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A Literary Blog

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I am a writer based in New Jersey. I have a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Master’s degree from the University of Toronto. I have experience as a German to English translator, a technical writer, and a grant writer. In my writing, I explore myth, legend, and languages. This blog is devoted to my past and future writings. – Johanna Rodda

  • The Final Breath


    This poem expresses love and hope at the end of a long life.


    The Final Breath

    Once there was a man who thought he’d die

    if ever he stopped counting his every breath.

    With each beat of his heart –

    pat-pan, pat-pan –

    he heard the passing-by of his life.

    While he lay, dying, in the hospital

    (breath coming out-in, in-out),

    he silently considered the tragedy

    of his so mortal self; thoughts of days gone by

    in and through his reeling mind.

    No children he had ever had.

    No loving partner.

    His thoughts were not those of a man

    who had scaled mountains, gone into space,

    painted a masterpiece, kissed a lover.

    No; all the while he had sat mostly at home

    (with not another to warm the midnight hours)

    and counted every breath, every beat of his heart,

    bringing him swiftly through the years.

    Now he lay, and hoped the end

    wouldn’t come at last,

    that he could go on; so much

    had he gotten used to the passing seconds.

    And then – so unexpected, and rare, and wonderful,

    as if seeing up close a smile on God’s face –

    before him stood a woman beautiful and bright.

    She was no nurse – that he knew – nor a doctor.

    Her hair was a yellow crown that swayed when she moved.

    For a moment, spellbound, the man who had always

    counted his breaths watched: the woman smiled.

    My son – she said – do not be afraid –

    (and the man of constant fear breathed more easily) –

    I come from a place beyond all dread.

    I am sent to take you from this existence

    to where the light of life never dims.

    At these words, the fearful man saw

    a far, wide world open up before his eyes:

    its carpet was green, its waters were life.

    The man, rising from his bed, his hand

    within the woman’s, set a foot in front, one ahead,

    stepped forward a pace – one – then two –

    counted his breath, his heart: pat-pan;

    and, with the first planting of his foot

    on the foreign, perfect soil, the first intake

    of pure air in his lungs: look – the breath was unsung!

    he passed into that wide world.

    And what fear there had been in him

    was no more.

  • Chaucer on the mind


    This short short plays with Chaucer and Beowulf.



    When Chaucer becomes so much on your mind

    you begin to wonder where Chaucer went

    Ibsen left the books on the table in the library then skipped out. One book was green, one red. The green was Chaucer. On the cover was a seated scholar, reading a book that could only have been Chaucer’s too. The red book was Beowulf: no one knows who wrote that.

    Time was strange to Ibsen when he stepped out of the library under the trees, and from the trees off the curb onto the avenue, where others had parked cars, then forgotten them. Where are they, Ibsen thought. I do not know where they have gone.

    Ibsen had left the books because he didn’t need books anymore. There comes a point for everyone when she wakes up one day, realizing he knows Chaucer already. That every word Beowulf ever said is inside her. Ibsen could say Whan that Aprille, stellifye me, That King Priamus’ Son was of Troy. Exactly he remembered them. Chaucer really gets inside you.

    Ibsen stepped out, leaving green Chaucer and red Beowulf. If you go into the library, you will see them and understand Ibsen has gone somewhere time does not. Ibsen has gone where Chaucer went when he wrote the book he gave to Ibsen when he saw him on the avenue where the cars were parked which people had forgotten to get books in the library (both red and green), forgetting they no longer needed libraries as Chaucer was already inside them, and Beowulf would be on their minds until time stood still.

  • Devotion to Heroes – Part Two


    The following three poems are also from my collection “Devotion to Heroes.”



    The Poet-Artist

    Poetry’s a bumbling and a fumbling art,

    an art that’s finished before you start.

    It fits the shape of a container,

    on a page it’s the remainder

    of all the thoughts you’ve thought;

    it’s turning what you’ve thought to naught,

    then turning back again.

    It’s picking up again your pen.

