“Touch and go, bank and stall, keeping a steady hand | as we flew beyond the bounds of the artificial horizon.” ~ Sue Standing, from “Artificial Horizon”

“The Japanese Lantern” (1912)
by Paul Burty Haviland

                   

Two for Tuesday: What is temporary

“No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.”

~ Wislawa Szymborska (trans. Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak), from “Nothing Twice”

                   

Untitled [I know now the beloved]

I know now the beloved
Has no fixed abode,
That each body
She inhabits
Is only a temporary
Home.
That she
Casts off forms
As eagerly
As lovers shed clothes.

I accept that he’s
Just passing through
That flower
Or that stone.

And yet, it makes
Me dizzy—
The way he hides
In the flow of it,
The way she shifts
In fluid motions,
Becoming other things.

I want to stop him—
If only briefly.
I want to lure her
To the surface
And catch her
In this net of words.

~ Gregory Orr

                   

Opening the Mona Lisa after WWII (photographer unknown)

Travel Elegy

Everything’s mine though just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.

Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads.

From the town of Samokov, only rain
and more rain.

Paris from Louvre to fingernail
grows web-eyed by the moment.

Boulevard Saint-MartinL some stairs
leading into a fadeout.

Only a bridge and a half
from Leningrad of the bridges.

Poor Uppsala, reduced to a splinter
of its mighty cathedral.

Sofia’s hapless dancer,
a form without a face.

Then separately, his face without eyes;
separately again, his eyes with no pupils,
and, finally, the pupils of a cat.

A Caucasian eagle soars
over the reproduction of a canyon,
the fool’s gold of the sun,
the phony stones.

Everything’s mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.

Inexhaustible, unembracable,
but particular to the smallest fiber,
grain of sand, drop of water—
landscapes.

I won’t retain one blade of grass
as it’s truly seen.

Salutation and farewell
in a single glance.

For surplus and absence alike,
a single motion of the neck.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

                   

Music by Cat Power, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”

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“Somewhere deep within the marrow of our marrow, we were the same.” ~ Kamila Shamsie, from Kartography

                     

“y nadie puede, nadie puede evadir los pasos
del corazón que corre callado y carnicero”
(and no one — no one — can escape the heart’s progress
as it runs, silent and carnivorous.) ~ Pablo Neruda, from Sonnet LXXI (71), trans. Stephen Tapscott

Happy Anniversary, my love. One day, we will see Paris and all of the other places on our list.

Music by Elton John, “Love Song”

                   

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

~ Pablo Neruda

“You’re a mother, aren’t you? There’s kindness in your eyes. And sadness. But a ferocity too.” ~ Dr. Who, from “A Town Called Mercy” (7.3)

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you out there!

                   

Typewriter Series #411 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Music by Esthero, “Over”

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