BY JAN HAAG

ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS

POETRY + ESSAYS + MUSIC + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO

The Desolation Poems

Poetic Forms Used in English

#1 ACROSTIC II

7-18-97

To be so desolate for poetry! -- Hear my lone call from seas beyond the sea! Earth house me, heaven nurture me, come rains, Decide my fate. O wind, destroy the pains Endured, the careful plans for rectitude Sought high, or crept upon as light and rude. Once writ, twice sold for practice, it is not Less easily, precisely crafted, wrought, Addressed, sent out, purchased, remembered, told, Told twice for lack or love of form. Each mold Intrinsically, hermetically misfiled Over or under complications mild, Nonce-formed, perfected, more than anyone can Peruse conveniently or keep in mind. O do it, just do it! Try Zen, try pen Embracing image and sense. Forget. Just ken Most gently what you can. Life is not so short, So circumscribed as poetry's last forte.

#2 HIR A THODDAID

7-19-97

#3 TELESTICH

7-20-97

Post concert, my heart soars opiated, hosts higher enchantment, conceives Lethe dreams, calls up desire, drums danger. Outcries team through my passages, temples, and go coon hunting beneath dark thoughts of cruel boons granted by guru, wise without Sa. Rings round the small, great eyes gleaming, protect king prowling interstices, nobled koi fish, sturdy from all tense drama, echo wishes -- fearful as all becomes music known.

#4 DOUBLE GLOSE

7-21-97

"When have I asked you
for a sop for my soup? I don't want gifts
from you. I want you to be ready
for the gifts I give."

-- Rumi, Sheba's Gifts to Solomon

#5 COMMON MEASURE

7-22-97

#6 CHOKA

7-23-98

#7 KATAUTA

7-25-97

#8 PANTOUM

7-26-97

The wild blue sky shelters the awful sun, the grey mud flats consume the endless land, the desolation rules nothingness, none but terrifying creatures try to stand. The grey mud flats consume the endless land, no trees or grasses blow nor shift the wind but terrifying creatures try to stand against the storm, the sand. The death's head grinned. No trees or grasses blow nor shift the wind or dance nor fill eternity with light against the storm, the sand. The death's head grinned, its hollow eyes quite empty, like the night. The desolation rules nothingness, none, the wild blue sky shelters the awful sun.

#9 KYRIELLE

7-27-97

The great oceans of ancient times yawn wide their jaws, their mountains mist, the landscape, flat, dry and sand, mimes eternity's shores, death's great fist. The sun born amid chaos shines through the sunset pass, verdant, kissed by unimagineable lines, eternity's shores, death's great fist. Reverberating like a gong behind monumental rocks, hissed great snakes, green and bright blue, along eternity's shores, death's great fist. Freedom! the soul cries gliding by through the rocks looking for the gist of life's charm that might justify eternity's shores, death's great fist. Tears fall as the boundless beauty of nothingness sheers high, a twist, a fine, spare elegance to see eternity's shores, death's great fist.

#10 REDONDILLA

7-27-97

Austerity rings noble Spain's Islamic past, and opulence crowns palaces, gardens immense, quite paradisical as Jain's fine filigree in stone with veins of music caught in temples dense with figures blithe as weather vanes of marble's white impermanence. Sun strikes the land, announces pains in payment stark, ravished, which wanes and cries its own inconsequence asks its stone-heart for recompense.

#11 HAIKU II

7-29-97

#12 SICILIAN TERCET/TRIPLET

7-29-97

The mountains, gray and quite transparent, drift one over, under, through each other, high above the desert salt and sandy cliff.

#13 ENGLISH SONNET (Shakespearean)

8-6-97

When memories begin to rise from my sonambulant and sleepy brain, twilight clears clouds that seem to gather to defy the sun, the warmth, the life, the dance, the bright blue beauty of a dying summer's lore. When stars begin to wink new fears rise up always new fears. Does God want terror more or humans' pitiful love in a cup with golden etchings commemorating the memorable few times when God's kind smile outweighed his wrath? Is God mean and blaming small, frightened and as full of fear, nay vile as creatures born of his loneliness, born in his image, born cringing, forlorn.