    It’s writing after you’ve not for years,

    conceding all your most concealed fears;

    it’s fighting might and main.

    It’s writing for soldiers twain.

    It’s paying homage and writing odes,

    it’s bearing good names and turning toads

    into princes; its common task

    is to take from us our stoic mask,

    writing outside or in a chair,

    writing everything everywhere,

    every emotion of mortal part

    laid by every mortal heart

    to tell you of its pain, its love

    for things here and up above.

    The poet’s an adventurer

    who’s of love sound and also surer,

    who writes within the space

    of his heart, the face

    of this most immortal art.

    And so I raise my grateful glass

    to every poet now and past.

    From bards all down the line:

    grant that what inspired you might also be mine.

    The Astronaut

    There is no oxygen in the void of space.

    I would not go there; too fearful am I,

    but there are others who face the sky

    and boldly live their lives;

    the astronaut for science strives.

    To those who seek to raise the roof

    of being, and proof

    of wonders overlay,

    say I: to outer space, and away!

    Bravery instilled in many forms,

    breaking all our thought-of norms:

    the astronaut’s a walker of space,

    he or she goes to that place

    where others will not go,

    far beyond the reach of a stone’s throw

    the astronaut in space patrols

    how a ship ventures, through space rolls

    and touches down again.

    Sure the astronaut’s also glad when.

    To walkers of space I’m not quite akin,

    My courage, I’m afraid, is quite too far thin.

    So, to those brave enough to try,

    I say: beyond with you! To the sky!

    Woman

    Call me niña,

    señorita,

    Fräulein,

    dame,

    la belle dame sans merci,

    call me shedder of all tears,

    call me person of great fears

    or staunchly on my own,

    call me lovely to make others groan,

    call me sister, good architect,

    surrogate, subject, queen:

    and whether cwene or guena,

    I’ll take pride in what you mean.

    Call me muse of Dante – woman wise and serene –

    or else in Ilium the cause of scene.

    Call me triumphant goddess

    with stars of twelve enstoned

    upon my crown while I am safe enthroned.

    To me life’s not been easy.

    I’m of no temperament

    to follow rules not agreed to

    which you did invent.

    So, wherever you find me,

    do not give me pain,

    but love me as men did Helen,

    and your affections please maintain.

  • Devotion to Heroes – Part One


    The following three poems are from my collection “Devotion to Heroes,” and deal with Grail legends, biblical myth, and an ancient goddess.


    Parsifal (Parzival, Perceval)

    Too close and deep is the king’s malady,

    never relenting, never asleep, he.

    The fallen knight upon the bier,

    who cannot see and cannot hear,

    for whom lament is ever raised,

    all at once remembered and praised,

    will never rise from there:

    it is for legend this tale to bear.

    Auf, Kundry, auf, and into the east

    go, past man, past beast

    and into regions unfurled,

    there to seek throughout the world

    for a medicinal balm

    to restore to your master peace and calm.

    But, failing that, I tell you:

    let us all search for the one so true:

    the one unformed in heart,

    his heroism to impart

    to make the land less waste:

    oh, Parsifal, come now in haste!

    Get the holy blessed spear,

    get it, pray, and bring it here,

    to forever undo the pain

    of what Amfortas does remain –

    and then, from that, I duly own,

    you will have warranted your blessed throne.

    King Solomon’s Epicedium

    Once I lived in power and splendor,

    riches beyond the sea

    , with house and all provender,

    still here comes death to me.

    What gain, my wealth and all my might

    or piles and stacks of gold

    , if it is only into night

    I go now I am old.

    I am known a wisegreat king.

    Sapientia my name – and further on –

    as so many now do sing –

    salaam – shalom – selam – Solomon.

    Meat and drink I gave not nane,

    but gave them out to all as one,

    from kings quite mad to poets sane

    , no matter their rank or station.

    Not this is why I am remembered

    , and others do invoke my name

    , but for poetry unencumbered

    I wrote my way to fame.

