The Dandelion of Easy Plains

Blink Admires the Bushtit

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville

SPRING CRAZY

The thinnest glass between cat
and bird; between bushtit and his own
reflection in the window.
Tiny bird I’ve only seen in gossipy
flocks—but spring changes
everything. All afternoon that little
nondescript bird
peck-pecks solo/lovelorn at the glass
by my computer as I
tap-tap words for spring
and Blink our cat lusts to grab him
beak and feathers—this bird
gone mad to kill the enemy/himself.
The thinnest glass holds them
invisibly apart, and safe from spring’s
raw passion to spring.

________________________

SURE SIGNS OF SPRING

Four sky-blue eggs
in a nestbox on field-fence; I note
WEBL (Western Bluebird) in the logbook.
We move on. Swallow babies
have fledged from box #5. While you
watch them soaring for bugs above the green,
I sit down in deep spring grasses.
Purple brodiaea and golden fiddle-neck
in bloom—a lovely, hazy-warm
morning. I open the binder to make my
notes. Feel something odd
between shorts-cuff and gaiters.
I’m sitting on a small
snake. You come to look.
“Let’s take it home, put it in our garden.
Gopher snakes are good.”
“What about these tiny rattles?
and the pit-viper head?”
It’s just a baby, and didn’t seem to take
offense—not like the other rattlers
I’ve met on this bluebird-trail. We leave it
to its lovely warm spring morning.

_______________________

BREAKING DAY OVER RIMROCK

That land’s stunted in its womb, pressing
out rock like shell casings, eroded
by floods down the tilted creek; thin-skin
soil for unthrifty oaks on twisted roots.
Man’s no more than the dandelion
of easy plains, a break of willow.
I seek the borderland gap for coyote
dark before dawn, and night
looses its imperfect span of silence.
Now the small hawk screams low,
chasing plumes of sky. Reality’s angel-
choir, invisible birds start singing
from the wind’s scroll. Bone, rock, sinew,
and soul hold what the flesh won’t.   

_______________________

NO CURE

It started out by hammering. Hard, aching
work with a sing-song refrain.
His arms developed rhythm like an urge
to speak; each hammer-stroke a syllable
wishing to become a word. The ache
moved muscle to brain, accents colliding
with each other, German with Spanish,
Latin, Old Provençal. His head throbbed
gibberish, nursery-rhymes in tongues
he’d never heard, playing leapfrog
with English. Sleep came hard, broken by
hypnagogic startles. One morning he
woke, hair at attention, reaching for sky-
messages, words out of dream, the hammer-
stroke rhythm demanding dance and
song. No matter the words, call it a poem.

________________________

OUT OF

what they call the sterility
of winter, someone lit a thousand
white candles on the rhubarb we planted
last summer. And o the green
contours of clover covering the ground!
In this garden there is no fall
from good graces.
No more gunshy at the crack of dead
branches—now I must rifle
through a thesaurus
just for the words of this morning.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"

—Robin Williams

________________________

—Medusa, thanking Taylor Graham for today's sumptuous fare, and wishing us all the best of the Vernal Equinox!

Rhubarb at the Graham's

Is This Another Ghost Tour?

—Photo by Ann Privateer

PERSPECTIVE
—Ann Privateer, Davis

Recess, a break from formulas
and books, hanging out with teacher.
Going back I rode my bike
flying on the bicycle lane
all going the same direction.
A tunnel up ahead so I
left the pack, pulled into a lot
where old vehicles set, stored.

From that low place, I could see
the street, a traffic light, signs.
If I climbed with my bike
we could cross, I thought, but once
at that place, water swirled below
abandoned trains created
another barrier
like a trapeze artist, I was

alone on the brink with my bike.

