My Name is Charles: A Memoir

Photo by Ber Himwich

It is with great pleasure that I share this poetic memoir from my friend Charles Eaton, who is now entering upon his eighty-seventh year. It is a precious gift to those who already know and love the man and his dear wife Pauline. Those who will here discover our Charles for the first time will recognize, as do his friends, that Charles' story is also our own.

Download MY NAME IS CHARLES

Still alive

It was the long, cool time between sleep and waking, nestling in the morning light like a fledgling, though by the counting of the clock the world outside was buzzing, he impervious to its insistent question, What now? What to do if not everything at once? He remembered the previous night when he had talked himself to sleep, giving himself to the Oblivion that soon enough would put an end to all the questions, the time when there would be nothing at all to do and the chance to forget, giving himself to the future with nothing on his mind but the GIVING AWAY, the questions no more than the flutter of leaves just outside his window that was more like the chatter of children than a farewell. And now in the eternal Before and After, he lay there in the half-light and was glad, surprised to be still alive.

(112020)

Oranges

He was determined this time not to cut his fingers as he sliced the oranges. He would focus and keep his fingers well away from the blade. He remembered all too well how previously his blood had flowed onto the oranges and pooled on the plate. He knew it wasn’t just because he was getting old, fading into memory and the lure of the trees and his first kiss. She had been as nervous as he and had closed her eyes. Now all he could think of was feeding her oranges and the taste on her lips. And suddenly, she had bitten his lip, making it bleed. And then, more softly, she was feeding him. She was delicious and he . . . . he was lost in the trees. He put the knife down and wept.

Out of Time

When they removed the tree they moved the place
Or rather the place became a barren field
Where light through the green, still moving shade
No longer marks the ground like rain.
And yet here I am with you,
Your face bent over mine the air
rippling with laughter the tree
covering us in its bright shadow the earth
yielding as we fall out of time. Out of time?
What is left but song?
Listen! the ringing in the air, this rain
These tears hammering out the tune, time and place.
He, she, and all you love, draw near.

Rilke on writing poetry when one is no longer a young man

Ah, but poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simple emotions (one has emotions early enough)--they are experiences. For the sake of a simple poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighbourhoods, to unexpected encounters and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else--); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars,--and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labour, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very well blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves-only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

Excerpt from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

Rebecca Torrez: "Lacrima Borealis" with audio

Download Lacrima borealis (restored)

Lacrima Borealis

Blue, light blue like the top of the sky. Black real black not brown not green ink green black. Inside, in the circle but really on top but really on bottom. And they implore. Staring into the whirling milk of forgetful coffee; cataracts. A ladder, silver – the spiderweb chain of a tender necklace – perched at the edge of the deep coffee bowl. Green soldiers, yes the soldiers from the box the shoebox size 8 under the bed, clamber mechanically up and dive into the rich lagoon and they are followed by the pretty shorthaired girls -coquettes. She teeters on her toes grip the smooth edge of the bowl and asks me a question, sorry what was the question? A plane flies by, I lose my balance and am plunged into sleepy coffee. Fight the fatigue. Remember. The swirling current draws me to a storm to la tempete du jour ferie. Un coup de foudre directement au milieu d’une pluie sous sédation et la enfin je suis arrivée a ressentir. La dernière fois, c’était cette nuit équivoque and the cup ran overflowing with tears.

(Rebecca lives in Albuquerque, NM)

Leedy Corbin: Paul Harding's "Tinkers"