    Death a state I yield no lot,

    nor seek to understand

    every soul it seeks or that it sought

    through one and every land.

    I die – where now my chains of gold,

    my coffers of the same,

    mighty vistas, view of old,

    remnants of my name?

    My story plain is to see

    in books devoted to mercy mild;

    a kingly crown was laid on me

    when I was but a child.

    I dream still of those days,

    as do many so.

    What mysterious ways

    that time so long ago.

    And so now my life is over

    and so now my course is run.

    This funeral song I offer,

    a second epithalamium.

    Ishtar the Ineffective

    Oh queen of redacted lore!

    Where have you gone – are you no more?

    Oh, goddess most dispassionate,

    is it man you most of all hate?

    Because in, around, and heroes through

    it’s never been much help from you.

    When faced with stories of a Flood

    ravaging all those cities of mud,

    what was your help to impart

    except to muse on mortal heart?

    Your pantheon has now long gone –

    but you, alas, do you journey on?

    Does Enlil keep you by his side

    though heroes have gone far and wide

    and battled through the Flood

    that ruined house and walls of mud?

    Tell me if this belies us.

    Oh goddess good, why do you despise us?

  • The Composer


    This poem paints the creation of the universe as a musical act.



    The Composer

    Before there was time, before there was “was,”

    before because of our worldly forms

    we had worry, nature, norms, there was

    a simple singularity, with parity of all matter,

    not created, not yet fated to one day die:

    a time before you, a time before I.

    And into this frame, of potential pure,

    sure of foot and gentle nature, stepped the greatest composer

    ever to be, into that small, vast, primordial symphony.

    I cannot really tell you now the proportions of him,

    whether he was massive or tightly trim,

    or how he came to rise above and generate

    the world he had come then to create. A great composer,

    is all I say of that first melody, and that first day.

    There came a chord, vibrations stirred: melodies

    of stars were heard, and with them, worlds away,

    that before in darkness lay. And with that first melody sung,

    the age of ages and being begun.

    Stars alight; soon, endless night was tempered

    by throbbing of the Word. Stars came, planets turned,

    churned the world, and ever yearned we to know

    who had made us, if he stayed us, to guide us further

    on the way he had set us on on that first day.

    But him to see, I do not know if we can ever

    do it so; but always before us, the everlasting chorus

    singing the music born so very long ago:

    as far back as ever we can know.

  • Tall People – A Poem


    This poem expresses what is sometimes felt living in a big city.


    Tall People

    In my city there are many tall buildings.

    In these buildings there are many tall people.

    To the side of the tall men are many tall women.

    To the side of the tall women are many tall men.

    In my city there are very many tall people.

    The tall people work in tall offices.

    They sit in their tall chairs and work on tall computers.

    The tall people go out sometimes to lunch at noon.

    The streets next to the offices are thin.

    When the tall people want to be entertained,

    they go to the wide theater in the center of the city.

    Next to the theater in which the tall people go to concerts

    there is a thin park with a thin pond,

    and in the thin park are very many thin people

    who go running down the thin streets, staying thin.

    In my city, when the tall people go to concerts,

    they are driven by other tall people, in black cars.

    In my city, there are many palaces of inconceivable wealth.

    In my city, there is a thick hall of justice,

    with thick men and thick women in dark blue.

    And the thick people cross over the thin streets

    to gain hold of the tall or the thin people

    as they roam the thin streets or go to the tall concerts.

    When the tall people on the thin streets want supple suppers,

    they go to the halls of food alongside the thin parks.

    If they want more diversion, they see movies

    on tall screens, craning their necks to the height.

    This is how I feel when I am in my city,

    always craning to look up at the tall, tall people.

    I come from a different world than they.

    I am a short person. When I walk through my city,

    I can only crane my neck to look

    at the tall people and the tall buildings on the thin streets.

    Will I ever be tall, too? Should I want to be?

    Or should I rest in what I have done, and stay where the lines

    are somewhat more in proportion?