______________________

SPRING COMES TO RED OAK HOLLOW
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

As soon as the snow finally melted
In Northern Illinois,
My grandfather decided it was time
To hike the three miles
West of town,
Out to the Hollow
To look for Indian bones, arrowheads,
Whatever we could find.
We never saw any artifacts,
Though I remember
Budweiser cans in the ditch,
And not a few dead dogs.
And pussy willows.
Lots of pussy willows,
Which we’d cut and
Put in our bag. Nobody
Appreciates your
Bringing home a dead dog
Any way.

_______________________

NEVER SWEEP THE PORCH BEFORE A HURRICANE
—Cynthia Linville, Sacramento
 
He is untethered
beaten up by the night.
Dropping pennies all over the house
he asks, Is this another ghost tour?
He is between a hard rock and a place
with the Angel of Death breathing down his neck.
He is bound together at wrists and ankles
with a raging demon.
Our thumbs bleed
from breaking down steel doors.
He has stitched my stocking toe to the carpet
so I won’t leave.
In the clove-scented white light
the serpent’s tongue stings my eye.
With the twist of a molecule
the moon flies beneath the clouds.

*  *  *

The moon flies beneath the clouds.
Our thumbs bleed.
He is bound together at wrists and ankles
beaten up by the night,
by a raging demon.
He asks, Is this another ghost tour?
Dropping pennies all over the house
so I won’t leave,
he has stitched my stocking toe to the carpet.
In the clove-scented white light
he is untethered,
breaking down steel doors.
With the Angel of Death breathing down his neck
he is between a hard rock and a place.
With the twist of a molecule
the serpent’s tongue stings my eye.

*  *  *

The serpent’s tongue stings my eye
so I won’t leave.
In the clove-scented white light
our thumbs bleed.
With a raging demon
and the Angel of Death breathing down his neck,
he is between a hard rock and a place,
beaten up by the night.
Dropping pennies all over the house
he asks, Is this another ghost tour?
He has stitched my stocking toe to the carpet.
He is breaking down steel doors
with the twist of a molecule.
He is bound together at wrists and ankles.
He is untethered.
The moon flies beneath the clouds.



 

 —Photo by Cynthia Linville

(YOUR) LOVE IS NOT ALL
—Cynthia Linville

What are the years
but drops of water on the palm
five—just a handful
ten—a small mouthful
that is gone
the throat already parched
before she says
I'm leaving.

______________________

I WALK THROUGH WET SPRING PASTURES, PICKING PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS FROM THE COW PATTIES.

—James Lee Jobe, Davis

The mud on my work boots is as thick as the walls of Jericho. maybe thicker. The raw, black sky whispers to me that it will rain again, at any moment. The air is heavy, and my breathing is difficult, as though I were breathing through a warm, wet blanket. I wash a large mushroom with water from my thermos, and eat it right there. Lightening flashes, followed by a long, low roll of thunder. I settled under a huge willow tree, my back to the trunk. In no time at all the beautiful show begins.
 

______________________

RAINY SPRING MORNING, BALTIMORE 
—James Lee Jobe

All the long morning I walk
through the harbor front
in the slow, steady drizzle.
There is a wildness to the city.
Pigeons, mice, spiders.
Opossum on Federal Hill.
An oak with an Oriole nest.
In the water, who knows what?
Fish, oysters, crab.
Overhead, geese returning to Canada.
From the cracks in the concrete
blades of grass and weeds poke through.
Even with skyscrapers above me,
the wilds of nature are everywhere.

_____________________

SIGNS OF SPRING
—James Lee Jobe

It is only March,
but there are signs of spring,
and although I enjoy winter,
I find some hope in that.
All four seasons are fine with me,
it is change itself that I like.
The three redwoods in my front yard
where just taller than a man
when we moved into this house,
and now they are well above the roof.
In that same time our family has also grown.
The three children are now adults
and there is a lovely grandchild.
My wife and I have gone grey
and the yard work is getting difficult.
Some things that used to matter
now don't matter at all,
and I find myself giving thought
to things that once I did not care about.
My season is changing, too.
I can feel spring coming.
It isn't here yet, but it's coming,
and I like that.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

SIGNS OF SPRING
—Cynthia Linville

pressed to the wall like
an Yves Klein painting

crying at breakfast
teetering just this side of crazy

out the window:
tiny green heart-shaped leaves

with the blink of an eye
the sky shouts

the cage door is open—

fly out

_____________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

Trickery of Light

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam

POSING HER

He wants her posed in a field of yellow
flowers—as if asleep—

her black hair prearranged around her in
a coif of curls—

as if surrendered—as if dead—appearing
weightless—

under a modest scatter of daisies that keep
her nudity in good taste,

while he—from his levitated perspective—
claims her with his camera.

