Followers

Friday, 29 May 2009

HAROLD NORSE AND THE BEAT HOTEL











The hotel, the patronne Madame Rachou and the stair well.
Owing to the less stringent laws in force at the time,
the smoking of hashish and marijuana was, among some
of the residents, a social activit y like any other in the hotel.
The distinctive smell would, day or night, drift from
someof the ill-fitting doors on to the stairs..beat Hotel







































Harold Norse was part of the magical interlude of "The Beat Hotel". Along with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin he playe d a pivotal part in the seeds that led to cyberspace.

Excerpts from "Beat Hotel":
"Bob sat up straight in bed, straining to listen. Nothing. Voices crackled as from an old radio and figures strirred in some numb echo-chamber of his brain, like newspapers down a windy street. He felt enclosed in a soundproof room. He had no idea where he was. He looked around without comprehension, not even knowing what city he was in. Low rapid monologue, nervous whisper of junk journey, endless trips -- "... in Tangier, for example, I dug Arabic from Hebrew -- same language you see -- you get these programs from Radio Cario -- I can tell what they're saying -- school broadcasts for example: Little Mohammed, says teacher, what do you do when you meet a Jew? Kill him. Little Mohammed, what do you do when you meet two Jews? I call ten Arabs to kill 'em...Good-natured laughter and applause. Like Little Mohammed is six years old, dig. And didja know Jews ain't allowed to ride camels because that way they're higher than an Arab...?"
"Aladdin and Titania still in Tangier?"
"Too stoned to move...three years in the Casbah..empty palace..mosaicwalls...six kids...rush mats...a cat...a groundhog..nah, I forgot...somebody ate the groundhog...made groundhog soup..."
"Man, all they ever eat is brownies, majoun brownies...hash, honey, sesame seeds, anise, dates, cinnamon...check runs out each month...the bread goes for hash and grass...even the kids are stoned...contact high...they were conceived high, Aladdin says.,.those little girls giggle all the time...lean against each other for support and giggle...never talk ..."
"Aladdin don't say much...and Titania...has any one ever heard her say a word?"
"They're living in the UNIVERSE, man...no gas...no water...no electricity...only the blinding light of the void...in hotel universe...hotel nirvana..."
"Blue dream of space...celestial flash of blue light in crystal blue silence...on blue mosaic floors...lattice light on silent mosaic heads..."
"Aladdin's a joint machine...sits and rolls till he's catatonic...a holyroller...shit is his religion...best dealer in Tangier...you always get a good count."
"Yeh, best mind in the business...except for Leary..."
"They're buddies...on the astral plane...Communicate via astral post office... Saves money in stamps ...."

Angry with journalists who called the hotel a "flea-bag shrine", Harold Norse used their expression to prophesy;"The flea-bag shrine will be documented by art historians".












Patrick Shelley, the English sensualist painter, and AllenGinsberg, Room 25. Christmas 1956.
Shelley introduced me to the Beat Hotel in the winter of that year.







Light Control Panel for each of the rooms in the Beat Hotel.
The bulb glowed dimly or brightlyaccording to the amount
of electricity beiing used.












photographer Harold Chapman






Thursday, 28 May 2009

HAROLD NORSE





Queer Beat Poet

Political activist and writer Born 1916, New York City. B.A., Brooklyn College 1938; M.A., New York University 1951. At age 22 in 1939 he became a member of W. H. Auden's inner circle, cited by scholar/critic Nicholas Jenkins in The New Yorker, April 1, 1996. William Carlos Williams called him "the best poet of your generation." The 10-year correspondence between Norse and Williams (1951-1961) was published by Bright Tyger, San Francisco 1990. [...]
That year City Lights published Norse's Hotel Nirvana: Selected Poems, establishing him among the leading Beat poets. He was nominated for the 1974 National Book Award.Norse lived in the "Beat Hotel" in Paris, 1960-63, with
William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. There he wrote his experimental cut-up novel, Beat Hotel, published in German by Maro Verlag, Augsburg 1973, now in its 30th printing. [...]
With Carnivorous Saint: Gay Poems 1941-1976, Gay Sunshine Press 1977, Norse became the leading gay liberation poet. His Memoirs of a Bastard Angel (William Morrow), 1989, preface by James Baldwin, further established his reputation. [...]Norse has produced 12 books of poetry and 3 of prose. He has received 2 NEA poetry grants and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Poetry Association.



