Hughlings Himwich

Kiss and Tell

 
Who but a god

Could look at you

Sweetly laughing

And not die


For a kiss, dying

Again and again

Like gods of spring

that never truly


Die. Your lips

Like night

hold back the day

And close my eyes . . .

Awake! Awake!

You are no god

To kiss and tell

Of life and death.

 

"Written in pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car: Dan Pagis

WRITTEN IN PENCIL IN THE SEALED RAILWAY-CAR

here in this carload

i am eve

with abel my son

if you see my other son

cain son of man

tell him that i

                    -- Dan Pagis

The Man Who Couldn't Love Someone Like You

He had once been a happy man. He had loved everybody, boys, girls, old women who thought themselves still vibrant and sexy, and old men with dangerously foul breath. He found lovable what others considered obscene, like protruding teeth or flapping ears or a nasty looking scar across the forehead.  He even found drooling as naturally becoming as sweat. He couldn’t help himself. Others thought he was delusional or simply a dirty old man, until one day, he suffered a head injury, having slipped off a ledge while ogling sagging sunbathers. After he recovered, he now found crippling fault with everyone.  His constant refrain was, “Who could love someone like you?” He said this whether the person was overweight, stuttered or blinked too much or had dull brown hair or had one too many eyes. He reserved a special place in hell for redheads, whom he previously had loved to distraction. Some remembered the “dirty old man,' but now putting their full faith in what had before been but a naive myth, that he had once been a lovely human being. They asked him what had changed and he said, “I woke up.” One day he took a good look at himself in the mirror and saw the faults he found in others in himself: unruly hair, yellowing and missing teeth, wrinkles that made his flaccid face look like a prune -- he even thought his skin had turned dark purple. So be it, he concluded, and banged his head as hard as he could against the glass. This time he didn’t wake up.

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.

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. 

Two Part Invention

If all there is and comes to be
A child to hold a dying sun
Then let the world our night to know
And let this song be what we love.

If all there is and cannot be
Two to bind a trinity
Then let our love forever shine
And hope for dark eternity.

Rise, O child, as a single note!
Lift this song on the desert sea
And make us all forget-me-not
That all may know love's levity!

The question yet I put to thee:
Does Death herself sing harmony?

 

River Notes

As I sit here writing tonight at my desk I am on the river and see myself in the flow of all things . . . the sounds of water, bird and wind are my voice, and all my senses are alive as though the stars were at elbow and foot . . . I breathe in the night and orion, aldebaran, and procyon come closer, and there you are again, musa, luna puella, your body curving and folding in the current, laughing and inviting me to dive with you beneath the rippling and lose myself at last, these words nothing but the falling rain.

A wise fool

One day a young monk asked his master, How can one find what one has never lost? You are a fool, the wise master replied.

The monk, who had been the master's most devoted disciple, turned his back and rejoined the world. The wise master smiled and continued teaching what cannot be taught.

Rebecca Torrez: "Lacrima Borealis" with audio

Lacrima borealis

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)

 

"I will put Chaos into fourteen lines" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines 

And keep him there; and let him thence escape

If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape

Flood, fire, and demon—his adroit designs

Will strain to nothing in the strict confines

Of this sweet Order, where, in pious rape,

I hold his essence and amorphous shape,

Till he with Order mingles and combines.

Past are the hours, the years, of our duress,

His arrogance, our awful servitude:

I have him. He is nothing more nor less

Than something simple yet not understood;

I shall not even force him to confess;

Or answer. I will only make him good.  

 

Digging in the garden

 

Digging in the garden I find

but earthy loot: worms, beetles,

pebbles and ocean shells

and a blackened shard to cast away

for luck and there in the shade

of a supple palm, taking hold

where it should not be, a girl :

I think of Phaiakia and Nausicaa

washing her clothes for some

beggar like me, rough-hewn

in all but speech and she lingers

beside the pool, wondering

if it be a god or beast or bard

that shapes her soul seaward

to be free. She looks and looks,

not believing what she sees

or what she feels. He tells her

of a younger, stranger man

who will come for her

when the spell is broken

and she as wild as the sea. 