  • Iocundus espresso

    The following is a poem that plays with Latin and with concepts in the study of medieval literature.


    Iocundus espresso


    The codex of my every thought is of life,

    not baring brown, with fine black inkings ruled

    or bound into quires (yes, it is dangerous to say

    how much I see the ends of my projects),

    with initials historiated, penned, or floriated,

    excoriated lightly in its way, upon itself so turned,

    so frail at every strand that, if I don’t meet it,

    if I don’t sway it to the path I want to continue on

    (free on! free on! I say), but quote verbatim

    the natural paraphrastical mimeograph of my thought’s health,

    the disputatum of my comitatus –

    no, not this the folio of my thought,

    not, no, not scribed in scriptoria penned by hands in floria,

    the res gestae of that I I call my own, my one, my home;

    oh, to only go further to the human arts,

    the art that gives me peace here and past and now and therely,

    barely with the desire that is the custom,

    , the fortune, the sun and also moon:

    you are beautiful, and more beautiful still:

    so, come with me into my abundance,

    the land, our garden, the city, that is to say,

    to make of it our own – not to set ourselves always away,

    always apart: that the rising of the sun

    , and that the dispute, for, if I never from myself grow

    and learn to love my force of thought:

    in excelsis gaudio.


    And so we know to right ourselves

    with proper interpunction

    when we have the quite compunction

    to live in our united disjunction

    and forever on to wind our way.

    What I mean to say, I will say in time.

    But the small subtleties of language escape me;

    they cannot yet take me in other tongue;

    I am too young in them yet to believe

    in this, that I can also know

    the minor points that make it so – graceful.

    I am homologous unto myself: what, then, if but a whelp am I?

    Connatural with what I see; a simulacrum of myself is me.

    But I do not thrall myself to be a mimic:

    this, in so many words, is my travesty.

    This I quote verbatim: my life is as I’ve made it –

    that, I mean, is quite divergent upon this, on my emergent.

    I’m an entity of being; I obtain my ever-graying

    and my prevail- and my maying; yes, it’s this; I do subsist

    in what I dispute, am saying.

    If you’re quite careful you’ll get a real earful

    of me, no tearful self, but resplendent

    upon this, on my ascendent way and ever day,

    always and anon to relay the commotion

    I always place my hope in;

    in short, that is to say, in – espresso.

  • Kapellmeister, Kapellmeister

    The following flash fiction piece plays with scientific concepts in the service of one very egomaniacal orchestral conductor.

    Kapellmeister, Kapellmeister

                And because the Kapellmeister was not the sort of person to stop when he was not of a mind to, they kept playing, even over and above the cries from the back of the shed:

                “Kapellmeister! Kapellmeister! You must stop going!”

                Someone shouted this from offstage, someone who knew him and who was responsible, as the ambassador of their organization, for his actions on stage and their ramifications in the world. But, while the Kapellmeister was making music, it was impossible to recall him, in mind and body, from the places he had gone to.

                This was a dilemma, because it was the life not just of the Kapellmeister, but of his whole orchestra, that was bound up in this drive to continue. Perhaps it was some strange magic that sealed the bond keeping conductor and orchestra locked together, so that neither the one nor the other had any charge over it. Or perhaps, also, the Kapellmeister had hit upon some unique property of our energetic universe that seemed like magic at the time only for its not being understood.

                The orchestra was in the middle of a Mahler Symphony, and it would be at least an hour before they were going to break for good, because the Kapellmeister took only the briefest of breaks between movements, not ever more than four seconds, and only so he could rest his arms for the slightest moment. Meanwhile, the orchestra manager (who had done the erstwhile screaming) was running around at the back of the shed and on the grass outside. He was surveying the real, or the potential damage, along with his staff, each of whom had come some way to find some means of coping with the – genius – and the particular form of logicality that the Kapellmeister espoused.

