travel // when I die

Tags

2019, 7*, accountability, afterlife, afternoon, architecture, bardo, being, black, brick, brown, buildings, capitalism, century, clouds, crane, data, death, decades, dedication, depth, doing, echo, fields, floating, green, ground, Have, height, horizontal, identity, industry, interdependent origination, iteration, length, lintel, London, magenta, mind, notice, orange, passing, perspective, pillars, presence, purple, rain, rainbow, red, reference, ripple, rooftops, russian vine, samsara, sandstone, sapphire, self-cherishing, self-grasping, silence, sill, sky, sound, speech, Thames, thought, tide, time, train, travelling, trees, Uckfield-London line, utility, walls, white, world, writing

                                                                                travel

                                                                                noticing
                                                                at all is a product of
                                                                shifted perspective
                                                                related to behold;

                                                                when I’ve nothing to write
                                                                I’ve lost any perspective,
                                                                cornered by both these walls
                                                                I’ve walked along

                when I die
                this mind will no longer whorl about this pinchèd self
                in a world of diminished return and profusion of iteration

                                                                cranes atop
                                                                pulling them further up and up
                                                                from the ground on which they
                                                                balance on receding point;

                                                                communities of them
                                                                each taller than the last and the next
                                                                all along the wharfs
                                                                of endless account

                it will be expansive
                high and up in industrial and sandstone sky
                it will fathom all the deep of brown kelp in shifting purple

                                                                kilometres long
                                                                courses of brick
                                                                grimed black and utility-studded
                                                                updown onoff foothold and wire

                                                                ripple along nicely
                                                                across right-angled centuries
                                                                and occasional shot bolts
                                                                of deepest russian vine

                with no sound
                save diminishing echoes of a pleading late self
                having nothing left to refer to and nothing left to here, and

                                                                believe it or not
                                                                a rainbow exponential
                                                                to the white arch of Wembley
                                                                we’ll chase for miles

                                                                orange shimmering to
                                                                magenta through staccato tides
                                                                out and over flat roofs
                                                                on and into the fields

                all data wiped –
                suds off my hands from my shoulders –
                and did I back enough up for some grander vector to reach?

                                                                where trees grow from ground
                                                                shaping over decades
                                                                green-flamed cupolas
                                                                clamped to the sky

                                                                and from perspective passing
                                                                of open field
                                                                turn – creak –
                                                                the whole world

                I may well
                have built pillars of cleverness and thought:
                plinthed, fluted, capitaled and giddyingly architraved …

                                                                and there
                                                                Lancashire red brick
                                                                with high and whitey
                                                                sills stale and lintel

                                                                before washed-out
                                                                sapphire-afternoon of steely sky
                                                                and horizontal fingers of
                                                                scud-rain

                … but they’d just
                floated there upright in space ‘neither use nor ornament’
                straining on the string in my baby-fat hands, I’ve

                                never really
                                made stuff happen
                                and didn’t have to try

                                more than let more and more
                                of stuff happening anyway
                                happen through me

 

train trip; East Sussex to London to Lancaster to Ulverston, Cumbria; where we lived for three years and started a family; stay at Swarthmore Hall; visited Conishead Priory where we lived for 18 months after marriage and graduation; notes and observations on the journey, sense of bridging 32 years of lifetime(s); notes > (maybe) two poems, but two which could nevertheless not be separate, although distinct, like train tracks; three years retired, still processing if I achieved anything in this capitalist and samsaric world …; London centuries old, still processing …; architecture as the stage-scenary of endeavour; the ‘here’ in the 9th stanza is definitely (sic); this is, positive

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

afternoon & sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
architecture & thought wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
being wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
black & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
brown & green & walls wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
buildings & crane & rain & red & speech wormhole: riders of the night
capitalism wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds wormhole: at Kreukenhof
death & identity wormhole: psssssh
doing wormhole: writening
echo & mind & passing & sound & time wormhole: – creak —
Have wormhole: on facing the Have
London wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
orange wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
purple wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
rooftops wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
samsara & trees wormhole: breakfast
silence wormhole: window
Thames wormhole: London, 1809
train & travelling wormhole: beneath
Uckfield-London line wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
white wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
world wormhole: none and all
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