now east now west

the road has a mind of its own

and my feet obey

the rest of me stays behind
treelike

above

the sky grows gentle

MY HEART OPENS

the road goes on

as if not knowing

which way is best

PoetryMatters 12

PoetryMatters 11

PoetryMatters 10

PoetyMatters I-7

Download PoetryMatters Ia

Download PoetryMatters 2

Download PoetryMatters 3

Download Poetrymatters 4

Download PoetryMatters 5

Download PoetryMatters 6

Download PoetryMatters 7September 5

Faulkner's Poetic Style / Orpheus in Black

For those not familiar with Faulkner's writing, this passage from his short story "Pantaloon in Black" will serve as an introduction to his genius. The context is that Rider's wife Mannie has died and he is returning home to what is no longer a home and, in a fleeting moment, very much like when Orpheus helplessly tries to embrace the ghost of his beloved Eurydice, she bids him farewell. Rider and Mannie are a black couple, living in the Mississippi of the 1940s. With Mannie's death, Rider understands that his home, rented from a white man, was never really his. With the collapse of this illusion, Rider's world and the life he had hoped to build with Mannie comes to an end. Again, very much like Orpheus, who was consolable, his singing now making those same mountains and trees that once echoed with the beauty of his song moan with heart-wrenching elegy. The Maenads put an end to it, dismembering him with their bare hands, and tossed his head into the Hebrus river, where it continued to sing. A kind of lynching. Rider's story also continues to haunt us -- it seemingly will never stop. The comparison of Rider to Orpheus does nothing to sanitize Faulkner's story because it is part of our own history. The mark of Faulkner's genius is especially upon the sentence that begins, "She was going fast now, . . . " The sentence ends with the verb "was' and has no grammatical subject, which seems appropriate to me, the barrier between life and death being invisible just as it is between the present and the past..

Then the dog left him. The light pressure went off his flank; he heard the click and hiss of its claws on the wooden floor as it surged away and he thought at first that it was fleeing. But it stopped just outside the front door, where he could see it now, and the upfling of its head as the howl began, and then he saw her too. She was standing in the kitchen door, looking at him. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe nor speak until he knew his voice would be all right, his face fixed too not to alarm her. “Mannie,” he said. “Hit’s awright. Ah aint afraid.” Then he took a step toward her, slow, not even raising his hand yet, and stopped. Then he took another step. But this time as soon as he moved she began to fade. He stopped at once, not breathing again, motionless, willing his eyes to see that she had stopped too. But she had not stopped. She was fading, going. “Wait,” he said, talking as sweet as he had ever heard his voice speak to a woman: “Den lemme go wid you, honey.” But she was going. She was going fast now, he could actually feel between them the insuperable barrier of that very strength which could handle alone a log which would have taken any two other men to handle, of the blood and bones and flesh too strong, invincible for life, having learned at least once with his own eyes how tough, even in sudden and violent death, not a young man’s bones and flesh perhaps but the will of that bone and flesh to remain alive, actually was.

Then she was gone. . . .

(Italics mine)

PoetryMatters 9

Advisory

Advisory for our Times

You're not a talking head to me
Nor I to you, I hope. The eyes
Are not the window to the soul
Without a body. Thank God for
Our bellies and ourselves.
We are knees arms toes and hands,
The grass gives way beneath our weight,
Our feet leave telltale signs
Of where we’ve been are going . . . .

Imagine a world in which a hug is forbidden
For fear of infection, body to body. Imagine!
Hugging your mother father sister brother
Can only take you so far – your soul
is going elsewhere.
Look to your right
Or left, there is another body, another soul,
Who desires nothing more than
Not to infect you.
Do not believe it!

Ber's Photography 308

The raw material Ber was working was water spray. He took the picture on one of his daily walks about the block. He is forever finding something new in what is all too familiar. To me there is the scent of the cosmic about it. It is literally magnificent.

That Bird

When I came to school today, I did not come alone. There was a bear with me. No one seemed to notice except for one young girl whose eyes were filled with the glory of the morning and whose red hair played in the light air. She gave me a look, laughed, and asked who my friend was. "What do you mean?" I replied. She laughed again and said "you can't fool me" and flew up into a tree. Later, walking from one building to another, I heard a bird call, and there she was walking beside me. Cautious, I asked, "Who are you?" She seemed surprised I didn’t know. She said she was my student and had been with me from the beginning. This time when she flew away, I growled annoyance and padded on hand and foot to my next class.

II.

So, I thought I was alone on that beach when a sudden gust of wind blew my old tattered hat away. It was like the hat had wings or was some sort of kite, diving and lifting over the sea, but having no string attached, it disappeared over the water and surely landed wherever it is that kites go once they are set free. But then there was this bird call. I turned around and there, where there had been not one solitary person for months, was a girl wearing my hat. She laughed at my surprise, handed me my hat, and flew happily off. I knew then I was not alone.

By lamplight

There is before me in my room
A broken lamp that yet gives light
from years ago when father read to me
of little mice who ruled the house
And left my room a fearful sight --
My toys and clothes all here and there.
He smiled his smile, as I do mine,
Beneath this lamp and its brief light.

