True Love at Last -- D H Lawrence

Guest poem sent in by Sarah Korah

(Poem #1805) True Love at Last The handsome and self-absorbed young man looked at the lovely and self-absorbed girl and thrilled. The lovely and self-absorbed girl looked back at the handsome and self-absorbed young man and thrilled. And in that thrill he felt: Her self-absorption is even as strong as mine. I must see if I can't break through it And absorb her in me. And in that thrill she felt: His self-absorption is even stronger than mine! What fun, stronger than mine! I must see if I can't absorb this Samson of self-absorption. So they simply adored one another and in the end they were both nervous wrecks, because in self-absorption and self-interest they were equally matched. -- D H Lawrence

Here comes D.H.Lawrence's take on true love... in the land of the self
obsessed :) This quirky, irreverent counterpoint to True Love makes the case
that there is something essentially selfless about love; or it is not the
real thing.

Sarah Korah

[Martin adds]

In a lighter - or, at least, friendler - vein, I was reminded of Lawrence's
playfully romantic "Intimates" [Poem #110] - it is interesting to note the
superficial similarity of theme, but wide disparity of intent, between the
two poems.

[Links]

Wislawa Szymborska's beautiful True Love poem can be read at
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/694.html

Minstrels has more D.H.Lawrence poems at
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1282.html
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/77.html

Snake -- D H Lawrence

Guest poem sent in by singh_abs2000

(Poem #1282) Snake A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me. He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough And rested his throat upon the stone bottom, And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness, He sipped with his straight mouth, Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently. Someone was before me at my water-trough, And I, like a second-comer, waiting. He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do, And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do, And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment, And stooped and drank a little more, Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking. The voice of my education said to me He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous. And voices in me said, If you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth? Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured. And yet those voices: If you were not afraid, you would kill him! And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth. He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black, Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream, Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face. And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned. I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter. I think it did not hit him, But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste, Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front, At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination. And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education. And I thought of the albatross, And I wished he would come back, my snake. For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again. And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness. -- D H Lawrence

          (From: Birds, Beasts and Flowers)

This is one of those poems that leaves its impressions deep in ones mind (I
am still haunted by that silent shimering serene snake)...the fact that it
also happens to be written by D. H.  Lawrence who voies some fundamental
issues that I deeply feel about makes this poem doubly precious!

The most striking aspect of this poem is the sense of tight conflict that it
evokes. Man vs. (his own?) nature, mystery vs. conformity, cool waters vs.
afternoon heat, Satan vs. Adam. The biblical connotations are pretty
obvious, and in his typical iconoclastic way Lawrence flouts the heavens by
finally acknowledging this alternative Lord of life.

Those who have read and are familiar with Lawrence's work would be able to
see the oft repeated motif of sexual and mystic repression forced by society
and its instinctual (re)awakening.  Needless to say the poem abounds with
freudian symbols; the snake, the trough, the hole in the earth...In fact the
poem is so cogent that when studying it we spent hours on each line!

Despite all the literary paraphernalia that often goes with Lawrence there
is something deeply human about his work. At some level we have all
experienced the sense of confusion, intrigue, awe, lust, anger, guilt (The
albatross is a reference to the "Rime of the Mariner" by Coleridge where a
sailor brings misfortune upon his ship by shooting the bird), shame and
ultimately sadness and wistfulness (...come back, my snake) that overcomes
us whenever we come face to face with our 'deeper' darker beings (what after
all are the origins of the original sin?)...

Well! Who else but Lawrence for the closing statement:

"If there is a serpent of secret and shameful desire in my soul, let me not
beat it out of my consciousness with sticks. It will lie beyond, in the
marsh of the so-called subconsciousness, where I cannot follow it with my
sticks. Let me bring it to the fire to see what it is. For a serpent is a
thing created. It has its own raison d'etre. In its own being it has beauty
and reality. Even my horror is a tribute to its reality. And I must admit
the genuineness of my horror, accept it, and not exclude it from my
understanding. . . .  There is a natural marsh in my belly, and there the
snake is naturally at home. Shall he not crawl into my consciousness? Shall
I kill him with sticks the moment he lifts his flattened head on my sight?
Shall I kill him or pluck out the eye which sees him? None the less, he will
swarm within the marsh. Then let the serpent of living corruption take his
place among us honourably. . . . For the Lord is the lord of all things, not
of some only. And everything shall in its proportion drink its own draught
of life."