________________________

THROUGH A CURTAIN OF THOUGHT

She is silky beautiful—like a yellow waft
of imagination posed between pillars of light,

her yellow gown blending with the quiet air,
soft as some ghost of memory. She haunts

the startled eye of the late observer—come
to sundown with the terrible weight of heart

and mind, grown apart like love and non-
love—all somehow blended with the sheer

duplicity of want and surrender. Only the lost
redeem how this is so: the sudden emergence

of myth, no longer sought or wanted, but
exquisitely mourned for a passing moment.

_______________________

IN FAILING LIGHT
(After "In the Sunlight",  c. 1893, by John Henry Twachtman)

You paint her there, sitting in mottled sunlight
in the garden, in a long blue dress
and a wide hat that shades her face,
with a footstool for her patience,
though she calls for a respite from your art.

The archaic garden melts its yellows around her,
fusing her arms to the arms of the chair;
pink shadows breathe in the scented light—
like echoes of her breathing—
her loose-petaled roses.

And deeper back,
the sallow green of muted shrubbery
rustles with anticipation,
waits to enclose what is left of the warmth
of the tired day’s ardor. 

And in this slipping light,
the sun-streaked ground
pulls down into a brush-swirl of incompletion,
and you hurry,
but the blue has softened and blurred.

So you give up the day—
leaving her there—
catching the late light in her lap
as it lowers around her,
suffusing the edges of her composition.

She is perfect now;
you can reclaim her forever—as she was—
in this unfinished summer
dwindled down to a memory you keep
to remind yourself of how you loved her.

YELLOW SOLSTICE AT SUMMER’S EDGE

They sit in two bulging chairs,
lonely for themselves,

two quarrelers consoling
their efforts at conversation.

They have brought all their miseries
with them,

stuffed inside
like suitcases full of stolen things.

Everything is locked inside of them,
too heavy now to save—

too heavy to throw away.
Their happiness depends on

something vague,
brought here for revision.

They have not yet
unpacked. They have not written home.

The room shrinks around them,
their heaviness filling the room to saturation.

The heaviness grows heavier.
He stares into her questions.

She stares into his answers.
They cannot move from their chairs.

Their hands are too heavy
to lift from their laps in any gesture.

_________________________

YELLOW HOUSE

The yellow house stands shimmering in the dusk,
revisioned by the sunset and the day,                 
engulfed within a swathe of golden light
that backlit birds fly through and disappear.

It almost feels as if there might appear
a revenant who seems comprised of dusk
emerging through that swiftly turning light
seen only in last moments of the day.

Everyone knows the dying of the day
is when old hauntings tend to reappear—
those thoughts you harbor, conjured out of dusk—
that flesh of shadow—trickery of light—

those indescribable tones of dying light
that make you feel you too might disappear
in sacrifice—surrendered to the day,
and you become a revenant of dusk—

dusk-motes that swirl and pull you through the day—
that burn of light where time can disappear.

                                                              
(first pub. in Poets' Forum Magazine)

______________________

YELLOW PICTURE WITH LONG
BLACK LINE

passing the
country by train . . .

yellow blur of
time between towns . . .

fields growing up around
the legs of stationary cows . . .

farm houses low behind
fluttering clotheslines . . .

the thin and narrowing sounds
of the train whistle . . .

small figures shading their eyes
and staring . . .

the imaginary sounds of shrill dogs
barking . . .

the ineffectual fences tilting off
into windy distances . . .

and the near fences holding their birds
from entering or leaving . . .

the telephone poles, too dizzy for counting
the hypnotic lulling, as if this were a forever . . .

transparent window-faces pulling the scenery by . . .
passing the country by train . . .   a long time ago . . . .

