Penone

"all sculpture is rooted in the experience of our body as the primary positive volume which imprints itself on the Negative of its surroundings"
Giuseppe Penone Spazio di Luce p31

Donne

A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy's Day

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;

         The sun is spent, and now his flasks

         Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;

                The world's whole sap is sunk;

The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,

Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,

Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,

Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring;

         For I am every dead thing,

         In whom Love wrought new alchemy.

                For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness;

He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,

Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;

         I, by Love's limbec, am the grave

         Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood

                Have we two wept, and so

Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow

To be two chaoses, when we did show

Care to aught else; and often absences

Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)

Of the first nothing the elixir grown;

         Were I a man, that I were one

         I needs must know; I should prefer,

                If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,

And love; all, all some properties invest;

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun

         At this time to the Goat is run

         To fetch new lust, and give it you,

                Enjoy your summer all;

Since she enjoys her long night's festival,

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call

This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this

Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.

What else could I possibly post on this day? A favourite poem by a favourite poet.  And a piece that proved to me that I couldn't write an academic essay about poems or books that I really love.  If it speaks to my heart, I can't put it through the intellectual mincer that grinds and sucks the life out of beautiful writing.  

The photo was taken this evening on a walk through the gardens of Villa Celimontana, not far from where I live in Rome.

Kathleen Jamie

Moon

Last night, when the moon

slipped into my attic room

as an oblong of light,

I sensed she’d come to commiserate.

It was August. She traveled

with a small valise

of darkness, and the first few stars

returning to the northern sky,

and my room, it seemed,

had missed her. She pretended

an interest in the bookcase

while other objects

stirred, as in a rock pool,

with unexpected life:

strings of beads in their green bowl gleamed,

the paper-crowded desk;

the books, too, appeared inclined

to open and confess.

Being sure the moon

harbored some intention,

I waited; watched for an age

her cool gaze shift

first toward a flower sketch

pinned on the far wall

then glide down to recline

along the pinewood floor,

before I’d had enough. Moon,

I said, We’re both scarred now.

Are they quite beyond you,

the simple words of love? Say them.

You are not my mother;

with my mother, I waited unto death.

Source: Poetry (October 2012)

Fredegond Shove

Revelation

Near as my hand

The transformation: (time to understand

Is long but never far,

As things desired are)

No iceberg floating at the pole; no mark

Of glittering, perfect consciousness, nor dark

And mystic root of riddles; death nor birth,

Except of heart, when flesh is changed from earth

To heaven involved in it: not at all strange,

Not set beyond the common, human range;

Possible in the steep, quotidian stream,

Possible in a dream;

Achieved when all the energies are still –

Especially the will.

Published in “Daybreak” Hogarth Press 1922

Julio Cortazar

Autumn Summary

 

In evening’s dome each bird is a point of memory.
It’s amazing sometimes how the year's fervor
returns, returns without a body, returns for no reason at all,
how beauty, so brief in its violent love,
saves us an echo as night falls.

And so, what can you do but stand there slack-armed,
your heart overloaded and that taste of dust
that was a rose or a road—
Flight outflies the wing.
Without humility you know this remnant
was wrung from the dark by the work of silence?
that the branch in your hand, the dark tear
are your inheritance, the man with his story,
the lamp shining its light.