PoetryMatters 8

What is not there

Though I am known to God
As Hughlings, my friends call me
Hugh and leave it at that --
Grace takes care of the rest.

Though I do not believe
In anything or have any Jesus,
Yet I retain a kind of genius
For harmless lies.

It is as if during the day
I can still see the stars
Blazing out of the night
And truly see what is

not there. Some say
it is a harmless madness --
My friends though look deep
Into what were once my eyes

And all they see is night.

Leonora's Photography 76-81

R i z i è r e © Leonora; all rights reserved

froid printanier
dans l'eau des rizières dérive
un nuage sans racine

spring cold
a cloud without roots
over the paddy field

Kawahigashi Hekigoto, (1873-1937)

♫♪ youtu.be/vu1BcNeebMI. (Arvo Pärt -Tabula Rasa-)

Il était une feuille © Leonora; all rights reserved

(Calathea loeseneri)

"Il était une feuille avec ses lignes —
Ligne de vie
Ligne de chance
Ligne de cœur —
Il était une branche au bout de la feuille —
Ligne fourchue signe de vie
Signe de chance
Signe de cœur —
Il était un arbre au bout de la branche —
Un arbre digne de vie
Digne de chance
Digne de cœur —
cœur gravé, percé, transpercé,
Un arbre que nul jamais ne vit."

(..)'

Robert Desnos, poète français (1900-1945) in "Les Portes battantes"

These six photographs illustrate the range and creativity of Leonora's photography. There is much more to discover at Leonora on Flickr.

Man

What goes
like a wolf
in the morning
like the sea
in the afternoon
and the wind
at night?

The wolf is desire.
The sea is the journey.
The wind is what remains.

The answer is always man.

Pauline Eaton: artist / dear friend

Pauline Eaton, American artist, educator. License instructor California. Recipient award, Hollywood (California) Form Arts, 1986, Grumbacker award, Conference 96 Hill Country Art Center, 2d award, Texas Friends and Neighbors, Irving, 2000, award of excellence, Arizona Aqueous, 2002, Originals award, New Mexico Women in Arts, Albuquerque Museum, 2003, Water United States award, 2008.

On Poetry

Poetry

Poetry is inspired song. The breath is the soul of the poem. The poet gathers the air around, the blue from the sky and her curling eyes, the warmth from the sun and his lover's body . . . and sings. The air is measured, the lover's body rolls with the waves and her eyes become one with the night. In the morning, the poet crawls out of the sky like a bear, stretching full out, searching again for the sweetness, searching in the movement of cloud and leaf and desire. He sings. If his words resound in skin and bone, in the stone-cold night, if he enchants the air with his song -- it is poetry.

Metaphor

Metaphor is the mystery. The poetic act is both a participation in and apprehension of that mystery. A poem may affect us by its lyricism and its passion, by its matching sound with sense -- but without metaphor and the mystery it confers, poetry belongs solely to the decorative or rhetorical arts. It is by metaphor that a poem draws us back again and again to trace the lines that lead to the heart of being and to ourselves.

The Meaning of a Poem

The meaning of a poem comes not from the words, but from the transmutation that occurs in the heart of the poet at the time the poem is written. In all poetry that is not simply decorative, there is an elemental activity of consciousness, a sustained golden moment that triumphs over raw experience. The meaning of a poem is that activity of mind, triumphant over the despair that the words of the poem may convey.

The poem that follows has elicited the dreaded no comment except from one good friend who did me the kindness of asking about the word ‘gimble'. Nevertheless, I continue to enjoy the poem as if it were written by someone else for whom poetry brings into view such beauty that we but suffer the more for its absence. It is a backward way of praising poetry. That’s what I think antipoetry is doing. Anyway, here is the worthless little bit of a stinker in its final ode-rous form. Hold your nose . . . . .

Poetry Stinks

Poetry gives us just enough of what is real
to make us howl and gimble in the night,
too far from moon and what is our fate
To make it right. It stinks a lot!

