Poem for March 2019: Ode to the Sun (update 18 August 2019)

winter

We brave the all-pervading wet and cold

the biting air, the icy rain. we dream

of sunny days and mild and balmy evenings.

we turn our faces to the sky seeking

your warm embrace. A glimpse of you would brighten

our days, but you refuse to oblige. We wait ...

spring

… until you draw us out like tender shoots

that spring from boughs and twigs; like blades of grass,

that break the soil and spread into a meadow;

like blossoms sprouting, early messengers

of summer´s fruits. you are so kind to all,

and all rejoices in your warmth and light

summer

… until we hurry, not to escape the cold,

but you, relentless, glaring fire ball.

we seek the shadow of our dens, to avoid

your scorching presence, so ubiquitous,

that just to breathe costs such an effort. Sunset

brings little relief. the asphalt has stored your rays,

emits their memory, consumes the coolness

long-awaited. In the morning looking at the sky

we wish you were not there already

waiting, enveloping us with glowing air.

Begone, why do you stare so viciously?

You ´ve sucked up all the rain and stunted

the growth of grain. The harvest´s poor.

The grass has withered, leaves changed colour early,

are gathering on the ground, and all is crumpling

in your stubborn glare. Have you no mercy?

In vain we plead until ...

Autumn

… rain-heavy clouds have overshadowed you

we breathe again, but summer´s fruits are scarce.

You ´ve let us down. It´s twice you´ve cheated us (by now)

You made us suffer from the cold and dark

in winter, the dismal weather was hard to bear.

But we´re no fools and this time we´ll outsmart you,

faithless sun. We´ll fly to sunnier shores.

by Gudrun Rogge-Wiest, April 2019

What about some more coolness in the face of the sun like in the following quote:

                            I don´t have to run after the sun. I wait till it passes by.

                                 Gerhard Gundermann, Interview in Neues Deutschland [New Germany] 2.96

The number of temperature records in the still young 21^st century has inspired the previous long and the following two short poems.

                       It is the warm, gentle rain

                       and not the stark, glaring sun

                       that is the true harbinger of spring.

                                April 2019, GRW

                       You shouldn´t trust the warm, blue days

                       the heart of the sun is cold as ice.

                       Withered the stalk that bore the grain,

                       what´s left is sorrow, fear and pain.

                       April 2019, GRW

My own sufferings in hot weather have also led me to look for kindred spirits in literature.

Here is an extract from Mick Herron´s disillusioned spy novel Real Tigers (2016), Chapter 7, p. 122…. which is set in London during a heat wave.

It was Dame Ingrid´s habit to catch the Tube into work, but she used her official ride for everything else. It took her now through streets that were wilting in the heat. When the freak weather had started it had splashed the capital in colour, but as hot days turned into baking weeks, brightness had faded like old paint. Greenery died, turning parks brown and lifeless. People scurried now from shadow to shadow, wearing the caved-in expressions of trauma survivors, and greeted rumours of rain like news of a lottery win. That the weather was not normal was a staple of internet traffic. The streets, meanwhile, were cruel reflections of an unforgiving sky, where everything dazzled and everything hurt.

 

                                          a park in Southhampton, 25 July 2018

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2018_Heatwave_Southampton.jpg

By mid-August the lawn was green again because it had rained in the meantime (Photo GRW).

                                    

In order to balance out the two sides, I have added a selection of pre-climate change sun poetry.

Mostly, the sun has a beneficial effect.

A beautiful example is this quote from Charles Dickens´s novel Oliver Twist

The sun, - the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man - burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.”
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1837-1839

The sun doesn´t distinguish between rich and poor. Its beams reach and give delight to everyone.

In Keats´s “To Autumn” it contributes to the ripening of the fruit which have grown in abundance since spring. “the maturing sun” is ambivalent pointing both to the effect the sun has and the aging process it has undergone itself in the course of the year.

To Autumn (1819)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

conspiring with him how to load and bless

with fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

Though John Donne creates quite a different sun persona in “The Sun rising” (1633) I drew inspiration from his tirade:

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school boys and sour prentices,

[…]

In the following extract from the poem “Nosce te ipsum” (1599) bei John Davis, the relation between soul and body is explored.

Then dwells she [the soul] not therein as in a tent, 
Nor as a pilot in his ship doth sit 
Nor as the spider in his web is pent ; 
Nor as the wax retains the print in it ; 

Nor as a vessel water doth contain; 
Nor as one liquor in another shed ; 
Nor as the heat doth in the fire remain ; 
Nor as a voice throughout the air is spread : 

But as the fair and cheerful morning light, 
Doth here and there her silver beams impart, 
And in an instant doth herself unite 
To the transparent air, in all, and part:
       [...] 

Even pre-climate change, exposure to the sun is sometimes also described as unpleasant.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1601), Act I, Scene 2: "[…] I am too much in the sun."

The sun stands for the hateful presence of the king.

Sonnet 18 (published in 1609): “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines.”

In the first lines of this song “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun” from Shakespeare´s Cymbeline the dangers of a scorching sun stand side by side with those of winter.

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

[..]