Classic Frieze in a Garage


I was walking thru the city past umberembassies
& pine-lined palaces
fat palms beside balconies
the heat something
you could really touch

the kids with cunning
delinquent faces
after american sailors

-thinking of nerval tends-moi le pausilippe
et la mer d'Italie & living
on the hill posillipo under
a gangster's dancefloor
among goldfinches

on the bay of naples
in a stone cottage
over tufa caves in which the sea
crashed in winter sweet gerad
one hundred years
have made the desolation greater

the tower is really down & the sun blackened
beyond despair the loudspeaker drowns
finches cliffs caves
all in the hands of racketeers
yet i have passed my time dreaming thru this
fantastic wreck
walking thru incendiary alleys of crowded laundry
with yellow gourds in windows &

crumbling masonry of wars
human corruption
so thick and hopeless that i laugh

when suddenly i saw among the oil & greasy rags
& wheels & axles of a garage
the carved nude figures of
a classic frieze
there above the dismantled
parts of cars!

perfect! & how strange! garage
swallows sarcophagus!
mechanic calmly spraying
paint on a
fender
observed in turn by lapith and centaury
flow

of unthinking flesh!
frank thighs!eyes
of aphrodite!
the myth of the mediterranean
was in that garage
where the brown wiry

youths saw nothing unusual
at their work
among dead heroes & gods
but i saw hermes in the rainbow
of the dark oil on the floor

reflected there
& the wild hair of the sybil
as her words bubbled
mad and drowned
beneath the motor's roar

Saturday, 23 May 2009

TAROT



Heinrick Ulrick

(Nurremberg
approx. 1572 - 1621)
The Jester-Etching
















THE ALLEGORIES OF THE TAROTS
The allegories which appear on the trump cards belong to the iconographical tradition common to most of Europe from the 13th century. They may be found in the decorations of the Gothic cathedrals, in the frescoes of public buildings, and in encyclopaedic and astrological manuscripts. In practice, the figures represented on the cards of the Triumphs are a real Biblia Pauperum, that means a "the Poor men's Bible". Playing the cards, people directly drew from these a knowledge of the Christian mysticism and its contents, concepts that were continually recalled in their minds, according to the method of the Ars Memoriae of the time. They may be readily interpreted by reference to the cultural context of the courts of northern Italy, and their taste for moralizing images derived both from religious tradition and classical mythology. For the ancient gods continued to play a role in medieval Christian culture, even though their characters were different from those of the original divinities.On the one hand, they were held to be civilizing heroes who taught men many arts, like Minerva, the first weaver, or Apollo, the medical god. On the other hand, they were interpreted as allegories of virtue and vice, and it is in this sense that they appear on some of theTarot cards. Obvious examples include Strength, represented by the mythical Hercules as he destroys the Nemean Lion - the symbol of animal instinct; Love, represented as Cupid ready to launch his darts against incautious lovers; Prudence, represented by Saturn; and the Modesty of Diana, the Immodesty of Venus, the Truth of Apollo illuminating Earth with the disc of the sun.Many Tarot figures clearly employ Christian iconography. For example, the World is sometimes represented by the Celestial Jerusalem placed inside a sphere supported by angels or dominated by Celestial Glory. The card bearing the Popess, identical to that in Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, derives from the image of Faith. Amongst many other possible examples, representations of virtues such as Temperance, Justice and Fortitude echo the classical iconography to be found in the sculpture of Gothic cathedrals or the minatures of the sacred books.Other sources of inspiration include ancient astrological treatises. The figure of the Bagatto, or Juggler, appears among the Children of the Moon - that is to say, the trades which are influenced by the moon. The Misero, or Fool, is found among the Children of Saturn, the Lovers among the Children of Venus, the Pope among the Children of Jupiter, and the Emperor among the Children of the Sun. Moreover, astrologers appear in several packs of trumps as representations of the Moon or the Stars.Lastly, there are images drawn from everyday life. An extremely interesting example is the figure of the Hanged Man, which refers to the punishment inflicted upon traitors.In the Bolognini Chapel of the church of San Petronio in Bologna an identical figure is represented in a fresco by Giovanni da Modena as the retaliation punishment for idolaters, since idolatry was considered the most awful kind of betrayal because addressed to the disownment of the Creator. Although the punishment of hanging by a leg has been represented in other works, the San Petronio fresco is the only known example which concides perfectly with the Tarot card.