Tags

beauty, bedroom, black, blue, bracken, brass, breakfast, brother, brown, clouds, colliery, cows, curtains, evacuation, eyes, faces, farm, fields, freedom, friends, grass, green, grey, hedge, hills, horizon, horses, house, identity, kitchen, London, loneliness, love, Michael J Redford, morning, mother, mountains, passing, ponies, rock, roof, rooks, running, sadness, sheep, sky, sleep, smell, sound, steam, stone, sun, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, travelling, valley, village, Wales, walls, waves, wind, windows, winter, World War, yellow

The Valley

My first memory of Wales is an aural one.   My brother and I were evacuated during the war and arrived late at night in Trelewis, a little mining village by the Rhonda Valley.   It was too dark to see anything of our surroundings, not that we cared much anyway for the winter’s journey had made us far too tired.

It was the sound of rocks that woke me early the following morning.   Having always lived in London, I had rarely heard their raucous tones, certainly not in such great numbers.   I could see from a narrow strip of sky between the curtains that the clouds of the previous day had been swept away.   At first I was undecided as to whether the colour of the sky was grey or a pale, misty blue, but as the minutes ticked by, it became evident that the heavens were clear.   I glanced across at my brother in the next bed.   He was still and fast asleep.   Without moving my head I took in the details of the room that had come to light.   There was a small wooden cross on the wall opposite and behind the door a small cupboard where, presumably, we were to keep our clothes and the few toys we had bought with us.   Beneath the window was a long wooden chest draped with a green satin runner, the secrets of which we were to discover later.   Apart from the two beds in which my brother and I were sleeping, there were no other items of furniture in the room.

I glanced at the bed beside me once more and again at the curtained window.   How desperate I was to see what lay beyond.   Should I wake my brother or should I let him sleep?   The minutes ticked slowly by.   Then slowly he turned over towards me.   His eyes were open – he too had been looking at the window.   Alan and I had always been very close as brothers, often both doing the same thing simultaneously, each seeming to know what the other is about to do.   Our eyes met for a brief second and without a word being spoken, we slid from our beds and crossed to the window.   Had an observer been looking at the rear of 9 Richards Terrace at seven o’clock that crisp winter’s morn, he would have seen the curtains slowly part and two small faces peer out with large apprehensive eyes.

We were almost on a level with the hills opposite.   In this part of the country the Welsh mountains do not present a dramatic outline to the sky; here, they are soft and rolling, rather like the South Downs on a much larger scale.   The hills were quite bare, void of trees, fields and hedgerows, and only one house stood there, square and lonely.   A paddock surrounded by a dry stone wall contained three ponies that tossed their heads in the early morning sun.   One wall of the paddock continued down into the valley to disappear behind a black, tower-like structure topped by two of the most enormous wheels I had ever seen.   From these, thick black cables ran down into a blackened building at the rear.   Everything was black.   The ground, over which ran a network of miniature railway lines and trucks was black; all buildings, shacks and huts dotted about were black; blackness was heaped everywhere.

Now we were conscious of other noises.   The distant rattle of shunting trucks and a continuous hissing sound of escaping steam.   Then the faint clip-clop of horses’ hooves became noticeable from the High Street below, and there appeared for a brief second between the houses a yellow float laden with clanking milk churns pulled by a big brown horse.   The bare hills, the colliery, the grey slate roofs of the village below and the screech of the rooks above, stirred within us a mixture of emotions, emotions that encompassed apprehension, expectation, excitement, loneliness, sadness; and even today, whenever I hear rooks calling on a winter’s morn, whenever I hear the rattle of the shunter’s yard or the sound of newly-shod hooves upon a hard road, I am back once more in Trelewis.   But no longer does loneliness feature in the memory now for I have many dear friends there.   No more apprehension or sadness, for the Welsh hills have afforded me much happiness and security, and beauty can now be seen in that which at one time appeared ugly.   Now, the memory is warm with affection for those sincere people and there is a longing to be among those stony, fern-covered hills once more.