                Ironically, though, if one looked into the faces in the audience itself, one would have found no note of worry, no hint of consternation, and not even a mark that anything at all was “wrong.” If you were to have asked one of them what was wrong, you might have received the answer that nothing was wrong, of course nothing was wrong, and please be quiet, because actually what we are doing right now is listening to the music those women and men are playing on the stage, and which that man there is conducting.

                It is not that there actually are, or were, parallel universes, either at that time, or else now. It is only to speculate that, if such things did exist, this might be one of the ways in which they operate. But in these circumstances, you would have to be an outside observer to both universes that are parallel to one another, and also therefore have access to the ability to see into, and see, both of the parallel universes at once.

                The manager, the stage manager, the offstage trumpet who had stopped playing some minutes before, their boss, the owner of the orchestra (who had decided to be present that day) were in one universe.

                Without waiting only for his “subordinates” to do what he must, at one second, have known to be necessary for the salvation of his orchestra, Kapellmeister Jensen, the K., was, anyway, always all the while conducting his orchestra slower and more slowly, even as, if one was looking on the two universes from the “outside,” the other universe was speeding up, immensely so, and, moving at such a pitch, was also beginning, in many cases, to become greatly compacted, or else to burst into flame from apparently out of nowhere. In a very short amount of time, it became impossible for the manager, the stage manager, now also the house manager, the offstage trumpet who had stopped playing, and the boss, the owner, to run around farther than the back of the orchestra (in the audience, I mean), because already that world was speeding up to the point that it was becoming so compacted that, if it did not burst into flame at once and right away, it very well might have done so had someone hit it with a stick – or better (so that it would actually hit), with a mirror image of itself lying on the same dimension and, therefore, also accessible to it by means of contact. I will not detail this for you, because actually this would take 13.9 billion years to do properly, but just believe me when I say that it was an amazing sight, although nobody saw it because everybody was in it, and also nobody who was in it knew that it was happening because for them time was speeding up in direct proportion to the “by much” by which the cosmos was being crushed.

                At the same time, of course, the universe in which K. Jensen was, was slowing down in time in direct proportion to the amount by which the first universe was speeding up, and would, therefore, if they had been able to observe into it, have seemed to have been slowing down even that much the more.

                So, soon, I mean to say, the green lawn (nee of grass) in back of the shed where the orchestra kept playing and its conductor kept conducting always every more slowly (and always ever the same in relation to himself) was soon neither green, nor also any longer a lawn, but only to an outside observer and not, also, to itself and to those on it, because, to it and to them, it was always remaining the same.

                So, K. Jensen kept conducting to the end of the Mahler symphony, which he never actually reached, although he didn’t know this, of course, because to him it seemed that he reached the end of it on time, which to everyone in that second universe (or in one that observed) seemed to take an infinitely long amount of time to reach because he kept on conducting ever more and more slowly.

                What I mean to say, I guess, is that to everyone who was in one of these two universes everything seemed normal, and that it was only to someone who was looking on from the outside that anything seemed to be the matter, so that the stage manager, the manager, the house manager, the offstage trumpet who had stopped playing, the boss (the owner), and myself, were, I think, the only people in this universe to note that anything about it was changing, or split into two. And I myself cannot say exactly why what was happening happened, or what impelled it, but I guess that part of the answer could be that somewhere we hit a black hole, although why we were split in two from it, I really cannot say.

  • In a Tower Far

    The following story was composed in the style of medieval poet Honorius Augustodunensis.

    So. You have caught me halfway through a dream.


    In a little room of a tower, clean and bare,

    I sat and dreamed. I looked out

    far beyond the space of the walls,

    down a plain, into a dark wood.

    I was alone.


    There came onto the plain,

    girded with a golden sword,

    a knight on a pale horse.

    His hair streamed.

    There were no gloves on the hands

    with which he led the steed.


    I was moved by his approach.

    Curious, his near-coming garnered my gaze.


    Under the wall he reined up his horse.

    His voice rose up.


    “I am the servant of a noble king.

    He would have you come for his bride.

    Come down from your tower,

    and I will take you to him.”


    “Sir,” I replied—the voice was not my own—

    “there is a lock upon this tower.