At Seventy-Two

As I have grown older, I have plunged into language as though I were one of Melville's Catskill eagles. Poetry has given me a kind of second sight that sustains me in the dark places and makes me invisible in the light. Now, at seventy-two, poetry is leading me into a deeper knowledge: to be truly alive means to experience myself as essentially compounded of earth and wind and all other living things. It all breathes fire. I now want more than words. I seek to understand simile and metaphor as reality itself. Man is as much wolf as wind, as much rain as mind and so I would be. I know that I am approaching the age of oblivion whose plentitude is ALL, an empty mirror that is yet full of life. What I tell my students is that to be truly alive is to strive passionately for one’s own truth. My truth is the poetry of mind and heart and of Being itself.

Translating sound into verse

When the wind spoke to me to this morning, it was laughing, another time it was oracular, at another like the whisper of one lover to another. How are we to represent these sounds? The laughter was a flutter of leaves, the prophecy the swoop of eagle fast upon its prey, the whisper a vanishing ‘yes’. In these different sounds I hear a flute, a waterfall and the new moon's own shy, silvery voice. The sound of all of these is translated into images and may be represented as phlooooemmmm. Let those who are not poets worry about onomatopoeia. Poets are more resourceful translators.

Ber Photography 302-307

The Going

In a quiet time long ago and now
a river runs past where I stand looking
at the play of light upon the flow
and draws me to itself
and I am gone
until the chill
of the evening hour shakes me loose
and I remember where I am
and where I long to be. Someone
is waiting beside a fire.

O I am older now
and what once was home
is now the sea.
Long ago someone
held me in her arms.
It’s there I go.

Leonora's Photography 71-75

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Le lotus rose

youtu.be/eEgXdmbbEno (Maurice Ravel - String Quartet In F Maj (1)-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Nesting

(Corvus splendens insolens)

Sur la jungle et le désert
Sur les nids sur les genêts
Sur l’écho de mon enfance
J’écris ton nom'

(Paul Eluard in "Liberté")

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Mondrian-esque

Les travaux avancent

Nénuphar épanoui

These five photographs illustrate the range and creativity of Leonora's photography. There is much more to discover at Leonora on Flickr.

As you once were

Set out beneath the stars
on a solitary raft
that drifts along the shore
on a current
that will bring you
out to sea and sky
beyond all imagining

as you once were
as you will be again.

Gaius Valerius

A previous engagement has kept me occupied for seventy-four years

and so I missed a chance to dine with Gaius Valerius.

His invitation read simply: Mortui mortuis solum loquuntur.

There was no mention of time or place. I thought it strange.

Whitman: Poem on the Proposition of Nakedness

Walt Whitman is known as a poet of praise, yet in“Poem on the Proposition of Nakedness” (aka “Respondez”) Whitman speaks with sustained anger as if he has been betrayed by a lover or by his own illusions. It is a reckless poem, an eruption, the irony so impassioned and imperative that we are compelled to answer, “No, No, No, it cannot be. We must not allow it to be who we are.” That the poem speaks directly to our own times is what disturbs me most. Whitman himself seemed to have been aware of the poem’s unseemliness, of its searing force, and excluded it from editions of Leaves of Grass published after 1876.

