Charles Bukowski: The Laughing Heart

Charles Bukowski

American-German Poet

(August 16, 1920 — March 9, 1994)

In honor of the poet Charles Bukowski, who was born one hundred years ago today, I would like to share one of my favorite poems:

The Laughing Heart

 by Charles Bukowski

                                       your life is your life

                                       don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.

                                       be on the watch.

                                       there are ways out.

                                       there is light somewhere.

                                       it may not be much light but

                                       it beats the darkness.

                                       be on the watch.

                                       the gods will offer you chances.

                                       know them.

                                       take them.

                                       you can't beat death but

                                       you can beat death in life, sometimes.

                                       and the more often you learn to do it,

                                       the more light there will be.

                                       your life is your life.

                                       know it while you have it.

                                       you are marvelous

                                       the gods wait to delight

                                       in you.

AN AFTERNOON WITH SWALLOW-TAIL KITES

Swallow-tail Kite

I spent a little time yesterday afternoon watching five swallow-tail kites perform an aerial ballet above the trees and fields a few miles for my house.  The swallow-tail kite is the most elegant and graceful member of the raptor family, and its essence was beautifully described many years ago by John James Audubon in his famous book, The Birds of America (1828 —1837):

The flight of this elegant species of Hawk is singularly beautiful and protracted. It moves through the air with such ease and grace, that it is impossible for any individual, who takes the least pleasure in observing the manners of birds, not to be delighted by the sight of it whilst on wing.  Gliding along in easy flappings, it rises in wide circles to an immense height, inclining in various ways its deeply forked tail, to assist the direction of its course, dives with the rapidity of lightning, and, suddenly checking itself, reascends, soars away, and is soon out of sight.

Here are some of the other images I made yesterday, punctuated by some important observations about birds:

In order to see birds

it is necessary to become a part of the silence.

Robert Lynd

The very idea of a bird

is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet.

A bird seems to be at the top of the scale,

so vehement and intense is his life,

large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic,

his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

John Burroughs

Birds are indicators of the environment.

If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.

Roger Tory Peterson

Happy of happy though I be,

like them I cannot take possession of the sky,

mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there,

one of a mighty multitude whose way

and motion is a harmony and dance magnificent.

William Wordswoth

I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

E.E. Cummings

Illustration of Swallow-tailed Hawk

(now classified as Swallow-tailed Kite)

by

John James Audubon

The Birds of America

A TIME TO WAIT AND TRUST THE HOURS

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

With a corrupt and incompetent American president, a deadly pandemic that continues to ravage the country, and growing racial strife that often ends in violence, it is challenging to get through the days without falling into despair.  It helps, however, when I come across a fine piece of writing that captures my frustration and points to a way forward.  That was the case yesterday when I came across this Galway Kinnell poem in The Writer's Almanac.  I found the poem to be both wise and inspirational.  Perhaps it will resonate with others as well.

                                                                    Wait

                                                         by Galway Kinnell

                                Wait, for now.

                                Distrust everything if you have to.

                                But trust the hours.  Haven't they 

                                carried you everywhere, up to now?

                                Personal events will become interesting again.

                                Hair will become interesting.

                                Pain will become interesting.

                                Buds that open out of season will become interesting.

                                Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;

                                their memories are what give them

                                the need for other hands.  And the desolation

                                of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness

                                carved out of such tiny beings as we are

                                asks to be filled; the need

                                for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

                                Wait.

                                Don't go too early.

                                You're tired.  But everyone's tired.

                                But no one is tired enough.

                                Only wait a little and listen:

                                music of hair,

                                music of pain, 

                                music of looms weaving all our loves again.

                                Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,

                                most of all to hear

                                the flute of your whole existence,

                                rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.