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.

Ber's Photography: 246-250

Leonora's Photography: 26-30

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

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

The old tree

♫♪

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

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

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.

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

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

Fils conducteurs

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.

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

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.

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!

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

Leonora's Photography: 16-20

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"

Tea Time

L'arbre pointilliste

Tale of lilac and lime

(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

"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.

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

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.

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

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Summer Rain

If it would only rain my words would pour forth like girls and boys too young to know shame O they are bold as I would be the rain falls I am young again dance touch while the music plays so falls the rain O she is here there are tears of joy tears songs of praise for the beauty of the day earth yields up its flowers to her hand turns to gentle thunder her body lifts and holds her laughter makes the night shudder unbinds her hair and falls to me now here now there like summer rain

Leaf Fall

Follow the path
of leaf fall,
the short cut home
twixt sky and dream.

When you're there,
you'll be right here,
safe with me.

“Coréâme” by Camille Schuwer

Coréâme

Because you did not lie on the day you were born,

The seers’ sun, the incandescent light,

delighted you under your eyelids, and the wheel of greenery

turning with your blood, became centrifugal,

splattered stones, was truth.

There were smiling eyes and crying flowers

at the end of the hands cutting the day’s rose,

the buzzing mouth to prophesize,

a black brain to bury oblivion.

At the foot of the towers the soil

was like a place ceded without a fight;

the dead looked like trees,

like their flagging flames.

The soul told the body:

if you like, I’ll take you everywhere without touching your clothes,

without letting you fall out of sleep;

you will go through the walls, the sheets of lead;

your raging thoughts, my star presence,

will redden the patients’ brow,

and steal from the poet his turn to speak;

you see the sun’s noise, the perpetual movement

of the bee that stays in one place

like a pulsating factory;

the same night, the same sun; you understand it all.

And the body answered: I hear less than the deaf,

I am thirsty, I feel dizzy at the edge of my anthill,

they fatten me like a queen, I am losing my seeds

and my blood, in spite of my heart’s rose window;

I scream, I have my own light, I feel hot in the snow;

O Sisyphus! O the ordeal! I fall and get up again;

time is feeding my strength and my fatigue;

please just give me a little foliage before I die.

The soul also said— sounding like Antigone:

who knows the weight of the shadow, a thin column,

O my palm tree head holder,

here is the wind of my mind, without all its glories;

and the heavy light one, supporting supported

wobbled along carrying its tower of light.

Dazzled they sleep in the middle of the darkness,

black, it slumbers, as the mangoes roll out of its hands.

Translator's Note: The paranomastic title is a pun on “Corps et âme“, which sounds exactly the same and means “Body and soul”.The created word means nothing in French. I have left it in French

"Coréâme" was published in Transition, No. 27, 1938: Download Coréâme II

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review:

"For Peace" (Pour la Paix) by Jacques Baron

For Peace

With time passing, with water flowing, with

the workers leaving the factories,

with the rumours of the stock market,

with the memories, the desires, the wasted moments,

the doors opening and shutting without knowing why

with all that we wanted to say that remained on the edge

of our lips,

with a landscape already seen in a dream,

with the habit of reading newspapers,

we went for that romantic stroll we had promised ourselves

a long time ago.

We took beaten tracks, so beaten that they screamed like beaten dogs,

we wanted to leave them but a sound philosophy would always prevent us from doing so.

We argued with ourselves, we grabbed each other's throats; and tore each other apart

after ferocious insults,

We did not entirely succeed in forgiving ourselves but the heart was in it,

the always obliging heart,

the very bar that grants credit,

until the time when all the paths that you’ve always followed

fall back on you and crush you like four-leaf clovers

pressed between the pages of a book.

Suddenly it is not the same any more,

not exactly the same.

You’ve left you’ve disappeared you are in the air you breathe and you see everything.

You see a woman and you grab her by the waist. She says yes.

She does not really know what she means by this.

But you hear the rustling of wings.

The dairyman’s hello is brighter.

The large drapes of one’s memory solemnly fall down

behind a procession of runaway actors.

But the branches of the pepper trees are stirred

in sweltering countries, where are buried under the sands,

temples dedicated to bloody cults.

Out of one’s nerves a rug is made on which to lie down

and one fears

that all pain might have vanished.

You stop writing to your friends

and you are forgiving about their letters gathered in the dew.

And all that remains slowly warms up.

The horizon becomes blurred

and you congratulate yourself that the good weather will last.

You call on the muses. They pretend not to

understand;

they are camping,

catching centaurs running.