TRAIL THROUGH A YELLOW FIELD

Too far this time—
all the way to the golden season
that veers
just as we almost reach
that ragged tree
those tracks
that pull off here and there—
going where,
that soon, that late,
when time was trusted,
and what still lies in
that green mass of trees,
un-entered yet—
such peril of the heart, in its rush,
in all the trust, with no signs
to tell us how to go
to the somewhere
we imagine—
all is slow—slow for awhile—
while time changes pace,
and there we are—at the forest
of all that comes to us, eventually.

______________________

THE RUE GARDEN
(Five Katautas*)

Where does that gate lead?
There are thorns on the roses.
watch out for the yellow ones.
         ~~~
Who has called me here?
Your note has been delivered.
The torn pieces flutter down.
         ~~~
Where are the songbirds?
A pool of sunlight glitters.
Bright wings shatter everywhere.
       ~~~
Does silence listen?
Cold shadow aches to be held.
The gray bird sings for itself.
         ~~~
What has displeased you?
Time has become motionless.
All the mirrors are empty.


*Katauta: Japanese syllabic form (5, 7, 7)
A question, followed by an indirect answer.
 
(first pub. in Noir Love, Rattlesnake LittleBook #2, 2009)

____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Joyce Odam, who chose the yellow aspect of daffodils for her poems today. Our new Seed of the Week is similar, since Thursday is the solstice: Sure Signs of Spring. Think out of the box: burmuda shorts? Daylight Savings Time? Kids groping each other in the park? Tell us about what you see as sure signs of spring in poems, photos, artwork and send your musings to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs though; ferret through those of our past in the link at the top of the page called Calliope's Closet for more ideas.

Daffodils and Birds

—Our thanks today for these 
Photos by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

[click once to enlarge and read titles]
 and these poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA.

IT IS YOU

It is you
hiding until this March
grounded for a season
when the sun comes up
near sea sounds
on the high bridge
you, jonquils
paler than a foggy yellow sky
suddenly appear
out of grey green springs
as a bird drinks
from the city fountain
on the boulevard
sentenced to a hapless fate
where silence sleeps
as in a fairy tale
to be kissed
and greet the dawn
still shivering by the gate
to the Bay's swan.

ODE TO A JONQUIL

You came from
the very verbal
and cultivated
Amaryllis family,
we met in March
near Crete
I was on a running meet
then clustered
under the arches
of Greek columns
with flowered books
in linear bright
yellow and white
we stared through
our looking glasses
as Aphrodite
that first night
and next afternoon,
we think of each other
as any closet Narcissus
from any nation or area
on the Mediterranean
taking your long leave
on perennial vacation
to keep
from being bored
while we eat
herbal spices
and grape leaves
and fruit from a gourd
before my taking
a tourist ride
at the bus station,
telling me
she was being harried
by the Amaryllis family
wanting her
to be a young bride
and soon be married
to a wealthy ship tycoon,
and she suddenly
cries out from the table
to the goddess Soteria
in a one rescued chance
for her deliverance
while I only ask her
out to dance.

THE LITTLE FLOWER

Picturing you
with mop in hand
saying prayers
under your breath
as you set a table
with cold silverware
and yellow jonquils,
gracious for words
that enter
into your head
for the diary
to be real
to every soul,
fishermen on the Seine,
women from Lima,
carrying you
in thin pockets,
African farmers,
exhausted from heat,
reading at lunch,
Asians weary from war,
little Therese
from every vocation
and walk of life,
who would, of all people,
have believed you;
awkward
in adolescence
with plain truths
changed into love,
your torn apron
wrapped around you,
almost faceless
in a mirror,
never imagining silks
about your person,
always at the edge
of forgiveness,
you of anybody,
Therese,
growing in Lisieux,
of all places,
uneducated,
humble, simple,
willingly imparting wisdom
to children grown old,
when an obscure baby
with newborn graces
from sprinkled water
and a tiny light
from wild olive branches
on an unseasoned crib
catches up
to the little flower.

