winter stillness

Although

we haven't had much snow,

my mind has felt numb these days.

Hibernation, I believe, is meant to be the condition

of women and men during the season of shorter days.

Words themselves seem

to have taken refuge

in the cave of  my mind.

So,

I have found it very hard to write blog entries

on things like

the Republican candidates (we are, it would seem, in America's endtimes,

during which the best candidates we can muster are the ones

who embody our overindulgences and mutations),

sinking cruise ships,

Madonna's Super Bowl Half Time Show,

or men who kill their children

then light their house on fire.

The desperation of each of these silences me

and makes me simply want 

to look close at each

and every day.

I actually pray

for more snow,

so 

the earth too can slumber with me.

I know,

as you know,

that after great silence comes

sound--

in the meantime, I will write here sometimes,

on days of thaw,

or share the words of others with you

that I think

are worthy of contemplation.

Be well,

dear friends --

I'm still here!

(all photos by Makropoulos)

Evening Without Angels, by Wallace Stevens

(the Temple of Poseidon,

at Sounion, outside Athens)

the great interests of man: air and light,

the joy of having a body,

the voluptuousness of looking.   (Mario Rossi)

Why seraphim like lutanists arranged

Above the trees?  And why the poet as

Eternal chef d'orchestre?

                              Air is air,

Its vacancy glitters round us everywhere.

Its sounds are not angelic syllables

But our unfashioned spirits realized

More sharply in more furious selves.

                       And light

That fosters seraphim and is to them

Coiffeur of haloes, fecund jeweller--

Was the sun concoct for angels or for men?

Sad men made angels of the sun, and of

The moon they made their own attendant ghosts,

Which led them back to angels, after death.

Let this be clear that we are men of sun

And men of day and never of pointed night,

Men that repeat antiquest sounds of air

In an accord of repetitions. Yet,

If we repeat, it is because the wind

Encircling us, speaks always with our speech.

Light, too, encrusts us making visible

The motions of the mind and giving form

To moodiest nothings, as, desire for day

Accomplished in the immensely flashing East,

Desire for rest, in that descending sea

Of dark, which in its very darkening

Is rest and silence spreading into sleep.

. . . Evening, when the measure skips a beat

And then another, one by one, and all

To a seething minor swiftly modulate.

Bare night is best.  Bare earth is best.   Bare, bare,

Except for our own houses, huddled low

Beneath the arches and their spangled air,

Beneath the rhapsodies of fire and fire,

Where the voice that is in us makes a true response,

Where the voice that is great within us rises up,

As we stand gazing at the rounded moon.

(again, pictures by me)