Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

-Seamus Heaney

Pre-arranged post, I'm travelling.

Happy Christmas!

New Hampshire

1
When the loons cry,
The night seems blacker,
The water deeper.

Across the shore:
An eyelash charcoal
Fringe of pine trees.

2
The lake reflects
Indefinite pewter,

And intermittent thunder
Lets us know

The gods are arriving,
One valley over.

3
After the long,
Melancholy of the fall,
One longs for the crisp
Brass shout of winter--

The blaze of firewood,
The window's spill
Of parlor lamplight
Across the snow.

4
Flaring like a match
Dropped in a dry patch,
One sunset tells
The spectrum's story.

See the last hunter's
Flashlight dim
As he hurries home
To his lighted window.

-Howard Moss

100 posts in this here blog.

I just stumbled upon this website while trying to find an online copy of Wendell Berry's essay on Edward Abbey (in "What Are People For?") and I'm intrigued (essay doesn't appear to be available online, though, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised).

"We come from different backgrounds, live in different places, and have divergent interests, but we’re convinced that scale, place, self-government, sustainability, limits, and variety are key terms with which any fruitful debate about our corporate future must contend. We invite you to read along, and perhaps join the discussion."

Thank-You Note

Mr. Berryman's songs and sonnets say:
"Gather ye berries harsh and crude while yet ye may."
Even if they pucker our mouths like choke-cherries,
Let us be grateful for these thick-bunched berries.

-Elizabeth Bishop, 1969

from Strophes

I

Like a glass whose imprint
leaves a circular crown
on the tablecloth of the ocean
which canít be shouted down,
the sun has gone to another
hemisphere where none
but the fish in the water
are ever left alone.

VI

Only space spots self-interest
in a finger pointing afar,
and light has its swiftness
in an empty atmosphere.
So eyes receive their damage,
from how far one looks.
More than they do from old age
or from reading books.

VIII

The bleaker things are, for some reason.
the simpler. No more do you
crave for an intermission
like a fiery youth.
The light on the boards, in the stage wings,
grows dim. You walk out right
into the leaves' soft clapping,
into the U.S. night.


IX

Life's a freewheeling vendor:
occiput, penis, knee.
And geography blended
with time equals destiny.
Its power is learned of faster
if the stick drives it in.
You bow to the Fatal Sister
who simply loves to spin.

XI

Dearest, there are no unfortunates,
no living and no dead.
All's just a match of consonants,
on crooked legs, instead.
The swineherd exaggerated,
obviously, his role;
his pearl, however unheeded,
will outlast us all.

XIV

These lines are a doomed endeavor
to save something, to trace,
to turn around. But you never
lie in the same bed twice.
Not even if the chambermaid
forgets to change the sheets
this isn't Saturn, you won't
land from its ring on your feet.

XIX

These things will merge together
in the eyes of the crew
peering from their flying saucer
at the motley scene below.
So whatever their mission
is, I suppose it's best
we're apart and their vision
won't be put to the test.

XXIV

Here our perspective ends. A pity
that it's so. What extends
is just the winding plenty
of time, of redundant days;
gallops in blinkers of cities,
etc., to the finish in view;
piling up needless words of which
none is about you.

-Joseph Brodsky, 1978

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier mâché . . .
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

-Wallace Stevens, 1954