Yeats: Knowledge of Reality and the Coming of Wisdom with Time

The knowledge of reality is always in some measure a secret knowledge. It is a kind of death.

-- Yeats, Autobiographies, p. 482

                    Though leaves are many, the root is one;
                    Through all the lying days of my youth
                    I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
                    Now I may wither into the truth.

Moonstruck

Tonight we are here

under the same stars

And turn our eyes

to the same moon.

How is it

I’ve lost you?

If you are the rain,

You will never get wet

Or need to huddle under a canopy of leaves

Dripping with tears or hide

from lightning or be afraid

Of thunder or look out for a blue patch of sky

Or tell someone you are not

A metaphor but at home

In darkness and

In light.

And then

You are gone

Until you find yourself

Falling once again.

You speak not in metaphors

But in streams and flowers

And everyone knows

What you're saying.

Before the end

Before the end coming at me

like a train off the tracks

a wistful fare well

and heart felt thanks.

(Worry not. Not gone

from here or home.

Just looking soully

at what yet may come.)

For my juvenile & senile friends

So-To Sing

Oranges are delicious

and volatile-inspiring

mischief & romance

So-to hold a fire

in one’s hands

like ice or a kiss

or maybe they

suddenly blossom

into love making

two in-two one.

If you’re counting

or frowning,

who can say

you’re wrong!

After all one

is one

and all alone

and evermore

shall be it so,

Green Grow the Rushes, O

(That was fun!

Even if it was not

much of a poem,

still it leaves one

singing.

What

more could one

Ask!*

(*‘So-to’ is a salute

to Gary Soto

who speaks of

peeling an orange

So-to make a fire

in his hands.

(The triple paren-

theses are a nod

to Falconer.

Some say he

& the falcon

& the wingèd

Word became One.)))

So-to Soto's Poem

Cures for Loneliness

Listen to the wind and forget who’s who.

You hear children laughing and smile.

Cats really do have secret names.

Light a match and let it burn.

If the hammer breaks, what use the nail?

Each is one, but so is two.

Singing in the shower works every time.

Write a poem and disappear.

Yoshino Cherry Blossoms

–C.A.E. 03/12/2023

I step into blazing light.

The blossoms compete with the sun for brightness.

They lose– But score decisively on whiteness

with a pink tip.

Two days ago, the wind blew away our daffodil blossoms––

They thought they might live forever

but were whipped from beauty

in to untimely d . . th.

She planted this tree.

I have a need to weep

but my throat aches

and there are no tears.

I would like to sob but am unable.

I fail to find the missing tears,

My throat burns on their behalf.

There are no breezes.

Single blossoms drift

straight down

to the path ––

Not aware that they

are alive no more.

If the wind fails in its appointed duties

The blossoms will hug each other and,

by that embrace,

form a soft, white shroud …

Perhaps they know the cherries

are right behind ...

Perhaps they are willing

to sacrifice beauty

to welcome sweet savor.

* * *

I go to the village senior-center for lunch.

I would like to eat without conversation,

but cannot.

I chat at the table

but do not speak

and do not hear.

I return after lunch more than an hour later.

There has been no wind at all.

The petals have not moved.

They believe that they are safe.

They aren't –– a big mistake . . .

I walk into the house and close the door.

I sit down and look at a photograph of a happy day.

She is smiling

So am I.

It is the least I can do for her ––

it is the best I can do

for me.

Yoshino Cherry Blossoms

for Charles

How sweet the sorrow

that sleeps through the night

and dreams!

Oh, the blossoming!

On Rhyming

How a poem gets written

If you were
watching

me write
this poem

you probably
thought

I was
sleeping

Perhaps
I was

It must be spring

He who does not hear the secret longing in the wind

and blush

will grow old and die —

upon a sigh so much depends.

How a man becomes the sea

The moment she touched the old man’s hand

He lost his sight, yet standing lost upon the sand

He heard the light upon the waves like keys.

She sang and let him go and like the wind he sighed.

None knows what song she sang or how he blindly

Played with light or how a man became the sea.

Thinking of you . . .

I thought

you would like

to know

I am here

waiting

in the rain

I guess

you forgot

What is the sky?

It is the upper atmosphere illuminated by sunlight.