As we descended the stairs later that morning for breakfast, the smell of polish was evident.   Everything shone.   The lino on the stairs had a shine so deep that I grasped the bannister tightly for support for fear that I should slip, and the brass fender in the living room glowed with the intensity of the sun.   The aroma of breakfast sizzling on the big black hob was wafted through the kitchen door together with the aroma of a hitherto unknown delicacy called a Welsh Cake.

The people in that remote little mining village threw open their doors and welcomed us into their houses.   Such was their nature that we, who could justly be called ‘foreigners’, became in a very short time, part of them and their community.   How many London mothers, I wonder, have cause to be grateful for the care and love lavished on their offspring by strangers in a far-off country.

The countryside behind the village differed from the great hills on the other side of the valley.   Here, there were dairy farms.   Hedgerows bound in small fields and cows grazed to the accompaniment of pure crystal streams that tumbled from the mountains further up the valley.   It is in these surroundings I feel sure, that I first became aware of the beauty around me.   I became conscious of a physical and mental freedom that could not exist in London.   Here, one could be alone, one could run and jump and roll in the grass without fear of reprisal, and high upon Wineberry Mountain on the other side of the valley, one could race the winds for miles before a fence or even a dry stone wall would be encountered.   Here on the heights, one can shout with full voice, yet it will be lost upon the wind.   Only a stray sheep will turn its head and the bracken will dip and ripple to the horizon like waves upon the sea.   Up here the ceaseless wind is the ethereal reincarnation of Dionysus, urging one to drink from him and become drunk with freedom.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

beauty & clouds & grey & hedge & passing & smell & valley wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
bedroom wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
black & horizon wormhole: slight sneer
blue & faces wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
brown wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
curtains wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
eyes & love wormhole: light of all interaction
green wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
hills wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
house wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
identity & wind wormhole: c’mon – keep up
kitchen wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams
London wormhole: {reading right to left}
morning & sky wormhole: then
mother wormhole: in deed
roof & windows wormhole: THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams
sleep & time wormhole: looking for the right exit
sound wormhole: window
stone & sun wormhole: boiled spangle with soft centre
travelling wormhole: travelling / back
walls wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
waves wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019
yellow wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams

 

The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870

Tags

1870, 2018, 6*, autumn, brown, canopy, chimneys, clouds, depth, distance, growth, height, horizon, house, leaves, life, lime, Pissarro, red, roof, sun, time, trees

                there came the time
                about the red-tiled house

                when the trees had grown
                high-enough to sway away

                from roof, to loom over roof to be
                the new horizon, lime and distant,

                no branches until the canopy
                creating a depth that was

                dizzying, higher than the
                chimneys, year after year,

                under ruddy clouds and a
                brown sun between autumn leaves

 

up through the depth of The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870 by Camille Pissarro

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

autumn wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
brown & life & lime & trees wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
clouds wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
horizon & leaves & red wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
house wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
roof wormhole: on facing the Have
sun wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
time wormhole: London, 1809

 

La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872

Tags

1872, 2018, 6*, adulthood, afternoon, air, architecture, brown, childhood, chimney pots, cottage, flame, flight, future, grey, hill, horizon, life, lime, orange, Pontoise, red, rooks, silence, smoke, sunset, town, trees, walls

                over the roll of hill the town
                of Pontoise reared architecture

                of afternoon-future, grey and
                soupy air where I will try my

                life later, but here the sun
                has set, kindled treetops with

                lime air, blazed the tree
                across the road to brown and

                orange flame,
                until the rooks could take

                no more, split, singed and
                away in array before the

                silence of the cottage wall
                wide and orange with the

                lazy smoke, and modest
                from the blood-red pots

 

right there, from La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872 by Camille Pissarro (… actually, better if you could see the original)

