Sunflower Song through Time and Space
Fu Xuan / Mahmoud Kianush/ Kansas/ other sunflower poets / Grateful Dead /
Aztec Flower Song (anonymous, pre-Columbian)
Be indomitable, Oh my heart!
Love only the sunflower;
It is the flower of the Giver-of-Life!
What can my heart do?
Have we come, have we sojourned here on earth in vain?
As the flowers wither, I shall go.
Will there be nothing of my glory ever?
Will there be nothing of my fame on earth?
At most songs, at most flowers,
What can my heart do?
Have we come, have we sojourned on earth in vain?
And of course the sunflowers.
As usual they swept across August
At first a few, a yellow trickle along the fence line
Then more, making pools in the pasture
And splashing down into the arroyo
Then incredibly many more,
Dappling the distance,
As though a giant hand had buttered the land.
Yet with the entire prairie to expand into,
They prefer crowds of themselves
They mass along the roadside,
Lined up as though a parade were about to pass.
Here and there one stands alone,
But not for long.
Soon his kin will come
And there will be sunflower squalor
There will be sunflower squalor, a floral slum.
Once they are out,
They will not be ignored.
Stretching their skinny stalks,
They top our roofline,
Press against the window screens,
And peep in at the door.
Familiar foot paths to the out buildings are obscured,
And from the road we seem afloat,
Our cabin, an odd tin boat
In a sea of sunflower faces.
They are the most staccato of flowers.
I catch them humming snatches of polkas
And John Phillips Sousa Marches,
Bobbing in the wind to the Boogaloo,
The Boogie Woogie and the Lindy Hop.
I call their names,
Clem, Clarissa, Sarah Jane
To try and tame them.
My neighbor comes by.
She has a field full
They’re useless, she complains.
Her horses can’t eat them.
I should hope not! I exclaim,
After she’s gone.
I don’t remember if you even liked sunflowers
But you liked life
And they are all about that.
Today I wrote to your family, finally.
I expect they are occupying themselves,
With beautiful gestures
In order to get over the grief of you.
As for me, I have sunflowers.
Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg
I
walked on
the banks of the tincan banana dock and
sat
down under
the huge shade of a Southern
Pacific locomotive to look
at the sunset
over the
box
house hills
and cry.
Jack Kerouac
sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
pole,
companion,
we thought the same thoughts
of
the soul,
bleak and blue and sad-eyed, sur-
rounded
by the
gnarled steel roots of trees of
machinery.
The oily water
on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
sank
on top of
final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
stream,
no hermit
in those mounts, just our-
selves
rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
on
the riverbank,
tired and wily.
Look at the
Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
shadow
against
the sky, big as a man, sitting
dry
on top of a
pile of ancient sawdust--
--I
rushed up
enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
memories
of
Blake--my visions--
and Hells
of the Eastern rivers, bridges
clanking Joes
Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby
carriages,
black
treadless
tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
knives,
nothing
stainless, only the dank muck
and
the
razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
past--
and the
gray Sunflower poised against the
sunset,
crackly
bleak and
dusty with the smut and smog
and
smoke of
olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla
of bleary spikes pushed down and
broken like
a
battered crown,
seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless
mouth of sunny air, sun-
rays
obliterated
on its hairy head like a dried
wire
spiderweb,
leaves
stuck out like arms out of the stem,
gestures
from
the sawdust
root, broke pieces of plaster
fallen
out of the
black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy
battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my
soul, I loved
you then!
The grime was
no man's grime but death and human
locomotives,
all that
dress of dust, that veil of
darkened railroad
skin,
that smog
of cheek, that eyelid of black
mis'ry,
that
sooty hand or phallus or protuber-
ance
of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
modern--all
that
civilization spotting your
crazy
golden
crown--
and those
blear thoughts of death and
dusty loveless
eyes
and ends and
withered roots below, in the
home-pile
of sand
and sawdust, rubber dollar
bills,
skin of
machinery, the guts and innards
of
the weeping
coughing car, the empty lonely
tincans
with their rusty tongues alack, what
more
could I
name, the smoked ashes of some
cock
cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
milky
breasts of
cars, wornout asses out of chairs
& sphincters of
dynamos--all these
entangled
in your mummied
roots--and you there
standing
before
me in the sunset, all your glory
in your form!
A perfect
beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely
sunflower
existence! a sweet natural eye
to
the new hip
moon, woke up alive and excited
grasping
in the
sunset shadow sunrise golden
monthly
breeze!
How many flies
buzzed round you innocent of your
grime,
while you
cursed the heavens of the rail-
road
and your
flower soul?
Poor dead
flower? when did you forget you were a
flower?
when did you look at your skin and
decide
you were
an impotent dirty old locomo-
tive?
the ghost of a locomotive? the
specter and
shade
of a once
powerful mad American locomo-
tive?
