The Fly (haiku)

Image via Google Images

Fuzzy, buzzy fly
Of alike uncertain fate
Are you same as I?

I should probably stop complaining about Haikus, but I find it so irritatingly difficult to create these little stanzas, supposed to say so much without sounding pretentious and stuck up… And this week we were supposed to be inspired by and distill the words of William Blake’s poem The Fly (original text below)! Whaaaat? *sigh* I’ve seen some others do brilliantly at a similar exercise recently, but no Haiku poet am I… Actually had these two additional Haiku-like bits in there as well, but not sure if they belong?

Creatures of the earth
Beings-  all under the sun
Not very diff’rent

Beating hearts inside
We dance in summer’s twi-light
We feed, we drink – die

In any case here’s my offering for this week’s Heeding Haiku with HA: To derive inspiration from Poetry over at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. Wish I could have had my own photo to illustrate, but at least I haven’t caught any flies yet (hahaha).

Little Fly
Thy summer’s play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush’d away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink & sing;
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength & breath;
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

–William Blake

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Tyger, Tyger…

From Deviantart

Tyger Tyger, beautiful beast
hunter of lands to the east;
Numbers dwindling all too fast,
please, of your kind, don’t be the last!

Who in distant age, now gone,
cast the die beneath the sun?
On what grounds where you so seen?
Why on your death were we so keen?

And what madness, and what fool,
Could so forget golden rule?
When thy heart no longer beat
our planet will not be complete!

What to do now? How to stop,
for your future, how to hope?
What the bullet? What to say?
To stop your kind dying today?

When distant myths you become
legends will be told by some:
voracious cat, golden fur
to your greatness we must defer!

Tyger Tyger, beautiful beast
hunter of lands to the east;
Numbers dwindling all too fast,
please, of your kind, don’t be the last!

Today is Day eight of NaPoWriMo 21014, and the prompt was to rewrite a famous poem. Yes, I know, I probably bit off more than I can chew, but… This is my (somewhat limping) take on William Blake’s ‘Tyger, Tyger’. The original is pasted below. Enjoy!

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

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28 November: Did you know?

Did you know that on this day in 1520, after navigating through a strait at the southern end of South America, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific? Or that on this day in 1582, in Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage license?

And on this day in 1814  The Times in London is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience, in 1893 women vote in a national election for the first time, in the New Zealand general election, in 1907, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater and in 1925 the Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee as WSM Barn Dance.

It was also on this day in 1972 the last executions in Paris, of the Clairvaux Mutineers, Roger Bontems and Claude Buffet, takes place as they are guillotined at La Sante Prison. (Bontems had been found innocent of murder by the court, but as Buffet’s accomplice is condemned to death anyway.) The chief executioner is Andre Obrecht and in 1989, at the end of the  Cold War, and as a result of the Velvet Revolution: In the face of protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces it will give up its monopoly on political power.

Some birthdays to remember on this day are William Blake, British poet (1757-1827), Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Swedish romantic poet (1793-1866), Friedrich Engels, German philosopher (1820-1895), Ed Harris, American actor (1950), Judd Nelson, American actor (1959), John Galliano, British fashion designer (1960) and  Anna Nicole Smith, American television personality (1967-2007).

If you need a reason to raise a glass of bubbly on this day, why not look into the celebration of Republic Day for Burundi and Chad or a whole lot of Independence Days, celebrating the independence of Panama from Spain in 1821, of Mauritania from France in 1960 and Albania from Turkey in 1912?

For more information about historic events on this day, please go here.

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