AN INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONunder the patronage ofMinistry for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage and Foreign Office Protocol no. 16638 dated January 1995LE TAROT Cultural Trust for Historical Studies and ResearchStradello Cappuccini 14 - 48018 FAENZA - ItalyTel & Fax +39.546.661143 / cell. +39.335.5619171info@associazioneletarot.it / letarot@virgilio.ithttp://www.blogger.com/www.associazioneletarot.it


Saturday, 9 May 2009

ELETRIC VERSES



.....................street light & night time cities
Electric Verses---------- bothFinnish and Swedish speaking. The site contains their
poetry in the original and translations into other languages.

EIRA STENBERG

Born in Tampere. Five collections of poetry, novels, radio plays, children's books and plays. Studied at the Sibelius Academy.

To talk of love…

the thing you can't talk about
the cul-de-sac of a looking-glass
with someone hanging upside down
from an invisible tree,
legs wrapped round a branch,
apparently grappling with gravity
and opening a mouthno cry comes out of…

Or to talk as if
love were a door
with a key called longing
and behind the door a tree flamed
into visibility,
a foetus straightened its legs and dived
up to the surface
and spoke to you the juggler,
who toss your head from hand to hand like dice,
and brought you a fresh leaf
after the deluge.

JUHANI AHVENJÄRVI

He living in Tampere. He has worked as teacher of creative writing in the University of Tampere and other places. He made his debut in 1992 in the anthology Ryhmä 92 -Group 92, edited by Jyrki Kiiskinen and Kari Levola-. Since that he has published three collections of poems, the latest of which, Yhä kiihtyvä tauko, came out in 2005.

There is no hope.
The image we
have of the eye
stays open

HELENA SINERVO

-1961 published her first collection of poems, Lukemattomiin (Untold), in 1994. Since that she has published six more. Sinervo has translated poems by Elizabeth Bishop and Yves Bonnefoy and written the lyrics for Liisa Lux’ debut song album (2002).

If the wind cannot recall, can you?

The one I thought of a thousand times
at the first hour, a thousand times at the second ,
could not recall me at all,
although the wind recalled its windward
a thousand times at the first hour, a thousand times at the second ,
and still at the third hour,
when the rooster had crowed thrice,
did the wind recall its windward
searching for early traces, covered in reminiscence.

JYRKI KIISKINEN

worked as editor in chief in the Nuori Voima literary magazine in 1991-1994 and Books from Finland in 1995-2000. He is one of the most important literary figures of his generation. He has published five collections of poems, three novels and three children’s books. He was awarded the Eino Leino Prize in 1992, Kalevi Jäntti Prize in 1994 and Yleisradio’s (the equivalent of the BBC) Tanssiva Karhu (Dancing Bear) Prize in 2000.

No one

So green that no one,
no one can say it
so green that the grass, the stand of pine trees
the clump of alders
cannot hide it
cannot describe
no one can describe it
so yellow that the dandelion, the
sun, so bright
that the water
that the light cannot break it
so deep, so warm, so quiet
is it
that no one can understand it
so icy, so dumb, so deep
is it

LEEVI LEHTO

- 1951- has published five collections of poems, Muuttunut tuuli -Changed Wind, 1967-, Rakkauden puheesta (Of Speech of Love, 1969-Ihan toinen iankaikkisuus -Quite Another Eternity, 1991- Kielletyt leikit -Forbidden Games, 1994- and Ääninen -1997- He also has published the novel Janajevin unet -Yanayev’s Dreams, 1992- and worked as translator, translating John Ashbery’s Flow Chart -Vuokaavio, 1994- among others.


You (I)
But I will couple you with the spring sky.
I have eaten angel flesh, drunk the moon from the sky,
visited China in a dream and returned to the kitchen at night:
to be my own son and close the cupboard door.

Saturday, 2 May 2009

JORGE RIECHMANN

Alliance

An entire forest has come back from

your neck tonight,
I saw a conciliator,
friend, strongly favor
possible, you were sleeping
upon the severity of recent
days. I did not wake me refresh
your pulse.
The signs seem clear:
We can assist in time together
Two of the god, the three other
case. It is now time not to forget
the dreams.

2
Sniff
as well.
There are sweat as honey,
There is wheat and soil. I see and hear
resonant
as well. You know so well enjoy.
While preserving instincts of the flower to the
fruit. I see and I hear you breathe
again
I called you at our table of wind.