Poem on the Proposition of Nakedness

By Walt Whitman

RESPONDEZ! Respondez!
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;)
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade!
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking?
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;	5
Let that which stood in front go behind! and let that which was behind advance to the front and speak;
Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions!
Let the old propositions be postponed!
Let faces and theories be turn’d inside out! let meanings be freely criminal, as well as results!
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery!	10
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know your destination?)
Let men and women be mock’d with bodies and mock’d with Souls!
Let the love that waits in them, wait! let it die, or pass stillborn to other spheres!
Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait! or let it also pass, a dwarf, to other spheres!
Let contradictions prevail! let one thing contradict another! and let one line of my poems contradict another!	15
Let the people sprawl with yearning, aimless hands! let their tongues be broken! let their eyes be discouraged! let none descend into their hearts with the fresh lusciousness of love!
(Stifled, O days! O lands! in every public and private corruption!
Smother’d in thievery, impotence, shamelessness, mountain-high;
Brazen effrontery, scheming, rolling like ocean’s waves around and upon you, O my days! my lands!
For not even those thunderstorms, nor fiercest lightnings of the war, have purified the atmosphere;)	20
—Let the theory of America still be management, caste, comparison! (Say! what other theory would you?)
Let them that distrust birth and death still lead the rest! (Say! why shall they not lead you?)
Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! let the days be darker than the nights! let slumber bring less slumber than waking time brings!
Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was all made!
Let the heart of the young man still exile itself from the heart of the old man! and let the heart of the old man be exiled from that of the young man!	25
Let the sun and moon go! let scenery take the applause of the audience! let there be apathy under the stars!
Let freedom prove no man’s inalienable right! every one who can tyrannize, let him tyrannize to his satisfaction!
Let none but infidels be countenanced!
Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed, indecency, impotence, lust, be taken for granted above all! let writers, judges, governments, households, religions, philosophies, take such for granted above all!
Let the worst men beget children out of the worst women!	30
Let the priest still play at immortality!
Let death be inaugurated!
Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers, and learn’d and polite persons!
Let him who is without my poems be assassinated!
Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—let the mudfish, the lobster, the mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish—let these, and the like of these, be put on a perfect equality with man and woman!	35
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the most filthy of diseases!
Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools!
Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of women! and let women among themselves talk and think obscenely of men!
Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public, naked, monthly, at the peril of our lives! let our bodies be freely handled and examined by whoever chooses!
Let nothing but copies at second hand be permitted to exist upon the earth!	40
Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever henceforth be mention’d the name of God!
Let there be no God!
Let there be money, business, imports, exports, custom, authority, precedents, pallor, dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief!
Let judges and criminals be transposed! let the prison-keepers be put in prison! let those that were prisoners take the keys! Say! why might they not just as well be transposed?)
Let the slaves be masters! let the masters become slaves!	45
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling! let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands!
Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the American, and the Australian, go armed against the murderous stealthiness of each other! let them sleep armed! let none believe in good will!
Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! let such be scorn’d and derided off from the earth!
Let a floating cloud in the sky—let a wave of the sea—let growing mint, spinach, onions, tomatoes—let these be exhibited as shows, at a great price for admission!
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers! let the few seize on what they choose! let the rest gawk, giggle, starve, obey!	50
Let shadows be furnish’d with genitals! let substances be deprived of their genitals!
Let there be wealthy and immense cities—but still through any of them, not a single poet, savior, knower, lover!
Let the infidels of These States laugh all faith away!
If one man be found who has faith, let the rest set upon him!
Let them affright faith! let them destroy the power of breeding faith!	55
Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent! let them dance on, while seeming lasts! (O seeming! seeming! seeming!)
Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what they have been taught!
Let insanity still have charge of sanity!
Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds!
Let the daub’d portraits of heroes supersede heroes!	60
Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself!
Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel persons!
Let the white person again tread the black person under his heel! (Say! which is trodden under heel, after all?)
Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied in mirrors! let the things themselves still continue unstudied!
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself!	65
Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself!
(What real happiness have you had one single hour through your whole life?)
Let the limited years of life do nothing for the limitless years of death! (What do you suppose death will do, then?) Notes on the Text

Leonora's Photography: 66-70

Urban living

(Victoria harbour; Hong-kong)

Today and tomorrow and yesterday too

Menthe à l'eau

N é n u p h a r

Les vitres des surprises

These five photographs illustrate the range and creativity of Leonora's photography. There is much more to discover at Leonora on Flickr.

Ber's Photography, 297-301

The Darkest Blue

This poem is a wingéd

thing, hovering

above the western sea,

seeing all

that isn't there.

II.

The day is dying,

soft like glass,

what we've lost

is all that lasts.

III.

The song leads on

to a hidden isle

where nothing is

is reality.

IV.

Song shields the eye

from the final fire,

the darkest blue

at the sunstruck hour.

Ber's Photography: 292-296

A Reading

Our life hangs

by a single thread

That holds the weight

On which itself depends:

Words burn to the touch

the hand that holds

the pen and die(s).

There is no other light.

Leonora's Photography: 61-65

Eclaircie

youtu.be/mRo7tMnM60I (Stan Sulzmann - Agatha Christie's Poirot - Opening Theme Music-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Au port (Lamma Island; Hong-Kong)

youtu.be/09WUa712XcA (Georges Brassens -Le bateau de pêche-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved
Un après-midi à la plage
youtu.be/8JeMeOrzkds (Yann Tiersen - La plage-)

Floating village - Vivre sur l'eau -

Clan Jetties form part of the Penang Heritage Trail in Georgetown. Billed as one of the last bastions of old Chinese settlements on the island, this waterfront society dating back to the late 19th century, is home to houses on stilts of various Chinese clans.

