Welcome to Letters from Quotidia, 2024 Episode 12, the October edition. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

One of the sites I visit regularly is Poem a Day. It has supplied several examples of verse that have appeared in the Letters over the past four years. Recently I came across Midmorning (Vormittag in the original German) by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger translated from the German by Carlie Hoffman. Eisinger was a Jewish, German-language poet from Bukovina. Born on February 5, 1924, in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, she was a Jewish poet and translator.

On December 16, 1942, at the age of eighteen, she died of typhus while incarcerated in a Nazi SS forced-labour camp. Before her deportation, Meerbaum-Eisinger gave her poetry manuscript to a close friend, in hopes that it would be safe. The handbound, handwritten manuscript contains fifty-seven poems, fifty-two originals, and five poems that she translated from other languages. Midmorning was written on January 8, 1941, nine months before her family’s forced relocation.

According to translator Carlie Hoffman, the fact that the manuscript survived is astonishing, as there were several close calls wherein-Blütenlese-would-have-been-lost-forever. The younger cousin of Paul Celan, her poem, Midmorning, speaks of the passions contained in the teenage heart and it reminds me of another precocious talent of that time who also perished from typhus in a Nazi death camp- Anne Frank. Here is Midmorning: Wind, dreamy notes, sings/its lullaby, gently touching the leaves./I let myself be, seduced, immersed/in song like grass.//Air shivers/and cools my fevered face/wrapped in desire./Clouds drift by, scatter white,/sun-stolen light.//The old acacia/leaves silence/a trembling tangle of leaves./The scents of the earth rise, climb/and then fall back to me.//

One of countless lives sacrificed on the obscene altar of sectarian hatred, it is to humanity’s enduring shame that the obscene altar continues to extinguish so many lives as I speak. Selma’s famous cousin, Paul Celan, survived the Holocaust and his great poem Todesfuge– The Fugue of Death I have spoken about in one of my earlier Letters from Quotidia– episode 44 published on 25th March 2021. I first read this poem as a 23-year-old teacher, and it has stayed with me as one of my literary touchstones. It was the inspiration for a song, Paul, which I wrote at age 29 commemorating his life and death by drowning in the River Seine. I recorded the song, during long service leave in 2000. I reprise it here. [insert song]

Time for an October poem and an October song. Dylan Thomas was born on the 27th of October 1914. He was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems Do not go gentle into that good night and And death shall have no dominion, He became widely popular in his lifetime; and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then, he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a roistering, drunken and doomed poet. Doomed or not, he wrote some of the more memorable poetry of the 20th Century. As a fellow Celt, I feel an affinity to his work. Here are a few lines from Poem in October,

It was my thirtieth year to heaven/Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood/ And the mussel pooled and the heron/Priested shore…/ My birthday began with the water-/Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name/Above the farms and the white horses/And I rose/In rainy autumn/And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…/all the gardens/Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales/Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud…/ And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s/Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother/Through the parables/Of sun light/And the legends of the green chapels/And the twice told fields of infancy/That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine./ And there could I marvel my birthday/Away…/It was my thirtieth/ Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon/Though the town below lay leaved with October blood./O may my heart’s truth/Still be sung/On this high hill in a year’s turning.//

The Clancy Brothers Songbook was my first primer when I was learning the guitar in my mid-teens. One of my favourite songs from this source was The Castle of Dromore. From the site irishpage.com I learned the following, The words of the song were written by Sir Harold Boulton to a traditional tune, My Wife is Sick, lulling a child to sleep with a prayer for safety against the wild weather and “Clan Eoin’s wild Banshee.” There are at least four castles named Castle of Dromore or Dromore Castle in the counties Down, Kerry, Limerick and Tyrone. Without solid proof Dromore Castle, in County Tyrone is taking the lead. Clan Owen in the second verse once possessed the counties Tyrone and Derry and parts of County Donegal. The banshee in verse two points towards a fairy-like woman originating from or serving Clan Owen (perhaps as some sort of clan ghost). Well, October is the spooky month as the first line of the song intimates- [insert song]

November beckons, so remember, for many of you residing in the Northern Hemisphere if there’s ice in November that will bear a duck, there’ll be nothing after but sludge and muck. Nice here in Quotidia, though, as summer cometh in!

                                   Paul (lyrics and music by Quentin Bega)

The forest gave to you a necklace of hands

The aspen tree reminds you of your mother’s hair

Now you are young as a bird dropped dead in March snow

Your poetry sings out like a phoenix from the flare

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

You drank the black milk and tasted ashes on your tongue

You played with serpents and you heard the fugue of death

You said the night needs no stars mouths full of silence

You sank as fish watched rising the spheres of your last breath

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

How many people have been covered by the night

Eyes burned out in the cradle by a hell-black sun

Yes I have been a blind guest those words you uttered

Let there be light an order this century undone

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

I said losing losing all control

Yes I am losing control

Lose..

The Castle of Dromore   (trad Irish tune words Sir Harold Boulton)

The October winds lament around
The castle of Dromore
Yet peace lies in her lofty halls,
My loving treasure store
Though Autumn leaves may droop and die
A bud of Spring are you

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo

Dread spirit of the Blackwater,
Clan Owen’s wild banshee
Bring no ill wind to hinder us,
My helpless babe and me
And Holy Mary pityin’ us
To Heaven for grace doth sue

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo

Take time to thrive my ray of hope
In the gardens of Dromore
Take heed young eaglet till thy wings
Are feathered fit to soar
A little rest and then the world
Is full of work to do

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo
Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.