Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

South of the Border-

Image result for diego rivera paintings

South of the border down Mexico way lies

Venezuela and revolution or possibly invasion

South of the narrow isthmus

across which the Chinese  and Nicaraguans are digging a new wider,

deeper canal…..for oil.

Down further in Brazil,

the latest fascist dictator

repeats his pedantic boring chants

in favour of free markets requiring

rain forests be despoiled.

Over the border lies trouble

….but build a wall?

Will not do any good at all.

The drugs will still pour in, Mr Trump-

your so called secure society a sorry business

with its own ecological dumps.

Anyway, anyhow that wall would be porous;

the gringos, aid and arms flowing south.

You might build a wall on the border

to keep the Mexicans out

but what do you do to your people

and yourself?

Let in the bright coloured flowers,

Diego’s art, let it grow…

before your population, sing once again

“Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind?”

Gone to soldiers every one?

When will we ever learn?

Image result for Nicaraguan Canal

 

Categories
Classics Poetry

The Jasmine at Night by the Italian Poet, Giovanni Pascoli

  E s’aprono i fiori notturni
nell’ora che penso a’ miei cari.
Sono apparse in mezzo ai viburni
le farfalle crepuscolari.
Da un pezzo si tacquero i gridi:
là sola una casa bisbiglia.
Sotto l’ali dormono i nidi,
come gli occhi sotto le ciglia.
Dai calici aperti si esala
l’odore di fragole rosse.
Splende un lume là nella sala.
Nasce l’erba sopra le fosse.
Un’ape tardiva sussurra
trovando già prese le celle.
La Chioccetta per l’aia azzurra
va col suo pigolio di stelle.
Per tutta la notte s’esala
l’odore che passa col vento.
Passa il lume su per la scala;
brilla al primo piano: s’è spento…
È l’alba: si chiudono i petali
un poco gualciti; si cova,
dentro l’urna molle e segreta,
non so che felicità nuova.

Image result for butterflies in Viburnum

The nocturnal jasmine is a poem by Giovanni Pascoli dedicated to the wedding of a friend of his, and published in 1903 in the Cantos of Castelvecchio .

Giovanni Pascoli ( San Mauro di Romagna , 31 December 1855 – Bologna , 6 April 1912 ) was a poet , academic and literary critic of Italy , an emblematic figure of Italian literature of the late nineteenth century . Despite his eminently positivistic training , he is together with Gabriele D’Annunzio, the greatest Italian decadent poet .

Here is a possible literal translation:-

And the night jasmines open their corolla
in the time of day when I think of my dear departed. Twilight butterflies
have appeared
among the viburnum.
For some time now the cries of the birds have ceased:
only there, in a house, can they hear the whispering of human voices.
The little birds are sleeping under the protective wings,
as the eyes rest under the lashes.
From the open corolla of jasmine comes
a scent like red strawberries.
In the living room you can still see a light on,
the grass rises above the tombs of the dead.
A late bee wanders around buzzing
because all the cells are already occupied.
The constellation of the Pleiades is wandering
through the threshing floor, rendered blue by the night sky, with a chirp of stars.
For the duration of the night
the scent of the nocturnal jasmine fills the air, carried by the wind.
The light in the house moves up the stairs,
then goes into the nuptial chamber on the first floor, then goes off …
The dawn arrives: the petals of the flower close
a little withered, but inside the ovary soft and hidden
in depth, grows a feeling of happiness
never felt before.

Image result for giovanni pascoli

Categories
Poetry Uncategorized

Impatient Apparition

I have been reading John Aubrey

recently, how it was common to

see visions, apparitions

and lions wandering as lightning strikes

in the Agora- or perhaps the seasons

are out of joint-out of synch.

 

And anyway you didn’t phone me

at home to tell me why

you were not coming today

as you do this day every week

early really at nine thirty

unpredictable irregularity

makes me quite shirty

 

No text or phone call by

ten past ten and then

I hope you are quite o.k.

Some good reason you did

not arrive today.

 

No post either-so feeling

somewhat put out and cut off

my unconscious seems to have ploughed

you up- so as I slammed

the door- it was you I saw-

 

Torso emerging in a forward frozen pose-

in some limbo-like

grey or perhaps bright red-

half alive but perhaps half dead

legs concealed beneath the tiled path

for ever immobile-

I am sorry to have left you

quite like that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i

Categories
Poetry West Cornwall (and local history)

Summer Blues over coffee-Penzance

Sitting in Mr Billy’s, cappuccino drunk

I  watch the Golowan flag unfurl and roll

over the discount furniture store.

An elegant lizard design ruffled

as Hurricane Hector creeps to shore.

 

Caffine restores and clears the brain’s funk;

mind having been clogged with too many poets

read too superficially, such a rapid tour:-

Akhmatova, Garcia Lorca, Neruda

-several more.

all read in translation with growing piles

of biographies-Akhmatova’s by Elaine Feinstein

and just recovered, after much searching,

Pablo Neruda’s by Adam Feinstein.

The latter faintly and quaintly inscribed to ” Jessie G-

My passion in my life” signed Den

with five kisses -a bargain at three pounds forty nine.

Although I don’t know these signatories.

I remember the  Sixties, when a certain Jessie G occupied

my thoughts and feelings.

