Charles E. Aufderheide (1918-1991): "Letter to Helena"

 

If I could send you bees and bugs

Kettles, colanders, and cats

Linings from coats, toothpaste tubes

Cellophane from cigarettes, and fur 

To furnish play and build your laughter 

Up to dimpled creases, to khaki eyes

You would not be my little girl.  Anyone

Can give you these. You find them yourself.

So I am giftless. You make independent 

Fun. Even the great desert sun

Just as it touches the evening earth

Becomes your rolling red marble.

"Garden of Games: The Collected Poems of Charles E. Aufderheide"

Asylum Arts, Santa Maria, California 1993

Isla de Flores, a Stony Love Song

 

Isla de Flores  Short Documentary, November 2020  -  Leonardo Chouciño

Image WIKIPEDIA

Lynn H. Nicholas

Full of optimism after this high-level response, Taylor wrote Sachs on December 4, 1942: "I do not know yet how the Federal Government will decide to organize this, but one thing is crystal clear: that we will be called upon for  professional service, either in civilian or military capacity. I personally have offered my services, and am ready for either." To reinforce their actions, Taylor and Dinsmoor have both written a memorandum for presentation to the President, recommending "a corps of specialists to deal with the matter of protecting monuments and works of art in liaison with the Army and Navy." As flamboyant as the man himself, Taylor's long memo somewhat undiplomatically referred to the centuries-long dispute over British possession of the Elgin marbles, and to Napoleon's removal of the bronze horses of Saint Mark's in Venice, in the same paragraph as the confiscations by the Nazis. ...  How this was to be accomplished,  given the recent invasion of North Africa, the deadly situation at Stalingrad, and the continued bombing of Britain, was not addressed.

Excerpt from Lynn H. NICOLAS' book "The Rape of Europa"

Vintage Books 1994

Dante

... As children, silent in shame, with their eyes upon the ground stand listening  and conscience-striken and repentant, so I was standing ...

Purgatory, Canto XXXI

W.S. Merwin : "The Heart"

 

In the first chamber of the heart

all the gloves are hanging but two

the hands are bare as they come through the door

the bell rope is moving without them

they move forward cupped as though 

holding water

there is a bird bathing in their palms

in this chamber there is no color

In the second chamber of the heart

all the blindfolds are hanging but one

the eyes are open as they come in

they see the bell rope moving 

without hands

they see the bathing bird

being carried forward

through the colored chamber

In the third chamber of the heart

all sounds are hanging but one

the ears hear nothing as they come through the door

the bell rope is moving like a breath

without hands

a bird is being carried forward

bathing

in total silence.

In the last chamber of the heart

all the words are hanging

but one

the blood is naked as it steps through the door 

with its eyes open

and a bathing bird in its hands

and with its bare feet on the sill

moving as through on water

to the one stroke of the bell

someone is ringing without hands

The Essential  W.S. Merwin

Edited by Michael Wiegers

Copper Canyon Press, 2017

before The Giver

 

Seamus Heaney: "Follower"

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders like a full sail strung

Between the shafts and the furrow.

The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing

And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.

The sod rolled over without breaking.

At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round

And back into the land. His eye 

Narrowed and angled at the ground,

Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,

Fell sometimes on the polished sod;

Sometimes he rode me on his back

Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,

To close one eye, stiffen my arm.

All I ever did was follow

In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,

Yapping always. But today

It is my father who keeps stumbling 

Behind me, and will not go away.

Seamus Heaney "100 Poems"

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018