Leonora's Photography

James Agee's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915," Samuel Barber's Music & Lyrics, Leontyne Price Performing

Download Original text by James Agee

(lyrical in itself)

Download Barber's Lyrics

(considerably less lyrical)

Leontyne Price Performing

(music & voice restore the poetry)

The Fall

He fell (he was always falling)

Or rather, he jumped, missing the water

That would have taken him, leaving his remains

to flow in the rhythms of his speech,

Washed clean like one hoping to please

Instead of what was, a silent heap,

Though there was heard from a nearby street

What some would call a melodious scream.

For Alex Thomas Coming To My House

The thought of Alex Thomas coming to my house

Could make an old man cry. Not me! Round

The back my grandson plays hide and seek.

I’ve not the slightest idea what that means

But, Alex, you will know! I can only dream

And look for nuts on airy ground.

You see, I’ve placed a charm about the house

And made my home among earthbound clouds.

Alex, you deserve this stupid poem. Take the blame!

If you were me, you would do the same.

If that’s confusing, Lord, just let it rain.

For Theo

Theo, let's go back to basics! I never did fall asleep in class and you completed every assignment in your own inimitable style -- No, I didn't and Yes, you did. That's the truth! I have kept every scrap of writing you have written and all my comments. There are memories drilled so deeply into my psyche that not even Alzheimer's could erase them. I have proof of all manner of shenanigans on both our parts and of our relationship that have made these last five years, rusty as they may be in my case, golden. Some years down the road, I will be rocking in my chair, looking out at a dying sun, and you will sneak up on me from behind as you have done so many times and I will know it's you. I will laugh and my heart will sing, the sun reborn. I love thinking of you wearing vests that I once wore, and you should know there will be more to come. We're not done yet, buddy! See you at the Circle K on Almeda!

Garous Abdolmalekian

I am excited to share with you the poetry of the contemporary Iranian poet, Garous Abdolmalekian. Listening to Garous in Persian makes me think of Rumi. His poetry sings like that. In translation, his poems have a different kind of sound, but, in the Anglo-Saxon way of things, they are still very effective and beautiful. Hearing Garous’s poetry in Persian and in English is for me like seeing mountains roll like waves. Only in the Persian the sound of the sea is actually in the words. The video is of pedestrian quality, but the poetry changes everything: Garous Abdolmalekian. I have also copied below a translation of Garous’s “The Ruins of Bam.” It comes by way of the Poetry Foundation.

The Ruins of Bam

by Garous Abdolmalekian

^{Translated by Idra Novey and Ahmad Nadalizadeh
For the city of Bam destroyed in the 2003 earthquake}

The window is black
the table, black
the sky, black
the snow, black
You’re mistaken!
I don’t need medicine
or a psychotherapist.
Just lift these stones,
sweep aside the earth
and look into my eyes!

My eyes
that are round like the Earth

an image of the world
the world of shut doors
of countless walls

anytime I stand before the mirror
the image of an upside-down tortoise
makes me long for a passer-by
to arrive and invert the world

Some night
our hands will tremble from all this solitude
and our depiction on the canvas
will be scribbled out

the ruins of Bam scribbled out
the shelters we built
collapsing on our heads

I am terrified by the next images in this poem
the image of God lifting all the doors onto his shoulders
getting away
retreating far and then farther

I write: one day
the missing keys will be recovered.
What should we do about the missing locks.

“I wrote the poem one month after the 2003 earthquake that struck the ancient city of Bam in southern Iran. It was around that time when I realized the earthquake had shaken not only the world outside, but also inside me. In the poem, the crack in the earth gradually extends to the human soul and to humanity’s relationship with the whole existence.”
—Garous Abdolmalekian

Leonora's Photography: 56-60

The Village Stream

Effet centrifuge

♫♪

youtu.be/7W-WFmT51w4 (René Aubry -Guitare bambou-)

Lumière tamisée

Nouvelles perspective

"Je déchirerai l’obscur nuage Pour voir moi-même le soleil"

"I’ll cut through your dark cloud To see the sun myself"

(Dylan Thomas)

To see more of Leonora's Photography: Leonora.

"Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas

Every once and a while

I force myself to read

a truly great poem

before I go to bed

where I will lie awake

all night and dream.

"Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas, text and reading

For Rachel

I do not know the pain you feel, dear one,

But it must be more than a soul can bear --

I feel that and would say no more

Than what the towering tree nearby

Would have me say: we feel it,

Earth and root, leaf and wind,

The sky itself would fall for you

and comfort you. It knows

no other blue.

Ber's Photography: 281-285

For Mary and Emma

Video Recording: For Mary and Emma

Hey Mary, Hey Emma,

Let’s say together

what we have made our own:

κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων.

Those who know no Greek

will understand what is essential:

we are friends.

In class, you let me ramble,

which I do well,

while you do all the work,

if you call it work

to play qui, quae, quod

and quack like ducks.

Some folks say Latin and Homer’s Greek are dead.

They’ll know better

when they hear angels like you

speak only bella Latina

and reckon things by the Αlpha and 0mega.

Those who know no Latin or ancient Greek

will find themselves back in school.

Not you!

Valete, vos amo magis quam dicere possum.

For Christine -- May, 2020

In times like these

Christine is our Christine

Not for better or worse

But for her gift not to dwell

On what’s not possible

But on what is

and do it so well.

Loci

Fragment

]
]
]
]
]
] remember]

From which all life comes

for Brenda

We bury this bird
Where it fell.

It goes to earth
Where its mother dwells.

Morning Light

The junk in my head gathers dust
Year to year, day to night

But rises with the call of birds,
Becomes a choir in the morning light.

For Alex Thomas Coming To My House

The thought of Alex Thomas coming to my house

Could make an old man cry. Not me! Round

The back my grandson plays hide and seek.

I’ve not the slightest idea what that means

But, Alex, you will know! I can only dream

And look for nuts on airy ground.

You see, I’ve placed a charm about the house

And made my home among earthbound clouds.

Alex, you deserve this stupid poem. Take the blame!

If you were me, you would do the same.

If that’s confusing, Lord, just let it rain.

A Flea

Having not heard from you in days

(seems like years to a flea like me),

I worry, no doubt needlessly,

but there it is – the worry

worrying me, knowing

it will do no good,

and that’s a worry too,

so let’s call it prayer,

which likewise does no good

except it makes me feel better

or worse about myself,

depending, as it does,

on a dog.

All x 1 & done

At a certain age time passes more quickly,

we count days by a two by four

then all x 1 & done.

IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO

Porridge, she said,

Doesn't rhyme with orange,

And then, as if upon a stage,

Danced a golden tango

About my bed. O, I said,

That's how it's done,

A golden orange on my head.

Thalassa

What poets know is what is not.
It sets us free upon the shore to dance like rain
And cry out to the sea as to a friend,
Who leaves and calls us home, its true name.

Its name is οὐ τόπος, the sea of tears,
In whose waves we would gladly drown.
We dance, I say, to enchant the sea
and make it sing: κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων.

οὐ τόπος (ou topos): not a place
κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων: (koina ta tōn philōn): common are the things of friends.

Leonora's Photography: 51-55

"Par gros temps, s'emmitoufler de lectures avant de repartir au combat"

(Correspondance -Walter Benjamin à Hannah Arendt)

(In rough weather wrap yourself up in reading matter before returning to battle)

Ces éléphants rugueux, voyageurs lents et rudes..

(At the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka)

Vulnérabilité

youtu.be/7fdqF4XIUsE (Bob Dylan -High Water- )

Bananier

Réseau

You can find more of Leonora's superb work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/150410475@N04/.

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

Featured

Search

Favorite Links

David Chalmers: Fragments of consciousness

The New York Review of Books

Poetry 180

Counter

R i z i è r e © Leonora; all rights reserved

Il était une feuille © Leonora; all rights reserved

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Le lotus rose

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Nesting

(Corvus splendens insolens)

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Mondrian-esque

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Au port (Lamma Island; Hong-Kong)

© Leonora; all rights reserved Un après-midi à la plageyoutu.be/8JeMeOrzkds (Yann Tiersen - La plage-)

Floating village - Vivre sur l'eau -

"Je déchirerai l’obscur nuage Pour voir moi-même le soleil"

Vulnérabilité

© Leonora; all rights reserved
Un après-midi à la plage
youtu.be/8JeMeOrzkds (Yann Tiersen - La plage-)