[Image: “Master Disconnect,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

A Suite of Appearances
(excerpt)

In another time, we will want to know how the earth looked
Then, and were people the way we are now. In another time,
The records they left will convince us that we are unchanged

And could be at ease in the past, and not alone in the present.
And we shall be pleased. But beyond all that, what cannot
Be seen or explained will always be elsewhere, always supposed,

Invisible even beneath the signs—the beautiful surface,
The uncommon knowledge—that point its way. In another time,
What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted

To say that language is error, and all things are wronged
By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be
Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.

(Mark Strand [source])

…and (in slightly different form):

It is the nature of things, which is speaking with the voice of a man, the thingness of things in Homer, the deathliness of life in Villon, the liveliness of death in Fielding, the life of apparently lifeless things in Hebrew poetry, the eating eatability of things in the Panchatantra, the (thrilling because unexpected) mysticism of Ancient Egypt. But the poetry of poetry, the Zen of Zen is when the words and the ideas are undivided and indivisible (though a word has its own intrinsic value); when you just can’t explain why it is poetry, why it is Zen (but you do). A poet is a mountain speaking mountainously (not montonously [sic?]) of mountains to mountains, just as Shakespeare is a Hamlet speaking Hamletically of Hamlets to Hamlets.

(R. H. Blyth [source])

…and:

The Pulse

Sealed inside the anemone
in the dark, I knock my head
on steel petals
curving inward around me.

Somewhere the edict is given:
petals, relax.
Delicately they arch over backward.
All is opened to me—

the air they call water,
saline, dawn green over its sands
resplendent with fishes.
All day it is morning,

all night the glitter
of all that shines out of itself
crisps the vast swathes of the current.
But my feet are weighted:

only my seafern arms
my human hands
my fingers tipped with fire
sway out into the world.

Fair is the world.
I sing. The ache
up from heel to knee
of the weights

gives to the song its
ground bass.
And before the song
attains even a first refrain

the petals creak and
begin to rise.
They rise and recurl
to a bud’s form

and clamp shut.
I wait in the dark.

(Denise Levertov [source])

From elsewhere:

Nora Stokes could smell trouble. Actually, thanks to the cream she’d been told to liberally smear all over herself to protect her skin through the strains of pregnancy, she could really only smell the sickly sweet stench of coconut. The stuff was strong, but it was too cold outside to open a window. Greevy, despite repeated assurances, had not got the boiler fixed before he had buggered off to Italy to save his sham of a marriage. That meant the heating had two settings, blazing inferno or off. It wasn’t much of a choice but she’d gone for inferno. At least that way, between the heat and the smell of coconuts, she could occasionally close her eyes and relax into the blissful fantasy of being on a warm tropical beach somewhere. Then the baby would kick and she’d remember her current state and how, if she really were on a beach, Greenpeace would soon show up and try and roll her back into the sea. Then she’d feel bad for thinking that and apologise to the baby. Currently, her days seemed to consist of wildly fluctuating emotions, bizarre cravings, and an exciting array of physical discomforts and indignities. Oh – and smelling like a deep-fried Bounty bar.

(Caimh McDonnell [source])

…and:

After the Roman Empire collapsed in the west, the Franks took over. Rye, which had spread from the east and north where other grains fared poorly in the cool climate, now spread farther south because the Franks ate rye and brought it with them, expanding its cultivation deep into Europe. Rye helped avert famine when wheat could no longer be imported, and according to [one author], the Frankish Empire would hardly have survived without it. The problem was that people who ate rye sometimes got sick because of a dark-purple spur that grew within the grain spike, a toxic fungus called Claviceps purpurea, which could lead to a condition known as ergotism.

But back then, people didn’t know that it was the toxins in the rye that were making them ill. They called the disease St. Anthony’s fire. Thousands died. Those afflicted went mad, their hands and feet burned. Women suffered miscarriages. Skin became numb, flesh rotted, limbs fell off. There were reports of a widespread dancing plague, and of monasteries where monks could cure the disease. Sometimes, at least. It was the wheat often eaten at monasteries which probably healed them, but no one knew this—they only knew that the monks and all their prayers brought relief…

Norwegian researchers […] had discovered a correlation between witch trials and outbreaks of ergotism. Both the witches and some of the victims of their witchcraft exhibited symptoms consistent with the condition: hallucinations and burning limbs and numbness of skin. And many of the witches noted that they had been initiated into witchcraft by eating bread. They had met mysterious creatures and, often, the devil himself had appeared to them. Witch trials had taken place in Finnmark to the north, where the poor inhabitants had to import bad grain, as well as in the province of Rogaland in the south, where rye was grown in wet fields.

(Solvej Balle [source])

…and:

My Deepest Condiments

I send you my deepest condiments
was in no way what my old friend
meant to say or write or send
the night she penned a note to me
one week after my father died.

Not condolences, or sentiments,
she sent me her deepest condiments
instead, as if the dead have need
of relish, mustard, and ketchup
on the other side.

O, the word made me laugh
so hard out loud it hurt!
So wonderfully absurd,
and such a sweet relief
at a time when it seemed

only grief was allowed in
after my father’s death,
sweet and simple laughter,
which is nothing more than
breath from so far deep inside

it often brings up with it tears.
And so I laughed and laughed
until my sides were sore.
And later still, I even cried
a little more.

(Taylor Mali [source])