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

afternoon & red wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
air wormhole: stuck
architecture wormhole: pediment to behold
brown wormhole: {reading right to left}
childhood wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
grey & trees & walls wormhole: on facing the Have
horizon wormhole: London, 1809
life wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams
lime wormhole: mauve
orange wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
silence wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
sunset wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840

 

{reading right to left}

Tags

1871, 2018, 9*, autumn, blue, brown, chimney stacks, chimneys, confusion, Crystal Palace, damp, dark, decline, draft, drifting, fire, flag, flagpole, garden, gas, high, London, passing, people, Pissarro, progress, reading, sand, shrub, sky, smoke, society, streetlamp, streets, Sydenham, the British Empire, wind

The Crystal Palace, London, 1871

                deep eaves in Sydenham the
                chimney stacks raised high

                to draw the draft – splendid
                in counter – front-garden shrubbery

                left tangled to riot and dampened
                from autumn, seems stuck in

                foreboding brown conflagration;
                the clean stroke of streetlamp

                under sandened sky will not
                be sullied by slimey gas until

                after dark – controlled, controlled blue –
                but, we read in the right direction:

                look, the flag from some
                turgic land of the Empire swaves

                away from its pole – the dirty
                heavens cry – the dwarfed

                chimneys, here, their smoke of
                coke and belch drift

                in the same direction conjuring
                transparent edifice where mens’

                seriousness loom in smudged
                silhouette, foreboding to behold,

                and others scuttle about the
                bright, wide street coming

                and crossing in all direction –
                pushchairs and carriages to hold

 

The Crystal Palace, London, 1871 by Camille Pissaro

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

autumn wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
blue & society & streets wormhole: on facing the Have
brown & wind wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
garden wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
London & sky wormhole: London, 1809
passing wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
people wormhole: only
reading wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

 

SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 5*, birth, blue, brown, bushes, clouds, fields, grass, growth, hospital, leaves, purple, red, roads, roots, Spring, trees, water, weeds, William Carlos Williams, wind

                                SPRING AND ALL

                By the road to the contagious hospital
                under the surge of the blue
                mottled clouds driven from the
                northeast – a cold wind. Beyond, the
                waste of broad, muddy fields
                brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

                patches of standing water
                the scattering of tall trees

                All along the road the reddish
                purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
                stuff of bushes and small trees
                with dead, brown leaves under them
                leafless vines –

                Lifeless in appearence, sluggish
                dazed spring approaches –

                They enter the new world naked,
                cold, uncertain of all
                save that they enter. All about them
                the cold, familiar wind –

                Now the grass, tomorrow
                the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

                One by one objects are defined –
                It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

                But now the stark dignity of
                entrance – Still, the profound change
                had come upon them: rooted, they
                grip down and begin to awaken

from Spring and All, 1923, from which Paul Mariani’s excellent biography of William Carlos Williams got its name “A New World Naked”; being is to break and contrast, it is primordial but also cyclical, WCW doesn’t bother with the cosmic, he deals in twigs

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
brown wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
clouds wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
leaves & Spring & trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
purple wormhole: … the underleaves show
red & William Carlos Williams wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
roads wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
wind wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

Tags

2018, 5*, blue, brown, evening, eyes, face, fawn, gaze, grey, head, home, life, meadow, morning, nose, perception, sound, time, walking, world

                his young head pushed through into a small
                meadow, brown and blue eyes gazed from

                a pitying face fifty feet tall, the chomping
                stopped and she blew violently down her nose:

                we walk the lane behind the herd every morning
                out, every evening home, both fawn and grey

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue & brown wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
evening wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes & world wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
grey & morning & sound & time & walking wormhole: we held cold hands
life wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows

Tags

1967, blue, brother, brown, cows, eyes, faces, food, hedge, herd, imagination, intelligence, Kent, meadow, Michael J Redford, milk, parents, reading, running, skill, sound, the Boats of Vallisneria

With Cows

Cows can be frustrating to say the least.   If you are in a hurry, they are not; if you want to turn left, they will turn right; if you want them to come to you, they will walk slowly but surely from you (except, of course, when there is food in the offing).   You can shout until you are blue in the face and, unless it is milking time, the only resultant effect will be an all pitying gaze from two enormous brown and blue eyes set in the most imperturbable face that nature has created.

