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[Image: “the SMILES MYSTERIOUSLY in DA VINCI GALLERY,” by user “RANT 73” on Flickr.com<\/a>. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) The caption, in Dutch, alludes to a computer-based analysis of the painting — described here<\/a> 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.]<\/em><\/p>\n From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Wait for an Autumn Day<\/strong> Wait for an autumn day, for a slightly Wait for the maple’s rough, brown leaves, for an evening when you sit in the garden Wait for afternoons shorter than an athlete’s breath, for the moment when you reach absolute peace Wait for the moment when you might not Wait for a bright, high day, (Adam Zagajewski [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n …and<\/a>:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (James Howard Kunstler [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n …and<\/a>:<\/p>\n Catchpenny Road<\/strong><\/p>\n Summer ends tonight. Spiked firs border the road. Mist spills from the trees (Elizabeth Spires [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n Letter from Swan’s Island<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The island’s dark tonight. Days pass here, weeks slip away, Sometimes the lobstermen wave to me. I have a fantasy: to walk on water.
\n(from Ekel\u00f6f<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n
\nweary sun, for dusty air,
\na pale day’s weather.<\/p>\n
\netched like an old man’s hands,
\nfor chestnuts and acorns,<\/p>\n
\nwith a notebook and the bonfire’s smoke contains
\nthe heady taste of ungettable wisdom.<\/p>\n
\nfor a truce among the clouds,
\nfor the silence of trees,<\/p>\n
\nand accept the thought that what you’ve lost
\nis gone for good.<\/p>\n
\neven miss those you loved
\nwho are no more.<\/p>\n
\nfor an hour without doubt or pain.
\nWait for an autumn day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nAir cuts into our lungs
\nas frost cuts the field
\ninto flowers. Stars catch
\nin the pond’s dark water
\ndrawing us farther
\nfrom the lighted houses.
\nWe catch our arms
\nin circles round our chests
\nas if this were protection
\nagainst darkness.<\/p>\n
\nBehind each one are ghosts
\nwhose names we don’t know,
\nwho watch us, who
\nwithhold themselves,
\nwho’d never hurt us.
\nThey come to you in your sleep,
\nsit in a circle round your bed,
\nsaying the things the living
\nwant to say and can’t.
\nYou try to move your head, try
\nto move into their world of light
\nwhere the lace on the child’s
\nwhite dress burns your skin
\nlike a kiss. But no,
\ntouching their lips to yours,
\nthey go, wordlessly and without cause,
\nas only the dead might.<\/p>\n
\nas you talk and we walk
\nfrom valley to hill, hill to valley,
\ntill we come to the place
\nwhere we left off, unmarked road
\ncrossing itself in the dark.
\nBlackened by frost, leaves
\nblow over the pond,
\nabsorbing the water’s stain,
\nsinking towards the stars’ reflections.
\nYou kneel, smooth the water
\nwith your hands, and say nothing.
\nPerfect in their pain,
\nthe dead surround us, holding
\nstones in their hands like coins.
\nMoney they would lend us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThe radio crackles with static, news
\nof a blackout, the voice
\ncoming through first loud, then soft,
\nas if a storm were moving
\nto cut all lifelines off. My one-room
\ncabin has a bed, a table, a chair.
\nLiving this way, I understand better
\nthat scene by an anonymous
\nilluminator: a row of monks
\neating at a rough table, diagonals
\nof light slicing across the room
\nto fall, as if by accident,
\non their simple meal. The black
\nand white tiles on the floor
\na symbol of the formal repetitions
\nof the simplest life, or maybe
\nan oblique allusion to a paradox
\nof theology: the complementary nature
\nof good and evil. Is evil possible here
\nwhere everyone lives so individually
\nand nature appears to be neutral
\ntoward everything but itself?
\nSome mornings I wake too suddenly,
\nthe light on the wall
\nbrilliant and unfamiliar, and wonder
\nfor a moment, where am I?
\nI answer myself, my disembodied voice
\nhigh and far off
\nlike what I imagine saints and martyrs
\nheard in moments of ecstasy: Swan’s Island<\/em>.
\nLightheaded, I rise, make coffee,
\nsettling into the simple ceremony
\nof another morning. Outside the sea birds
\npick the clam flats clean, fly off,
\nreturning late in the afternoon
\nlooking for more to scavenge.
\nGood days, I swim in the quarry,
\nsun myself on the rocks, and plan
\na diary. One entry: I feel<\/em>
\nthis place to be a rough approximation<\/em>
\nof heaven, the heaven of the lost<\/em>…
\nBut then I wonder if a diary
\nwould be superfluous and put it off.<\/p>\n
\nand even when it isn’t,
\nit seems to be Sunday,
\nirreal<\/a>, subdued, the queer, slowed-down
\nfeeling of late afternoon
\nspreading through the hours
\nof an entire day. Impersonal, yet benign,
\nthe sun rains indiscriminately down
\non everything, instead of singling out
\nparticular objects, so that
\neven the rocks out by the tide line,
\nnormally gray-brown, become heightened<\/em>,
\nfalse, and I have to turn away.<\/p>\n
\nI must seem frivolous to them,
\nan outsider<\/em>, with my pants rolled up
\nto the knees, standing knee-deep in water,
\na shell or rock in my hands.
\nWe have a code. I wave a white
\nhandkerchief above my head,
\nthey blow their foghorns back.
\nOnce means the mail’s in,
\ntwice, a storm by afternoon,
\nthree times, the weather
\nwill clear by evening.
\nBut really, after a month
\nin a place like this, there\u2019s no use
\nto wonder why<\/em> the sea does this or that,
\nwhat time it is, or whether
\nthe approaching storm will be a bad one.
\nIf I think of anything here,
\nit’s the peculiar way
\nthe sea gets into everything,
\nsoftening the crackers I seal
\nin an airtight jar, rotting the armchair
\nwhere I sit in the evening,
\nlooking into the evening’s afterlight.
\nIt smells peculiar, damp<\/em>,
\nas if it had been tossed overboard
\nfrom a dory, thought better of,
\nand hastily retrieved.<\/p>\n
\nNot eastward, the Atlantic far out
\nscares me, but long, island-hopping
\ngiant steps up and down
\nthe coast the way as a child
\nI’d make my “two-legged” compass
\nwalk the map. Walking to school
\na thousand winter mornings,
\nI imagined each thought, each step,
\nan exercise in good and evil;
\nor, after confession, I’d cup
\nmy hands around my breath,
\nsaved for an hour, knowing I’d sin
\nagain, the scars on my soul
\nwhitening like the scars on my hands
\nwhere I burnt them on the stove.
\nSwan’s Island<\/em>. A world
\nexisting side by side with yours,
\nwhere love struggles to perfect
\nitself, and finally perfect,
\nfinds it has no object.
\nThe waking dream’s intact—
\nthe world continues not to change,
\nand staying the same, changes us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n