Above Cloud Eight and Cloud Seven, apparently. People kept trying to find ways to describe a state of being even more blissfully happy than that for which phrases existed. Of course, it has stayed at “nine” since the 80’s, with George Harrison’s single. Cloud Ten just doesn’t have the same ring (or does it?)

While we’re speaking of clouds, there seems to be one in my head and I’m going to stop Pythoning for a bit to let it all sink in. Meanwhile, here’s a cloud-related poem that I adore (by Sara Teasdale):

THE CLOUD

I AM a cloud in the heaven’s height,
The stars are lit for my delight,
Tireless and changeful, swift and free,
I cast my shadow on hill and sea–
But why do the pines on the mountain’s crest
Call to me always, “Rest, rest”?

I throw my mantle over the moon
And I blind the sun on his throne at noon,
Nothing can tame me, nothing can bind,
I am a child of the heartless wind–
But oh the pines on the mountain’s crest
Whispering always, “Rest, rest.”

I just realized that I really love walking. You wouldn’t know it, considering that I have actually dropped classes because they were at the Friend Center and I just didn’t feel like going there. And while I enjoy walking with people, I enjoy walking by myself somewhat even more. For the first time in a while, I felt entirely grounded. There was a time that it seemed to me as if my body was moving of its own accord and I was kind of watching it and following it around. There is that self-sense, almost like nostalgia, of being, and of the awareness of being, the awareness of purpose, of completeness in myself. I spent a very long time in earlier years trying to define myself in words, then trying to live up to that description, and while many of those observations are true, it is an incomplete picture. And I am glad of it.

Also, last Tuesday I was looking for a CVS that wasn’t where Google Maps said it was, and rather impulsively decided to meet up with a friend at Juilliard and go to a violin recital by a fourth year, Igor Pikayzen, and the whole of it was absolutely brilliant. I also never knew that Thomas Moore’s poem, “The Last Rose of Summer,” had been set to music and that there is a fantastically difficult solo violin piece consisting of variations on it.

I can’t decide, but I get the feeling that this poem isn’t meant to be conveying this sensation that I get from it. Or did she mean it that way? If she did, it’s genius.

AFTER PARTING
Sara Teasdale

OH I have sown my love so wide
That he will find it everywhere;
It will awake him in the night,
It will enfold him in the air.

I set my shadow in his sight
And I have winged it with desire,
That it may be a cloud by day
And in the night a shaft of fire.

This particular Teasdale poem, when I first read it, didn’t particularly make an impression on me with its lyrical quality as much as it did with its content. Specifically, it reminded me of Song, by Christina Rossetti, an English poet a couple of generations before Sara Teasdale. The two poems begin with exactly the same words — “When I am dead,” but convey two vastly different perspectives. Both are essentially Victorian, but while Teasdale says, “I shall not care,” she implies that, while she cares now, she will not care when she is dead. Rossetti, on the other hand, is already creating a degree of detachment. Teasdale somehow expects someone to lean over her, broken-hearted, while Rossetti is indifferent to whether or not the object of her poem remembers or forgets her. Rossetti’s embodies a sort of Victorian ideal stoicism, while Teasdale’s is a facade of stoicism that threatens to crumble and reveal a barely-contained smoldering. Who is the stronger woman? It’s hard to say.

I SHALL NOT CARE
Sara Teasdale

WHEN I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

Song
Christina Rossetti

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree.
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain.
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Ah, Broadway. Funny how it hasn’t changed so much in the last century. It’s hard to imagine Broadway actually being quiet at night — quiet enough to hear the strain of an instrument through an open door — but the magic is there, and the constant city noise is like silence against the music.

Anyone want to see a show with me sometime?

BROADWAY - Sara Teasdale

THIS is the quiet hour; the theaters
Have gathered in their crowds, and steadily
The million lights blaze on for few to see,
Robbing the sky of stars that should be hers.
A woman waits with bag and shabby furs,
A somber man drifts by, and only we
Pass up the street unwearied, warm and free,
For over us the olden magic stirs.
Beneath the liquid splendor of the lights
We live a little ere the charm is spent;
This night is ours, of all the golden nights,
The pavement an enchanted palace floor,
And Youth the player on the viol, who sent
A strain of music thru an open door.