"montaigne" poems
I keep collecting books I know
I'll never, never read;
My wife and daughter tell me so,
And yet I never head.
"Please make me," says some wistful tome,
"A wee bit of yourself."
And so I take my treasure home,
And tuck it in a shelf.
And now my very shelves complain;
They jam and over-spill.
They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?"
"some day," I say, "I will."
So book by book they plead and sigh;
I pick and dip and scan;
Then put them back, distrest that I
Am such a busy man.
Now, there's my Boswell and my Sterne,
my Gibbon and Defoe;
To savour Swift I'll never learn,
Montaigne I may not know.
On Bacon I will never sup,
For Shakespeare I've no time;
Because I'm busy making up
These jingly bits of rhyme.
Chekov is caviare to me,
While Stendhal makes me snore;
Poor Proust is not my cup of tea,
And Balzac is a bore.
I have their books, I love their names,
And yet alas! they head,
With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James,
My Roster of Unread.
I think it would be very well
If I commit a crime,
And get put in a prison cell
And not allowed to rhyme;
Yet given all these worthy books
According to my need,
I now caress with loving looks,
But never, never read.
3k
Éloge de Monsieur de Montaigne
(Dédié à Jean-Pierre)
Toi seigneur de Montaigne, au si beau nom d'Eyquem
que nul amateur de Bordeaux ne saurait négliger.
Tu fus l'ami de La Boétie et un sage joyeux,
Tu vécus en ton château, dont l'une des tours rondes,
contenait une bibliothèque fournie.
Toi, qui faisait cultiver ce vin de Bordeaux,
qui sied au palais et plait tant aux anglais.
Cher Montaigne ayant étudié à Bordeaux,
au collège de Guyenne,
Tu vécus en un temps empoisonné
par les guerres de religion et ses sombres fureurs.
Temps affreux ou l'homme égorgeait l'homme,
qui ne partageait pas sa même lecture de la Bible.
Et dire que nous avions cru, ces temps-là, révolus !
C'est peut-être ce qui te poussa à choisir l'école stoïcienne,
Bien que par ton tempérament et ta vie.
Tu fus beaucoup plus proche des bonheurs de Lucrèce.
Tu fus, un long temps, magistrat au Parlement de Bordeaux,
bien que les chicaneries du Droit t'eussent vite lassées,
et plus encore, la cruauté de ses modes de preuve.
et cet acharnement infini des plaideurs,
à n'en jamais finir, à faire rebondir les procès
que tant d’énergie vaine te semblait pure perte.
Mais tu voulais être utile et l'égoïsme étroit de l' «otium»,
choquait ta conscience.
Tu eus un ami cher, Prince de Liberté et de distinction,
Etienne de la Boétie, qui réfléchit avec profondeur,
sur les racines de la tyrannie en nos propres faiblesses.
Et de cette amitié, en recherchant les causes,
Tu conclus et répondit ainsi :
«Parce que c’était lui, parce que c’était moi»
Révélant ainsi que la quintessence du bonheur de vivre
luit au cœur de cette amitié dont nous sommes,
à la fois, le réceptacle et l’offrande.
Cher Michel de Montaigne, je voulais,
te saluer ici et te faire savoir en quelle estime
Je te tiens avec tes «Essais» d’une bienveillante sagesse
Qui font songer aux meilleurs vins mûris en barriques de chêne
Et à ces cognacs qui éveillent l’Esprit et les sens,
Même lorsque l’hiver nous pèse et nous engourdit
Je voulais aussi te dire que de ton surnom
J’ai nommé Jean-Pierre qui te ressemble si fort
Et apporte une douce ironie à mes passions tumultueuses.
Paul Arrighi
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 6:16 AM UTC
Renaissance you say,
and my heart sinks.
Too much and not enough
in the book, by the book,
play by the book, play
by the rules.
What Do I Know,
Montaigne said (allegedly)
And we all look and
say Nothing.
Jul 1, 2012
Jul 1, 2012 at 2:18 PM UTC
AS SURE AS SHOES IS SHOES
out of the interlocking needles
a sock
grows
hanging from its needles
the sock
a chrysalis
Auntie Marge's socks
as if a rainbow
had grown two feet
Auntie Marge's
infamous rainbow socks
flying off for Christmas
Paris..New York...Termonfeckin
nieces nephews children grandchildren
all wearing rainbow socks
the half grown sock
tick of a grandfather clock
wait for the mourners to return
her needles in a cigar tin
standing to
attention
sticking their heads
out of the bin
some large crochet needles
"As sure as shoes is shoes
I kept warm the feet
of this here family!"
clock cuts up Time
into little bits
so that the humans can understand
***
Her grandfather was a cobbler and would always say this whatever the situation. People would always need shoes...although the family of the cobbler often did without as shoes is what put food on the table.
But who is wurs shod, than the shoemakers wyfe, With shops full of newe shapen shoes all hir lyfe?
[1546 J. Heywood Dialogue of Proverbs i. xi. E1V]
All languages have same sounding adages...whatever the profession.
Les cordonniers sont les plus mal chaussés.
with a first quote by Montaigne : Quand nous veoyons un homme mal chaussé, nous disons que ce n'est pas merveille s'il est chaussetier in
In German:
Die Kinder des Schusters haben die schlechtesten Schuhe.
In Spanish (En casa de herrero, cuchillo de palo "In a blacksmith's home, knives are wooden").