 

Though she's lost her way

Though she's lost her way

a river runs through her veins,

the moon in her hand. 

 

Painting by Magdalena Ramos Mullane

I was lucky to be able to purchase Maggie's painting.   I had admired Maggie's writing and art from the time she was in the eight grade.  She was never my student. 

 

Love is so strange

Every time he looked at her he scowled.  She finally had enough and asked him what was his problem.  He said, “You’re so beautiful.  I can’t help myself.”  She didn’t understand. “But your face is so ugly when you look at me?” He didn’t understand and, of course, all the while he was scowling and making himself look ugly.  Finally, she asked, “Can you smile?” and he answered, “I thought I was.” “No, a smile looks like this,” and she smiled for him. He scowled. Then, for some reason, she kissed him. When people see the two of them together now, hand in hand, he scowling and she smiling, they wonder aloud, “What an odd couple!" Love is so strange.

Maria Metzger: Photo 1-3

 

Ber's Photography: 256-260

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Boy Who Flipped My Mind

for Caulder

It always scared me when he did his flips. What, I thought, if he should misjudge the landing or slip on take-off and break not just an arm or a leg but his head, already balanced precariously on his shoulders. A mere shrug, it seemed, and he would be unrecognizable. I decided it was best not to mention my concern. Then what I feared most happened, but he was smiling, asking me who I was. It had been fun.

For the life of me

Yesterday before school I watched the sun rise over the trees but for the life of me I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do next.  

                                The trees                                           

                                 I can’t remember    

                                Yes! It was

                                The sun

                                 Life    

                                Above . . .

Come the revolution

At night you could hear the wolves cry or was it  my own voice coming from afar, searching out like a comet in the night a nesting place where all would end, burning out, and begin again come the revolution and the downfall of the sky and all that keeps us from knowing who we are or what we're doing, always returning like birds in spring, hunting seeds and love and laying up treasure against the day when the revolution comes and we are what we have always been and will be again but this last time riding on the backs of storms and galaxies, spinning spun and spent all at once.  

The Woman Whose Lovers All Had Green Eyes

The Woman Whose Lovers All Had Green Eyes -- or so she told me, though when I looked, my eyes were as blue as the sky, just like hers. She said that’s because I’d had other lovers too. That was hard to figure, but then I remembered my first love and her eyes were as blue as the moon, though she said I’d mistaken her for someone else. Maybe so. Maybe I was thinking of you. It’s hard to know. There’ve been so many.   

Song for Richard

You spoke the only true word I know
And that word became an open wound
They cleaned with lye, not knowing
Your pain, your tears were like wine
That would save their shining souls.  

Pick up the rifle, son
No you said
That’s no SIR, son
Pick up the damn gun!
No you said. 

They called the captain
They called the priest
They called the doctor
Are you crazy, son?

No no no

Come with us!
You walked away.

I see you now forty years later
alone on that far thundering shore
    “I will not fight your fucking war!”
You are carving a face out of driftwood
the face behind the face of everyone I meet
I have it still and think of you.

You came back. True to your word.
And they sent you to Leavenworth
Where your bruises became sores
Your sores gaping wounds
Your screams the blessing
That saves our sorry souls. 

Once begun

Across the lake the sun falls

Water rises to the night

The moon divides

Lets loose a silent keening

Human bird and spark

And then there’s naught

 

But clap and clatter

Of constellations:

Your story once begun

Leonora's Photography: 36-40

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Homo communicans

"L’exercice le plus fructueux et le plus naturel pour notre esprit, c’est pour moi la conversation. Je trouve cette activité plus douce que n’importe quelle autre dans notre vie. Et c’est la raison pour laquelle, si j’étais maintenant obligé de choisir, je crois bien que je consentirais plutôt à perdre la vue que l’ouïe ou la parole (...) Etudier les livres est une activité tranquille, calme, qui n’excite pas ; la conversation apprend et exerce en même temps. Si je m’entretiens avec un esprit de valeur et redoutable polémiste, il me presse sur les flancs et m’aiguillonne à droite et à gauche: ses idées stimulent les miennes. La jalousie, l’attrait de la gloire, la compétition me poussent et me font me dépasser. Etre du même avis, c’est quelque chose de tout à fait ennuyeux dans une conversation (..) "