#14 SOMONKA

8-6-97

I will never know when you declare you love me why you do not show me your face, nor abide in my presence, nor touch my hand. Love makes the heart grow. Love answers all questions asked of itself. Love smiles in a heart free and alone. Love is your thought of my love.

#15 SEDOKA

8-6-97

In time's history today is eight/ six/ nine seven. In eighty-six I died, in ninety-seven you, too, left, leaving our daughter an Earth orphaned, free, alone.

#16 CINQUAIN

8-9-97

#17 HYMNAL OCTAVE

1-18-98

Alive today, alive tonight I'll walk across the bridge I'll see the dark, I'll see the light I'll climb upon the ridge and through my tears I'll know your plight while round me ride the vig- ilante winds, the rocking kite, the storms upon the height. O come again my love, my fear, today, tonight I'll wait upon the high wild ridge, the bier of thought, of hope, of fate. And when the Gods decide to hear my plea, my hope, the dat - um left by you, the wind will veer the sky, the earth will wait.

#19 SHORT MEASURE

1-20-98

This morning, lying still -- at peace at last, no thought lay waiting in my head, no fear no claim, no ghastly "ought," and nothing cold or damp to rob my heart of cheer -- I grew serene. As flowers bloom, as lilacs coax a tear of sheer mad joy, I lay so still, so soft, so sweet, as if the spring had come to be with me in winter's sleet.

#20 RHUPUNT

1-21-98

At dark of night when the high flight of birds is right you see shadows against the sun as if a pun on light and dun were often foes with the blue moon rising too soon above the dune all luminous, all grand and bright a glowing kite across the site quite numinous. Birds caw in fun clouds above run and blush to shun the dying light. And so it goes, red as the rose the last light flows into the night.

#20 RHUPUNT (Long line)

1-21-98

At dark of night when the high flight of birds is right you see shadows against the sun as if a pun on light and dun were often foes with the blue moon rising too soon above the dune all luminous, all grand and bright a glowing kite across the site quite numinous. Birds caw in fun clouds above run and blush to shun the dying light. And so it goes, red as the rose, the last light flows into the night.

#21 QASIDA

1-22-98

To wake at night and see the light surrounding me as if in flight glittering bits of angel bright bold wings soaring high to ignite the wonder of an amazed kite who thought the blue sky hers by right and kept the angel's wings in sight whether she flew to a great height or skimmed the ground with her beauty's might in daylight for sheer love, delight where glittering, winking pyrite near stars shown out hoping to smite with cycle, ritual and rite such rivals flying, daring quite as if it were not a great slight to vaunt their glorious new plight above and directly in sight of all the ladies and the knight who stood below. He, full of fight, thinking, as men do, but to smite or at the least to charge, indict the angel and the kite for blight, the stars, the night for will to incite too great a light high in the night.

#22 CYHYDEDD HIR

1-23-98

#22 CYHYDEDD HIR (Long line)

1-23-98

#23 ENGLISH ODE

1-24-98

The desert stretches to the winds, to sands beyond the hills, to cactus prickly green and blue, the sky above as pale as lands all washed by winter snow. But heat -- a sheen, a sheet, a sword, a violent furor of rays -- so strong no one can see the light in sun's great circle shimmers, glints and glows, and bids each creature to exult in war against denied, curtailed, quite blinded sight, to find some means to overcome its foes, find shade, cool rest from deserts lying -- won because it hides, it waits, it melts, it steals all things: will, water, rights -- to feed the sun's insatiable brightness. Its shine congeals what is not there. It manifests mirages, and vision, elusive insight, cold nights, bright moons, inhospitable, reclusive long views of solitude in dreams, barrages of pains, hallucinations, small delights, rage, sorrow, hatred, fury, fire. If short life were lived on a desert plateau with wind and sand and stars and scentless waste, desireless stasis, Argus-eyed deep woe to watch each Io move, each breath, each taste, the sun would burn up envy, fever, too, and leave the mountains bare and stark, a place with widening space and air so clear and cliffs of joy so sheer, one's desert love would woo the beating heart to happiness like lace quite fine, quite sheer, quite open, and bestow all gifts.