3
I dreamed
the salvation of your sweat
advocate
our common privacy

before the ravages of this bloody
sky
receipt
Freedom in your body marking
the slight pleasure prosody
I dreamed
the salvation of your sweat.

4

Then on the edge of the shadow
dance
illuminated by white slow,
beautiful,
strongly live, knowing all
the pores
and all the wrinkles of pleasure,
It is true that the death, but only
begins tomorrow.

Of "mobile equipment" and "Book of Berlin":

Absent
Encounter with the
angel
Unbelief

Poem of the meeting
Three times
awakening


From "Song of erosion:

Abolish the nostalgia
You
Get rid of your vertebrae tame
Sleep a bit longer, gardener adorable ...
At dawn she always just left
Trace of a body

From "Hope violent":
Absence of a friend in ZamoraT

he most beautiful dress
The lover 2
Heading
The smoothness of love



Jorge Riechmann Fernández

Born in Madrid in 1962. Degree in mathematics from the Universidad Complutense, studied philosophy, German literature and political science. Professor of moral philosophy at the University of Barcelona since 1995, editor of the magazine "Meanwhile" , translator of French literature and German. He is considered by critics as one of the best examples of Spanish poetry of recent decades. Awards: Poetry Hyperion in 1987, Feria del Libro de Madrid in 1993, National Poetry Villafranca del Bierzo 1996 jaen Poetry in 1997 and 2000 awards: International Poetry of Gabriel Celaya Translation and Stendhal. Following publications: "Song of erosion"-1987, "Cuaderno de Berlin"-1989, "Rolling stock" - 1993, "Both in April in October", "The cut under the skin 'and' Dance an alien "- 1994, 'Figure of yourself', 'Hope violent" and "The truth is a fire where ardemos", containing poems of the eighties ,published in "Amarte No Return" in 1995.


Thursday, 30 April 2009

LA NIÑA DE LOS PEINES



Pastora Pavón


Garcia Lorca:
“voice of the shadows, voice of tin, voice of moss...”.

In 1996 her voice was declared a part of Andalusian cultural heritage by the Cultural Council of the Regional Government of Andalucía. Pastora Pavón is now considered the best and most important cantaora of all time. Her singing, which she described as “singing with a foundation”, is the mirror through which all other cantaoras look at themselves.
Pastora Pavón Cruz, known as La Niña de los Peines Seville, Spain-10 February ,1890-November- 26-1969
She is considered the most important woman flamenco singer of the 20th century She was a sister of singers Arturo Pavón and Tomás Pavón, also an important flamenco singer, and aunt to Arturo Pavón, the first flamenco pianist. Both brothers, Pastora and Tomás, together with singer Manuel Torre,, were the inspiring models for the next generation of singers like Antonio Mairena, Pepe de la Matrona or Fosforito , who led the movement towaBorn in the famous quarter of Alameda de Hércules, in Seville, she started singing for the public as at the age of 8, in the Seville Spring Fair . Later, when she was singing at Café de la Marina, a café cantante in Madrid, she acquired the nickname La Niña de los Peines (The Girl of the Combs, a nickname she never liked), as she usually sang a stanza in tangos style with the following lyrics:

Peinate tú con mis peines
Mis peines son de canela


Comb with my combs
My combs are made of cinammonrds












Tuesday, 28 April 2009

SEAMUS HEANEY

Seamus Heaney born 13 April 1939 is an Irish poet, writer and lecture and who was awarded theNobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He currently lives in Dublin



small bird

chirp-chirruped:

yellow neb,

a note-spurt.



Blackbird over

Lagan water.

Clumps of yellow

whin-burst!

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

LAJOS PARTI NAGY

















Lajos Parti Nagy

He was born (1953) in Szekszárd, Hungary. teacher of literature and history from Pécs University before going on to edit the Pécs-based journal of contemporary, Hungarian literature, Jelenkor (The Present). He began his literary career as a poet and has been writing prose and drama since the early 1990s. He written and adapted a number of works for the stage as well as his own original pieces, (adaptations of works by Caragiale, Hauptmann, Kroetz, McDonagh and Moliere). He lived in Berlin in 2001-2002 on a DAAD scholarship Lajos Parti Nagy , contributed to the reinvention of the Hungarian, literary language and his works always present something new and memorable. His recent works ,Hősöm tere (My Hero's Square - published in German in 2000 as Meines Heldenplatz), Grafitnesz (Graffitness - poems, 2003) and A fagyott kutya lába (The Frozen Dog's Leg - short stories, 2006). Kossuth Prize and the Hungarian Literary Prize.