Michel de Montaigne, philosophe français du XVIe siècle, in "Les Essais"

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Urban blues: youtu.be/J1I_sO81eL4.     (Albert King - Blues At Sunrise-)

 

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Terre sacrée

Le temple marin de Tanah Lot sur Bali, construit au XVIème siècle en hommage aux esprits de la mer, est un haut lieu de pélérinage de l'Indonésie

Tanah Lot is a rock formation off the Indonesian island of Bali. It is home to the ancient Hindu pilgrimage temple Pura Tanah Lot.

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Le livre de la rose

````````````````````````````````````````

Je te vois, rose, livre entrebaîllé,
qui contient tant de pages
de bonheur détaillé
qu’on ne lira jamais. Livre-mage,

qui s’ouvre au vent et qui peut être lu
les yeux fermés

(..)

Rainer-Maria Rilke, poète autrichien (1875-1926)

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Safety lines

 

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

 

 

For my students (2019 - 2020)

For Yoshi

Here an old man on his crane-like legs unfurls his wings and tucks

    his head into the clouds

Here a young man who does not know he has wings begins to flutter

    like a leaf in the wind

*****

For Mateo

Here the seasons wait in line to fall upon the land

Here a young boy already old and bent in two spins the wheel

Here Mateo, young in winter, dreams of hunting

*****

 

That Bird

I. 

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.  

                                                            

Leonora's Photography: 31-35

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

L'étang aux lotus (The lotus pond) 

youtu.be/d2bdn2RIsVY (Schumann - Romance for oboe & piano-)

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Entre les lignes

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

The Feast

..."It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible."

        Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet (1875-1926) in "Letters Of Rainer Maria Rilke"            

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Mosaïque

"Le monde entier est une mosaïque, le monde entier est une mosaïque de croyances, de langues, de communautés différentes, et la question n’est pas de savoir si on peut les faire vivre ensemble, la question c’est de savoir comment on va les faire vivre ensemble, parce qu’on n’a pas le choix."

        Amin Maalouf, écrivain français né au Liban en 1949.          

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Watching you

"What’s that mean—been seen? Who’s been seein’ me?"

        (In "Milkman", by Anna Burns)

*

youtu.be/MBR4cn2flRU (Shostakovich- Cello Concerto Nº1-)

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Les murs parlent

"(..)

Il me souvient de chansons qui m'émurent 
Il me souvient des signes à la craie 
Qu'on découvrait au matin sur les murs 
Sans en pouvoir déchiffrer les secrets 

Qui peut dire où la mémoire commence 
Qui peut dire où le temps présent finit 
Où le passé rejoindra la romance 
Où le malheur n'est qu'un papier jauni (..)"

    Louis Aragon, poète français (1897-1982) in "Les yeux d'Elsa"

 

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

 

Ber's Photography: 246-250

 

 

 

 

 

Dividing the night

If you were here

All aflame in the evening light,

If it had been you running

through my fingers

like long summer grass

If it had been you curling

Like a wave upon the shore

So much like my own heart

Beating for night to come

And you close upon me

Your eyes dividing night

To hide away the tears,

There would be no sound

Or silence, no hour,

just you and all delight. 

 

Leonora's Photography: 26-30

 

  © Leonora; all rights reserved

L’importance du jaune
*
"Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets,--
Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover's words."

                               --Emily Dickinson

 

  © Leonora; all rights reserved

Together

*

"AS late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields:
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd:
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me
My sense with their deliciousness was spell'd:
Soft voices had they, with that tender plea
Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquell'd."

                                                          --John Keats

 

  © Leonora; all rights reserved

The old tree

♫♪

youtu.be/PocYOusrw1I
(Lilium - Sleeping Inside-)

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

A fleur d'eau
♫♪
youtu.be/hTe9wYTWd4M
(Lauth Quartet - Pastels-)

 

  © Leonora; all rights reserved

Fields of Gold

*
♫♪
youtu.be/e7wjbNpw2Xk
(Fourplay - Fields Of Gold-)

 

