the longest day!

MIRACLES

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of
nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs
of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me
riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness
of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light
and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior
swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

Walt Whitman

MIRACLE FAIR

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it's backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer
than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle,
as everything is additional:
the unthinkable is thinkable.

Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak

oops... almost forgot

he read a book!

THE DAY I READ A BOOK

(click Jimmy's photo to hear him sing this song!) ...... Jimmy Durante

When I look back through life I find,
Lots of memories remain,
Certain days stay in my mind
And keep running through my brain,
I remember the day that Ederle swam the channel, what a splash.
I remember the Wall St. Crash
Or when Winchell first shouted, “Flash!”
But there’s one day that I recall though it was years ago.
All my life I will remember it, I know.

I'll never forget the day I read a book.
It was contagious, seventy pages.
There were pictures here and there,
So it wasn't hard to bear,
The day I read a book.
It's a shame I don't recall the name of the book.
It wasn't a history, I know, because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book. I can't remember when,
But one o' these days, I'm gonna do it again.

Ah, lit'rature!
There's nothin' like sittin' home next to the fireplace, with a pipe, a dog, and a good book at your feet.
But if you walk into my house, you’ll see loads of books.
And believe they are not there just for appearance.
I press an awful lot of butterflies.
My literary appetite is “stupendious.”
They don’t write them quick enough for me.
The book of the month didn’t come out fast enough,

So I read the book of the week!
The book of the week didn’t come out fast enough,
So I read the book of the day!
The book of the hour!
The book of the minute!
But that wasn’t even fast enough.
So far this week I’ve read six books that haven’t been written yet!
But I’m not confined to home reading.
I once spent two weeks in library.
I would have been outta there sooner,
But I had buried my nose in a book and forgot which book I buried it in!
A “dilemmia.”

Why on the first page of this book they printed the author’s name,
And right underneath it was a private phone number.
Copyright-1-9-3-9.
But I’m gonna send it back.
I’ve been dialing that number for four months
and nobody has answered.
Nevertheless, while perusing through the library,
I found the tract that I was looking for.
It wasn’t the Encyclopedia “Britannia”!
It wasn’t Ferverum Briago.
It was a book that was 3,857 pages thick.
And I’m glad I took it!
It fit perfectly under the short leg of my pool table!

It was not a history, I know because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book.
I can't remember when,
But one o' these days,




I'm gonna do it again.
Yes, and one of these days,
I’m gonna do it again!

catch a scent of salt

1812

.亡母や海見る度に見る度に
naki haha ya umi miru tabi ni miru tabi ni

my dead mother--
every time I see the ocean
every time...

Issa's mother died when he was a small child. In his diary, this haiku is followed immediately by another ocean poem:

murasaki no kumo ni itsu noru nishi no umi

on purple clouds
when will I set sail?
western sea

In mythic terms, the western sea separates this world from the Pure Land. The ocean, then, is a barrier between this world and the next, keeping Issa separate from his beloved mother.

Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

OUR VALLEY

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts
saying the mountains
have no word for ocean,
but if you live here
you begin to believe
they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one,
like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours.
Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in,
and the men
who carved a living from it
only to find themselves
carved down to nothing.
Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

Philip Levine

(c) copyright 2011 Philip Levine

MOTORCYCLE CRASH

DYING MAN (inner voice): Don't look at me so stupidly! Haven't you seen anyone croak before? Shit, is it this easy? I'm lying in a puddle, stinking like an oil tanker. I can't really end up here like a cow shit! Everything so clear! How they stand there gawking at me. The oil puddle...

DYING MAN (Inner voice): Karin, I should have told you yes-terday... This thing got out of control. ...I'm so sorry. Karin! Now I'm lying here. I can't simply... I have to... Karin, there are so many things I still have to do! Karin, Baby, things look bad for me.

DAMIEL
(speaking for the DYING MAN):
As I emerged from the valley out of the fog into the sunshine...
The fire
at the edge of the prairie...
The potatoes in the ashes...
The boat-house
far off at the lake...

DAMIEL and the DYING MAN:
The Southern Cross,
The Far East,
The Great North,
The Wild West,
The Great Bear Lake!

DYING MAN:
The Isles of Tristan de Cunha.
The Mississippi Delta.
Stromboli.
The old houses of Charlottenburg.
Albert Camus.

