Hans Holbein, RGM. KGT

A Song for My Daughter

I too have walked and prayed for my daughter,

Through storms and ages and the unmouthed mystery

Of unfolding acts brought out through blood

Or what neurons fired we call mind,

Through that fiat lux that fixes our fates in place of will,

Then secured under a tethered tent of taut words.

When you were with Ama in Delhi, your words

Gave her what anyone would hope a son or daughter

Would give, a testament she’d lived, a will

Bequeathing the image and sounds, the mystery

Of somehow sneaking in to the foreign mind

Of another and feeding a near ghost needed blood.

Odysseus heard the dark prophecy drawn by blood,

Tiresias freely forced to utter  ‘lose all companions’, words

That exceeded the ability of even a metamorphic mind

To mend or comprehend, but not Mnemosyne, the daughter

Who forgets nothing, then lends any life its mystery

By fogging the pane of glass between the way and the will.

Radical innocence and a self-delighting soul will

Come into conflict with each other through blood,

Between generations and genetics, the mixed mystery

Yeats missed in his terribly beguiling words

That sing a Siren’s song to his silent daughter,

Offering instead his vision within his opinionated mind.

You speak and write beauty, a quality of mind

To replace WB’s wish to limit the image and will

Through custom and ceremony of his daughter;

His love’s hands, stained and restrained by blood

Shed, spilled and quelled until his words

Framed them formally within poetic mystery.

I don’t have the gifts to unveil the mystery

Of your richly growing laurel tree, your mind

Singing to yourself and to us, each time your words,

Rooted, branched and unfolding still, will

Sound and surpass the limits of our blood,

A scarecrowed father and his Ovidian daughter.

Write the mystery of won’t and Heaven’s will,

 Through Grace and a mind borne by blood,

 Transmute my dull words cherishing my daughter.

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A Prayer for My Daughter

By William Butler Yeats

I ONCE more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory’s Wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind,         5 Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed; And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gloom that is in my mind. II I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour, And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,         10 And under the arches of the bridge, and scream In the elms above the flooded stream; Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come Dancing to a frenzied drum         15 Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. III May she be granted beauty, and yet not Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught, Or hers before a looking-glass; for such, Being made beautiful overmuch,         20 Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness, and maybe The heart-revealing intimacy That chooses right, and never find a friend. IV Helen, being chosen, found life flat and dull,         25 And later had much trouble from a fool; While that great Queen that rose out of the spray, Being fatherless, could have her way, Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man. It’s certain that fine women eat         30 A crazy salad with their meat Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone. V In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift, but hearts are earned By those that are not entirely beautiful.         35 Yet many, that have played the fool For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise; And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.         40 VI May she become a flourishing hidden tree, That all her thoughts may like the linnet be, And have no business but dispensing round Their magnanimities of sound; Nor but in merriment begin a chase,         45 Nor but in merriment a quarrel. Oh, may she live like some green laurel Rooted in one dear perpetual place. VII My mind, because the minds that I have loved, The sort of beauty that I have approved,         50 Prosper but little, has dried up of late, Yet knows that to be choked with hate May well be of all evil chances chief. If there’s no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind         55 Can never tear the linnet from the leaf. VIII An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,         60 Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind? IX Considering that, all hatred driven hence,         65 The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is heaven’s will, She can, though every face should scowl         70 And every windy quarter howl Or every bellows burst, be happy still. X And may her bridegroom bring her to a house Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious; For arrogance and hatred are the wares         75 Peddled in the thoroughfares. How but in custom and in ceremony Are innocence and beauty born? Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn, And custom for the spreading laurel tree.         80