How is it then that I see nothing but sky

When I listen to every word you say

As if life itself depended on it

Each syllable catching fire

Endowing time and space

With the luminescence

Of a lover’s song?

At night the sky devours

Us, giving rise

To the stars

That mark our journey

Here and beyond

Where we will hear at last

The song of songs.

Leonora's Photography: 164-168

Concentriquement

Les arbres de l'étang

(..) "Sur tous mes chiffons d’azur
Sur l’étang soleil moisi
Sur le lac lune vivante
J’écris ton nom
(..)
Et par le pouvoir d’un mot
Je recommence ma vie
Je suis né pour te connaître
Pour te nommer

Liberté"

(Paul Eluard)

Variation on a theme

youtu.be/9FytgfMV618 (Sergei Rachmaninoff.-Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini-)

Brown and grey façade

Quel bouquet!

Leonora's Photography on flickr

Friendship

Charles, Pauline, Ber, & Hugh (Photographs by Ber Himwich)

When we turn moonside

and open our eyes

We see the night as it is,

Turning upon an axis

Of light inside the dust —

The shattered* heart of us.

exploded / broken

Ber Himwich Photography 395

Temple Grandin, February 20, 2023 Peralta, N.M.

It's raining tonight

It's raining tonight.

there's thunder & lightning too

making sure we stop and listen

there's no place to go

no reason to be elsewhere

no summons for tomorrow

it's all happening now
here within & without
there's no need for prayer
I hear the beating
of every heart in my own
If this is a dream
I don't want to wake up

It sometimes makes me near ashamed

The wonder of an eye to find

In tears to find the rain.

Words fall like rain

Or tears ‘til a stream

Becomes a river

Ever seeking to be

One with the Sea.

There is a voice

That knows my name;
It calls me close
Then parts our ways.
It knows my nights
But not my days.

It is not love
For it would stay.
More like a dream
Or song that fades.
The moon would know
But turns away.

A bird calls us

As if to some account;

Its song is all

We care to care about.

Beauty is the Truth

We cannot do without;

When poets die

The birds will sing them out.

That bird now here

And now is gone

Calls the sky a friend.

He sings for morning’s glory

That it should never end.

Some hear it late or not at all

Nor wake to hear its song.

May it not take all night long

For us to greet the dawn.

To sleep, perchance to dream

The mountain hangs on the moon

And gathers clouds about her

And vanishes. The moon moves on,

Leaving behind trees, a river

And at last the sun.

So too will we disappear

Into the night we love.

What poets do

A hawk is as little

a darting thought

or glance

As it is a sky-wolf

or windborne voice.

It is a name

for what cannot be

named within ourselves

and would else be lost.

So we stop and die

But would bravely say,

We dive like hawks

and climb the sky.

In winter the geese
follow the sun. Don't we all?
Time to write haiku.

In winter the geese follow the sun. Don't we all? Time to write haiku.

So strange the new moon,
its beginning a shadow
summoning a song.

So strange the new moon, its beginning a shadow summoning a song.

Branches bare of leaves,
the moon hangs in the balance.
A lone night bird sings.

Branches bare of leaves, the moon hangs in the balance. A lone night bird sings.

There is but one thing I yet desire:

a waking silence

where there’s no longer the one who sees

or is seen, only the mountains

and the ribbon of light that is a river

on whose shore children throw stones

to test their strength. No one wins.

The river stretches out to a moment

And the silent splash of stone.

(One I hardly understand myself
Or perhaps too well.)

The Metaphorical Imperative

Were I in two places at once

I would know I was dying.

How’s that? Try it.

Now here. Now there.

What’s next?

Listen

If there were time

Or just a time

When I could tell you

Where I’ve been . . .

But there isn’t, is there?

And no place to speak of

And nothing much to tell.

Still, I must try. Listen

Don’t you feel sometimes

There’s no point

to any of this

And want nothing more

than to curl up with the grass

and just listen

The earth breathing life

into you the music that never stops

And you become

What you’ve always been

but somehow forgot

every time you were afraid

Which is most of the time

except now softly curling with the grass

you know there is no point

To any of this

The Art of Michaela Romero

Graphite Pencil

Medium: black charcoal, white charcoal, and graphite pencil

Acrylic Paint and Ink

Digital Art

White and Black Charcoal

Michaela Romero

Nobody There

Thereisnothinghereforyoutoseeunlesslookinginamirroryoufindsomeoneelselookingbackatyou-

oristherenobody?

