Moonlight Musings

Sometimes when it comes time to write, I’m in more of a contemplative mode, yearning to listen instead of speak. Today is one of those times. So I hope you can follow me on a bit of a journey through some of the poetry and music that’s speaking to me today.

I’m still thinking about darkness and light, as all kinds of seasons are shifting around us. James Baldwin seems to have been intimate with darkness and speaks to it profoundly.

One discovers the light in darkness. That is what darkness is for. But everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith…I know we often lose…and how often one feels that one cannot start again. And yet, on pain of death, one can never remain where one is. The light. The light. One will perish without the light…For nothing is fixed, forever, and forever, and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have…The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. And the moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Baldwin’s words about faith reminded me of a David Whyte poem that speaks to the tenuous nature of our faith in the darkness.

I want to write about faith,

about the way the moon rises

over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,

slowly becoming that last curving and impossible

sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself

I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,

like a new moon, slender and barely open,

be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

Yesterday I had a spiritual experience listening to Debussy’s “Claire de Lune.” Little did I know that the song is based on a poem with the same title by Paul Verlaine. Translated from French by Norman R. Shapiro, here’s “Moonlight.”

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,

Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,

Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be

Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

Singing in minor mode of life’s largesse

And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite

Reluctant to believe their happiness,

And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,

The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,

Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees,

And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming–

Slender jet-fountains–sob their ecstasies.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes and listen to the musical version. It speaks to places words can’t go. As a special treat, I’m posting a version played by Lydia Kavina on the theremin. But if you prefer something more traditional, check it out on piano or violin.

11 comments

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  1. that the music of our childhoods will always speak directly to our hearts and souls. Given that I was raised in the church, there is music that, to this day, moves me emotionally, even when I have discarded the dogma.

    This morning I woke up needing to hear this song. And who better than Mahalia Jackson to bring it to me.

    • Robyn on December 14, 2008 at 17:42

    …we had vastly different childhoods. 🙂

    Of course, I grew up in the era of the transistor radio:  TI/Regency put one out at the end of 1954 and Totsuko came out with their “Sony” soon after.  And they had to fill up those airwaves.

    Robyn

    • kj on December 14, 2008 at 17:49

    once again, captures in language what i feel inside.  

    several years ago i was in the countryside, at night, driving along a seldom used road.

    the moon rise was spectacular, i pulled over to the side and wrote this:  (pivot word is “sun” “son”)

    15th Night

    It’s easy to believe in god

    when the moon looks like this;

    thin host rising low, in the East,

    tinged by the blood of the sun.

    • kj on December 14, 2008 at 18:07

    essays, which i’ve been reading, but not logging in and reccing or ponying.

    grew up with a kazillion aunts and uncles (38 first cousins on one side!) and a few weeks ago my godmother died.  that left two, one aunt, one uncle.  now my uncle is dying.  he was/is our Uncle Teddy of this grand extensive clan.

    so i’m quiet these days.  i’ve already let go of all of the people, the past, the tribal ties.  whatever is in the genes plays its own tune and i’m just happy to hear it now and then.

    but i’m stocking the larder.  that’s where i see the safety issue playing out.  major stocking.  whole chickens cooking in crock pots (i’ve never cooked a whole chicken in my life!) hundreds of cans of beans and black-eye peas (and i should have gone to bags not cans, but i’m a city girl).  larder stocking.  i could feed all of dd if i had to.

    this season has revealed itself as quiet.  

  2. this essay brings to mind

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