#24 LAI

1-25-98

#25 ENGLYN CYRCH

1-26-98

#26 CYHYDEDD NAW BAN

1-27-98

#27 CLOGYRNACH

1-28-98

#28 CYHYDEDD FER

1-29-98

#29 OCTAVA RIMA

1-30-98

I woke into the morning's pure white light, a desert sun, a moonbeam's silver glow. It was as if the sun could show at night, all with the moon's consent and stars to tow, along a dancing, shimmering, strange sight that night was day and day was night, a row of infinite illuminated in- crements of time to which my love was kin. His blue-white bones sparkled in my embrace as if the stars had seen and chased the moon, the sun, and each descended, glowed, to race outside time, outside life, beyond my dreams, soon to see that even enlightenment was grace that could be chased away by doves whose croon- ing to the sun, the moon that they were two not one convinced my love -- who who, who who.

#30 QUINTILLA I

1-31-98

Without tension and without stress beneath the covers, warm, secure lies woman ready to confess, her thoughts mellow, her thoughts quiet pure fingering eternity's egress. I'll not use it, nor abuse it. Kittens I'll have but no children. I condone the longing to quit: having slept in peace, practiced zen, enjoyed the whirling of world wit. Enough is enough in a world of greed. What happened to pure need of beauty like the spider's pearled web in the fog? Planting blind seed is not me. For this life I've furled desire, practiced inquiry, built up, restored, educated my molecules, which, still fiery, I perceive might yet be mated with neutrino's in an eyrie, breed dark matter and continue to fill the unaccounted for invisible space with no clue of the empty bore, gathered lore or the universe's rued glue.

#31 QUINTILLA II

1-31-98

What is a cobweb? I see no spiders, only the gathering of dust lines and veils clinging and must manifesting to blow in the lazy air set singing by quietly whispered bird song, by the meow of a cat or caterpillar's dream, even more by banging a gleaming brass gong, calling the wind in at the door. O what is a cobweb curtain? Why am I veiled from all sight? wake in the drift of the night, see lace and motes in uncertain, dim, and half invisible light. Send me a kitten, send some cats, help me unwind from nothingness, from turning dust motes, spiderless webs. Take shredded bright straw of mats; knot them again to something-ness. Weave something from nothingness like the spider, the motes and the air. Nothing can survive, nothing fair, nothing but what feels like a spike through hearts parting a human pair.

#32 ENVELOPE QUINTET

2-1-98

Rest in happiness, rest in peace, rest my love in this long lease of high solitude. Be like the birds, like the natural beast, quiet, befurred, never ceasing in mood, whether feasting or lying, to reply to spring's new air with gamboling delight, strolling across woodland, meadow or stream, fauna on flora waking from the cold, in shadow folding to accept the dream, dancing in high grass, extolling the light. Praise aloneness, pairs parted to pursue the hopes of the body, hopes of each limb, the head and the heart, the eyes and the skull. Let the feet wander, let the mind renew the primal laughter in empty space grown dim with the coming from the east of the night. Do the lions and geese -- like cats -- love cream? If we loved them would they dehisce as bold, increase their friendly regard, even beam, rising like good yeast to proclaim our right to adore them like gold, be their ally, pet them and scold them and bring them good food? As they grow old and we older, at least there will be peace if we shoulder our lewd, moldy passion to never, never die.

#33 QUATRAIN

2-2-98

Copyright © 2002 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@janhaag.com or jhaag@u.washington.edu

ALPHABETICAL INDEX BY FORM

POETRY FORMS USED IN ENGLISH

ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS

POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO

21st CENTURY ART, C.E. - B.C., A Context