no answer

A REWARD

Tired and hungry,
late in the day, impelled
to leave the house
and search for what
might lift me back to what I had fallen away from,
I stood by the shore waiting.

I had walked in the silent woods:
the trees withdrew into their secrets.

Dusk was smoothing breadths of silk
over the lake, watery amethyst fading to gray.

Ducks were clustered in sleeping companies
afloat on their element as I was not
on mine. I turned homeward, unsatisfied.

But after a few steps I paused, impelled again
to linger, to look North before nightfall — the expanse
of calm, of calming water, last wafts
of rose in the few high clouds.

And was rewarded:
the heron, unseen for weeks, came flying
widewinged toward me, settled
just offshore on his post,
took up his vigil.
If you ask
why this cleared a fog from my spirit,
I have no answer.

— Denise Levertov

1811

.杭の鷺いかにも露を見るやうに
kui no sagi ikanimo tsuyu wo miru yô ni

heron on a post
gazing down, it seems
at dewdrops

issa

sawade's tiger

the mills brothers

from ANIMALS ARE MY LIFE

A terrible event was soon to be the subject of another cable. In his big carnivores group Richard Sawade had a young tiger which he had brought up from infancy. It was called Nik and was his great pet. It used to go round with him like a big sheep-dog. But one evening none other than this tiger attacked him and ripped up his shoulder and upper arm.

Fortunately, Sawade was able to grip a bar of the cage with the other hand, and, being a man of athletic strength beyond the ordinary, he succeeded in preventing the animal getting at his neck. His fearless assistant, Rudolf Matthies, came running up and as close as possible fired blank cartridges into the tiger's jaws, and the wooden cap of the cartridge, at that short range, hit the animal.

Indeed, some splinters also wounded Sawade in the back, but the necessary result was achieved the tiger at once began to gnaw at its own wounds, and with his wooden pole Matthies could drive the animal away.

We all held our breath. Slowly, Sawade loosened his hold on the bar. Everybody expected him to fall. But, his face contorted with pain, he now went back into the ring, drove all his animals out of the central cage, bowed rather curtly, and only then, streaming with blood, collapsed in the paddock.

Thank Heaven, medical aid was immediately at hand. The surgeons of the German hospital saved his life. For weeks he lay, terribly hurt, struggling against the blood poisoning which is so frequently a complication of carnivorous animal wounds. A lung inflammation hindered the recovery, which this brave man -- later general manager of our travelling circus -- owed solely to iron will and an iron constitution.

A carnivorous animal always remains a carnivorous animal. Whether caught fully grown or brought up from infancy on the bottle makes no difference whatsoever. Gratitude and faithfulness are virtues in our human ambit of emotions, and not to be imagined unconditionally into animals, which are in the power of other instincts.

After this accident, Rudolf Matthies took over Sawade's animal group, from which of course I removed the attacker. Matthies not only did his outstanding teacher every honour, but himself became a first-class tiger trainer, the only one, indeed, later to be awarded the German Animal Protection Medal.

-- Lorenz Hagenbeck, 1955 *

blue skies

PRINCIPALITIES OF JUNE

Original light broke apart,
the Gnostics say,
when time began,

singular radiance
fractioned into form
— an easy theory

to believe,
in early summer,
when that first performance

seems repeated daily.
Though wouldn’t it mean
each fracturing took us

that much further
from heaven?
Not in this town,

not in June: harbor
and cloudbank, white houses’
endlessly broken planes,

a long argument
of lilac shadows and whites
as blue as noon:

phrasebooks of day,
articulated most of all
in these roses,

which mount and swell
in dynasties of bloom,
their easy idiom

a soundless compaction
of lip on lip. Their work,
these thick flowerheads?

Built to contain
sunlight, they interrupt
that movement just enough

to transfix in air, at eye level,
now: held still, and shattering,
which is the way with light:

the more you break it
the nearer it comes to whole.

