Allen Ginsberg on Dharma Poetics continues from here
AG: The most famous statement of transitoriness and impermanence that we all know probably is by John Donne, so I’ll … I’m using the Norton anthology, it’s on page two-thirty-two of the Norton Anthology of Poetry
“If thou be born to see strange sights,/Goe, and catche a falling starre,/Get with child a mandrake roote,/Tell me, where all past yeares are,/Or who cleft the Divels foot,/Teach me to heare Mermaides singing,/Or to keep off envies stinging,/And finde/What winde/Serves to advance an honest minde./ If thou beest borne to strange sights,/Things invisible to see,/Ride ten thousand daies and nights,/Till age snow white haires on thee,/Thou, when thou retorn’st, wilt tell mee/ All strange wonders that befell thee,. And sweare/ No where/ Lives a woman true, and faire./ If thou findst one, let mee know,/Such a Pilgrimage were sweet;/ Yet doe not, I would not goe,/Though at next doore wee might meet,/”Thou shee were true, when you met her/And last, til you write your letter,/Yet shee/Will bee/False, ere I come, to two, or three.”
It’s transitoriness in a very localized way here, although built within it is a suggestion that’s as great as the old Buddhists or Gampopa or Henry King. “Tell me, where all past yeares are,” “Ride ten thousand daies and nights,/Till age snow white haires on thee,” – that’s a really fast recap of old age, sickness, and death and gives you a sudden flash of the lengthy brevity of the span of an existence, like the Bhakti-Vedanta Hare Krishna diorama of all the ages of man in an instant of an eyeball – I think we’ve all seen that. Does anybody know that one? From babe to the strong man through the creeping old skeleton falling backward into the dust. “Ride ten thousand daies and nights,/Till age snow white haires on thee” – it’s a very strong, clear, visual grasp of the notion of transitoriness.
to be continued