Thomas Merton Poetry 7. Translator. Poem Translation: ‘Memories of the Ancient World’

When we recall Merton’s upbringing in France it occurs to us that he is multi-lingual from an early age. This was to prove an immense gift when he came to write on the spiritual life because he could work across the languages of Christian tradition. He could also therefore translate poetry.

Translation of ancient and modern texts was a job at the monastery. It is quite likely we have not seen all the translations made by Merton. Nor could we identify them, as the productions have been published without ascription.

The following poem expresses certain central concerns in Merton’s work. Peace is upheld. Community is available. You belong in community. The natural world is familiar in shape and colour. The rest of the world exists outside our immediate concerns. We continue to exist happily while the rest of the world continues outside our concerns. We are free to enjoy the sky and the beauty of creation. We are bodily, we breathe in and out. Best to keep minor the things we worry about. It is good to live in expectation of something new, like a letter. There are some rules in life that keep things orderly and meaningful. We don’t wear our best clothes every day, that’s what makes them best. We are reminded and remind ourselves to be grateful. Gratitude extends to things we generally take for granted, like gardens and the future. We live inside time, and even though we seek that which is timeless, and we would be free of time, nothing would make sense without time. We live in the ancient world. Morning is when we wake up.

Memories of the Ancient World

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Translated from the Portuguese by Thomas Merton

 

Clara walked in the garden with the children.

The sky was green over the grass,

Water ran golden under the bridges

And other elements were blue, or pink, or orange,

The policeman smiled, and bicycles went by

The little girl ran on the grass to catch a bird,

The whole world, Germany and China, all was quiet around Clara.

 

The little ones looked up at the sky: it was not forbidden.

Mouths, nostrils and eyes were wide open: There was no danger.

 

The only dangers Clara feared were influenza, hot weather, insects.

Clara feared to miss the 11 o’clock bus

And hoped for letters that were slow in coming,

She was not always able to wear a new dress.

But she walked in the garden, in the morning!

 

For, in those times, there were gardens, and there were mornings.

 

Sources

Thomas Merton. The collected poems of  Thomas Merton. New Directions, 1977

 

 

 

Thomas Merton Poetry 6. Hermit. Poem: ‘Oh Sweet Irrational Worship’

On the 17^th of March Philip Harvey conducted a Spiritual Reading Group on Thomas Merton. Pursuing a biographical line, poems were read and discussed that identified nine different aspects of Merton’s life, self, and work. Each aspect was illustrated by one of his photographs. Here is the text, with comments from the group about the poetry. 

Merton’s desire to live an even more isolated and more creative life at one stage drove him to want to swap orders and become a Capuchin monk. It seems that one way to resolve this need was for Merton to go and live in a hermitage on the estate of the Cistercian monastery. It can be concluded that the abbot therefore gave Merton enough freedom to get more work done, more prayer, and a life of self-subsistence within the abbey community.

Going there meant going further into the desert. He would write that “It is truly God who is calling me into the desert. But this desert is not necessarily a geographical one.” (Moses 40-2 ff.) He could say, “I don’t need to take a long journey in order to find the desert: the desert is myself.” By which he was saying, “the real desert is this: to face the limitations of one’s own existence and knowledge and not try to manipulate them or disguise them.” But it also led him to ask, “What is my new desert? The name of it is compassion. There is no wilderness so terrible, so beautiful, so arid and so fruitful as the wilderness of compassion. It is the only desert that shall truly flourish like the lily. It shall become a pool, it shall bud forth and blossom and rejoice with joy. It is the desert of compassion that the thirsty land turns into springs of water, that the poor possess all things.”  

Hermitage life expanded the creative possibilities for Merton. He started making Eastern calligraphy. He cultivated the practice of what he called Zen photography. His writing increased in scale and variety to reach new audiences and meet his own needs and answer his imaginative capacities. Writers know that their lives are hermit-like when it comes to the actual demands of time and thought necessary to complete their writing. Merton took this simple reality to a practical level by becoming literally a hermit. So much of his contemplative writing was informed and shaped by the poetic discoveries he made in the actual poetry.

It is the Merton of this period who can write as follows: “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” This is the learning that Merton gives to others. It is the learning that informs his own life as he lives an isolated basic existence in the woodlands of Kentucky.

Here is a poem that comes out of this newfound place in his own life. Bobwhites are native quail that live in the forests nearby. The poem lets go of any formal signposts as it declaims the ecstatic oneness of self and nature. He has even let go of his name.

Oh Sweet Irrational Worship

 

Wind and a bobwhite

And the afternoon sun.

By ceasing to question the sun

I have become light,

Bird and wind.

My leaves sing.

