The Greece of Books . . .

Looking out at the Aegean Sea in 2006 on the painting trip to Greece led by Robert Dvorak.

Houston, 6 p.m.

Europe already sleeps beneath a coarse plaid of borders
and ancient hatreds: France nestled
up to Germany, Bosnia in Serbia’s arms,
lonely Sicily in azure seas.

It’s early evening here, the lamp is lit
and the dark sun swiftly fades. 
I’m alone, I read a little, think a little,
listen to a little music.
I’m where there’s friendship,
but no friends, where enchantment
grows without magic,
where the dead laugh.

I’m alone because Europe is sleeping. My love
sleeps in a tall house on the outskirts of Paris.

In Krakow and Paris my friends
wade in the same river of oblivion.

I read and think; in one poem
I found the phrase “There are blows so terrible . . .
Don’t ask!” I don’t. A helicopter
breaks the evening quiet.

Poetry calls us to a higher life,
but what’s low is just as eloquent,
more plangent than Indo-European,
stronger than my books and records.

There are not nightingales or blackbirds here
with their sad, sweet cantilenas,
only the mockingbird who imitates
and mimics every living voice.

Poetry summons us to life, to courage
in the face of the growing shadow.
Can you gaze calmly at the Earth
like the perfect astronaut?

Out of harmless indolence, the Greece of books,
and the Jerusalem of memory there suddenly appears
the island of a poem, unpeopled;
some new Cook will discover it one day.

Europe is already sleeping. Night’s animals,
mournful and rapacious,
move in for the kill.
Soon America will be sleeping, too.

Adam Zagajewski,                     (Born 1945)

             translated by Clare Cavanagh

Mysticism for Beginners, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997, page 69.

Thinking about what is happening all over the world, as we wake or sleep--especially if we find ourselves far from home--is a universal interest. Where are you sleeping tonight, where were you five years ago???

The dawn, as yet . . .

Rose names are a little funny. In Idaho, we have a pink rose called

Barbara Streisand. We read that she insisted on a rose having a fragrance

if she was going to allow then to name it for her. 

But this, rose, Mr. Lincoln was named for Honest Abe

without his permission. and really has very little fragrance.

However, we think it is one of the best red roses

and the buds have this truly beautiful, urnlike form.

Vernal

Some things we believe cannot be redeemed.

But in a valley the Railroad finally forgot,

the silted sluggish ditch we would not eat fish from

runs again, a river, rilled as before

by clear water, not black. Grass grows back

between tracks and rails. Limestone spalls

hews from the mountain heal into soil.

Stumps heaped with live coals, split, and winched out,

in spring frail a new circlet of green.

Panthers are seen. A son is born blue, and lives.

Some things we believe cannot be redeemed,

but the dawn, as yet, is diurnal. The woods keep

a hushed vigil. then rustle with life we cannot see;

small ponds well from the ground when we sleep.

Rebecca Foust

Paradise Drive; poems. Press 53, 2015, page 82.

Here is another sonnet, very hopeful, from this poet 

so new to me. As much as I like sonnets, 

I have never tried to write one. Have you??

I am on Facebook with an group called American Rivers
which frequently publishes pictures of rivers that have been. 
or are being, restored. There are still some things to be happy 
about amidst all the environmental bad news.

A Pleasant Attitude

Blossoming whitely and quietly by the front door now,

and beginning to show tiny spots of brown.

Waning spring. . .

Outdoor Photos

Find a quiet rain.  Then a green spruce tree. You will notice that nearly every needle has been decorated with a tiny raindrop ornament. Look closely inside the drop and there you are. In 
color. Upside down. The raindrop has no instructions to flip us right-side up. People, dogs, muskrats, woods, and hill, what-
ever fits, heads down like quail from a hunter’s belt. Raindrops have been collecting snapshots since objects and people were placed, to their surprise, here and there on earth.

Raindrops are fickle, of course, willing to substitute one image 
for another without a thought as we pass by them. Our spot 
taken by a flash of lightening or a wet duck. Still, even if we are only on display for a moment in a water drop as it clings to a 
pine needle, it is expected that we be on our best behavior, hair combed, jacket buttoned, no vulgar language. Smiling is not necessary, but a pleasant attitude is helpful, and would be, I think, appreciated.

by Tom Hennen     (born 1942)
Darkness Sticks to Everything; Collected and New Poems;
Copper Canyon Press, 2013, page 154.

I got this book because of the splendid review in the New York Times and the recommendations from Robert Bly and Jim Harrison. It is a wonderful treasure: the selected poems of someone who has been working carefully and paying attention for a long while. The prose poems are near the end of the book, and earlier poems have linebreaks. All the poems demonstrate the most careful attention to the natural world.

With the Earth and the Sky and the Water

In bloom today in our garden at Wallace Drive:

Heritage Rose (introduced 1925) DAINTY BESS!

This is my all-time favorite rose! I bought it in bloom

because I fell in love with the 5-petal shape

and the burgundy-colored stamens.

Look on the top petal for the bonus insect!

The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my                                                                                                      heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of                                                                                                       gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. 

William Butler Yeats                       (1865-1939)

This is how they used to write poems! Imagine getting this on your valentine. Each of these eight long lines could easily be broken in half. Would that be wrong??

Looking back while drawn . . .

Here I am, in the late 1930s, reaching for a grapefruit 

on my grandmother's tree in Mesa. Arizona.

My mother has brought me on the train all the way

from Schenectady, New York -- to show me to her family in Arizona.

If Not, Winter

How the night air smells like Circe's island,
like frangipani, even the trees a species
of rose. Grapevines bound in precise chords
tracing contours of hills. Orchards knee-deep
in wild mustard along I-5, forget-me-nots
blue in the ruts. Silver chains of salmon
hauled up mountain streams. Live oak, wild orchid,
purple owl clover. Mt. Tam's cubist nude
in recline, alpenglowed. Persimmons hung
like bright lanterns after the leaves have gone.
Houseboat gypsy scarlet and azuls,
gray gulls, parchment egrets. Frail sculls
pulling diagonals on wide pewter water.
Looking back while drawn into the future.

Rebecca Foust  

Paradise Drive, Press 53, 2015, page 81.

This book of poems won this year's Press 53 poetry prize.
After 20 years of pursuing a legal and youth advocacy career, Foust has returned to writing and won several awards for her poetry. This book is all sonnets and they are terrific examples. Check it out! I love the California tropes in this poem, as I have grown to love California in the past 50 years.