Speaking in terms


Speaking in terms

of perspective,

infinity

finally turns

the parallel

of our lines

into a point,

but in terms of

railway sleepers,

endlessly linked

and kept apart

we are both

running on

our own.

Monday, 20 April 2009

INDIAN CONTEMPORARY POETRY


















THE POET


by P. Lal


For all his wild hair like an aureole, Stammer at parties, slipping from a tram,
Putting off the mending of a sole,
And putting on a mock-heroic Damn!,
He notices the spider’s intestines
Claim harlot, smuggler and blackmarketeer,
And in the clicking grin his eye divines
A moody world of artifice and fear.

Above all, this: When a woman turns
Black clouds of hair, with a rhythmic hand
Weaving their silk in the possessive sun,
He sees her common eyes stretch to a land
O lost, lost; as when repentance yearns
For hope,and love, and finds that there is none.

Purusottama Lal born 1929, in Punjab - India. Poet, essayist, translator, professor and publisher. Founder and publisher of Writer's Workshop in Calcutta where he lives presently.
Under the name of P. Lal, he has written eight books of poetry, over a dozen volumes of literary criticism, a memoir, several books of stories for children, and dozens of translations from other languages, chiefly Sanskrit, into English. He has also edited a number of literary anthologies.

Thursday, 16 April 2009




Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar, Chosôn dynasty (1392–1910)Unidentified artist (late 15th–16th century)KoreaThe title identifies the work as one of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a poetic theme traditionally associated with the Northern Song painter Song Di


This painting takes as its inspiration a poem, inscribed in Chinese characters in the upper right corner after the four-character title:


On the frozen frontier is a hail of arrows,

Along the Golden River [Jinhe] there are no rice fields.

Brothers one and all, flying down in skeins,

After ten thousand li, they arrive at Xiao and Xiang.

The distant waters shine like reels of silk

The level sands are white as glinting frost

.At the ferry quay, no one is about,

Close to the setting sun, the geese descend ever more gracefully.


(Translation by Roderick Whitfield)–ca.

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

HAGIWARA SAKUTARO


















At dayFor all the startling beauty and originality of his work, Hagiwara remains a poet of the dark; a native of that extraordinary world where Dylan Thomas' question ("Isn't life a terrible thing, thank God") really needs no answer. Shiveringly sensitive to loveliness in all its million modes, he finds it not only in its familiar haunts but even in such unexpected subjects as a rotten clam or the dead body of an alcoholic. A man intensely aware that the sun, that symbol of Japan, rises as much to cast shadows as to give light, his early self-portrait establishes the tone of all his later work:

Sad in the ailing earth,
Tongue-tender with despair,
Green moves through grief's grimace;
And, sick and lonely, there
In the gloom of the under world
,At the bottom of the world, a face.

The Most Primitive Feeling

In the depths of this jungle one can see
Fronds of the great
Gum-trees lounging leadenly:
Like ears of elephants
Their leaves luxuriate.
In this damp and dim-lit place,
Towing their shadows like a trawl,
All kinds of fern embrace
Wetly. All kinds of plants
Sprawl out upon each other. All
Kinds of reptiles, kinds of snake,
Frog, lizard, salamander, newt
Maul in the clammy gloom to make
Slithering absolute.
From the sad longing of mid-day
For what did Adam yearn,
To what dank dawn look back?
The feeling of primitiveness
Is like a cloud, an endless
Endlessly darling love.
It flows away
Past reasonings of return,
Endless and endlessly.
On the far-off other bank
Of the river of memory,
There is no glade nor grove
Nor landing place nor plank
To pin this feeling down.

Sunday, 12 April 2009

EZRA POUND




Canto XLIX: For the Seven Lakes

For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:

Rain; empty river; a voyage,

Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight

Under the cabin roof was one lantern.

The reeds are heavy; bent;

and the bamboos speak as if weeping.


Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes

against sunset

Evening is like a curtain of cloud,

a blurr above ripples; and through it

sharp long spikes of the cinnamon,

a cold tune amid reeds.

Behind hill the monk's bell

borne on the wind.

Sail passed here in April; may return in October

Boat fades in silver; slowly;

Sun blaze alone on the river


.Where wine flag catches the sunset

Sparse chimneys smoke in the cross light


Comes then snow scur on the rive

And a world is covered with jade

Small boat floats like a lanthorn,

The flowing water closts as with cold. And at San Yin

they are a people of leisure.