I am earth, earth

All these lighted things

Grow from my heart.

A tall, spare pine

Stands like the initial of my first

Name when I had one.

When I had a spirit,

When I was on fire

When this valley was

Made out of fresh air

You spoke my name

In naming Your silence:

O sweet, irrational worship!

I am earth, earth

My heart’s love

Bursts with hay and flowers.

I am a lake of blue air

In which my own appointed place

Field and valley

Stand reflected.

I am earth, earth

Out of my grass heart

Rises the bobwhite.

Out of my nameless weeds

His foolish worship.

 

Sources

Thomas Merton. The collected poems of  Thomas Merton. New Directions, 1977

John Moses (editor). The art of Thomas Merton : a divine passion in word and vision. Franciscan Media, 2017

Thomas Merton Poetry 5. Social Activist. Poem: ‘The Great Men of Former Times’

On the 17^th of March Philip Harvey conducted a Spiritual Reading Group on Thomas Merton. Pursuing a biographical line, poems were read and discussed that identified nine different aspects of Merton’s life, self, and work. Each aspect was illustrated by one of his photographs. Here is the text, with comments from the group about the poetry. 

The monastic town of New Norcia in Western Australia has at least five libraries. I have visited all of the main ones, including the actual abbey library used by the monks every day. My most profound discovery was to find that they read all the latest magazines, newspapers, and social commentary. They are amongst the most well-informed people in Australia. I say this because we can say the same of the Cistercians at Gethsemani: they knew everything that was going on outside the walls, if they needed to. This is good to remember when we read anything Merton wrote on social and political activism, and there is a lot.

His protest poetry, if that’s a way of naming it, stems from realism, a desire to say things as they are, and justice, a desire to call out injustice and right that which is wrong. Look closely enough and again we find Christ as the original inspiration of the words, the maker of change from within, stepping into the dangerous places where violence begins. The 11-page prose poem ‘Original Child Bomb’ (1962) is a strategic takedown of the making and use of the atomic bomb. That poem is too long to read here today on zoom, and likewise the book-length poem ‘The Geography of Lograire’ (1968), a remarkable exploration of the spirit through time that, amongst other things, defuses the concepts of racial and religious divides throughout history.

Instead, I will read one of Merton’s short anti-war poems, a deadpan view of warmongers that exposes their cynicism while reminding us that there is a future while the voice of hope rejects their oppressive power. We may take it as given that Von Clausewitz, Napoleon et al, these representatives of war theorists, war mongers and practitioners, will be found at the Stock Exchange. Where else? A parade ground? Seriously? Their names are interchangeable and we will meet them again in the same location. At first we may regard the poem as cynical or despairing. This cycle will never end. But hope and opposition is present around the corners. In fact the poet Merton grows weary of their conversation. Unlike them he has other places to go. Ominously, some would say, he indicates that that they have the power to kill him too. The future is unwritten and unknown. He will go where he will. The priorities of those with power to wage war are demonstrated by naming boulevards after them, as we in Melbourne know who recognise a couple of the names. The poet stands as a witness to the wrongs being perpetuated by those he talks with. The poem shows its time period with the word “deter”, a relatively new concept in global military strategy at the time, but one that is still with us today. On a literary note, the poem seems to me to be possibly influenced by Merton’s reading of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’, a book he had been familiar with since university days. Wellington, Napoleon and the rest play parts in that novel, as archetypes of the sort of thing Merton is saying in simplified form in this poem.    

The Great Men of Former Times 

 

Today I met Von Clausewitz

At the Stock Exchange

And said to him: “You’re dead, man,

What are you doing here?”

And he replied

“I have nowhere else to go

Nowhere else to go.”

 

I also saw Lord Nelson

The Duke of Wellington,

Napoleon and his Marshals

And many others with the names of Boulevards.

They all said the same.

 

And I said to Clausewitz

At the Stock Exchange:

“Don’t you know, men,

That all the wars are over?

We fight no more:

It is sufficient to ‘deter’.”

And they replied:

“You are wrong, and we will prove it

By killing you:

We will prove it by killing you.”

 

Lord Nelson,

The Duke of Wellington

Napoleon and his Marshals

And many others with the names of Boulevards,

They all said the same.

 

Then I grew weary

Of my conversation

With these great men of former times,

And quickly leaving them

Went far from the Exchange

But I know that tomorrow

Or the next day

Or indeed next year, if I return,

I will find Von Clausewitz again

I will find him there again.

 

With Lord Nelson

The Duke of Wellington

Napoleon and his Marshals

And many others with the names of Boulevards

I will find them again.

 

 

Sources

Thomas Merton. The collected poems of  Thomas Merton. New Directions, 1977