BASIL

When I was a young thing, wanting to be a poet (why would I?  who would care?  who reads poetry anyway?) I met Gibbons Ruark.  I was a student at UNC-Greensboro and he took an interest in my work.  He and his wife Kay had two adorable little girls.   He wrote poetry about his family, his place,  his lost father.  Later he and his wife lived in Italy, thanks to a grant from which foundation I can't remember.   This poem from that time is one of my favorites.


We think of basil as Italian, but it orginated in India, as did so many of our herbs and spices.  Maybe basil is how Krishna seduced the gopis?  No matter.   Basil is definitely an erotic presence in this poem.


BASIL


There in Fiesole it was always fresh
In the laneway where the spry grandfather
Tipped you his smile in the earliest wash
Of sunlight, piling strawberries high and higher
In a fragile pyramid of edible air.
Light down the years, the same sun rinses your dark
Hair over and over with brightness where
You kneel to stir the earth among thyme and chard,
Rosemary and the gathering of mints,
The rough leaf picked for tea this summer noon,
The smooth one saved for pesto in the winter,
For the cold will come, though you turn to me soon,
Your eyes going serious green from hazel,
Your quick hand on my face the scent of basil.


----Gibbons Ruark


Oh, but I am not in Italy.   I am here at home in the Appalachian mountains, picking the last of our basil, having neglected it during weeks of worry about a parent's illness.  My hand are laved with the scent of basil.  The scent floats through the kitchen, the living room.  I rub my nose with it.  I rub it in my hair.   I would make ink from it and write my own poem with the scent of basil.

ToDAY'S POEM--BY Edward Thomas

(The Danube, with a few lights from cruisers and buildings reflected on it, as we walked back, tired, to our hotel, eager for supper and a good glass of wine. No owls, though. Only the rush of traffic. But in four days Budapest would be remembering the tragic events of the 1956 Revolt, with long processions of citizens carrying candles along the river.)

For this poem, perhaps some strong black tea? Or a glass of cognac? Anything to warm the bones on a winter night.

The Owl


Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

--Edward Thomas

Sent by Gibbons Ruark, who says:

http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/CITN/citn31.htm

And here, as a purely personal footnote, is a link to a feature on a site in Liverpool which includes my elegy for the beautiful Edward Thomas, published in my first book nearly 40 years ago. He has been one of my touchstones always. I have even had a correspondence with his grandson Edward C. Thomas, who is closely involved with the Edward Thomas Fellowship http://www.edward-thomas-fellowship.org.uk/ , one of the few "fellowships" that truly deserves its name.
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Here is the Gibbons Ruark poem from the site:


A Screech Owl’s Lament for Edward Thomas

Edward, the house is dark
As I begin to hear
What you bring back to me.
Though I am lonely now,
Nights had their loneliness
Before I found your name
In the lists of casualties.
Winter brought me a death
That shook my breath away
For a dear man lost
To anything I say
This side of silence.
Night on night the music
In me was an old hymn
Whose tune I could not carry.
Now though I am troubled
As the lost key rises
In a familiar air,
It would be worse to come
To an end of mourning.

Edward, the snow was deep
When you left for the war
And you and your Helen
Cooied to each other
Through the whitening fog
Till neither one could hear.
This evening in the dusk
Your voices came to me
In the gray dove’s call
Beyond the tulip tree.
For a time that low song
Lasted, and when it died
It made a silence
Deep enough to breathe.

But now in the cold dawn
Comes a sound like the sound
You always listened for
Where you fell in the trenches,
A shivering whistle
Like a small horse whinnying
As he falls from the sky.
The screech owl in the woods
Has left his secret branch
And glided toward me.
Now he floats overhead
Like a ghost of the dark
And lowers to me
His wild descending cry.


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