1 pce.

"...guided along as it were a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life."

Museum of Jurassic Technology

I stared into the valley: it was gone—

 

wholly submerged! A vast flat sea remained,   

gray, with no waves, no beaches; all was one.   

And here and there I noticed, when I strained,   

the alien clamoring of small, wild voices:   

birds that had lost their way in that vain land.   

And high above, the skeletons of beeches,   

as if suspended, and the reveries   

of ruins and of the hermit’s hidden reaches.   

And a dog yelped and yelped, as if in fear,   

I knew not where nor why. Perhaps he heard   

strange footsteps, neither far away nor near—   

echoing footsteps, neither slow nor quick,   

alternating, eternal. Down I stared,   

but I saw nothing, no one, looking back.   

The reveries of ruins asked: “Will no   

one come?” The skeletons of trees inquired:   

“And who are you, forever on the go?”   

I may have seen a shadow then, an errant   

shadow, bearing a bundle on its head.   

I saw—and no more saw, in the same instant.   

All I could hear were the uneasy screeches   

of the lost birds, the yelping of the stray,   

and, on that sea that lacked both waves and beaches,   

the footsteps, neither near nor far away.

In the Fog

By Giovanni Pascoli

Photograph: Alec Soth

 

On an island the soft hue of memory,

moss green,

kerosene yellow,

drifting,

mingling in the Caribbean Sea

 

Excerpt from:

Hugging the Jukebox

By Naomi Shihab Nye

 

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"But then the demon, much too soon, returned one Sunday afternoon."

Edward Gorey

'Hide'

I've been waiting for the black deer

all my life, hidden here in the dark,

corner of the wood.

I see glimpses of them, breaking cover,

swinging  away

to erase themselves in the deep trees.

 

They are implicit there, and will move

only if I hold still.

Though in a dream I have

they stand so near I can feel them breathing.

Then, when I look down

I have disappeared.

 

Out at the wood's edge, the snorts

and coughs of the feeding herd.

A gust startles a lift of leaves, and they

scatter and bound like the far-off heads

of deer in the distance.

The wind drops and the trees are antlered.

 

~ Robin Robertson

"Prayer"

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important

calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage

I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?

My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.

~ Marie Howe

 

'The Eye Border'

Gisèle Freund, the German-born photographer who died in 2000 at 91, is both famous and not famous enough. 

Freund, who fled Germany for France in 1933, took an astonishing number of photographs of writers and other artists, through her connection with the much mythologized Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier. 

A touching exhibition at the Fondation Pierre Bergé/Yves Saint Laurent, “Gisèle Freund, l’Oeil Frontière,” covers the period from 1933 to 1940, when she went to southern France after the German invasion. The show pulls together the portraits, most of which were done during that time, with some of the reportage, plus professional documents and letters. 

 

Read the entire review here.

From Olga's Diary

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'Because You're Young' ~ Mary Hampton