DYING MAN :
The morning light.
The child's eyes.
Swimming in the waterfall...

(click to see the scene)

VOICE OF THE DYING MAN (off screen):

The flecks of the first raindrops.
The sun.
Bread and wine.
Skipping.
Easter.
The veins of leaves.
The fluttering grass.
The colors of the stones.
The pebbles on the river bed.
The table cloth in the open air.
The dream of the house...

...in the house.
The neighbor asleep in the next room.
Sunday's peacefulness.

The horizon.
The light from the room...

In the garden.
The night flight.

Biking with no hands.

The beautiful stranger.

My father

My mother.
My wife.
My child.


from Wings of Desire

Wim Wenders and Peter Handke 1

the fire & the rose

what are we then to do?
knowing that the world has seen holocaust,
war, genocide, and, yet, come this far...
were you there, now, what would you do? swim?,
or stand tremulously, waiting, at the water's edge?

from LITTLE GIDDING

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.




We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known,
because not looked for
But heard, half-heard,
in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames
are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T. S. Eliot
from Four Quartets

Turning Japanese II

This was the state of the art of printmaking in 1850,
the dark silence before the dawn of the Japanese
influence on everything:

Then the tsunami hit: and the stories
of the means of that onslaught are many.

Perhaps, since the woodblock prints were supposedly used
as wrapping paper on ceramic imports,
they were inadvertently discovered
by painters buying ashtrays.

(That's what they told me on the sightseeing tour to Giverney.)

There were the scholars, vendors, and pilgrims,
many of whom have been discussed here, whose
curiosity drove them to Japan itself as soon
as they could. They were inspired, profoundly awed,
and they looted the back rooms for whatever they could
for museums and private collections.

Extremely important, too were the Universal Expositions
which bloomed on every shore and brought
artist, craftsman, and person-on-the-street
into direct contact with the Japanese items themselves.

To explore the variety in more depth, check out this.

There were entrepreneurs on all shores (also previously
covered here), who opened shops, started magazines (or both),
to display and sell the imports; or in Japan where they began
to marshall artists to produce what the West wanted.

Now, I'm not saying that each artist pictured here was
introduced to Japanese arts and crafts in one of these ways.
What I am saying is that every single one (and all the more
who are not featured here) was influenced none the less.

No longer was the body's content as important as were its bones.
And all of the other Japonisme-y things: flat planes of color,
asymmetry, outlines. Consciously or unconsciously,
people had begun to see differently.

The language changed, and changes still.

charles
clive

Circling • (the calendars)

9.
March, sodden, bled away to April.
On my birthday i had a dream.

A tooth had loosened
to a taste like iron.

With two fingers I gripped the crown
and pulled it out.
No blood, but tiny sepals,
faint green leaves
that slowly blossomed in the sun
awakening me

to one last snow,
its glare in sunlight
harsh, a kind of trial.

APRIL FIRE

1
What is it we
desire in spring,
or are we merely a part
of desiring?
In early morning,
birdsong trills
like running water.
Something in us grows
from darkness.

Below these trees,
huge fountains that stand,
already the worms begin
to slide
their alphabet

over white roots,
white tendrils
that slowly unfurl,
grow, and divide
finer than a woman's hair,

while the orange of robins
moves like flame
across the lawn.

Mark Irwin

from Against the Meanwhile (c) 1988 Mark Irwin. published by Wesleyan University Press.

these two bits are but a wee excerpt from a very long poem called Circling, which travels the year. here, obviously, we're at the same moment in the poem as we are on the earth. perhaps more will follow.

and these calendars, ones for which i can find no further pa- ges, or no more information, keep me on the prowl through the back musty rooms of shops and museums, searching. rooting.


i hope you've not yet tired of my series. i've got more!

a man for... golf?: 1897, 1899, 1900, 1906 (the calendars)

this moment of the birth of the poster
around the world, was the perfect moment
for edward penfield to shine.

the calendar was, as we have seen,
an excellent use of the new, japanese-inspired,
methods of printing and design.

it's not difficult to stumble across
the covers of his calendars,
but how i love to play the detective
to find the other pages.

penfield's 1906 may have had no other pages.
i couldn't find anything, not even
images that looked like they may have had
a little calendar section on the bottom.

but it's been so much fun finding what i could.
i hope my obsession (and my thanks to
this artist) is shared by you too!

calendari