The Table Setting

for Charles and Pauline

There is no waiting,

No answers to our questions,

There’s nothing we must do.

What comes is ours forever.

We may forget to breathe

yet know the rest is true,

The heart our only rule.

So praise the rising of the sun

And the fullness of the moon.

The table’s set for two.

I cannot say what I would

Not because it’s dark and true

And not because there are no words.

What I would say dulls my tongue

And I make sense where there is none.

Try me:

It’s the wings of morning

That bring the darkness.

The morning birds sing all night long.

I cough and spit and write this song.

The dead don't talk

I know why

the dead don't talk

to the living:

it hurts

to remember

and we stopped

listening

All of It, Every Bit and Piece of It, is Poetry

Love has taken up knitting.

Truly, he was as alone as he had been in the beginning when there were only himself and the vast emptiness of space that seemed to want to swallow him whole.

In that time before time, he had discovered that if he whirled like a dervish, bits and pieces of his colossal corporeal being would fly off and, as he spun faster and faster, he filled the space around him with feathery forms that floated aimlessly about him.

Some had the shape of white linen on a clothesline but others looked like bats. There were even eyes looking back at him, dazzled, and he saw sharp, heavier bits of silver and gold that had been flung far off and arranged themselves as constellations, though for him the great stories were yet to be told. Theseus had not yet sailed for Crete. They were not yet the museum pieces they are today, though he could not deny the wonder they evoked.

As he had never seen himself, he looked upon all this jumble as simply Other and called it Friend.

Then, on what we now would call inspiration, he let out a great shout of greeting (SAL WAY TE wA LAY TE) and the bits and pieces began to attract or repel other bits and pieces.

In an instant that would seem to us endless time, doll-like figures began to emerge and some of these appeared to be giving parts of themselves to each other as though they were gifts.

He was still lonely, of course. After all, these figures, except for the eyes, were lifeless, but then, thinking he was making a joke, he began to play with these megoistic forms and discovered a power within himself to bring them to life and was able with practice to forget to remember that all their laughter, lovemaking, and quarreling were nothing but himself playing alone.

Some of these strange beings even seemed to be aware of their creator, but soon enough they began to vie for his favor, tearing each other apart, piling up body parts, and setting them on fire. Some, out of gratitude, made living torches of themselves. They thought he, their creator, would inhale the smoke and be pleased. He wasn’t. Indeed, he was appalled to see what had formerly been bits and pieces of himself going up in smoke.

It was then he decided to stop spinning and take up knitting instead, hoping to piece together what was left of himself into one colossal Other, who might one day be a comfort for his loneliness.

He worked day after day for seven days without sleeping until he could no longer hold off the night, though it would have looked to us today as if he had just given up.

When he woke from his dreams, however, he discovered his loneliness had vanished. Before him was a wingéd Other. He called her Anima because he felt she had always been as close to him as the wind. Anima Animus Animus Anima was his mantra.

He now took up his knitting in earnest, but after every cycle of seven days, he would sleep and dream and discover upon waking other wingéd forms to whom he also gave names inspired by what he felt when he first saw them, names like Twilight and Shadow, Dawn and Cobweb, Shifting Sand and Trumpet, Midnight Blue and Riverunrun.

And all these lovely, strange wingéd Others would bring him earth, air, fire, and water as gifts, and he in turn would dream up worlds for them in which their strange and varied beauty would be at home.

He did not know exactly how all this had happened but felt as if he now had a purpose, though at the time he actually knew nothing at all about this. It was as if there were some great something at stake, but when the earth turned away from the sun on every seventh day, he would, like time itself, fall asleep and dream again.

Truth be told, he was still alone, but now the wind told him that all this, every bit and piece of it, was poetry.

Wings

by Charles Eaton

From our bedroom window, I can see a Great Horned Owl. It is balanced easily on a swaying limb of a large tree buffeted by strong winds. I don't know where its mate is. Pauline and I loved to watch the two huddle together. Sometimes one would shelter the other with a wing during rain.

