[Image: “the SMILES MYSTERIOUSLY in DA VINCI GALLERY,” by user “RANT 73” on Flickr.com. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) The caption, in Dutch, alludes to a computer-based analysis of the painting — described here and elsewhere — which determined that “she is 83 per cent happy, 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful and 2 per cent angry.” I leave it to your judgment whether such an analysis is useful as an exercise in art appreciation.]
From whiskey river:
Wait for an Autumn Day
(from Ekelöf)Wait for an autumn day, for a slightly
weary sun, for dusty air,
a pale day’s weather.Wait for the maple’s rough, brown leaves,
etched like an old man’s hands,
for chestnuts and acorns,for an evening when you sit in the garden
with a notebook and the bonfire’s smoke contains
the heady taste of ungettable wisdom.Wait for afternoons shorter than an athlete’s breath,
for a truce among the clouds,
for the silence of trees,for the moment when you reach absolute peace
and accept the thought that what you’ve lost
is gone for good.Wait for the moment when you might not
even miss those you loved
who are no more.Wait for a bright, high day,
for an hour without doubt or pain.
Wait for an autumn day.
(Adam Zagajewski [source])
…and:
If it happens that the human race doesn’t make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who lived here with us on it, and that we celebrated the beauty of it in music and art, architecture, literature, and dance, and that there were times when we approached something godlike in our abilities and aspirations. We emerged out of depthless mystery, and back into mystery we returned, and in the end the mystery is all there is.
(James Howard Kunstler [source])
…and:
Catchpenny Road
Summer ends tonight.
Air cuts into our lungs
as frost cuts the field
into flowers. Stars catch
in the pond’s dark water
drawing us farther
from the lighted houses.
We catch our arms
in circles round our chests
as if this were protection
against darkness.Spiked firs border the road.
Behind each one are ghosts
whose names we don’t know,
who watch us, who
withhold themselves,
who’d never hurt us.
They come to you in your sleep,
sit in a circle round your bed,
saying the things the living
want to say and can’t.
You try to move your head, try
to move into their world of light
where the lace on the child’s
white dress burns your skin
like a kiss. But no,
touching their lips to yours,
they go, wordlessly and without cause,
as only the dead might.Mist spills from the trees
as you talk and we walk
from valley to hill, hill to valley,
till we come to the place
where we left off, unmarked road
crossing itself in the dark.
Blackened by frost, leaves
blow over the pond,
absorbing the water’s stain,
sinking towards the stars’ reflections.
You kneel, smooth the water
with your hands, and say nothing.
Perfect in their pain,
the dead surround us, holding
stones in their hands like coins.
Money they would lend us.
(Elizabeth Spires [source])
