The Weather
I'd like to live a slower life.
The weather gets in my words
and I want them dry. Line after line
writes itself on my face, not a grace
of age but wrinkled humour. I laugh
more than I should or more
than anyone should. This is good.
But guess again. Everyone leans, each
on each other. This is a life
without an image. But only
because nothing does much more
than just resemble. Do the shamans
do what they say they do, dancing?
This is epistemology.
This is guesswork, this is love,
this is giving up gorgeousness to please you,
you beautiful dead to be. God bless
the weather and the words. Any words. Any weather.
And where or whom. I'd never taken count before.
I wish I had. And then
I did. And here
the weather wrote again.
John Newlove (1938 - 2003)
7 comments:
Ahh, Mike, you have both an eye and an ear; lovely post.
Bron
Thanks, Bron -- I'm not sure where I came across the poem, but as he's Canadian it was probably on the Wood s Lot blog.
Mike
I've been holding back for fear of gushing.
That last pic (the square one, of course) is just brilliant.
Struan,
I appreciate the restraint -- we certainly don't want any unseemly displays of enthusiasm round here!
I like it a lot, too... I enjoy the way the depth of field of a small sensor can help create a decorative 2-D surface which can pop back and forth into 3-D. Combine that with a tasty variety of pattern and palette, and you get a kind of Chinoiserie effect that is very much to my taste.
I have an eye-popping photo of my partner asleep in an orange, green and yellow dress on a blue and silver patterned sofa that is pure Vuillard / Bonnard.
Mike
Re: restraint. Tilman and Shipton on the summit of Nanda Devi in 1934 (an altitude record which stood until the 1950s):
" it gave us a curious feeling of exaltation to know that we were above every peak within a hundred miles on either hand. Dhaulagiri, 1,000ft higher, and 200 miles away in Nepal, was our nearest rival. I believe we so far forgot ourselves as to shake hands on it."
As for Bonnard, well there is a point where the grace notes take over and become the tune. I like the accents provided by the colour, and, as you say, the popping back and forth between 2D and 3D comprehension.
veriword: 'efiere' - which is a loan word from veriFrench, meaning to perform something without apparent effort.
Struan,
Now that quotation is funny...
I'm beginning to realise quite how much "restraint" was the fuel of Empire -- there was a review of P.G. Wodehouse's letters this weekend, which mentioned that his parents shipped out to a job in Hong Kong, leaving him and two brothers in the care of some aunts. He didn't see his mother again for sixteen years!
Mike
Yes, not bad.
[Checkword: tegerso - Sicilian dialect for "I tickle you"]
Post a Comment