These owls would both sit motionless for hours and then one would leave on silent wings for a destination beyond our sight. I would that I could have alerted each of you personally and sooner, but I have been topsy-turvy––often sitting motionless while buffeted by strong winds.

Last week on this day and hour, Pauline took flight on her own quite silent wings.

How is it that we can "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep"
[Romans 12:15], and that we can do both at the same time? How can we be so completely alone and yet un-separated? The strong bonds of memory, woven by cords of love, are both mystery and gift––perhaps as precious as Life itself.

"In My Dreams I Danced With Picasso": Sculpture by Pauline Eaton

"This sort of self-portrait shows how an artist feels in the presence of genius.
In my gnarled feet and knobby knees I felt clumsy,
but in my head, dancing with Picasso's freedom,
I felt I could do anything!" -- PE

In My Dreams I Danced With Picasso - By Pauline Eaton, 1982

4' foam-core, rice papers, and acrylic paint

In 1980 MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York City held a show of Picasso's work that I knew I could not miss. They emptied all four floors of the museum to host the giant exhibition. You entered from 53rd Street instead of 52nd into the basement where you began with his youthful work and continued up through all four floors, ending up with his work at age 92. Pablo's father was so awestruck by his teenage son's work that he quit his career as an artist. His son had already surpassed him. The young works were like Old Masters. Picasso said that it took him a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.

I went to New York with Charles's sister, Beth. We had tickets for three days, but after two, my eyeballs were just spinning in my head. I was totally overwhelmed and felt I could not take in any more. We sold our tickets to happy hopefuls outside the museum.

I went home to San Diego with a deep need to digest all I had seen and the hope that I could do something to express the experience. Picasso said with his art that there are no boundaries and "You can do Anything!"

I saw our Eric making his custom surfboards and became interested in the slabs of foam-core that he could easily carve yet would harden when exposed to the air. I went with him to his supply shop and acquired the foam-core and some of the finishing materials. At first, I made paper maquettes and then did a few pieces that are around the house of Shadow People and the Shopping Bag Lady. Then, in aluminum, I did a maquette of this piece. When I was ready (almost two years after the MOMA show)

I cut, carved, and coated this piece with rice papers and acrylic medium as glue. I knew I had to paint the figure. Picasso was a painter. But I held back until one night, in the middle of the night, I could not sleep. I felt ready to tackle the piece.

I took the pure white figure to the garage and dove into the painting. About 3:30 a.m. Charles realized I wasn't in bed and came to check on me. When he saw the intensity with which I was working, he backed off, and I must have worked to past five.

This sort of self-portrait shows how an artist feels in the presence of genius. In my gnarled feet and knobby knees I felt clumsy, but in my head, dancing with Picasso's freedom, I felt I could do anything! The style of painting is relational to a middle period of his work when he was painting Girl Before a Mirror, etc. -- Pauline

A Note from Charles:

"I suddenly and definitively realized that "In My Dreams…" is precisely what she says that it is: it is a revelation of the person and feelings of the artist, her very Self made visible––a Self portrait. Not only that, but a significant portion of Pauline's art consists first of an inner searching, and then an attempt to extract the results of this exploration by using a medium more immediate, direct and indirect, profoundly subtle, and flexible than language. Finally, having given it to her framer (me), she sent them out into the world to be witnessed and experienced.

Some, on viewing a piece of art, will reflect on how it should be interpreted––which consists often of an attempt to distill experience into language. In Pauline's case, it is as if the artwork has been invested with some of the resonance/vibration/insight that she was feeling and experiencing in the act of its creation–and that the viewer can pick up as strong or distant reverberation. As you viewed the photograph, you said: "I feel myself almost riveted to the floor. I feel such gratitude to have known Pauline". Of course your response, as a long-time dear friend, must be stronger than that of a person passing by on the way to urgent business. My claim is that you, and even those who have never met Pauline, may all feel heavy-in-the-legs and clumsy––but at times capable of feeling a lightness and élan that almost approaches ecstasy.