But all that happens is good.

You are as pleased as when you’ve passed the age

of the New Year’s visits.

You slip into the Adriatic Sea near a charming woman

whose eyes are islands peopled with castaways

sensing their hour of deliverance.

She is swimming.

Now is not the time to understand.

"Pour la Paix" was published in Transition, No. 27, 1938: View this photo

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Leonora's Photography: 6-10

Le monde de la carpe koï

Garden with a view

Observatoire sous-marin

Orgues urbaines

Dans l’eau du temps qui coule à petit bruit

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

Hovey Jude Corbin aka Henry David: singer-songwriter: "The lesser I suffer, the lesser I know"

Singer-Songwriter: https://www.hoveyjudecorbin.com

I was the proud teacher of Henry David in English, Latin and Ancient Greek, 2015-2018.

Here is what Henry David wrote for his "This I Believe" statement, the last writing assignment of his senior year.

Hovey Jude Corbin

I think I believe in too much to be whole;
a rose with too many thorns, most would not hold.
They tell me, when grown up, I’ll learn to let go – Yet…
The lesser I suffer, the lesser I know.

I believe in the wand’rer who’s stuck in my soul,
I grit my teeth, bid him to lay down his load.
He’ll make me his home ‘til I fin’ly grow old,
and we’ll riot like schoolboys, and tear up the road.

I believe in the song that I’ve kept in my chest,
and I’ll keep singing on to the day that I rest.
I’ll rot away blissful, greeting Death with a smile,
into torture we’ll go, singing both all the while.

I want to believe in the honey of love,
I’ve felt it before and I house the white dove.
Still it cuts me to pieces, and tears me to shreds,
I lie awake bludgeoned ‘til daybreak instead.

I believe in the heart that will beat my life long,
there the drum and the drum and the drum through the wrong.
It makes me a well, and it fills to the brim,
to be lost in the streets as they slowly go dim.

I believe I’ll be lost ‘til I finally pass,
that I’ll endlessly wrestle myself to the last.
I will toss and return to the fasting, and drought;
I will eat of myself from the in to the out.

I believe that I know how I’m hopelessly not,
that I’m clueless as here, even now, as I’m shot
by my old smoking gun that I light on mine own
as I sit and pretend that I’m carved into stone.

I think I believe in too much to be whole,
that I’ll keep a tight grip on the dreams that I hold,
I know that, still someday, I’ll need to let go. Yet! –
The lesser I suffer, the lesser I know.

~Henry David

Surprise

Suddenly
this morning
I knew the rainbow
to be a bird

of my soul
taking flight
and vanishing
into cloud and sky

as I am bound
to do, shimmering
not with color
but surprise

to be at last
not here.

"Anonyme" by André de Richaud

Anonyme

Les biches de l'amour ont pleuré jusqu'à l'aube
les bêtes de ma vie ont toutes les yeux faux
Et toi — tête de gel qui sanglotte dans la flamme
sans pouvoir redevenir le nuage
visage étonné des étincelles du silence
calciné par l'odeur des cuivres emmêlés
et les chevaux du rire impatients
de mordre la chair des astres ennuyés
et les femmes de verre qui se brisent quand on ne pense plus à elle
et celui qui se décompose en souriant
au fond de la glace miroitante
et sa jambe lépreuse de soleil
et son sexe couvert de rosée
et le ventre de cette femme tout parsemé d'hirondelles évanouies
qui vont et viennent et passent à travers les anneaux de diamant comme
si le diamant ne pouvait se faire comprendre
sans le secours des oiseaux du ciel

- -

Parle nuit plus douce que les amandiers de sa bouche
qui neigent sur ma langue quand l'heure se couche
Parle, fantôme étonné du silence.

* * * * *

Nameless

Until dawn the does of love cried
all animals in my life have phony eyes
And you—frozen head sobbing in the flame
unable to be cloud again
your face baffled by the sparks of silence
charred by the smell of tangled brasses
and the horses of laughter eager to bite
the bored stars’ flesh
and the glass women breaking through oblivion
and the one who is smiling as he rots away
at the bottom of the shimmering ice
and his leg under the dappling sun
and his sex covered in dew
and that woman’s belly dotted all over with unconscious swallows
going in and out of the diamond rings as if
the diamond could not be grasped
without the help of the birds in the sky
_ _

Speak up night, softer than the almond trees in her mouth
falling like snow onto my tongue when the time retires at night
Speak to me, ghost amazed by the silence.

