Blood and
ink
I simply
love leaning on your poems
O poet!
It ignites
the interplay
Of blue, red
and white in my heart,
Setting free
those hidden feelings.
Fondled by
your poetry,
Readers find
their past and present
Resonating
in them.
Your poems
are so freshening,
So
liberating, so rejuvenating
That they
throw a resplendent smile
On their
faces, kindling a light
Of exotic
pleasure,
Evidenced by
your acts of love.
Your poems
come as myriad-colored jewels,
Bridging
your heart to readers' hearts,
Transcending
language barriers,
Adorning
them in dreams and reverie,
In worship
and in wisdom,
And with
your great compassionate mind,
You harbor
them all,
The
segregated, the sedated,
The
worn-out, the disheveled,
Making their
hearts
Never run
out of tune
By creating
the chemistry
Of flint and
steel.
Your poems
speak of the blazing fire,
The fleeting
embers, the desires,
The lovelorn
cry of peacocks,
The owls in
tree-holes,
The
transgressions against God's laws,
The sighs of
lovers,
Their pains
of separation,
The fresh
spring gales
And the Holy
Grail.
Dear poet, I
know you write with a pen
And yet, the
mystery of
Your
powerful pen remains unraveled.
When I think
of your pen,
With neither
flaw nor fault,
Something
deep inside me,
Humming a
sweet rhapsody, tells me
Your pen
writes not with ink,
It writes
with your blood---
For ink is
for the conscious mind,
Blood is for
the unconscious mind
And great
poets like you
Write with
the unconscious mind.
In Old French, "san graal" or "san gréal" referred to the Holy Grail. A "graal" was a cup or bowl made of clay, wood, or metal, derived via the Latin "gradalis" from the Greek "krater," a large wine-mixing vessel. Between 1181 and 1190 Chrétien de Troyes introduced the figure to medieval literature in his unfinished romance, "Perceval, le Conte du Graal." Chrétien wrote 9,000 lines of eight-syllable couplets, and four other poets added 54,000 additional lines. Chrétien claimed he was working from a manuscript given to him by his patron, Count Philip I of Flanders. While dining in the magical abode of the Fisher King, Perceval witnessed a young man carrying a bleeding lance, two boys carrying candelabras, and a beautiful young girl with an elaborately decorated graal containing a single Mass wafer, which provided sustenance for the Fisher King's crippled father. Perceval remained silent throughout the procession and woke up the next morning, alone; he later learned that he could have healed his host's father if he had asked the appropriate questions about what he saw. A century or so later Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote "Parzival" in an East Franconian dialect (he claimed that he was illiterate oral poet) expressed disdain for "Perceval" and claimed that he recieved the genuine story from a poet from Provence named Kyot (perhaps Guiot de Provins, though none of his extant works dealt with the theme); Wolfram described the Grail as a great precious stone (lapis exillis) that fell from the sky and had been the sanctuary for the angels who remained neutral during Lucifer's rebellion; it was kept at the castle of Munsalvaesche (mons salvationis; perhaps Montserrat in Catalonia) in the care of Titurel, the first Grail King.
ReplyDeleteAnother century passed before Robert de Boron's octosyllabic "Joseph d'Arimathe" set forth the now-standard formulation by merging the Grail story with a Christian backstory, claiming that Joseph of Arimathea used the Grail (the Last Supper vessel) to catch the last drops of blood from Jesus's body as he hung on the cross, and later, while imprisoned by the Jewish leaders, received it back from an apparition of Jesus to sustain him, and he then sent it with his followers to the "vaus d'Avaron" (valleys of Avaron), which later poets changed to Avalon and identified with Glastonbury; the family guarded it there until the time of Perceval, its final guardian. An early 13th-century romance, "Perlesvaus" (also called "Li Hauz Livres du Graal" [The High History of the Holy Grail]) contended that Joseph went to Britain himself, taking with him holy relics; later medieval writers claimed he was the first bishop there. (According to all four canonical Gospels, Joseph of Arimathea was an influential citizen of Jerusalem who donated his own prepared tomb for Jesus' burial. Early church historians such as Irenaeus (125–189), Hippolytus (170–236), Tertullian (155–222), and Eusebius (260–340) added details not found in the canonical accounts. Hilary of Poitiers (300–367) further enriched the legend, and St. John Chrysostom (347–407), the Patriarch of Constantinople, was the first to claim that Joseph was one of the Seventy Apostles appointed in Luke 10. Around 1350 John of Glastonbury, wrote that Joseph took vessels containing the blood and sweat of Jesus to Britain, though he did not mentaion a grail; he also invented a genealogy by which Arthur was a descendant of Joseph; other medieval writers posited that Joseph was either a maternal or paternal uncle of Jesus.) The early 13th-century prose romance, "Lancelot-Grail" (the Vulgate Cycle) detailed the Grail quest and introduced Sir Lancelot's son Galahad, destined to acquire the Grail due to his superior virtue. The Grail quest theme was revived in the 19th century, especially in Alfred Tennyson's 12 blank-verse "Idylls of the King" (1859-1885) and Richard Wagner's late opera "Parsifal" (1882) . In 1870, Hargrave Jennings identified the Grail with female genitalia.
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