Poem: The intelligence of snow

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The intelligence of snow

To float

from the massive

cloud of unknowing

down

without hurry

or tension

into the amplitude open

above fields humped and blurry

and the gentle

geometry of roofs

falling

with no clear

apprehension

loose—adrift, or cast—

resting and feathering

across downy light,

or, becoming light

without edge

descending

and hovering

where buzzards meditate

a white spider

hanging and swinging

(without gossamer thread)

into the quietude

of outstretching spruces

tossed and bob-slipping

past treetops

beside

blue jays jerking

and nuthatches skipping

at last touching

into place

with soft pliancy

weightless wafer

on the bird feeder’s lip

onto one black seed

instantly scooped

The solitary

snow flake

dissolving

in the mitered beak

of the cardinal

in its ultimate

and particular

gesture of praise

December 2011

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Christmas angels from the farm: photos and music

To my friends near and far, I've put together some photos of Christmas on the farm and linked them with jazz singer Abbey Lincoln singing "Christmas Cheer." I wish you Merry Christmas, and as Abbey sings, Here's to love . . . now . . . and throughout the year.

You'll see a couple of angels given to me by my mom, the first at 0:28, a woodland musician I treasure. Another is the colorful grosgrain one at about minute 3:45, who looks a little worn, but still cheerful. Christmas and my mother are linked, with memories of sitting at the piano with her while she played carols from the big blue book, and I sang songs like "The Holly and the Ivy," "Go Tell it on the Mountain," and "Good King Wenceslas." Toward the end you'll see a portrait of my small mom with Matroyshka dolls. After the video, I'm sharing a new angel who flew in from my brother Nelson this week, too late to include in this slideshow. She is holding a red bird like the cardinals in the video and seems to have just alighted from the meadow, so beautiful.

Have a happy weekend, quiet or loud, at home or in someone else's, with all your angels large and small.

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Dylan Thomas: A Child's Christmas in Wales

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Back in November I scanned a few of Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations of A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas to share with you, and I had already typed up the start of the story, and loaded the YouTube. Bear with me as I nurse my hands a little longer. On the horizon: voice recognition software for my computer. Merry Christmas to me!

This is a boy's adventure I post, in honor of my soon-to-be-born grandson. Dylan Thomas's fantastically and mythically detailed descriptions should prompt us all to get our own memories of Christmas down, and giggle again and again. OK, on with the master.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in my snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

Pull up a child, and continue reading here . . .

Listen to Dylan Thomas himself read the story in his lugubrious but simultaneously old-child-joyful voice below . . .

The audio recording of Dylan Thomas reading it, what a voice . . .

Text copyright 1954 by New Directions.
Illustrations copyright 1985 by Trina Schart Hyman.

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Poem: Beating flames

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Beating flames

Rain falls
in the rhythm
of a bird’s heartbeat;

but when the crow cries,
his raucous call
does not pierce
this thrumming trance.

Rather,
like the cast iron
of the wood stove—black body,
rising up—he carries
the beating flame, hungry
and consuming, crackling
the language of the heart.

Illustration by Ива́н Я́ковлевич Били́бин, aka Ivan Bilibin (thanks, Montag!), for Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin's poem "Two Crow." Unrelated to my poem, but interesting anyway, from wiki on "Twa corbies" (or "The Three Ravens): " . . . a 1828 partial translation of the French translation of Sir Walter Scott's Border Poems. It includes the poem entitled 'Шотландская песня' (Scottish Song), which has become known to almost every literate Russian-speaking person. Pushkin's translation contains only the first half of the poem, ending with 'and the mistress awaits for her lover, not the killed one, but the alive one', thus making a dark hint the central point of the story. Many composers of the time wrote musical interpretations of the poem."

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May heaven be hospitable to you, George Whitman

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“Be not inhospitable to strangers

lest they be angels in disguise”

I should not be typing up a blog post. Thanks to those of you who have been concerned about my hands, arm and shoulder, which are giving me grief from inflammation due to work on the computer. I am trying to be good and limit typing to university work. But I cannot neglect posting on the peaceful-in-his-sleep passing of American George Whitman, owner of the Shakespeare & Co bookstore in the Latin Quarter of Paris since 1951, at age 98. The quote above is painted above the lintel of a doorway in the happily disheveled shop, where books are roughly categorized by type, and you worry that you will topple a pile of them when you squeeze around a corner into the next room.

The first time I "met" Mr. Whitman was in 1997, one of the thousands (millions?) of strangers who have visited him there, caught in the above photo, taken by my sister Nancy. She and I spent two weeks in Paris after our mother died with Alzheimer's. Nancy had been Mom's primary caregiver for six months, and this was Nancy's much deserved vacation; she invited me along. Mr. Whitman stamped my Collected Poems of Phillip Larkin with this emblem of the shop (right). Read my first blog post at my Paris blog (Paris Deconstructed) in April 2006, about the time Mr. Whitman asked if I had a place to sleep, here.

I would love to type up more for you to read about George Whitman, but I must keep this short. You can read his story in this NYTimes article upon his death yesterday. He was a legend, and in case you're wondering, the NYTimes article seems to lay to rest the question about whether George was related to Walt Whitman. I will always think fondly of him, for the way he opened his arms to me one day in 2004 and asked if I had a place to sleep. Has anyone ever been sorry they had a place to sleep? I was that day, and I regretted saying, "yes."

My then sister-in-law Donica snapped this photo in 2004
 of George Whitman while he was asking me 
if I had a pillow for the night (fuller story here);

he invited writers and bibliophiles to sleep in his upstairs guest room, 
as long as they agreed to sweep up and help around the shop;
but my sister Boots (Ginnie)
and her then wife Donica and I already had a place

 

an upstairs room before a poetry reading (not by me!) on my solo trip in 2006; 
authors and poets like Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Samuel Beckett,
 James Baldwin and Allen Ginsberg read in his bookshop  

I love this board in front of the bookshop, with his brief but wonderful
autobio that ends with ". . . it is my daughter's turn" which refers to

Sylvia Beach Whitman, who now runs the store and was 

named for Sylvia Beach, the woman 
who owned the first Shakespeare & Co bookstore; 
history of Shakespeare & Co at wiki here

me in front of the bookstore in 2004;

George Whitman was already old then,

and I wondered if he'd live to be 100

Oh, and in case you have never seen it,you can witness
the extraordinary wayMr. Whitman "cut" his hair in this video;
there is a bonus if you watch and listen.

Below is the view of the Notre Dame cathedral just across the Seine

from Shakespeare & Co, when Don and I

stepped out of the bookstore in 2003, and a storm was brewing.

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Poem: the turquoise sea for Christmas

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I read a billboard:

Gifting made easy.
I mourned suddenly
the loss of giving.

And I thought
of the green-glazed vase
curved like cupped hands
(or your opalescent cheek)
on top of the cabinet.

Or the perfect green field
and the turquoise sea.

I would like to give
them all to you.
But they
are already yours.

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Winter slideshow with the Esbjörn Svensson Trio

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It's been a busy and tiring week, but a good one. I have not been blogging today, but I will respond to comments and visit blogs soon. My mother-in-law is doing so well she won't need any more dialysis and may go home early next week!

This morning I felt the need to be quiet. So I spent some time gathering photos and making a slideshow. I've paired my winter photos with Esbjörn Svensson Trio's song "Winter in Venice." Wouldn't that be pretty, to walk in Venice in winter?

Starting at around minute 4:15 on, the photos are from today. I hope the images and music will help you feel peaceful. I am always drawn to solitary things in photographs, and while taking them.

Full screen with headphones is nice.

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