For the New Year, 1981

 Denise Levertov, British, 1923-1997

 

 

 

I have a small grain of hope–

 

 

 

Detail of Ice Drawing, 2012, installation consisting of video (color, silent, projected through structure) and structure with metal armature and hanging crystals. Joan Jonas, American born 1936.

Loaned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to MOMA, NY in 2018

 

 

one small crystal that gleams

 

 

 

As above

 

 

clear colors out of transparency.

 

 

 

As above

 

I need more.

 

 

 

As above

 

 

I break off a fragment to send you.

 

 

As above

 

 

Please take this grain of hope so that mine won’t shrink.

 

 

 

 

Please share your fragment so that yours will grow.

 

 

 

The Path through the Irises, 1914-1917, oil on canvas.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

The artist cultivated more than forty varieties of irises at his estate in Giverney.  ‘Generous’ the museum calls his planting schema with irises  ‘blurring the edges of gravel pathways.’

 

 

 

Only so, by division, will hope increase

 

 

 

 

As above

 

 

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless

 

 

 

As above

 

you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source–

 

 

As above

 

 

clumsy and earth-covered–

 

 

As above

 

 

of grace.

 

 

 

As above

 

 

As above