I saw Vincent walking down my street.
He said, ‘I’m cold.’
I said, ‘You’re not alone.’
He said, ‘Finally.’
Phone camera: Toronto street
NASA space image
Vincent Van Gogh: ‘Self-Portrait with Straw Hat’
Paris: Summer, 1887
Oil on Canvas
The Detroit Institue of Arts
Every
Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does
Anything weird,
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with Me.”
Come
Dance.
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
One summer a few years ago (maybe more than a few – the time seems to fly) I created wearable paintings (acrylic paint on light canvas) with young dancers. I marvelled at how they adapted to the not-so-pliable fabric enclosing their movements. Like watching a pack of playing or Tarot Cards in motion. Swirling angles and flashes of colour. Only found a few photographs – hence the repetition in design.
The left hand and the right hand begin working,
Working to create double vision,
Perceptualizing the miracle, painting the town red.
Shrouded within a shimmering portal, same as before,
& Beneath the reflection a mirrored dream of innocence.
In the innocence of mirrored images a mechanism round as a marble
Rises and falls. Shattering above twin, holy worlds. Same as before.
Within this terrible possibility perhaps lies the intrigue,
An intrigue beyond failure,
Beyond the post-modern landscape any failure is a reassurance.
The reassurance of a terrible possibility.
Mystery centres wrestle with the impending implosion,
Endeavoring round the clock using the latest technology,
Such as sound in the centre of trees,
Processing data, round as a marble,
Rising like a feather in the breeze,
Until night with the force of an atomic blast
Arrives, inspiring the melancholy of the absurd, forever.
The images above were taken from the internet. I do not own the copyright and have recomposed them for purposes of non-commercial parody or commentary under fair use provisions. The personalities are Ho Chi Minh, Einstein’s brain, young John Lennon, actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, author Simon de Beauvoir, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 16th Century painting Tower of Babel. Film stills are from The Keystone Cops. The mirror is Egyptian, from the 18th Century, held by the Brooklyn Museum. The computer scientist ‘unknown.’
As I understand the accepted wisdom Jesus was a peacemaker. Reflecting upon Remembrance Day one cannot help but think of how children (and civilians) are affected by war. I have incorporated the biblical quotes/visual references into this digital essay as a way of contemplating the historical workings of religion towards war.
‘Jesus however said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them; for it is to those who are childlike that the Kingdom of the Heavens belongs.’ – Weymouth New Testament, Matthew 19:14
‘Blessed are the Peacemakers…’ – Matthew 5:9
Images of Christ from the Ravenna Mosaics – a public domain image from Wikipedia Commons.
Credit: Photos of children from the online collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art released for non-commercial adaption. I have used images from the great photographers Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, Johan Hayemeyer. If I have misunderstood the terms of conditions attached to these images I will remove the digital collages from online publication.
Poema 20
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, “The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.”
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Pablo Neruda
A film about Fascism,
In a garden with shadowy eagles,
Reflecting on the ancient definition of Flowers.
A shadowy figure
Behind a windowbox of plants or flowers,
Reminding me of the mysterious, ornate windows I’d seen
Walking about Rome.
And the Political-noir
Of an ideology that took root,
Thrown in sharp relief by flickering street lamps,
Mussolini’s definition of Fascism,
The Imperial Eagle of Ancient Rome,
& Flowers at a memorial.
My uncle
Convalescing,
When he was young & wounded,
Laughing on the telephone about
A flower pot tossed
From an upper story,
Barely missing.
And concerning the decision I made,
I would have told my son to do the same.
Did you possibly imagine (you couldn’t have)
On that youthful, sun-dappled afternoon,
The rays of an ancient light caressing your skin & inspiration, when you were
A skipping stone striking at the perfect angles & gaining your balance,
Amusedly & perfectly crossing a warm stream at the edge of town,
The water fresh and the fences down,
Driving home after closing time…
The years marking your skin in ways the Great Depression & the
Enemy marked your psyche, past an abandoned brewery,
Seeing the quiet streets coming up fast like a flood, silent as a submarine,
Balancing on wet stones, laughing as you splashed & driving home
After closing time, to a lonely house, impervious to depth charges,
Past the dislodged bricks of the abandoned brewery,
Imagining that sun-splashed afternoon & shallow, sparkling water,
Your children crossing streams within darkened rooms,
Finding their balance, in ways the enemy
Marked your psyche & warm afternoons caressed your inspiration,
An ancient star illuminating quiet streets, starlight splashing,
Streaming into and beyond abandoned spaces,
Rays of an ancient light driving you home.
