'No Romance Involved With All That Now' - Fog Drenched With Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'The Terrible Sonnets' Discovering Heitor Villa-Lobos Poem by Warren Falcon

Awakened to this this morning, Bachianas Brasileiras No.1**

I remember the first time I heard it - in college, thanks to Elaine, a library copy and a suspended moment at the dorm window watching fog pour up from a deep Tennessee valley, socked in again, which often happened on Lookout Mountain, weeks of thick late Autumn fog, gray white-out cloud-light leaning into the un-lit quarter, philosophy books stacked, Pre-Socratics, Church History, Clement, Polycarp, Gnostic wind howling just beyond the pane, the un-modulated whistle of said insistent storm playing the Castle In The Clouds in fierce Sinai song, Bachianas Brasileiras, No.1, conducted by Villa Lobos himself, nothing short of revelation that my too young to be so weary self had no idea existed but upon hearing within pinnacled gale, then, nothing could prevail against my landing oriented-at-last by mostly cellos and fog spinning in the Brazilian folk rhythms I would spend my entire life descending toward, stumbling forward, misstepping after, 'my kingdom for a macaw, ' become a slack-jawed shamanista entranced by dirt, green overhang in forest din, daily feathered by birds all kinds in twining limbs above.


No romance involved with all that now, I am an almost old man more rapidly untangling string by string, out-cello-ed in the end, and yet again, by an innate longing to land, go under, dwell within, peaking out, over strung, finally done with Polycarp and company, at one with my Hopkins book still, sufficed -

Terrible Sonnets to accidental Grace.

Rendered, I yield.

I am peeled layer by layer to pomes-penny-each
glottal stops of 'soul, self, come, poor Jackself, '
be advised once more, 'jaded, let be' -

while not forgetting to go with Lobos rhythms,
leave 'comfort root room' finally escaping
John Calvin's dire and doom -

'let joy size At God knows when to God knows what;
whose smile's not wrung, see you'

and raise you One.


******

The sonnet entire, #47, by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

MY own heart let me have more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst 's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.




**Copy and paste this link to hear Heitor Villa Lobos Bachianas Braseleiras No.1:

https: //www.youtube.com/watch? v=fL3rH0tCsJg


***Copy and paste this link to hear Laia Falcon, my cousin in Spain, sing Bachianas Brasileiras No.5:

https: //soundcloud.com/a-impulso-concertante/laia-falcon-canta-bachianas-brasileiras-n5-danca-de-villa-lobos