Melancholia

I couldn't get much of a wink of sleep this night, which never fails to summon some kind of soft and depressed melancholy in me. Melancholy speaks English to me. Melancholy over years past and gone, over people i used to love, over friends with whom i lived. Over all those things coloured in soft ones, mildly turning into one's head when in that state between tireness and utter excitment.

Today, my melancholy focuses on some particular poems i used to read over the past few years, and whose rhymes are still haunting me sometimes, still crossing my mind in some fleeing epiphany, leaving only some sense of beauty, some sense of a life that could have been, like some other path i could have walked. Though there was none. They've just become parts of my life, something i could have lived, had i wanted to...

Let me express to you my nostalgy of those lives running behind and besides mine. I'll comment them - in French - some other day.

It was not death, for I stood up,

And all the Dead, be down –

It was not night, for all the Bells

Put out their Tongues, for Noon.

It was not Frost, for on my Flesh

I felt Siroccos – crawl –

Nor Fire – for just my Marble feet

Could keep a chancel cool –

And yet, it tasted, like them all,

The figures I have seen

Set orderly, for Burial

Reminded me, of mine –

As if my life were shaven,

And fitted into a frame,

And could not breathe without a key,

And’t was like Midnight, some –

When everything that ticked – has stopped –

And space stares all around –

Or grisly frosts – first Autumn morns,

Repeat that Beating ground

But, most, like Chaos – spotless – cool –

Without a chance, or spar –

Or even a report of Land

To justify – Despair

Emily Dickinson (1862 ?)

642

Me from Myself – to banish

Had I an Art –

Invincible my fortress

Unto my Heart –

And since Myself – assault Me

How have I peace

Except by subjugating

Conscious men?

And since we’re mutual Monarch

Haw this be

Except by Abdication

Me – of – Me.

Emily Dickinson (1862 ?)

I heard something break…

I thought I was strong enough

I thought I was well enough

And, most of all, I though that you, were enough

To save me from myself

Seems like you’re not

I must have been mistaken, somewhere,

Perhaps the part when I thought I could be saved at all

Perhaps the part when I thought there was a way out

Out of my breakdown

Out of sadness, loneliness tiredness and all the othersness…

Out of me…

Tonight, no positive ending, no happy conclusion at all

For all I want is weep my soul out

Till I’m dried out like an old apricot and shrink

Come back to the unconscious state

Well, I still can, but, in a way, I promised

Not exactly to you, but rather to me first,

The day I made me bleed, I decided I wanted to change

That suffering was not my path, that I wanted something else

And all those months later, look where I stand, to that very point,

Exuding tears,

Biting my lips…

No one is never gonna save me, Lily won’t, and even if you wanted,

You couldn’t do better,

And it’s a lie, when people say you can choose your life, do what you want, moan and regret, or turn your head and smile, because you can’t… you’re just glued to that shit,

And god knows that…

So well, just face it, face it and close your eyes, for nothing’s never gonna change while you’re not looking

And there’s nothing anyone can say, or do, to help

All you’ve left, all you will ever have left, as long as you want it, is hope

Hope that some day,

Hope that a miracle,

Hope that… anything,

Just hope, and fight your bloody way out, waiting for the unexpected…

Till something breaks out…

Just pray it’s not you…

And in case it should be… seize the day…

This, at least, won’t be robed.

‘But there is just…

That fear…

That I might spoil you as well… or lose you…

Saoirse MacCann, 1926.

Argument

Days that cannot bring you near

Or will not,

Distance trying to appear

Something more than obstinate,

Argue argue argue with me

Endlessly

Neither providing you less wanted nor less dear.

Distance: Remember all that land

Beneath the plane;

That coastline

Of dim beaches deep in sand

Stretching indistinguishably

All the way, all the way where my reasons end ?

Days: and think of all those cluttered instruments,

One to a fact,

Cancelling each other’s experience;

How they were like some hideous calendar

“Compliments of Never and Forever, Inc.”

The intimidating sound

Of these voices

We must separately find

Can and shall be vanquished:

Days and Distance disarrayed again

And gone

Both for good and from the gentle battleground.

E. Bishop, a cold spring.

Silent is the house – all are laid asleep

“He comes with western winds, with evening’s wandering eyes,

With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars;

Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire

And visions rise and change which kill me with desire-

Desire for nothing known in my maturer years

When joy grew mad with awe at counting future tears;

When, if my spirit’s sky was full of flashes warm,

I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunderstorm;

But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends;

The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends;

Mute music soothes my breast – unuttered harmony

That I could never dream till earth was lost to me.

Then dawns the Invisible, the Unseen its truth reveals;

My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels-

Its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found;

Measuring the gulf it stoops and dares the final bound!

Oh, dreadful is the check – intense the agony

When the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see

When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again,

The soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain!

Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;

The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;

And robed in fires of Hell, or bright with heavenly shine,

If it but herald Death, the vision is divine.”

Emily Jane Brontë, 1845

Rodin's day today. To me at least...