WALKING THROUGH

Walking through the hills
on a new March dawn
trying to be cool and calm
with Goethe's lyrical poems
dreaming under my arm,
nervously waiting to play
the first part
of Bach's double concerto
at the fine arts museum,
with my hanging hands
ready to do an encore
for I have memorized
a Vivaldi score,
now viewing the jonquils
in a long corridor
of wonderful Van Gogh
and the few lovely bowls
of flowers by Berthe Morisot.

A SIGNING IN FRISCO

Everyone has a pulse
raised for music
trying to feel alive
after L.A.X.
a torch singer
with a guitar wrapped
on her book back shoulder
offers to carry my stuff
when she heard me
speaking Spanish
tells me about pirated
passports around the tips
of deserts in dawn's sand
on the pale horizon
where the hungry travel,
yet here in a rainy season
Pillar accompanies me
at my reading and gigs
to sign autographs
of my newest collection
eager to delight
in a sudden passion
and hands me jonquils.

FLOWER CHILDREN

It must have cost me
when I had no flowers
for a freshman date
and had to rely on
crocus and jonquil
from our own garden
that March day
when a sax-playing
guy showed up
at Marsha's driveway
with amazement
that I came
with my own gifts
of entertainment
she was reading
as a recent emigre
in Russian
Eugene Onegin
the tragic love story
by the poet Pushkin
her parents seemed
pleased I was taking her
to the art cinema
to see Ivan the Terrible
and we talked in the rain
about Stalin's crimes
she was even happy
that my flowers
were wrapped
in the New York Times.

ANNA AKHMATOVA'S GOODBYE

Her words like ashes
in my one life memory
of your picture
in a collection
from a Russian poet
now reunited across the seas
you, Anna, visible
under the slowest clouds
inheritor of Pushkin's love
as immortality summons
us only after death,
once accommodated
to tundra's long suffering
with barren trees
as in Jerusalem
amid tiny flowering herbs
that Easter's day
your tragedy moves us
as jonquils in a vase
to an open room of sunlight
where we watch
my lifted-up ballet friend
named after you
practice for a performance
of Swan Lake
or in a diaphanous first act
of Sleeping Beauty,
here with your eyelashes
doomed me to nostalgia
as is in your frame
of a poet's vocation
knowing your portrait
is always in my recollection,
we watch early March grackles
fly off the weather vane
over the slate roof
or our running by water
of the Bay
reminds me of the Neva
on a goodbye
visit to the countryside,
for your tomb is not empty
you are with us
when every spring returns
from winter's dizzy cold
embracing us
far beyond this space
or uneven century
sowing a tear yet rejoicing.

Today's LittleNip:

JONQUIL, PROMISE ME

Jonquil, promise me
the yellow light
from your new blossoms
will shine on waters
as resting metaphors,
dabs of your petals
sit on my hand.

Be transformed
and spring
on my shirtless sleeve,
promise in every color
to enter my rock garden
as a sign every March
lacing the morning road
by the Bay's sea voices
as a sweet offering
over my half-dark vase.

________________________

—Medusa, wishing you a happy St. Patrick's Day!

 Tom Meschery, who featured with Hannah Stein

at last Monday's Sac. Poetry Center reading.

Be Davison Herrera will be in town tonight to host

a reading featuring The Inclusionists.

That's 25th & R Sts., Sacramento, 7:30pm.

Resurrection

Gold Tulip

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

BULB PLANTING TIME
—Edgar Guest

Last night he said the dead were dead
    And scoffed my faith to scorn;
I found him at a tulip bed
    When I passed by at morn.