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

 

Two fingers or three

(boy girl, sitting on a bench in lamplight)

There's something else bothering you, isn’t there?

No, I’m fine.

No you’re not.

I tell you I am fine.

I’ll believe that when you can tell me how many fingers I am holding up. 

Two.

No, I was holding up three. 

No you weren’t.

Yes I was. Try again. How many fingers?

Two!

No, three again. Something's not right.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with my eyes.

Maybe not, but I know there’s something bothering you.

You’re right! YOU are bothering me.

I knew there was something.

I hate how you always think you know.

Like now?

Exactly! I'm leaving.  

Then leave.

I can’t.

Why not?

Because I don’t know where to go.

Home?

No.

Why not?

I can’t tell you.

Well, you can come home with me.

Thank you. 

Two fingers or three?

Just drop it. 

What?

You got what you wanted, right?

What's that?

Me.

Ber's Photography: 251-255

 

 

 

 

 

Maria Metzger: José

 

 

Maria was inspired to draw this from her reading of Oliver Sacks' "The Autist Artist". 

Turn the page

Turn the page and you will find
The emptiness you have been searching for:
A blank page is waiting for you,
Alone now for the last time,
Yearning for all that is not there,
Each word you write so full of life
You'll never want to turn the page again.
The sun will spin and the moon will weave
Itself into the mystery of the night
Where now you find yourself
As you truly are: not really there at all. 
Let the land flourish and be whole,
Let the thunder bring you home.

Leonora's Photography 21-25

 

  © Leonora; all rights reserved

S'envelopper dans la lumière d'un jour d'été
♫♪  youtu.be/7v8zxoEoA_Q (Vivaldi -Sonata in D Minor 'La Follia'-)

 

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Fils conducteurs

 

 

 © Leonora; all rights reserved

Technologie et tradition

Taipei 101 in Taiwan

Rich with symbolism and tradition, Taipei's iconic landmark is a standing monument to ancient feng shui traditions and modern architecture.

Construction on the Taipei 101 tower began in 1999 after two years of planning; work concluded in 2004

The Taipei 101 tower had to be constructed with more than just beauty and symbolism in mind; Taiwan is regularly subjected to powerful typhoons and regional earthquakes. According to the designers, the tower can withstand winds of up to 134 miles per hour and the strongest earthquakes on modern record.

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Le langage des fleurs

              *
"Orchidée du soir
Cachant dans son parfum
Le blanc de sa fleur."
Yosa Buson, poète japonais (1716-1783)

An evening orchid
Hidden in its scent
The flower’s whiteness

夜の蘭
香にかくれてや
花白し

yoru no ran ka ni kakurete ya hana shiroshi

 

 

 © Leonora; all rights reserved

Dendrobium

           *

"La fleur n'en finissait pas de se préparer à être belle, à l'abri de sa chambre verte. Elle choisissait avec soin ses couleurs. Elle s'habillait lentement, elle ajustait un à un ses pétales. Elle ne voulait pas sortir toute fripée comme les coquelicots. Elle ne voulait apparaître que dans le plein rayonnement de sa beauté."

                                                           Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, écrivain français (1900-1944) in "Le Petit Prince".

 

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

A stray

She was moving beyond the sound of his voice, coming ever closer until she passed so close he could have reached out and touched her. It was not a dream; he was not asleep, “She is real, I saw her,” he would tell his father who did not laugh or argue or cry, at least not until the boy had calmed down and could see things as they are: it had been a dog, just a stray dog except this one was scarred and limping, though proud in the lift of its head and radiant in the storm. He too had seen her; she was moving on to some other place and time.

Staying awake

  In the resonant silence was the multiform totem of all his past lives as a boy who yelped and snarled amd scampered like so many wild animals and then as a youth who learned to shape his words to fit the hearing of others as fearful of him as they were of themselves and then as a father of three children, toothless furies, all of whom would run away to some neverland, though he could still see the conscientious discontent in the downward slant of their eyes that would suddenly look up and straight through you like glass, and now there was no one but himself and his memories, no wife rooted to this earth, no kin to whom to be kind or kind to him, lying awake in the darkness perhaps for the last time or maybe not, but still good practice for staying awake when his