Wild geese swoop to the sand-bar,

Clouds gather about the hole of the window

Broad water; geese line out with the autumn

Rooks clatter over the fishermen's lanthorns,


A light moves on the north sky line;

where the young boys prod stones for shrimp.

In seventeen hundred came Tsing to these hill lakes.

A light moves on the South sky line.


State by creating riches shd. thereby get into debt?

This is infamy; this is Geryon.

This canal goes still to TenShi

Though the old king built it for pleasure


K E I M E N R A N K E I

K I U M A N M A N K E I

JITSU GETSU K O K W A

T A N FUKU T A N K A I



Sun up; work

sundown; to restdig

well and drink of the water

dig field;eat of the grain

Imperial power is? and to us what is it?


The fourth; the dimension of stillness.

And the power over wild beasts.


Thursday, 9 April 2009

TRANSLATION OF THE NIGTH
























Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo.

Born in March 4, 1901, Tananarive, Madag.he died in June 22, 1937, place Tananarive) Malagasy writer. Largely self-educated, he earned his living as a proofreader for a publishing concern. He wrote seven volumes of poetry in French, of which Near-Dreams (1934) and Translation of the Night (1935) are considered the most important. The mythical and surrealistic world created in his poems is intensely personal and dominated by visions of death, catastrophe, and alienation. Harassed by French authorities and addicted to drugs, he committed suicide. He is regarded as the father of modern literature in his native land.


"And the drum is ready
when gladioli crown
the horns of the delivered calf
who bounds
and grazes the hills of grass.

There it will resound,
and its incantations will become dreams ...

from Translated from the Night:#3


9



The secret hives are aligned
near the lianas of heaven,
among the luminous nests.

Gather nectar there, bees of my thoughts,
little bees winged with sound
within the pregnant cloud of silence;
laden yourself with resin
perfumed with stars and wind:
we will seal all the gaps
communicating with the tumult of life.


Laden yourself also with stellar pollen
for the prairies of the earth;
and tomorrow, when there will be wreathed
the wild roses of my poems,
we will have celestial rose hips
and sidereal seeds.

Wednesday, 1 April 2009

PLACES WHERE I NEVER BEEN

















Probably never see, so I let my imagination go where they are .....

Madagascar

Is legendary wildlife and flora,Isolated from the continents 160 million years ago, Madagascar followed a unique evolutionary path into enormous tortoises elephant birds, and lemurs. Lemurs were the highest primate formon the island until the Malagasy people, of Afro-Polynesian ancestry,arrived a mere 2000 years ago. Though divided into at least 18 tribes or clans, the Malagasy share a belief in the power of dead ancestors.This belief explains the importance of tombs and funerals. Although the form differs among the clans, it is after the first burial that the Malagasy honour their dead. The best-known ceremonyis the famadihana of the Merina people, a joyful occasion to communicate with a loved one whose remains are exhumed and wrapped in a new shroud. Some of the world’s most unusual birds are found only on Madagascar – gorgeous ground-rollers,the diverse vanga family, the couas.

Monday, 30 March 2009

THE ODE TO ANACTORIA


Sappho -fragment 2

The Ode to Anactoria


That man seems to me peer of gods, who sits in thy presence,
and hears close to him thy sweet speech and lovely laughter;
that indeed makes my heart flutter in my bosom. For when I
see thee but a little, I have no utterance left, my tongue is
broken down, and straightway a subtle fire has run under my
skin, with my eyes I have no sight, my ears ring, sweat pours
down, and a trembling seizes all my body; I am paler than
grass, and seem in my madness little better than one dead. But
I must dare all, since one so poor ...

H. T. Wharton

Monday, 23 March 2009

THE COOL BREEZE AND STARRY NIGTH





















the cool breeze and starry night

A sea-breeze (or onshore breeze) is a wind from the sea that develops over land near coasts. It is formed by increasing temperature differences between the land and water which create a pressure minimum over the land due to its relative warmth and forces higher pressure, cooler air from the sea to move inland. Generally, air temperature gets cooler relative to nearby locations as one moves closer to a large body of watertells me





you are near!
Sea Breeze


Far off. Let’s go!
the birds, fly


into unknown spume

golden gardens mirrored by eyes –


in the sea,
the abandoned light of my lamp,

Boredom...
islands