You were never
no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
sunflower!
And you
Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
not!
So I grabbed
up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
it
at my side
like a scepter,
and
deliver my sermon to my soul, and
Jack's soul
too,
and anyone
who'll listen,
--We're not
our skin of grime, we're not our dread
bleak
dusty
imageless locomotive, we're all
beautiful
golden
sunflowers inside, we're bles-
sed
by our own seed & golden hairy naked ac-
complishment-bodies
growing into mad black
formal
sunflowers
in the sunset, spied on by our
eyes
under the
shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank
sunset
Frisco hilly tincan evening sit-
down
vision.
Poet Allen Ginsberg, born
June 3, 1926, died in April 1997. To hear him read “Sunflower Sutra,” click
here, to hear him read “Sunflower Sutra.” Flowers can be uttered!
Ah Sunflower! by
William Blake
 Print, Jerusalem, Plate 53 Chapter 3 (Winged muse atop a floating sunflower) 1804-1820. |
Ah Sun-flower!
weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun: Seeking after
that sweet golden clime Where
the travellers journey is done.
And the pale
virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from
their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go. |
"Woman" by Fu Xuan,
from
Arthur Waley, Chinese Poems, (New
York: 1946),
pp 84-85, reprinted in Albert M. Craig, et al, The Heritage of
World
Civilizations, 2d ed., (New York: Macmillan, 1990), p. 217
How sad it is to be
a woman!!
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.
Boy stand leaning at the door
Like Gods fallen out of Heaven.
Their hearts brave the Four Oceans,
The wind and dust of a thousand miles.
No one is glad when a girl is born:
By her the family sets no store.
When she grows up, she hides in her room
Afraid to look at a man in the face.
No one cries when she leaves her home --
Sudden as clouds when the rain stops.
She bows her head and composes her face,
Her teeth are pressed on her red lips:
She bows and kneels countless times.
She must humble herself even to the servants.
His love is distant as the stars in Heaven,
Yet the sunflower bends towards the sun.
Their hearts are more sundered than water and fire--
A hundred evils are heaped upon her.
Her face will follow the years changes:
Her lord will find new pleasures.
They that were once like the substance and shadow
Are now as far from Hu as from Ch'in
[two distant places]
Yet Hu and Ch'in
shall
sooner meet
That they whose parting is like Ts'an and Ch'en [two stars]
The
title of Irving Lo’s Sunflower
Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry
highlights the significance of sunflower imagery in classical Chinese
poetry.
Mahmud
Kianush, rubái
(quatrain),
English translation at http://www.artarena.force9.co.uk/esunflowers.htm
Sunflowers
Sunflowers:
I
have seen them everywhere;
They
are
beautiful, this no one can deny;
But,
surely it
was Van Gogh who painted the truth
Of the sunflower and hung it on the wall.
Kansas
Sunflowers 
Sunflowers in Prose and Poetry
Sunflowers are
native plants
of the North American prairie; One state
where
sunflowers would be found is
The Earth’s Birthday Project asks the students to write their own sunflower poem and provides examples of student work.
Sunflowers, a
“When sunflowers
fail,” from Evening Verse by Jack Harter , http://home.tiac.net/~cri/poetry/poetry3.html
Sunflowers
are a chancy crop. If they don't make it
they aren't harvested. The unharvested
fields are
striking - acre upon acre of black. [Note: this is incorrect - the
fields have
to blacken before they are harvested. The seeds must dry out in their
last
mortality.]
When
sunflowers fail
They do not fail
In the manner of wheat and corn;
For fields of grain wither to brown
And sunflower fields blacken instead.
The great green leaves fall away;
Each plant becomes a stick.
The yellow eyes that once
So proudly followed the sun
Are humbled;
They bow their heads in ebony.
Row upon row the sunflowers stand
Like candy canes awaiting Halloween
"Along the river" by Lorine Niedecker http://www.oysterboyreview.com/archived/17/niedecker/
Along the river
wild sunflowers
over my head
the dead
who gave me life
give me this
our relative the air
floods
our rich friend
silt
Poem to a
Sunflower, Elaine’s Sunflower Page http://freespace.virgin.net/derek.berger/sunflowers.html
Sunflower
poems
http://www.allspirit.co.uk/sunflower.html
Garden
Poems from KTC (Kids Turn Central) http://www.kidsturncentral.com/topics/hobbies/ktcgpoets.htm
Terrapin
Station - Lady with a Fan, lyrics,
Grateful
Dead
Let my inspiration flow in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm,
That will not forsake you, till my tale is told and done.
While the firelight’s aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow,
Till things we’ve never seen will seem familiar.
Shadows of a sailor, forming winds both foul and fair all swarm.
Down in
Here beside him stands a man, a soldier from the looks of him,
Who came through many fights, but lost at love.
While the story teller speaks, a door within the fire creaks;
Suddenly flies open, and a girl is standing there.