My first introduction to the bovine species took place when I was about seven years old.   My parents, brother and I were on a picnic in Kent and on that particular day I was a fearless explorer penetrating the depths of the African jungle.   This had stemmed from the fact that I had just finished reading a book called the Gorilla Hunters which had sparked my imagination into a riot of fantasy.   Slipping unobserved into the undergrowth, I crawled upon all fours until I came upon a high, mossy bank surmounted by a thick, prickly hedge.   Hearing an unfamiliar chomping sound coming from the other side, I wriggled into the hedge and poked my head through into a small meadow.   I turned and gazed upwards and at the same instant, a cow who was hiding behind the hedge and who I swear was no less than fifty feet tall, turned and gazed down at me.   Then, unable to contain herself any longer, the cow blew violently down her nose at me, turned on her heels, and shot across the field like a bullet kicking the air behind her as she went.   I cannot recall ever seeing a cow move with quite so much speed.   Neither, I suspect, would an observer have ever seen a small boy move with such speed.   I rejoined the family scratched, breathless and as pale as a ghost, and shamelessly told the face-saving lie that I had been chased by a bull.

My opinions regarding the intelligence of cows has pendulated with the acquisition of experience.   When I first worked with cows I noticed how, on entering the shed at milking time, they all went to their own particular stands, and had an animal for any reason entered the wrong stand, she was very soon ousted by the rightful occupier.   This, I assumed, denoted intelligence.   However, I was very soon to discover that cows are animals of habit and habits are no criteria of intelligence.   Eventually I came to the conclusion that, because of its indolence and obstinacy, the cow was a complete and utter dim-wit.   But once again, experiences of the past year have led me to the final conclusion that cows have a very good measure of intelligence.   I milk for a local farmer one day a week to give his herdsman a much needed break from the seven day a week routine.   He owns a large farm with two herds of cows, a herd of Jerseys and a herd of Friesians.   Milking is carried out in a modern tandem parlour with automatic feeding and ‘all mod cons’.   When the animals enter the parlour they are fed by pulling a lever which releases just the right amount of food from a hopper into a manger.   When the lever is pulled down, two pounds of food are released and when pushed back up, another two pounds.   After a surprisingly short period of time, the cows become aware of the connection that existed between the action of the lever and the delivery of food.   By contorting their bodies in a manner quite out of character with their natural movements, the cows discovered that they were able to reach the lever and very soon began pushing it down and returning it to the upright position to obtain an extra double helping of food.   Indeed, one of the Friesian cows developed the knack of tossing the lever violently up and down in order to obtain an almost continuous supply of food.   When her manger was almost full, she would struggle back to her normal position and attack the gargantuan meal before her.

However, with cattle cake costing over thirty five pounds per ton, this state of affairs had to be dealt with.   We eventually overcame their antics by tying a piece of cord to the stanchion and looping the other end over the lever, so that in order to feed the cows, we would merely remove the loop, pull the lever and replace the loop.   This system worked beautifully – for a while.   It wasn’t long before the animals overcame this obstacle by pulling the loop from the lever themselves, despite the fact that this is a somewhat delicate operation for their great, cumbersome muzzles to perform.   An interesting point that came to light during this period was that the Friesian cows were the worst offenders, whereas, out of a herd of twenty five Jerseys, only four managed to reach this standard of reasoning and acquired the knack of working the lever.

