Now and Nowness goes beyond their connotations of “mindfulness”.
There are other philosophical dimensions at play, some of which lift us beyond “living in the moment” to a consideration of how this might only be possible with a mind tuned into past and future.
You write slightlingly of mindfulness, James. You should see that, for some, it is the only way to escape from a life of stress, rumination and driven addictions that are well beyond their control.
Focusing on the Now, as Freddie Omm suggests in this poem, is a means of reconciling those pressures – which arise from the past, and are projected into the future, but then rebound from both directions to lay waste to the person‘s present.
Escape can be found only in “timelessness”:
as in those
footfalls of the past
*
we find in absence
a beauty missing in presence
sometimes, timeless love
Thank you for your thoughts, Yu Yan.