Eyes alight, with glowing hair, all that fancy paints as fair,
She takes her fan and throws it, in the lion’s den.
Which of you to gain me, tell, will risk uncertain pains of hell?
I will not forgive you if you will not take the chance.
The sailor gave at least a try, the soldier being much too wise,
Strategy was his strength, and not disaster.
The sailor, coming out again, the lady fairly leapt at him.
That’s how it stands today. You decide if he was wise.
The story teller makes no choice. soon you
will not
hear his voice.
His job is to shed light, and not to master.
Since the end is never told, we pay the teller off in gold,
In hopes he will return, but he cannot be bought or sold.
Terrapin Station
Inspiration, move me
brightly. Light the song with sense and color;
Hold
away despair, more than this I will not ask.
Faced with mysteries dark and vast, statements just seem vain at last.
Some rise, some fall, some climb, to get to terrapin.
Counting stars by candlelight, all are dim but one is bright;
The spiral light of Terrapin Station - lady with a fan
Let my inspiration flow in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm,
That will not forsake you, till my tale is told and done.
While the firelight’s aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow,
Till things we’ve never seen will seem familiar.
Shadows of a sailor, forming winds both foul and fair all swarm.
Down in
Here beside him stands a man, a soldier from the looks of him,
Who came through many fights, but lost at love.
While the story teller speaks, a door within the fire creaks;
Suddenly flies open, and a girl is standing there.
Eyes alight, with glowing hair, all that fancy paints as fair,
She takes her fan and throws it, in the lion’s den.
Which of you to gain me, tell, will risk uncertain pains of hell?
I will not forgive you if you will not take the chance.
The sailor gave at least a try, the soldier being much too wise,
Strategy was his strength, and not disaster.
The sailor, coming out again, the lady fairly leapt at him.
That’s how it stands today. you decide if
he was wise.
The story teller makes no choice. Soon you will not hear his voice.
His job is to shed light, and not to master.
Since the end is never told, we pay the teller off in gold,
In hopes he will return, but he cannot be bought or sold.
Terrapin Station
Inspiration, move me brightly. light the
song with
sense and color;
Hold away despair, more than this I will not ask.
Faced with mysteries dark and vast, statements just seem vain at last.
Some rise, some fall, some climb, to get to terrapin.
Counting stars by
candlelight, all are dim but one is bright;
The spiral light of Venus,
rising first and shining best,
On, from the northwest corner, of a brand new crescent moon,
While crickets and cicadas sing, a rare and different tune,
Terrapin Station.
In the shadow of the moon, Terrapin Station.
And I know we’ll get there soon, Terrapin Station.
I can’t figure out, Terrapin, if it’s the end or beginning, Terrapin,
But the train’s put it’s brakes on, Terrapin,
And the whistle is screaming, Terrapin.
Terrapin Station - at the siding
While you were gone, these faces filled with
darkness.
The obvious was hidden. With nothing to believe in,
Sullen wings of fortune beat like rain.
You’re back in terrapin for good or ill again, for good or ill again.
Venus,
rising first and shining best,
On, from the northwest corner, of a brand new crescent moon,
While crickets and cicadas sing, a rare and different tune,
Terrapin Station.
In the shadow of the moon, Terrapin Station.
And I know we’ll get there soon, Terrapin Station.
I can’t figure out, terrapin, if it’s the end or beginning, Terrapin,
But the train’s put it’s brakes on, Terrapin,
And the whistle is screaming, Terrapin.
Terrapin Station - at the siding
While you were gone, these faces filled with
darkness.
The obvious was hidden. with nothing to
believe in,
Sullen wings of fortune beat like rain.
You’re back in Terrapin for good or ill again, for good or ill
again.
Words by Robert Hunter; music by
Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing.
Look for
awhile at the China Cat Sunflower
proud-walking jingle in the midnight sun
Copper-dome
Bodhi drip a silver kimono
like a
crazy-quilt stargown
through a
dream night wind
Krazy Kat
peeking through a lace bandana
like a
one-eyed Cheshire
like a
diamond-eye Jack
A leaf of
all colors plays
a golden
string fiddle
to a
double-e waterfall over my back
Comic book
colors on a violin river
crying
Leonardo words
from out a
silk trombone
I rang a
silent bell
beneath a
shower of pearls
in the eagle
wing palace
of the Queen
Chinee
On the other hand, anyone who had hung out in coffee houses in the early sixties would be familiar with Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra," which appears in Howl with other poems. The sunflower in this poem is likely linked. While it is some times a dark presence, a representation of mortality, it is also a symbol of hope, of at least a once lived life. It is rather more all encompassing, somthing our worldly, joyous China Cat might be.
Annotated version at
Aztec Flower Song / Dale Harris / Grateful Dead / William Blake / Allen Ginsberg /
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