Red Letter Poem #279
Transmigration
Bach Cello Suite #1 in G Major: Prelude /
performed by Yo-Yo Ma
A cello is a tree singing.
Take his bow—drawn across
the crescent of hollow spruce
filament touching filament.
As I listen my body a tree’s body
vibrating and the wind’s hands
and the spruce shivers.
In the forest he caresses his cello.
Trill of a minor key under G major.
Sound under silence
and I understand—I think
how Pythagoras understood
the inaudible music of perpetual spheres
planets chanting. And you,
Red-winged Blackbird—
flame bursting from ebony wings
waiting atop the cattail—
sing your river of syllables.
––Anastasia Vassos
Synchronicity. The term was introduced by Carl Jung––the Swiss psychiatrist, prolific author, and founder of the school of analytical psychology. Referring to “meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect,” Jung’s “togetherness principle” was part of his larger cosmological vision, borrowing heavily from Chinese Taoist philosophy. Of course, you can argue that our meaning-making minds are always furiously at work, trying to impose order on this chaotic existence––that perhaps it’s only human consciousness that turns chance into revelation. But this morning, I’m thinking about interconnectedness and gratitude––here in our time of thanksgiving––and have a perfect poem, not to answer the question, but to help intensify that wondering. Anastasia Vassos has appeared once before in these electronic pages; but a few months ago, and thinking ahead to that familial red-letter day on the calendar, I decided to schedule her poem “Transmigration” to mark the holiday. To be honest, I’d completely forgotten about her epigraph at the start, saluting Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of the first of Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello––even when, last Friday, I attended the cellist’s return to Symphony Hall in Boston, playing all six Suites––a three-hour performance without intermission! It was an astonishing, challenging experience, not least because the celebrated musician was offering the Bach as part of a program he entitled We the People: Celebrating Our Shared Humanity, which he’s been performing all around the world. “In this time of turmoil and divisiveness,” Yo-Yo Ma wrote in the program, he was challenging us to think deeply about how our lives might be more intertwined than we know––and how music and art create those “communal spaces where we all feel safe and welcome.” And this morning I learned that Anastasia was in the audience as well.
Right from her poem’s opening line––“A cello is a tree singing.”–– we are being invited into Anastasia’s communal space where she is allowing herself to feel truly at-home on this blue-green sphere hurtling through darkness. “As I listen my body a tree’s body/ vibrating and the wind’s hands/ and the spruce shivers.”––intentionally omitting some of the punctuation that might separate subjects and objects, our minds from (what another poet once called) “the music of what happens.” Perhaps that is one of the main purposes of art: to allow us to stop (for a few moments) being contained within these mortal bodies, this circumscribed consciousness, and to experience something unimagined–– that “Sound under silence.” It seems that Bach grasped what Pythagoras and the red-winged blackbird also understood: that design (intentional or accidental) is woven through all we know, but that (and here’s that Taoist patriarch Lao Tzu chiming into the conversation) we must find some more intuitive way to apprehend what is everywhere present. “The tao that can be told,” begins the Tao Te Ching, “is not the eternal Tao/ The name that can be named/ is not the eternal Name.” So how are we to respond? Balance precariously atop the quivering cattail of our days, and sing our river of syllables as artfully and clearly as we can.
Anastasia Vassos is the author of two collections: Nostos (from Kelsay Books), and Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate Press). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. A speaker of three languages, Anastasia writes compellingly about the Greek-American diaspora, and how poetry is a vehicle for deepening understanding––within our lives and without. It’s clear that her psychic antennae are always up and scanning the airwaves for whatever vibration feels most compelling. And that, I’ve come to realize, is what I, too, am most thankful for: the possibility of deep awakening, always close at hand and, of course, those much-loved beings with whom I can share the experience. Forgive me, but now my mind can’t help but angle off in a tangent. In the last month or two, we have lost a number of fine poets––including, just this past weekend, the unimaginably buoyant spirit that was Charles Coe, with whom I served on the board of the venerable New England Poetry Club. Somehow Anastasia’s fine poem has allowed me to feel such deep gratitude for all we are fortunate enough to know in our lives––and to sense the magnitude of the loss when we must let go. Unless there is no loss but simply transmigration into something else. What would it feel like, I wonder, to entertain that possibility for, say, the duration of a walk in the woods, the song of a blackbird, the arpeggiated chords of Bach’s masterpiece––or, Dear Reader, for the time it takes to peruse a letter from a distant friend?
The Red Letters
* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:
steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com
* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:
https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices
and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
http://dougholder.blogspot.com
* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on BlueSky
@stevenratiner.bsky.social
and on Twitter
@StevenRatiner
All Red Letter installments and videos will be archived at:
No comments:
Post a Comment