Tiger Lily,
Jumping at the sun,
Singing to my mother,
Your jitterbugging effervescence
Revisited:
Seen in the rear-view mirror,
In the light of
Swimwear fashion-history
&
The tragic reversal of
Original alchemical
Fortune.
Consider:
The destruction of the Bikini Atoll
By American nuclear testing for war preparedness
(1946),
And the subsequent starvation of relocated islanders,
As well as the irradiation & poisoning of the native, original environment.
Events
Intersected, by the frolic of
Bikini,
Designed & sewn by a Parisian –
Shall I editorialize,
Paraphrasing Yeats: Rag & bone shop
Of the physical,
Or simply,
Fashion design house
Emulating
The blast psychology of the atomic bomb
Within & upon
Contemporary, popular culture,
Mirroring the undoing:
Alchemical atomic nothingness unleashed
Upon
Fauna and flora, coral & the seabed…
Only one year earlier
Undressing & disintegrating
Cities:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Bikini
Introduced to the public
Five days after the blast
On the Atoll.
My mother adored Tiger Lilies.
My brother delivered her ashes
Into a forest,
Spreading them across the roots and moss –
Shaking her into the wind –
Planting again her Tiger Lily bulbs,
Jitterbugging,
On the West Coast.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Original photograph by Grahame Garner (1964) of women with a Ban the Bomb banner in Brisbane, Australia.
Source: http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:114192
I do not own copyright to this image and have altered it for purposes of non-commercial commentary under fair use provisions.
You might think the birds would fly three dimensionally
Into this their second body of branches and leaves,
Tuning a vibrational revelation at mechanisms
Attuned eons ago to invisible knowledge,
Whispering upon silent migration,
Twigs and victorious feather,
Summery din of magic,
Sunlight swooping,
Midnight vine
Asleep in
Dreams
Made
Of
I glean pathways, spiralling gyres, thin vivacious lines
Echoing in silvery twigs & prehistorical symbolism,
Glimmering beyond this garden of fallen souls,
A volcanic woman nesting like a blue bird,
Her bed an ancient sea of knowledge,
Flowering & blooming oceanic sky
Harmonizing & hammering,
Hypnotizing shadows arc
Perceiving caravans,
Intuiting stone,
Entrancing
Watery
Eyes
Of
Those nights and days, mostly nights, shaded and cool,
Illuminated by the slow voyaging of distant starlight,
Songs of star-birds meandering far from magnetic
Fields with soft grasses imprinted upon wings,
Upon all motion, this hand with pen, now
A decision as if Original Idea, golden
Original Thought, in purposeful
Cascading winds, lighting
Archways & beyond,
Whose feathers
And twigs
Speak
Of
Earlier that day in school
We were told to ‘duck and cover.’
The teacher explained:
Those communists will soon lay waste
To the surrounding farmland and fields,
The blast will be as brilliant as the sun.
Do not look into it!
Charred flesh and animal remains will be
Driven by the force of the wind through the classroom windows.
Pray to god they do not launch multiple warheads:
Evaporating the dairy farms,
Tractor dealerships and pine forests.
You must, as one, kneel beneath your desks,
Noses pressed into the floor,
Knuckles clasped firmly behind your heads,
Under no circumstances open your eyes!
I stared at lines
On the wooden floor
Wondering how deep
The grooves went.
Sometimes they led us into the basement,
Turning the lights off:
I listened to breathing
In the black, damp air:
A multitude of moist
Nostrils inhaling
Cold
Concrete.
That night at the baseball game we were playing for the championship.
‘Everything depends on tonight’s effort,’ said the coach.
‘Everything.’
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