One thing is clear about Pauline: she had a rich, dynamic inner life. I often smile when people remark on the remarkable energy of Pauline's art. It does, of course, look indeed like energy––which it is. But more than that, it is a passion––a dynamic, forward driving passion; emotion not recollected in tranquility but splashed, brushed, and scraped from the cauldron of her creativity. Can you imagine what was churning internally while she was reflecting on Picasso, carving the foam-core, turning over possible approaches in design, waiting for the genii of art to drive her to pick up brushes and paint? Our reactions as viewers must be a pale, thin gruel compared to whatever constitutes her feast: the banquet she prepares, at which she feasts, and then shares with us––for her delight at the reception of others was part of her appetite for artistic expression. And yet… we are strangely and powerfully moved by the mere act of viewing her creations.

Charles 12/18/2021

P.S. Pauline regularly painted at night. She wanted to be interrupted by nothing, to have a deep quietness, to paint without a break for as long as she was physically able. It amazed me. I always take any excuse to take a break and then come back to take a look at my work from a different place in time. C.E.

This photograph emphasizes the sculpture's three-dimensional aspect:

Pedigree

Something Else

For K

A young woman was combing through the grass with her fingers or rather that’s what it looked like. Her grandfather, seeing her out the window, thought to himself, she must be thinking about something BIG. He knew, because he, while thinking about all the questions that come naturally to an old man near the END, would himself run his fingers over the page on which he was writing as if to discover some secret he had been missing. He decided to go outside to be with her. She hardly noticed he was there, so he just straight out asked her if she was looking for something. And she, as if talking to herself, answered, “Something’s missing.” Her grandfather, who wanted to be helpful, asked if she was sure she was looking in the right place. Her reply surprised him: “It’s not here, but it’s only out here in the light of day that I can even think about it.” The old man thought he understood and began running his scarred old fingers through the grass He was thinking of her, her young life in summer and winter, and then, for the first time, she looked up at him and smiled. Somehow each had found something.

Alec Himwich Photography, 8

Cereus

Alec Himwich Photography

Death is not a mystery. To deny its finality is to turn away from the simplest truth of all. What remains possible is to safeguard the living memory of those we love. If one follows out the logic, death always wins. It's not complicated. To treat death as raising complex questions is self-evidently a dodge. The reality of death does, however, call us to a devotion to this life and those whom, for a time, we yet carry forward with us. When I write a poem that suggests a loved one lives in the sound of wind or fall of rain, it is because the conscious act of the poem itself makes it so. And so it is, until the poem ends. It is a sacred and futile art.

The Sound that Wind Makes

(for Maya)

I want words to breathe like I do, weep when I do, and bruise easily.

I want words to dream and remember those dreams that first set me on this path.

I want words to grow old with me and become like the lines in my face and tell me
old stories that keep my stumbling spirit from falling and new ones that tell of
love forever young and freely given.
I want words of no regret even for the sorry waste of all I have left undone, unsaid.

I want words to hold up a mirror and see there all who at some time have gone hand
in hand with me through this life.

O what a wondrously crowded reflection that would be, all of them in the morning
of their lives, young and old alike.

O that words would fall like these tears and mark the page in silver and gold, the true
colors of night, that these words would live on in their hearts and find some rest there,
though I myself be nothing but the sound the restless wind makes on a cold night,
the wind that sweeps down the mountainside and past all the houses in which loved ones
have died and gathers up all those lost souls and scatters what is but dust and ash
through the deep space of time.

It is enough that the leaves

are green all summer long.

Fall will come and the wind
Will carry them all away.

The same wind holds me.
It is more than enough.

The Greatest Calling

After forgetting your name
I remembered everything else
that matters.
What’s in a name
is not you. You are as beyond
naming as the light. Don’t name
the constellations. The stars
are waiting for you to join them
in their radiant anonymity.
It is your birthright as surely
as wave upon wave makes
no sound upon the shore
that does not rhyme
with your breathing.
Listen! The birds
are nesting in your heart.
They will guide you home.
We go together and alone.

hhimwich is the author of all poems and other writing unless indicated otherwise.

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Favorite Links

David Chalmers: Fragments of consciousness

The New York Review of Books

Poetry 180

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Concentriquement

Les arbres de l'étang

Variation on a theme

Brown and grey façade