André de Richaud's "Anonyme" originally appeared in Transition: A Quarterly Review, No. 26, 1937.

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Blue hair and all that

For -Bel

In the beginning your hair was blue like fire and you had webbed feet and no knees. You were different and beautiful and strange and somehow despite all the daily crushing normalization, all those pretty pictures of what we are not, despite all the soulless practicalities of life and more and there is so damn much more, especially the cool hypocrisy required just to get along, you are still strange and different and beautiful, blue hair and all.

She: What? Where did you get all that? Was it something I said?

He: You tell me. Where does 'all that' come from?

She: That’s not an answer and you know it.

He: Sometimes I don’t seem to know the difference between a question and an answer.

She: That seems pretty basic to me.

He: The “not knowing”?

She: No, “the difference”. It’s the simplest thing. You can’t keep answering a question with a question. It's annoying.

He: Well, then, let me try again: a question is when you hear the wind calling and an answer is when you stop listening.

She: You’re so strange!

He: I suppose so. Hey, is that blue hair natural?

She: You tell me. What do you think?

He: And your feet, they’re webbed? And you have --

She: I know, I know, I have no knees and all that.

She had had quite enough and told him so, though the air was moving. When she spoke again, she asked almost in a whisper, "Is my hair really blue?" But this time, all she heard was wind.

a dead-wall reverie

Ibidom. Is no thinking thing here but the peepinghouse round it goes is there nothing there from sea to rounda coda no knowing no browbeating to hoedown the adamses and damses looking roundaway the wailing goes awagginawaning about the off wall but there shebares all to what is not there the museymusik makes you trot and drop so rainruns and her lastofall. There!

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.

Touch

Your skin like this ground

Upon which all things run

Is scarred and cracked

yet yearns for life

and wordless words

that speak of love.

You lie there

and think of spring.

You are as old as rain

and ever young.

A way of dying

He held her feathers in his hand

But the wind took them for itself.

There was nothing but these words

To write on this dry coarse paper,

Her skin, the red ink she died of

Running off like a mountain stream.

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.

So deep his eyes

for mickey

There is life and death

and life again, ground

to common cosmic

dust. Here we end

and begin again,

his eyes so deep

we find in death

his life and love

within ourselves.

Ber: Picture of the Day 209 - 213

Blue Iris: Photography by Alec Himwich

https://www.alechimwich.com

Botanical Terminology

-for so k

So, here you are

only different in form

prima puella

'heart blooming

irises'

even at night.

On not explaining ourselves away

It is a common response in light of all that neuroscience has told us of our circuitry to ask how a machine, however complicated, could ever exercise free choice and thereby allow individuals to be responsible for their actions, as we in fact experience ourselves to be. If we are machines, then free choice is not possible. We might well ask if there is not some other approach that would resolve the question of personal responsibility, one that does not require any determination regarding free will or the findings of neuroscience. One such possibility is simply to look to our engagement with life and allow our actions to speak for themselves as irreducible facts that are not to be explained away by any manner of ulterior reasoning. Our answers to the questions of value that life inevitably puts to us would be thus plainly stated and speak of the only reality and the only truth we can ever know.

Ber: Picture of the Day 204, 205, 206, 207, 208

To see more of Ber Himwich's photography, go to: https://www.flickr.com/photos/berhimwich/

No, not I / Revision

No, Not I*

I did not do
the thing I did,
nor say aught
that I have said.

Nor will I die
Like other men.
I will decline,
and lie in bed.

*Hamlet, III.i, 96-97; V, gravediggers

* * *

Revision

If only 'lie'
would take a nap,
but like my tale
it likes to wag:

nor did I say
what I have said,

Which I prefer, but
would miss the play.

Most would say, what’s the point?
Such slender threads are all my thought.

“I am not Prince Hamlet nor meant to be” --
Eliot says and does not say,
revels here are ever ended.

Dying well

She wore no more
than her eyes,
She held the ring
and spoke her vow.
Simple as breath,
as wind she died.

We turned now
to hear him speak,
but all we heard,
as he fell, was
the fall of rain
in every word.

We all agreed
they both died well.
We could not hear
each to each
their vows betrayed
in the river's deep.

A Letter from Charles Eaton

I have the great good fortune of having Charles for a friend. Just how fortunate I am you can see if you read his attached letter to me which, though typical of his correspondence, is in no other way customary. He is not just an old school epistolarian. He is a philosopher, whose conversation is as inspirational as his writing. Charles is the husband of Pauline Eaton, whose ecstatic pictures you can find on this site. Pauline is a consummate artist and, if she will forgive me, a determined mystic. What Pauline does with her paints Charles does with language. Though their work may look different, they are drawing from the same well.