whole world would go away, a ritual he had begun as a child when he first felt the wind outside his window cutting through him like grass and the leaves just out of reach fluttering in the early light, he listening now also to the hum and roll of his breathing, feeling blindly for the iron thread that sews together all beginnings and endings, his chest heaving like the hills and mountains that roll and swell and fall as surely as any ocean, though it was also true his body had always been alien to him and, if possible, more so now that it was but a shelter that was collapsing about a stranger who would soon enough depart, leaving no one nowhere and nothing to hand on to another except that which, being all in all, is nothing but a hope and a prayer to the living. 

Ber: Picture of the Day -- 241-245

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Dialogue entre deux corsaires" par Roger Vailland

 

Dialogue entre deux corsaires 

Premier Corsaire:

            Tes belles victuailles feront éternellement ma tristesse.

            Pourtant, si tu les cueilles, tes épines tomberont.    

Deuxième Corsaire :

            Mes épines sont plus belles que les tiennes,

            Dans la terre elles grandiront comme des tours,   

            Elles blanchiront comme des jeunes filles,

            Elles descendront comme des paravents.

 Premier Corsaire:

            Pare le vent!

            Vente tes pas!

            Vent à bois,

            Le vent déguingande sur les toits.

Deuxième Corsaire :

            Bois le vent !

            Cueille la brise !

            Brise le ris,

            La tempête gourgandine la voile.

Premier Corsaire:

            Ma voile est plus belle que la tienne,

            Elle serre la certitude dans ses bras noirs,

            Elle flatte la cuisse du ciel,

            Elle casse-gachète la pelure de l’ombre.

Deuxième Corsaire :

            L’ombre se perd, l’ombre se crée,

            Le nombre est l’ombre,

            L’ombre est le nombre

            Et le monde est le nombre de l’ombre.

Premier Corsaire:

            Braconne la ramure sans croix,

            Croise la plaie et rame dans les lances,

            Crique le blâme et saigne la camaille,

            Ton oriflamme est sans balance !

Deuxième Corsaire :

            Le crois-tu, protecteur des Anneaux,

            Contempteur du mercure et du plomb,

            Rival des germes et des coraux,

            Vainqueur de la conjuration des roses du Vent?

            Ma gâchette est plus camuse qu’on ne le pense.

Premier Corsaire:

             Panse-la!

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

English translation

**

A dialogue between two corsairs

First Corsair:

            Your fine victuals will make me sad forever

            However, if you pick them, your thorns will fall off.

Second Corsair:

            My thorns are better than yours.

            Once in the soil they will grow like towers,

            They will turn pale like young women,    

            And drop like folding screens.

First Corsair:

            Parry the wind!

            Get the wind in your steps!

            Wind for wood,

            The wind tumbles on the wood.

Second Corsair:

            Drink the wind!

            Catch the breeze!

            Reefing time,

            The sail gets flirty in the storm.

First Corsair:

            My sail is better than yours,

            It holds certitude tightly in its black arms,

            It cajoles the sky’s thigh,

            It splits the skin of the shadow.

Second Corsair:

            The shadow is lost, the shadow is created,

            The number is the shadow,

            The shadow is the number,

            And the world is the number of the shadow.

First Corsair:

            Poach the deer without a cross,

            Cross the wound and paddle among the spears,

            The blame might crack and the rascals bleed,    

            But your banner is partisan!

Second Corsair:

            Do you believe it, protector of the Rings,

            Despiser of mercury and lead,

            Rival of germs and corals,

            Victor of the compass rose conspiracy?

            My gun trigger is blunter than one thinks.

First Corsair:

             Bandage-it!

 (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

         "Dialogue entre deux corsaires" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933
          Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review
          Collection of Leonora's translations from Transition: Leonora's Translations from Transition

 

Leonora's Photography: 16-20

 

 © Leonora; all rights reserved       

Sunrise

*