Yet despite their apparent superior intelligence, I have in my experience, found fewer ‘character’ cows among the Friesians.   By ‘character’ cows I mean the bovine equivalent of the human being who is ‘a bit of a lad’ or rather ‘quite a girl’, the one who stands out in a crowd.   One such a cow was Magatha, who was just about the ugliest little creature that I have ever seen.   She was sway-backed, had a fawny-coloured coat with grey patches all over it and had a face too concave even for a Jersey.   One ear had a lump torn from it and her ridiculous little head was beset by two crooked horns.   Despite her lack of charm and elegance, for she waddled along in a most ungainly manner, she was the most endearing and affectionate cow I have ever met.   At milking time she would always be last out of the field and last out of the shed and during the short walk between the two, she would creep up behind me and push her ugly little head under my arm and we would troop up the lane behind the herd like a couple of young lovers.   On one occasion (I think it must have been a ‘morning after the night before’, for I wasn’t in a very benevolent mood), I failed to reciprocate her affections and instead gave her a hefty whack on the rump to speed her on her way.   She countered this breach of etiquette by doing a half-passage and forcing me nearer and nearer to the side of the road.   I realised too late what she was up to when I landed full length in the ditch running with effluent from the much heap.   However, like all good lovers we made up and until the end of my stay at that particular farm, we could be seen every morning and every evening strolling arm in arm together along the lane.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue & brown wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
eyes wormhole: thought
faces wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
hedge wormhole: travelling // arrival
reading wormhole: … the underleaves show
sound wormhole: moon- // washed

 

TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams

Tags

2017, 7*, blue, brown, church, convergence, flower, jasmine, line, moon, morning, orange, petals, pink, pinnacle, seeing, sky, slate, smooth, steeple, stone, turquoise, weight, William Carlos Williams

                     TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE

                Rather notice, mon cher,
                that the moon is
                tilted above
                the point of the steeple
                than that its color
                is shell-pink.

                Rather observe
                that it is early morning
                than that the sky
                is smooth
                as a turquoise.

                Rather grasp
                how the dark
                converging lines
                of the steeple
                meet at the pinnacle–
                perceive how
                its little ornament
                tries to stop them–

                See how it fails!
                See how the converging lines
                of the hexagonal spire
                escape upward–
                receding, dividing!
                –sepals
                that guard and contain
                the flower!

                Observe
                how motionless
                the eaten moon
                lies in the protecting lines.

                It is true:
                in the light colors
                of morning
                brown-stone and slate
                shine orange and dark blue.

                But observe
                the oppressive weight
                of the squat edifice!
                Observe
                the jasmine lightness
                of the moon.

 

from Al Que Quiere! 1917

it was me he was talking to, it was me; and although I was young and didn’t really follow him with consciousness, nevertheless, as I grow older I notice, mon cher, that I walk about with my head, tilted;

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: new blue porsche
brown wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie
church wormhole: oh, alright then
moon wormhole: moon- // washed
morning & seeing wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
orange wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
pink wormhole: Bridgnorth
sky & William Carlos Williams wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
stone wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye

 

brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie

Tags

2017, 6*, breath, brown, eyes, hair, identity, life, neck, nose, portrait, red, retirement, shirt, tie, Virginia Woolf, writing

                                brown corduroy shirt
and dark redwine tie

                finding Virginia
                                              young before gathered and drapèd hair
                                              over enquiring philtrum
                old where sternomastoids meet
                below the whole larynx readying to write properly
                                              and hooded eyes half closed to stolidity
                                                              half open to breath

 

 

read the whole sequence: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …; I bought myself some new shirts with the no-blame severance pay I accepted to make it all stop – one of the shirts is a mid-brown corduroy that naps a darker brown when stroked because it hasn’t washed worn yet; the tie I bought from a charity shop before I even started teaching – deep burgundy red, slim and tonic in the light; I have been meaning to get in to Virginia Woolf for quite some time, but the afternoon light of the parlour has never been quite right; am I pathetic: oh yes, but at least I can write about it; Carol likes to travel as an instinctive way to comb-through the threads of career and life; we planned a trip to the stones in Wiltshire started with the Avebury stones …

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breath wormhole: and smile / like a bud
brown wormhole: occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y
eyes wormhole: darkness
hair wormhole: handsome
identity wormhole: bud
life wormhole: somewhere
red wormhole: love and precision
retirement wormhole: retirement
writing wormhole: no / thing