Theft of the Stallion: Pantheist Wisdom of California Poet Robinson Jeffers

A Wild Stallion by Albert Bierstadt

"She endured, and to hasten the act she feigned desire; she had not
for long, except in dream, felt it.
Yesterday's drunkenness made him sluggish and exacting; she
saw, turning her head sadly,
The windows were bright gray with dawn; he embraced her still,
stopping to talk about the stallion.
...
The nerves and the flesh go by shadowlike, the limbs and the lives
shadowlike, these shadows remain, these shadows
To whom temples, to whom churches, to whom labors and wars,
visions and dreams are dedicate...
...
The child Christine waked when her mother left her
And lay half dreaming, in the half-waking dream she saw the
ocean come up out of the west
And cover the world, she looked up through clear water at the
tops of the redwoods." (Roan Stallion by Robinson Jeffers)

I had first become aware of the brilliant illuminations of Robinson Jeffers while listening to the Joseph Campbell lecture, Origins of Man and Myth. Where the poetry of Jeffers is invoked to describe that which makes us human, the affinity for "a divinely superfluous beauty." I also like his Natural Music. Some poetry enthusiasts consider Jeffers' work to be pantheist. In this regard, when I read Jeffers, I indulge in the right road to my relationship with the world, as with that of my mother. Every natural phenomenon calls to a supernatural truth, a divine magic, personified in the ambient face of seasonal change, the drastic force of the weather, or the inner passions ignited. A theme that started this blog currently recurs in my life, that being a recognition of the wayward allure of exceeding exposure to the night so often accompanying life in the northern climes. Yet, after reading such poetic masters as Robinson Jeffers, I can't help think that in the opaque cold of infinite nothingness, there is a mythopoeic field of space, love and silence; the kiss of a goddess in recline.   

More intellectual blogging on Jeffers & Dream

___________

I am a child amid the street market tianguis of Mexico, the grand bazaars of Egypt, and I brush past the singing troubadours of Italy. The air is wild, and my light coat loose. As I glide in and out of various merchants and their wares. I grab a handful of corn, pocket a cookie, and steal away with a sandwich wrap, to enjoy under a youthful sun.

A pretty fair woman by Ferdinand Wagner 

The subtle gate of theft and its freedoms beckon a cause bursting and boiling over within me. I am full with need. The essence of life is stolen away to the fair of justice and the game of life. Still, I scarf down my winnings in jubilee, and return for more. 

_________

A threshed sweat leaf, singled out over the billowing masses,
A high, overstated nocturne

Dreaming in workaholic shivering screams
That transform lightly into breath of song with male weeping

And her deserted lips struggle to purse
Over the citrus flesh of an Iberian mother

Calling for heart chains to unlock
Yet distressed and of unruly mind

She dresses timelessly with prophetic sophistry
Beyond the rasped vocal bead of the Roman elite

Prideful with elegant cheeses to smother their appetite
For lower slavery below the belt of animal sanity

excerpt from "Natural Pleasure"