"Notre terre éblouie du rayon qui la dore, 
Nage plus mollement dans l'élastique éther, 
Comme un léger nuage enlevé par l'aurore 
Plane avec majesté sur les vagues de l'air."

    Lamartine, poète français (1790-1869), in "Harmonies poétiques"

 

 

 © Leonora; all rights reserved

Tea Time

       

 

 © Leonora; all rights reserved

L'arbre pointilliste

       

 

                                                                                                                             © Leonora; all rights reserved

Tale of lilac and lime

 

 

                                                                                                                               © Leonora; all rights reserved                 
La belle balade

(au bord de la Loire)

*

"Douceur,
Je dis: douceur.

Je dis: douceur des mots
Quand tu rentres le soir du travail harassant
Et que des mots t'accueillent
Qui te donnent du temps.

Car on tue dans le monde
Et tout massacre nous vieillit.

Je dis: douceur,
Pensant aussi
A des feuilles en voie de sortir du bourgeon,
A des cieux, à de l'eau dans les journées d'été,
A des poignées de main.

Je dis: douceur, pensant aux heures d'amitié,
A des moments qui disent
Le temps de la douceur venant pour de bon,

Cet air tout neuf,
Qui pour durer s'installera."

    Eugène Guillevic, poète breton (1907-1997)in "Terre à bonheur"

 

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

 

       

Fuck you I love you

 

Fuck you I love you is pretty

Much the same as the golden strands

Of your hair falling from the sky

Like petals and your lips a bitter

Chocolate and the children dressed up

In grown-up clothes, high heels and

Cowboy boots to begin their journey

To the dark and lovely Afterlife.

Fuck you I love you! All the prying

Eyes of heaven are not as blue as

Yours so lovely in that shade of black

Which is the same through my eyes

As the night sky is to the riverrun

Through dark fields of wheat and fire. 

NUIT FAISEUSE D’ANGES par Camille Schuwer

 

NUIT  FAISEUSE D’ANGES

par Camille Schuwer
 

elle est née

Sélèné

c’est l’aînée

à l’heure du réverbère

il lui pousse un corps bleu des feuilles d’air

au bout des flammes de vent

de toutes parts la rue est dans les blés

sans compter les roues amères

et la tour de vos cheveux

o mort armure à rendre

ah me voilà

âme à voile

âme vois-là

comme elle tremble aux étoiles chues des terrasses

les chômeurs de l’ombre pillent aux vitres

tout ce qui n’est pas or mais brille

dans le ciel au bord de la mare

la tête des maisons se suicide

 

ENGLISH TRANSLATON

Night of the angels

she has been born

Selene

She the eldest

at the time the street lamp was lit up

she’s growing a blue body leaves of air

at the tip of flames of wind

the street is in wheat fields all around

not to mention the bitter wheels

and the tower of your hair

o death armor to restore

ah here I am

soul with sail

soul you see

how she trembles to the stars fallen from the terraces

the invisible unemployed loot in the windows

all that glitters but is not gold

in the sky at the edge of the pond

the head of the houses commits suicide

(English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

          "NUIT  FAISEUSE D’ANGES" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933

          Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

          Collection of Leonora's translations from Transition: Leonora's Translations from Transition

 

Ber: Picture of the Day, 236-240

 

 

 

 

Some other Scotland

It seems, don’t it, that in trying to understand the whys and wherefores of other people’s lives we are just trying to understand ourselves and justify our own choices, for there but for the grace of God go I?  It’s a silly business, but it makes community possible and not just because it gives us all something to talk about, the lives of others, but provides safety in numbers, wherein we may ourselves disappear.  Like that time you said you loved Charles but wouldn’t marry him because he was too much like your father. And I thought to myself, no girl, you are just afraid of life. And then you married someone else you didn’t love and had your family and only now regretted your choice when it was too late anyhow, though you and I would talk about what might have been, you seeing yourself in some other Scotland, a materfamilias of a brood of children who would live out all the lives you saw for yourself when you first fell in love with Charles, laughing at yourself, and me offering the lazy, redundant comfort of a friend, saying we were both a pair of fools.

Foraging

 

Last night the raccoons foraged

in our backyard: there were grapes,

bread, cheese, wine and figs

we'd left out ‘til morning. 

All the while we slept

 