 

As the shoppers come and go- not thinking, I think

of Michelangelo,

I long for the enigmatic winds that energised us all-

when Co-Operative with its cheap and vivid green awning

was not just a shop.

As the street fills with delivery vans,

I long for the fervour again to discover,

Sous les paves, la plage!

Categories
Art and Photographic History Art Exhibition Reviews Poetry

Viewing Joseph Wright’s paintings in Derby

Image result for joseph wright of derbyThe light from within the Orrery

illuminates the children’s faces.

This glow in the darkness

spreads and each canvas is lit.

This picture depicts some wonder of generosity;

a marvel that touches deeply your curiosity.

Here around are landscapes, portraits and myths

gathered in profuse display and all Wright.

Here Arkwright sits near the spools of cotton

woven at his water-powered mill,

seemingly the quintessence of optimistic enterprise.

Beyond Arkwright’s son and wife look

more prosperous yet more mannered too as

Gainsborough might depict.

Across here a scene from Laurence Sterne

has captured Wright’s inquisitive imagination.

Nearby Vesuvius again erupts into crimson

and emerald below in the bay boats float

with fishermen undistracted in their industrious

capture of shoals beneath the calm seas.

I too am captured by a certain canvas in which

an Indian squaw sits widowed on a hillside under

her hero husband’s suspended arms and

awaits the breaking tumult from the threatening clouds.

Image result for joseph wright of derby

Categories
Classics Literature Poetry

The Oriole-a nature poem by Emily Dickinson

  1. One of the ones that Midas touched,
    Who failed to touch us all,
    Was that confiding prodigal,
    The blissful oriole.

So drunk, he disavows it
With badinage divine;
So dazzling, we mistake him
For an alighting mine.

A pleader, a dissembler,
An epicure, a thief, —
Betimes an oratorio,
An ecstasy in chief;

The Jesuit of orchards,
He cheats as he enchants
Of an entire attar
For his decamping wants.

The splendor of a Burmah,
The meteor of birds,
Departing like a pageant
Of ballads and of bards.

I never thought that Jason sought
For any golden fleece;
But then I am a rural man,
With thoughts that make for peace.

But if there were a Jason,
Tradition suffer me
Behold his lost emolument
Upon the apple-tree.

Some beautiful lines in this poem and I find myself wondering about what sort of mine might be “lighted”. Also, verse 4 which puzzles me but I find entirely beautiful too.

Categories
Literature Poetry

Sea Poppies by H.D.

Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,
treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:
your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.
Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?
Hedylus
Categories
Literature Poetry Uncategorized

An Emily Dickinson -There is another sky

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields—
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

by Emily Dickinson

Categories
Art and Photographic History Poetry Uncategorized

Alphonse Osbert-born in Paris in 1857 and died there in 1939

This French painter studied at the School of Fine Arts and under Henri Lehmann, Fernand Cormorant and Léon Bonnat. His entrance to the salon of 1880, Portrait of MO (“without a trace”), reflected his early attraction the realist tradition of Spanish painting of the 17th century. Impressionism’s impact encouraged him to lighten his palette and paint outdoor landscapes. At the end of the decade of 1880, Habibo cultivated the friendship of several symbolist poets and the well-known painter Puvis de Chavannes, which made him abandon his naturalist approach and adopt the aesthetic idealism of poetic painting. Abandoning topics extracted from daily life, Osbert proposed to transmit personal visions and developed his own set of pictorial symbols. Inspired by Puvis, simplified forms of landscape, which served as backgrounds for static and isolated figures dissolved by a  mysterious light. A pointillist technique, taken from Seurat, a friend of Lehmann’s, tended to dematerialize forms and add luminosity. However, Osbert avoided the full range of nuances of the so called “divisionists” of their choice of blues, violets, yellows and silvery green. The mysticism of Osbert is located in the center of the painting. The Rosacrucian ideal of “art as an evocation of mystery, as a prayer” finds no better expression than the virginal figure of faith, often interpreted as Saint Geneviève or Saint Jeanne, situated in a meadow with a lamb and wrapped in a supernatural radiance. Such works were praised by the Symbolist writers who considered them as visual counterparts of the poetry of Paul Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé and Maurice Maeterlinck. Osbert was called “painter of the Nights ” “Alma artist ” and “Poet of Silence” for his evocation of an atmosphere of mystery and reverie.

(With thanks to the incomparable Ines Vigo for this transcription from You Tube)

Image result for osbert alphonse

Categories
Literature Poetry

The Hazardous Hunt for Madam Butterfly

Butterfly escaped his attention

that foggy night, whilst his ears

were ringing from the singing of “The Mikado“,

so his splendid new automobile skidded

over the edge on the road near Lucca.

So in February of 1903 Puccini plunged

off the embankment and

fell down fifteen feet.

 

Having had that five metre fall

he found his right shin bone fractured.

In May he was disconsolate and complaining-no surprise

as it was badly set

had to be broken again

and reset.

 

In deep depression he wrote again

to Illica, his versifying lyricist;

“Addio tutto, addio Butterfly, addio vita mea”

Not easy to catch this fleeting insect-girl,

but in June, he slowly began once again

and by December,

the orchestration was finally complete.

Image result for puccini

Source

The Complete Operas of Puccini

by Charles Osborne