Download Poems- Himwich Eaton Stevenson Henley[2]

Reading lesson

(for Peter)

Mom, who is dad talking to? Friends who write.

Where did he meet them? In books.

Is he talking to himself? Yes.

Is he crazy? Yes, a little.

Will I be crazy like dad one day? Just keep reading.

Can I read dad’s books some day? Of course, he is talking to you.

Are you crazy too, Mom? A little. I am talking to you, aren’t I?

But Dad is so quiet when he writes. Yes, he talks and talks.

Like me? Yes, little one, like you.

Moon walk

Walking through days
I have walked through
long ago, same
step and stride, same
heart wanting something

more; yet today
is the only day
I can’t remember you
Walking through the years
to find me standing

here alone, longing
for the moon,
Its light buried
in my heart of hearts:

Be with you soon.

Pauline, Charles and Hugh

Photograph by Ber Himwich

What the eye sees
Is true, though
only a shadow
of the truth.

What remains
Is ours alone
and holds us
All as one.

No one can take
What is not theirs
To give: a heart,
a mind, a simple

soul and what
at last is grace.
Just so are we
For what remains

So simply bound
As friends.

Some

For Emily

It's but a drop of rain -
However slight its sum -
It will dissolve the sky
and swallow up the sun
. . . . .

What can lift the fallen soul
And make it feel its toes?
Don’t hold your breath
That is the key
And be it but the air
You’ll light upon a wayward word
And turning -- dancing there

She

She unraveled
at my feet
like the sea

like the sea
She rose and wept
and called to me

Now I call to you
with a thousand voices
of a thousand seas.

What soft tune

What soft tune
Turns the moon
Through its stations?

No lover's art
Shapes the night
And makes it move

Only the note
Of a dying bird
In its dark nest

Sings it round
The earth
And calls it home.

To be wholly there

If we were wholly open
To earth, tree and flower,
There would be no poems
Only the chattering silence
Of wind, hoofbeat, and rain.
For to be wholly there
Is to die 10.000 times,
Each sight and sound
A thread that binds us close
and makes us whole.

Some More

Sewing

Is it possible to love
and be alone? he asks,
but she, worrying at buttons,
just mutters, Some days,
my love, are better than others.

Nothing but wind

I’ve stopped dying and breathing,
But you, my love, fall upon me like skin,
Like rain that streams through my veins,
And you teach me to breathe again
And how to die again and again
Until I become nothing but wind.

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.

Getting it up with Shakespeare

Love, friends, is deadly. You may wonder,
Am I suffering from a broken heart
Or has love, freely given,
Not been returned? To which I say,
Yes, O Yes, Yes!
Beat the drums and let the bagpipes play
And I will march ripe into that narrow patch
Of mind and sand and play, She loves me
She loves me not, and haply saw
My soul in two.
I shall send her flowers,
Long purples that prickly boys
Call a grosser name,
But she will say as maidens do,
"How could you be so lame?"

Buttons

Smoke rising burnt orange then down around the edge until the tenderness binding flung into the night curving endlessly, her gift her fire dying in my arms her body rising until nothing but the bloom of sighing herself to sleep tight as the moon and flying.

(untitled)

You will come to the end
of your high story,
your body broken,
your spirit weak and alone,
the goal still distant,
yet on your lips a song
of no regret as you
set out a final time
on a ship unrigged,
your self the wind
and sky and sea.

Signs along the way

NO SPOONING ALLOWED ON CAMPUS

So young folks

have only soup

and are always

hungry.

DON’T TOUCH THE FLOWERS!

They are not for you!

(After all, you are not dead.)

NO HUNTING ALLOWED!

Students Are Out of Season.

Spring cannot be far behind!

Oracle

For far too long
I’ve been hostage
To the fates.
No more.
I will not play.
Do what you will,
I will not obey.

Of course, you will.
So runs the wind.
It's the air you breathe,
the song you sing.
So stirs the day,
You hear it still.
You will obey.

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

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David Chalmers: Fragments of consciousness

The New York Review of Books

Poetry 180

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The old tree

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

Fields of Gold

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Dendrobium

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Chaque rayon de lune est un rayon de miel

She

Sewing

Getting it up with Shakespeare

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

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

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
Underground

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La danse du serpent

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Les oiseaux ne savent pas quand c'est dimanche.