In Chinese "the lady who sells fans fans herself with her hands",
In Arabic, "at the potter's house water is served in a broken jug".
***
Her grandfather was a cobbler and would always say this whatever the situation. People would always need shoes...although the family of the cobbler often did without as shoes is what put food on the table.
"Chomh cinnte is bróga atá bróga!" as she would say in her Irish.
Her grandfather would shorten it to" is bróga atá bróga!" or" shoes is shoes."
Feb 12, 2024
Feb 12, 2024 at 7:18 AM UTC
Man is certainly stark mad
He cannot make a flea
Yet he can make
Gods by the dozen
Wrote Montaigne.
But surely man can not be wholly bad
If he can make a cup of tea
With which to slake
A heav’nly cousin’s
Throat-dry pain?
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 1:40 PM UTC
Ese alto caballero americano
cierra el volumen de Montaigne y sale
en busca de otro goce que no vale
menos, la tarde que ya exalta el llano.
Hacia el hondo poniente y su declive,
hacia el confín que ese poniente dora,
camina por los campos como ahora
por la memoria de quien esto escribe.
Piensa: Leí los libros esenciales
y otros compuse que el oscuro olvido
no ha de borrar. Un dios me ha concedido
lo que es dado saber a los mortales.
Por todo el continente anda mi nombre;
no he vivido. Quisiera ser otro hombre.
621
Love first appears as you
window shop the quiet streets of
Hogansville , Georgia with a friend , quite
convinced your on the Avenue Montaigne in Paris , France ...
Apr 16, 2016
Apr 16, 2016 at 1:08 PM UTC
I’d like to believe I’ve known you over many lifetimes.
I’d like to believe I met you in New York City, as you browsed through records on a cold 1962 evening.
Perhaps in Paris at the end of the war.
Tinker parades marching down the “Avenue Montaigne”.
Perhaps you were standing on the corner demanding they “don’t forget Catalonia!”.
Maybe I smiled and accepted a pamphlet and remembered those nostalgic hands.
Maybe then they reminded me of summers in Grimaud and not Christmas in Mexico.
Apr 19, 2018
Apr 19, 2018 at 3:31 PM UTC
Dear Readers
I am no philosopher, nor had I taken any course in philosophy.
Furthermore, I have read very little though there are some philosophers who are close to my heart---Montaigne, Marcus Aurelius, Epicurus, Seneca, Epictectus, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus and a few more.
However, I have plunged myself into the writings of Confucius, Lao-Tze (author of Tao Te-Ching) and his followers', Buddhism and Zen.
I never planned to write this 'life series'-- after having written a few,
I couldn't stop. But these were not 'forced' thoughts--it's as though they had been latent somewhere in the labyrinth of my mind--in incubation- waiting for the right time to hatch.
A writer must have honesty and integrity. I did not have a book in front of me so that I could copy an idea and then ventured to restate in my own words--all the ideas I have expressed are my own.
It's intrinsically me thinking about life and my own experiences
and my way of perceiving things.
They had been written at home, in the tram, in the library, in coffee-joints--even mentally when I had my regular walks.
No doubt, some would not agree with what I have said and I am not the least offended or unhappy in any way as such---I welcome their comments so that I could re-examine what I had expressed. I would even learn from them.
I realised right from the start that I could inadvertently stir up a hornet's nest but I was prepared to take that risk, even to the extent of
being challenged or ridiculed.
No one looks at life in the same way as we are all unique. At the same time, none has the monopoly of knowledge or wisdom--not even the brightest among us. Life is such that we could only understand some parts of it with most being unknowable. There are limits to our understanding but we don't throw our hands in the air and give up-
we are thinking creatures and are never content to stay stagnant-
it's in our nature to explore, to reach out, to understand and try to make sense of things that matter or our life would have little meaning or value- we have to push frontiers and test our limits to be able to come to our own.
It's in the light of the above that I have marshalled enough courage to
write this 'life-series'.
I sincerely hope that readers would come forward to talk to me.
My best wishes to all of you.
4th December 2017, Melbourne
Dec 3, 2017
Dec 3, 2017 at 8:56 AM UTC
ATARAXIA
Felis Catus blinks
"The Tories think
( I didn't know they could do that)
we are not sentient beings
or that we do not feel pain?
Only shows they have no brains!
'Unheimleich' as Heidegger
would have observed!"
she purrs...delicately...cleans herself.
"Your philosophy is
your fail-osophy...
you simply think too much.
Think instead of do
and you can't do without thinking.
Poor poor you!
Be like me.
Just be.
Be.
Only when you play
with me do you
escape being human.
I am your distraction
from the prison of your self
just stop your self thinking
live in this
instant
no before or after.
Ah 'the great chain of being'
placing your self at the top
oh so smugly superior.
Our feline-osophy
would be if at all
not to have a philosophy.
As Montaigne put it
so succinctly you 'needed
a mind departing distraction"
to deal with your consciousness
and awareness of death.
And I my friend - am it!
Now if you can be
a good chap and feed me
that can be my fee
for talking you through
your all too human dilemmas
and you may yet achieve
(perhaps)ataraxia
but until then or when we cats
learn to peel the foil
from Kitty Kat Salmon
and so leap to the top
of the 'great chain of being."
Felis Catus
will rule
over all.
***
ATARAXIA....a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety; tranquility.
Nov 24, 2020
Nov 24, 2020 at 3:30 PM UTC