Mark Doty






copyright mark doty
all rights reserved

that one, by herself

picture this guy naked. oh-- you'd rather not? that's understandable, and it's also, well, predictable. when are you going to see a guy naked having a picnic?

well, okay, but what about these? they're courtesans, after all. nope. you might see their private bits every now and again, but lying there nude? ain't gonna happen.

until just very recently, you will only see rosy behinds and billowy taa-taas on western women. does this demean us, exalt us, show us as stronger, or weaker? i honestly don't know.

Ueda Akinari

桜さくら散って佳人の夢に入る
sakura zakura chirite kajin no yume ni iru

Cherry blossoms fall
Entering into the dreams
Of lovely women.

Tr. Blake Morgan Young 1

Issa

.ひとりなは我星ならん天の川
hitori na wa waga hoshi naran ama [no] kawa

that one by itself
is my star...
Heaven's River

This haiku refers to a popular belief that each person upon birth is assigned a corresponding star in the heavens.
"Heaven's River" refers to the Milky Way.

year unknown

.蓮の香や昼寝の上を吹巡る
hasu no ka ya hirune no ue wo fuki meguru

over my midday nap
the scent of lotuses
meanders 2

the california japonist

pomegranate is doing something very important. quite simply, they are illuminating, with appropriately jewel-like books, the era of printmaking, in this country and in japan, of the last century.

we have al- ready looked at pomegranate's new books of shin hanga; this time we look at their new, beautiful, book about william seltzer rice.

rice was the quintessential california printmaker; every one of his prints rings true in the hearts of we californians who live and breathe life here -- rice lives in that place of the heart.

while he would go on to publish books about block-printing himself, in the beginning the teachings and books of arthur wesley dow had a major influence on him.

his own initial contact with japanese prints came at the panama-pacific international exposition in san francisco in 1915. after having spent so much time as a painter, he saw and admired, in the prints, the simplicity, the vivid colors, and the clarity of form through outlines.

he had seen these prints in books, but seeing them in person was transformative.

though he worked with lino-cutting rather than the full, complex, japanese methods of making the prints, it's clear that the lessons were well learned.

the new book, william s rice: california block prints, includes a helpful essay, giving glimpses of artist as man rather than simply technician.

while william rice was friends and colleagues with many of the other american printmakers of his time, his vision was his own. translating his obvious love of nature into color and line gives us a legacy of a california past that we will preserve as long as we can.

and this series of pomegranate books will help that along.

the will to wed

THE OWL AND
THE PUSSY-CAT







I

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'


II

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.


III

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

the grand Edward Lear, 1871

It’s more than the increasing depth of the day

music

A VERY COMMON FIELD

What is it about this grassy field
that’s so familiar to me? Something
with the beings, the form of the place?

It’s not within
the foxtail,
not within
the brome, not within oat grass
or red clover
or yellow vetch
or the lot of them as one
motion in the wind.

It’s not the morning
or even of the morning,
or of the invisible
crickets, one near, one away,
still sounding
in the damp after dawn.

What is it so resonant and recognized here?
A sense like nostalgia,
like manner,
like a state felt but
not remembered?

It isn’t the center of the purple cornflower
or its rayed and fluted edges, not the slow
rise of the land or the few scattered trees
left in the fallow orchard, not the stone path,
not the grains and bristles of stems and seeds,
each oblivious in its own business,
but something impossible without these.

It’s more than
the increasing depth
of the day and
the blue of its height,
more than the half-body
of the lizard
turned upside down
on the path, torn

and transfigured during the night, more
than the bells beginning their lesson in the background.

It’s not a voice, not a message,
but something like a lingering,
a reluctance to abandon, a biding
so constantly present
that I can never
isolate it
from the disorderly crows
passing over or
from the sun moving
as wind down through the brief fires
of moisture on the blades of timothy

and sage, never separate it
from the scent
of fields drying and warm, never
isolate it from
my own awareness.

It is something
that makes possible,
that occasions without causing,
something
I can never extricate
to name, never
name to know,
never know to imitate.

— Pattiann Rogers