Tag Archives: memory

The shape of what you lived.

poetry, , ,

REMEMBERING

And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke, by Leonid Pasternak 1928

Never look straight up at the sun.

art, beauty, poetry, , , , ,

I traveled north several hours to my daughter’s for Thanksgiving last week, and home again three days later. Through rural areas mostly, my favorite views were of the forests and orchards, oaks and maples and almonds, many of the trees with their leaves glowing yellow and red as the light caught them just right, against a dark green conifer background. The sun was, as this poem says, the artist.

THE SUN

All colors come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular color, for it contains them all.
And the whole Earth is like a poem
While the sun above represents the artist.

Whoever wants to paint the variegated world
Let him never look straight up at the sun
Or he will lose the memory of things he has seen.
Only burning tears will stay in his eyes.

Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at the light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost:
The stars and the roses, the dusks and the dawns.

Warsaw, 1943

―Czesław Miłosz

Fern Coppedge, Autumn

 

This is how the heart makes a duet.

beauty, grief, poetry, , ,

ADRIFT

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

-Mark Nepo

 

 

Rain and a hundred connections.

love, poetry, , ,

It’s still raining here, but it’s not hailing, and the air is warmer. So it’s a day when I can imagine spending time in the elements with someone you love, and this poem I’ve been wanting to share finally fits the mood of the season, and the current weather. On our honeymoon in the Santa Cruz mountains of California, my beloved and I walked in rain under redwood trees, and it wasn’t the last time. Here’s to all the rainy days when we’ve been in love with somebody and with life.

ANNIVERSARY POEM

Remember that day in the rain
at the park where we used to meet,

how we took and we gave,
and what couldn’t be spoken

was nevertheless contained
in what we were able to say,

well, it’s raining again
and it’s the body, I realize,

that stores memory
and sends it, when keyed,

to those long unvisited
regions of the brain – remember

that steady collision
of rain and branch and leaf,

a hundred connections
happening at once,

long before I said I do.
I was saying I will and Let’s.

-Stephen Dunn