    It is sealed with seven seals.

    Answer my seven questions,

    and I will descend to be the bride of your lord.”


    The noble knight nodded in response.


    “Tell me first: who is your lord?”


    “My lord, who sent me from a land far off,

    having heard that there is none among the seven lands

    better than are you, or who can be your match,

    is a lord above all other lords.

    He sits on a high throne that is on a high mountain.

    From there he can look out on all the land.”


    “Tell me second: is he handsome?”


    “My lord is twenty times more handsome than the most beautiful of the children of Adam. He is surrounded by a court of retainers and of beautiful women who are always desiring to see his face. But his face is veiled behind a veil of silk, and he will lift the veil not until such a time as he is ready, for otherwise his beauty would overshadow the world.”


    “Tell me third: is he powerful?”


    “His left hand has the strength of thirty men, and in his right he wields a sword that is sharper and larger than all other swords. None of the children of Adam can compare to his might.”


    “Tell me fourth: is he rich?”


    “If I had seven years I could not describe to you the face of every gold coin that is in the treasure chamber that stands behind his alabaster palace.”


    “Tell me fifth: is he generous?”


    “Lady, if you will come with me, he will shower you with all the riches I have described, and will open to you the endless fountain of his mercy.”


    “Tell me sixth: is he well loved?”


    “People come from near and far to honor him. Come with me, and you will be honored with him.”


    The six seals were broken.


    “Tell me seventh, and be quick to seal your answer in no more than one word, or the seal will remain forever sealed: of what substance is your lord?”


    The rider sat a moment back in his seat. His head hung as he thought. Then, gripping his spurs, in a loud voice he said, “Love.”


    I descended to the door. A hand that was not my hand undid the latch. A foot that was not my foot stepped onto the path. The beating of the heart in my chest was the beating of a heart that was full of love that comes from a king sent from afar out of a wood over a plain by a noble knight with a golden sword to break the seven seals that seal a tower that holds the heart that in my chest beats.


    Gott sei Dank.

  • Of Ten Thousand Men

    Dear reader,


    Much like the last poem I posted, the following poem was inspired by the biblical Song of Songs.


    Of Ten Thousand Men

    I.

    The world has grown harsh about me, and all is change.

    The sun-god, following my mind,

    has departed from the sky

    and words nor thought can any longer call him back

    until the day I die.

    My mind grows open to the world.

    It is tied to the spring and spring retreats from the earth.

    II.

    He came swiftly leaping in the hills.

    He was younger than I.

    He called to me in the fields:

    Come.

    And I came.

    III.

    And soon the summer-days will be departed, as seems neither possible nor true.

    We looked into the sky and saw the means by which we will be saved.

    He is dead now, though he shall leave the tracks of himself written on the sand.

    He is dead now, though he shall rise again in the spring.

    We will wait through the fall.

    We will wait through the winter.

    When the spring comes we will harvest the fruit

    that through the winter has waited

    in patient thought, hibernating

    till, springing suddenly, from the sheaves of stalks

    shall leap the life-god again, bringing with him a halo of rain

    to sprinkle over the barren earth.

    See now what love has wrought.

    This is what my true love with his blood has bought.

    IV.

    If I had a thousand years I could not tell you all

    the features of my love.

    He is ruddy, white and red.

    Swift as the hart in the hills,

    terrible as a king on his throne,

    tender as a child borne in a mother’s arms.

    The face of my love is silence.

    If we had a thousand years I could not tell you half

    the features of my love.

    V.

    Around our house there stands a wall.

    We are enclosed in the garden of love.

    I call him my king.

    He calls me his dove.

    The wall is such that none can climb.

    The wall is such we will never leave.

    VI.

    In the garden spring has come again.

    My mind is closed to the world, but open to him.

    I need no longer call until he comes.

    We are together until we die.

    The sun has broken from my mind

    and sits once more in the sky.

    The world has returned to itself once again.

    My love is the best out of ten thousand men.