and I, dreaming of dreaming,

tasted honey and found you

close, pawing softly, hands

and feet rhythmically climbing.

In the morning there were tracks

on my arms and legs and you,

looking out, cursed the varmints

gently and, like a detective, traced

your fingers through your hair

and could not help but smile.

L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux, par Joë Bousquet

 

 L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux

par Joë Bousquet

 

    Parler, une chanson d’argent qui s’élève à la vie

    Parler pour qu’une passante devienne de la lumière qui

m’écoute  et qui s’avoue combien une solitude est profonde

    Parler, la route dans la neige, le silence des voitures arrêtées

devant les maisons

                                               *

    Ouvrant autour d’elle la nuit protectrice où je me sentais

m’enfoncer

    Des mains où la chair était aussi légère que le regard, flot-

tait sur lui comme un miroir pour le ciel qui passait

    Un cœur pour que ma douleur me conduise

    De grandes ailes lasses dans ces jambes brisées pour qu’un

rayon vivant éclaire ce qi n’est pas dans une image qui nous

appelle,

    Des bouches dans la chair, toutes les ardeurs qui soulèvent

un corps sur l’oubli de lui-même.

                                                  *

    Ma chair dans mes yeux, un miroir d’eau pure sur la terre,

    Un abîme dans ma stupeur où se lève la toute-beauté de

son visage comme un regard rayonnant dont sa chair se ferait

une proie.

    Quelle douce main dans ces yeux ouvrait les yeux du jour ?

                                                 *

    Tu le sauras. La nuit sans mouvement que ton œil cache

avec du ciel

    Habille de tes larmes l’âme qui dit que tu n’es pas.

 

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Love gave me eyes

 

     Words, a song about money rising to life

     Talk so that a woman passing by might become light

listening to me and avowing how deep solitude is

     Speak, the road in the snow, the silence of parked cars

in front of the houses.

                                             *

     Opening around her the protective night into which I could feel myself

sink

     Hands with flesh as light as the gaze, floating

 on him like a mirror for the passing sky

     A heart so my pain can lead me

     Large weary wings in those broken legs so that a living

ray can illuminate what is not in an image

calling us,

     Mouths in the flesh, all the passions that lift

a body on its abandon.

                                             *

    My flesh in my eyes, a mirror of pure water on the earth,

    An abyss in my awe where rises the very beauty of  

her  face like a radiant look on her flesh

as prey

    What soft hand in those eyes opened the eyes of the day?

                                            *

    You will know. The still night that your eye hides

with some sky

     Dresses in your tears the soul that says you are not.

                                                                                         (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

            "L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933
            Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Where no angels reside

 

You want to know

what is your life

but all you find

are words, zeroes

and ones,

and bread crumbs

in your beard.

Where you ask

is the red iris

that is your heart?

Where the feather

of your breath

or your absence?

You want to become

what you already are

while there is still a you

that cares how light

becomes a face

and looks at you

like you were glass.

There comes a time

when love turns away

and finds itself in dust

where no angels reside,

no one teaches you

how to live, where

no one knows

you are not there.

Leonora's Photography: 11-15

 

                                                                                                                             © Leonora; all rights reserved       
Jeu de lattes

youtu.be/HTRw_rsg9HM
(Marc Mellits- Gravity-)

 

 

                                                                                                                 © Leonora; all rights reserved          
Underground

youtu.be/S8JxMvMFL4U
(Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartet Nº7-)

 

 

                                                                                                                   © Leonora; all rights reserved      
La danse du serpent

youtu.be/KZP3V76UBUE
(Louise Vertigo - La Danse Du Serpent-)

 

 

                                                                                                                  © Leonora; all rights reserved  
