Poetry for the week. "Everything Changes."

“Everything Changes” by Cicely Herbert
“Everything Changes” (Alles wandelt sich) by Bertolt Brecht.

At a recent poetry discussion meeting these two poems were mentioned. I have always been interested in examples of how poets are aware of writing and traditions that may belong to a very different time or place, and how individual poets create a kind of dialogue with other writers and texts. Cicely Herbert explicitly acknowledges Bertolt Brecht in the title of her poem, which is the English translation of his poem Alles wandelt sich.

Everything Changes

After Brecht, Alles wandelt sich

Everything changes. We plant
trees for those born later
but what’s happened has happened,
and poisons poured into the seas
cannot be drained out again.

What’s happened has happened.
poisons poured into the seas
cannot be drained out again, but
everything changes. We plant
trees for those born later.

Bertolt Brecht’s poem was written in the 1940’s in the USA, during his exile years from Germany. The following is the English translation by John Willett from Brecht's collected poems.

Everything Changes.

Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.
But what has happened has happened. And the water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again.

What has happened has happened. The water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again, but
Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.

If we are familiar with Brecht’s career – his commitment to political and social causes, his Marxist driven concepts of “dialectical theatre” and unwavering insistence on the need for art to foster political action, this may seem to be a surprisingly personal, reflective poem. Herbert’s poem, in contrast, may seem the more “political”, taking as a central image the pollution of the oceans - the destruction of the environment- against which the willingness to plant trees without the purpose of personal gain reflects the hope of responsible choice. Herbert is clearly attracted to the shape of Brecht’s poem. The German poet’s skilful use of repetition and counter-balance held together by apparent contradictions (nothing can be done but you can start again with your last breath, everything repeats itself but everything changes). Herbert’s green poem, like much green rhetoric, tend to emphasise the big picture and deal in general concepts. Brecht seems somehow more human, more intimate. Perhaps it is the use of water and wine, their suggestion of the everyday and domestic, or perhaps part of the poem’s impact is the notion of someone being so determined to work at life and get it right that they are open to change even at the point of death. Personally, and even given the impoverishment of translation, I prefer Brecht’s poem. For a writer who was so determined to write to the intelligence he has an ability to move and engage readers that put him alongside the greatest poets of the Twentieth Century. If anything, Herbert’s “Everything Changes” is more a homage than a re-writing, a homage to a poet who can fuse fatalism and hope, resignation and determination.

Poetry for the week

“Wild Fruit” by Elaine Feinstein
“From A Shropshire Lad by A.E Houseman



Wild Fruit

Yesterday, I found an over-ripe quince,
wrinkled and yellow, on the tree
and the sweet flesh smelled of
stored apples in a half-remembered room

from a childhood as far off as another country,
where the light was golden as
weeds by an autumn waterside, and all
that pungent garden entered the house

and breathed its warmth in fruit. And I
held to the memory all afternoon, even though
the whole fen sky glared white,
and the thin November air tasted of snow.

In Feinstein’s poem the scent of quince makes a powerful connection to memory and childhood. Of all the senses, the olfactory sense is the one most strongly linked to memory. Most of us will have experienced being strongly reminded of someone by a perfume or a place by the smell of food or plants. Feinstein’s quince would have ripened in the early autumn and is now “over-ripe” as the year slips towards winter. The parallelism of this with her life is implicit – childhood is “far off” and wintering age approaches. Feinstein seems to echo the opening of L.P. Hartley’s novel “The Go-Between”: “The past is a foreign country – they do things differently there.” This feeling of otherness and distance can occasionally be closed by the power of memory – in this case triggered by the smell of the quince – and the poet is flooded by a sense of the past.
In “Wild Fruit” Feinstein is aware of several traditions of English poetry. One is the country house poem – a classical, public verse form of the 17th and 18th centuries, though here it is adapted to the intimate and private world of the writer where fruit signifies not the proper management of an estate but the presence of the past. Another influence is the kind of nostalgic, elegiac country poetry exemplified by the poet A.E Houseman (1859-1936).
From A Shropshire Lad
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue-remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Feinstein’s poem (though unrhymed) is even similar to a typical Houseman poem in structure. The ideas – and imagery overlap in several places: “half –remembered” and “blue-remembered”, “another country” and “far country.” For Houseman, the sight of the countryside opens a door on memory, the visual sense rather than smell, and his main concern (which produces the grater melancholy of the poem) is as much with the distance of time as the proximity of memory. Feinstein’s quince memories are far more reconciled to the inevitable patterns of change and age; their warmth can be held against the onset of winter.

NOTES

Language Notes:

Fen: Lowland wholly or partly covered in water, typical of parts of East England.
Yon: This is an archaic or poetic form of “yonder “ or “beyond” that would only be used today ironically.

GENERAL NOTES
Although they are not grown commercially in Britain, quince trees are not uncommon. The quince has seen renewed interest in recent years and is recovering some of the popularity it enjoyed as a Victorian garden tree. If you want membrillo in England you’ll probably have to make it yourself or patronize Harrods’s Food Hall or a similar establishment, unless you have it sent from Spain. Quinces are the golden apples of mythology, and have a rich history. Jewish lore suggests the serpent tempted Eve with a quince rather than an apple, and they are praised in the Song of Solomon. Ancient Greeks believed the trees sprung up wherever Aphrodite stepped when she was born from the foaming sea, thus linking the fruits with love and fertility. And quinces have featured in Persian cooking for at least 2,500 years, both in meat and sweet dishes.
The quince has made some odd appearances in poetry and popular culture, appearing in Edward Lear’s nonsense poem “The Owl and the Pussycat” when the enamored animals “Dined of mince and slices of quince/ Which they ate with a runcible spoon.” More recently, in The Simpson’s episode “Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part1”, Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers end up eating an entire box of chocolates in one sitting, leaving behind and discarding only one piece – the sour quince log.