Shakespeare

Dante

 E volta nostra poppa nel mattino

De' remi facemmo ali al folle volo

Inferno XXVI

May 31, 2021 - Via Marina Militare

From Adrienne Von Speyr's "Man Before God"

 

a Tree in a flower pot...

The hardest thing required of the believer is to place himself

at the disposal of something incomprehensible, 

something that begins to make sense

               only through love...

Until now he was collecting, gathering, counting and disposing...

Now he is meant to open himself in such a way that 

the hands he holds out to collect 

have to remain apart...

 

He (the believer) is embraced by God

in such a way that he is no longer capable of embracing anything.

He must keep himself as vessel,

and he cannot guarantee what this vessel will contain.

He no longer knows it

because he must allow 

what he had once 

well protected and thought through

        many times over

simply to flow into the infinite

        according to a rhythm that 

              God alone

                   determines ...

Obedience

 

Ocean Vuong: "Toy Boat"

 For Tamir Rice

yellow plastic

black sea

eye-shaped shard

on a darkened map

no shores now

to arrive --- or

depart

no wind but

this waiting which

moves you

as if the seconds

could be entered

& never left

toy boat --- oarless

each wave 

a green lamp

outlasted

toy boat

toy leaf dropped

from a toy tree

waiting

waiting

as if the sp-

arrows

thinning above you

are not 

already pierced

by their own names

Ocean Vuong

Poetry Foundation

Poem by John Masefield (1878-1967)

Stand like a beaten anvil,

When thy dream is laid upon thee,

Golden from the fire.

Flinch not, through that furnace gleam,

Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom,

' Tis but the wordsmith's heaving to and fro,

Stand like a beaten anvil.

Take thy doom

Their ponderous weapons deal thee blow on blow

Needful to truth, 

As dew fall from the flower,

Is this wild wrath           impeccable scorn?

For each new         , new beauty and new power to be born,

Stand like a beaten anvil

Let Earth wrongs beat on that anvil,

And ring back Song.

  

( July 14, 2016 )

Note to the poet: I apologize for blanks left as I was transcribing the poem. Simply, I could not read my own handwriting... I'll be right back to fix it. Thanks :)

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