Saturday afternoon, sunny and warm, 88 degrees.
Today is supposed to be the last day for a while in which temperatures approach 90. That’s a good thing. I need to get back into the habit of walking the property, and because of my weird, new reaction to bug bites, I’m looking forward to the cooling temperatures and the reduction of no-see-ums buzzing and biting me.
As today is the last day of August, I thought that I’d share this passage from Austrian poet, essayist, lecturer, and author Ingeborg Bachmann. Bachmann was a member of the literary circle Gruppe 47 or Group 47. To read her biography, go here.
August! There they were, the days of iron made red-hot in the forge. The times resounded.
The beaches were besieged and the sea no longer rolled forward its armies of waves, but feigned exhaustion. deep and blue.
On the grill, in the sand, roasted, moiré: the easily corruptible flesh of man. Before the sea, among the dunes: the flesh.
He was afraid because the summer squandered itself so. Because this meant that autumn would soon come. August was full of panic, full of the compulsion to snatch at life and hurry to start living.”
~ Ingeborg Bachmann, from The Thirtieth Year: Stories
Music by John Prine, “Summer’s End”
A Kind Of Loss
Used together: seasons, books, a piece of music.
The keys, teacups, bread basket, sheet and a bed.
A hope chest of words, of gestures, brought back, used, used up.
A household order maintained. Said. Done. And always a head was there.
I’ve fallen in love with winter, with a Viennese septet, wiht summer.
With Village maps, a mountain nest, a beach and a bed.
Kept a calender cult, declared promises irrevocable,
bowed before something, was pious to a nothing
(-to a folded newspaper, cold ashes, the scribbled piece of paper) ,
fearless in religion, for our bed was the church.
From my lake view arose my inexhaustible painting.
From my balcony I greeted entire peoples, my neighbors.
By the chimney fire, in safety, my hair took on its deepest hue.
The ringing at the door was the alarm for my joy.
It’s not you I’ve lost,
but the world.
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 