"O ho!" said I, "the frost is near
    And mist is on the hills,
And yet I find you planting here
    Tulips and daffodils."

"'Tis time to plant them now," he said,
    "If they shall bloom in Spring";
"But every bulb," said I, "seems dead,
    And such an ugly thing."

"The pulse of life I cannot feel,
    The skin is dried and brown.
Now look!" a bulb beneath my heel
    I crushed and trampled down.

In anger then he said to me:
    "You've killed a lovely thing;
A scarlet blossom that would be
    Some morning in the Spring."

"Last night a greater sin was thine,"
    To him I slowly said;
"You trampled on the dead of mine
    And told me they are dead."

_____________________

—Medusa

The White of Heart Smoke

An Unusual Calla

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke

PSORIASIS

I had been having problems with my skin.
It was getting red and shiny with plaque.
Recently I had noticed words appearing
In the plaque.  At first they were words
In languages I could not read but as
The disease progressed more and more
Words began appearing all over my body.

They were not sentences, just words.
Most were verbs and adjectives but
Nouns began to creep into the sites
That appeared on my hands.  By the end
Of the month I was covered in words.

Whenever I said anything it would appear
On my body within a few hours.  Sometimes
In English but Arabic, Hindi, the Romance
Languages, Braille bumps and International
Sign Language hand signs appeared.
I began to speak in gibberish and slang
More and more often.  Eventually I became
A book.  A book that walked but a book nonetheless
Covered with shiny words that might appear
At any time, anywhere on my body.

My physicians tried a panoply of medications
On me.  After six months the words began
To fade quickly.  My doctors told me that
I would never be cured but that I must become
A poet to deal with the disease.  I have done
So.  Now all I have is a bad case of psoriasis.

_______________________

ACROSS THE HEART

It was a black we were
Supposed to know the name of.

The keen eye of the hawk
Could trace the footprints of a mouse
Across our heart and dive to make
It part of its own body.

That night we slept on shell casings.
There were so many they were warm
Most of the night.  I watched
The sky.  I could read messages
There.  They told me to bring
You tidings that the night
Would return as a gift for us.

That morning, sporadic machine
Gun fire.  A barn, pure white
Near the west camp
Was shot full of holes.  They knew
Our names and could say them
If asked.  We were never asked.

 Tree at New Hope

THE PLAINS

The plains seem to come out of nothing.
We had been in rolling hills all day.
Then, just before evening was getting serious
About everything, passing through a break of willows,
We were on the plain.

They went on forever.
They had no need of us.
We were as dandelion seeds
To the air, horses and all.

"One, one, one," I sang, mostly
To myself, for I was in love
With this work of breathing.
There, outside, able to say God
And have it mean something
That sent shivers through me
Like the lessons of Winter
And the lighted stars, crisp
In their home.

Oh, to never be blind to these things.
Room after room of them.

We made a simple camp and told
Stories to one another as if he were
Really human.

_____________________

THE LENGTH OF THE DAY

Tarantula mouth.
The sweet fur of the spider
Held over the flame for only
A few seconds and the fur
Burned and the custard of its body
Became a treat for children
Who live in that forest.

 Porch Detail, Locke

FIRE

He thought there was some reason
To keep fire.  So he did,
In a small jar next to his
Bed.  At night he would remove
It and play with it,
Running his fingers along
its back and make
Soft noises to it.
The fire would lick his hands
And roll itself through his hair
Crackling and snapping.

“Sweet fire,” he would say
And the words were cinders
Covering his bed.


(first published in sum magazine,
1968, by Carl Woideck)

_______________________

IT IS MORNING

The heavy eye of the moon
Lies in a tangled heap
Just above a small clump
Of trees.  There is no move-
Ment anywhere in the land.

A mist begins rising.
A mist that just fits inside
The shirt of a man, near the
Narrow space of heart and lungs.

Now some bullets are walking
In the air.  They are about
The size and shape of bees.
One of them has entered
The mist.  The others follow.