(p. 235 DHL: Life into Art by Keith Sagar/University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1985)

There are plenty of online discussions of this classic poem. One of
my favorites is:
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1252.html

Intimates -- D H Lawrence

(Poem #110) Intimates Don't you care for my love? she said bitterly. I handed her the mirror, and said: Please address these questions to the proper person! Please make all requests to head-quarters! In all matters of emotional importance please approach the supreme authority direct! -- So I handed her the mirror. And she would have broken it over my head, but she caught sight of her own reflection and that held her spell bound for two seconds while I fled. -- D H Lawrence

I'm not precisely sure why this is a poem, but I'll take Lawrence's word for
it <g>. It certainly made me laugh out loud - lovely buildup (complete with
exclamation marks) and a wonderfully unexpected last line.

m.

Bavarian Gentians -- D H Lawrence

Forwarding Thomas's poems while he's away...

(Poem #77) Bavarian Gentians Not every man has gentians in his house in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas. Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark darkening the daytime, torch-like, with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom, ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze, black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue, giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off light, lead me then, lead the way. Reach me a gentian, give me a torch! let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark and Persephone herself is but a voice or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom, among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and her groom. -- D H Lawrence

Published posthumously.
From 'Last Poems', 1932.

Lawrence's 'Bavarian Gentians' hypnotizes the reader with its rolling,
flowing sounds, its gently rising and falling cadences, its almost
soporific repetitions... as the soft and sweeping syllables wrap
themselves around you, you become entranced, slipping into the world of
"Pluto's dark-blue daze", falling under the spell of the gently spoken
words...

thomas.

[Commentary]

This poem, written close to Lawrence's death, is much more meaningful if
you know what a Bavarian Gentian looks like. It's a blue tubular flower
and was one of the symbols that Lawrence claimed as his  own, along with
the phoenix, dark sun, and rainbow symbols.

Here he relates the flower with the Persephone myth. Persephone, a
daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was abducted by Pluto, King of Hades. For
six months of the year she must reign as Queen alongside Pluto but is
allowed to return to the surface for the other six. Persephone carries
the flower torch-like into the underground to light her way to Pluto's
chambers. Or rather it is Pluto's "blue-smoking darkness" which
overtakes the light of day, her consciousness. "Black lamps from the
halls of Dis." It is Death which has come, and the flower acts as guide
into the "sightless realm." But like the phoenix, Persephone will once
again be resurrected for she is a symbol of springtime rebirth. And
although Lawrence's body is dead, his consciousness arises again each
time we read his words.

In a letter to Ernest Collings dated Jan. 17, 1913, Lawrence writes:
    "I conceive a man's body as a kind of flame, like a candle flame,
forever upright and yet flowing: and the intellect is just the light
that is shed on to the things around. And I am not so much concerned
with the things around--which is really mind--but with the mystery of
the flame forever flowing, coming God knows how from out of practically
nowhere, and being itself, whatever there is around it, that it lights
up. We have got so ridiculously mindful, that we never know that we
ourselves are anything--we think there are only the objects we shine
upon. And there the poor flame goes on burning ignored, to produce this
light. And instead of chasing the mystery in the fugitive, half-lighted
things outside us, we ought to look at ourselves, and say 'My God, I am
myself!'"
                    (p. 563-64/The Portable D.H. Lawrence/Penguin)

This is what's known as Lawrence's "belief in the blood" speech. I
quoted the second half of the speech first because it's important to
understand that Lawrence wasn't so much anti-intellectual as he was
anti-self-conscious. He was himself both self-conscious and
intellectual, and therefore knew that these things came at a high price.
So here then is the first part of that speech:

"My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser
than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood
feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit
and a bridle."

The blue gentian, the "forked flame" which plays a part at the end of
Lady Chatterley's Lover, is also the body of man. It is our bodies that
wilt and die, drawing us to Pluto's chambers in the "marriage of the
living dark." We are all virgins to Death. And the reason not everyone
has "gentians in his house in soft September" is because not everyone
knows how to be truly alive in the flesh. Not everyone knows how to
"achieve your own beauty as the flowers do" -- existing instead in a
kind of living-death so that the "nuptials" are replaced with apathy.
Lawrence relished the contrast between life and death, day and night,
male and female. It is the "marriage of the living dark" at which he is
"wedding guest."

    -- Tina Ferris, from the WWW.