Les oiseaux ne savent pas quand c'est dimanche.

"(..) je voudrais un moment me transformer en oiseau pour connaître le contentement et la joie qu'ils éprouvent à vivre"
Giacomo Leopardi, poète italien (1798-1837) in"Petites oeuvres morales"

 

 

                                                                                                                          © Leonora; all rights reserved 

Chaque rayon de lune est un rayon de miel

youtu.be/Nft7tiy5E-w
(Claude Debussy - Suite Bergamasque - Clair de Lune-)

 

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

 

Salaire de mes yeux, par Joë Bousquet

 

Salaire de mes yeux, par Joë Bousquet

 

Elle est tout mon regard; mon regard où ma chair se

traverse de sa nuit comme un œil clos dans la lumière qui

l’a créé.

                          Le langage du cœur, celui qui donne un

 corps à ce qui nous poursuit

                          Un voile léger, ton visage

                          briller, redire avec mon regard, redire dans

le vertige de mon regard: A qui sont ces yeux ?

                         Voiler de ma présence la pensée que tu es

une femme, le ciel déchiré de l’autre chair.

            Le soir ; sur la nuit vaine, la rose des regards où l’es-

pace ferme les yeux et rêve entre nous de nos corps;

            Une étoile de mer dans la main des sables

mouvants.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

My rewarding eyes, by  Joë Bousquet

 

She is all I see; a gaze where her night

crosses my flesh like a closed eye in its creative light

                        The language of the heart, the one that gives

flesh to all that pursues us  

                        A light veil, your face

                        to shine, to say it again with my gaze, and to repeat it in

the vertigo of my gaze: Whose eyes are these?

                       To hide with my presence the thought of you as

a woman, the torn sky of the other flesh.

            Close of day; on the vain night, the rose of gazes where space

shuts one’s eyes and between us dreams of our bodies;

            A starfish in the hand of the shifting sands.

 (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

          "Salaire de mes yeux" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933

          Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Do you have a sister?

His sister, well not exactly his sister, more like an aunt who was born after and somehow arrived in his life as though he had known her since childhood, his sister, if you like, though unknown as such to others who were actually of his blood, more like a greek goblin goddess, you know, like those sculpted images that plague the precincts of Cybele in Pessina --she asked as innocently as you please, if I had kept safe the letter she had written me when she was away for school and then away for good because someone, not me, had lied to her and had left her an orphan. Her question prodded another, Do you have a sister or not? And the answer was right there in that letter, along with a litany of liaisons, assignations and other matings and musings, a letter of letters, depending on how you multiply the readings, that I had in fact saved into my present old age through what seemed now like epochs of history but were actually no more than a boy who had withered away into adolescence, died and reborn again as a New Man, who in turn withered away, and now crept along on three feet, soon to be four – the answer was that every man had a sister whether he knew it or not and so every woman a brother.  That’s what the letter said and that she was my sister whether I liked it or not, whether I loved her or not, and that If she were an orphan, then so was I. But, you ask, is there, was there, such a letter? Here. Read it for yourself.

Out of time

Following the long clean broken line of sight we fill in the gaps with the only words that fit: separation, dust, fulfillment that is in itself no more than rain.  No, he did not love her, nor she him, but both knew with certainty what was at stake and a sort of dreamy dialogue between the two would follow and conclude in an embrace, as much understood as the speech of an idiot who says one thing and means another.  They spent their nights together, hungry for each other, the darkness as harsh as a hammer upon an anvil, leaving them both barely alive and without breath save the one they shared. In the morning, they would be strangers again and would remain so until the one, feeling on her skin an approaching storm or the dry cacophonous clattering of leaves, would fall upon the other as though he could bury her whole, devouring her cries like dry sand a sudden summer shower. He knew her then, knew himself, the long clean broken line disappearing from sight.