Quickly they eat the narrow
Space inside the shirt.

It is morning.


(first published in sum magazine, 1968, 
by Carl Woideck)

 Moss on House, Locke

CARTILAGE

The moon looked as if it had carved
A place for itself in the night sky.
An aching yellow-blue, it nearly sighed
Across the night.

We went down to the creek.
On nights like these, the fish there
Would pick up the bits of moonlight
That reached them and swallow them.
Their bodies glowed with the light
That poured through them.

They swam around a reflected moon
In the water and shafts of moonlight
Rippled away from the spot
And made magic of the night.

And I am the neighbor to this spot.
The light is as clear as this,
I tell myself, and think
Of your face as you sleep,
Angels in your skin.
The stuff of dreams that call
Heaven down into your body.

And all the night is Queen
Anne's Lace and the whisper-
Song of great things that never
Had a home on this sad earth
But spoke the angel language
Silence articulates for us.

We are a holy place.
This is a holy place.
For all things must die
And are holy because of this.

The fish swim in circles
As there is no death at all.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

LOVE LAMENT

Bring me a pool of bright water.
Make it tremble upon the air.
Tell me the sky is your singing.
I swear I will ever be there.

This is the home to home.
This is the spirit uncoiled.
This is the endless heart and face.
This is the golden child.

And for battle we may have come
But we forgot it all
And I would want no other's touch—
Not angel’s silk, no one at all.

But bring me the white of heart smoke
And the red breath of the fire,
For I have known the love you give
And I shall know no other.

_______________________

—Medusa

 Unusual Callas

Wishing For Roses

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

LOT'S WIFE
—Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

The just man followed then his angel guide

Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;

But a wild grief in his wife's bosom cried,

Look back, it is not too late for a last night

Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square

Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn,

And the toll house with empty windows where

You loved your husband and your babes were born.

She turned, and looking on the bitter view

Her eyes were welded shut by mortal pain;

Into transparent salt her body grew,

And her quick feet were rooted in the plain.

Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not

The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?

Yet in my heart she will not be forgot

Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.

(trans. from the Russian by Richard Wilbur)

_________________________

SUMMER GARDEN

—Anna Akhmatova

Wishing for roses, I walk through the garden

Where the world's reddest rose leans from a wall.

Where the statues still remember me as a girl.

And I recall their gestures under the Neva's water.

In that expanding silence, among the tsarist lindens,

I mistake a ship's mast for a violin.

And the swan keeps swimming across the years,

Deeply in love with his disturbing double.

And death-deep is the sleep of the hundred

Thousand marches of enemies and friends,

And a procession of shadows moves without end

From the granite vase to the portals of the palace.

There I hear my white nights of whispering of

A transcendent, secret love.

And the garden burns in pearl and jasper,

But the source of light is hidden in the leaves.

(trans. by Stephen Stepanchev)

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

TASHKENT BREAKS INTO BLOSSOM

—Anna Akhmatova

As if somebody ordered it

the city suddenly became bright—

it came into every court

in a white, light apparition.

Their breathing is more understandable than words,

in the burning blue sky

their reflection is doomed

to lie at the bottom of the ditch.

I will remember the roof of stars

in the radiance of eternal glory,

and the small rolls of bread

in the yound hands

of dark-haired mothers.

(trans. by Richard McKane)

__________________________

How can you look at the Neva,

how can you stand on the bridges? . . .

No wonder people think I grieve;

his image will not let me go.

Black angels' wings can cut one down,

I count the days till Judgment Day.

The streets are stained with lurid fires,

bonfires of roses in the snow.

—Anna Akhmatova

(trans. by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward)

__________________________

Today's LittleNip:

He loved three things in life:
singing at vespers, white peacocks,

and worn-out maps of America.

He did not love tea with raspberries,

or feminine hysteria.

. . . And I was his wife.

—Anna Akhmatova

(trans. by Barbara Einzig)

_________________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Cynthia Linville