Sometimes someone will knock and ask her to post poems more frequently.
Posted in early February 2020
She also leaves the names of poets on my answering machine in the tones of someone speaking of a lover. Which, of course they are.
You can hear the rustling of paper. To make you long for a particular book you used to have.
When I call her, she will say: “Listen to this line….”
She is also building a garden. That is how I met her: she was poring over a catalogue of exquisite rose varieties.
Jane, come away from the edge of the city and live near me!
–——————————————–
Love Calls Us to The Things of This World
Richard Wilbur, American, 1921-2017. From Collected Poems, 1943-2004
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Detail of Summer, 1546/48, oil on canvas. Jacopo Tintoretto, 1518/19-1594, Venetian. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
Detail of Summer, 1546/48, oil on canvas. Jacopo Tintoretto, 1518/19-1594, Venetian. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Angel mannequins made by the National Gallery of Art, Washtington, DC to display a technique of Jacopo Tintoretto, 1518/19-1594
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
As Above
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;
Now they are flying in place, conveying
As above
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day
And cries,
“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”
Untitled (The Dancers), 1944, oil on canvas. Stanley William Hayter, 1901-1988, English. Promised gift to the Philadelphia Art Museum
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
Hallucie, 1998, screenprint. Sigmar Polke, 1941-2010, German. MOMA, NY
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
Taboo, 1963, tempera on hardboard, with light interference. Jacob Lawrence, 1917-2000, American. Philadelphia Art Museum
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”
Ensemble spring/summer 2014; black and white synthetic crepe and white cotton canvas. Moschino, Italian.
Loaned by Moschino to the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute exhibition, Heavenly Bodies, in 2018
That’s so beautiful.
If you mean the poem, I agree! It was my friend, Jane, who left this poem’s name on my answering machine, too! Thanks for reading!
Yes the poem, art and meaning.
Yes. I find the poem matches my daily reality except I don’t dance much! The art I love, of course….
It’s uplifting. I wish I had the words. The sentiment is an inspiration. It’s hopeful.
Yes, hopeful is a good word. I also find it realistic. Some people say that realistic is no different from tragic. Dreams are often easier and more pleasant than life. But life is everything and why not be hopeful?
That’s sad if they say realistic is tragic. I guess everyone has their own interpretation. A poet that puts poems on their door sounds like the kind to spread the love around.
She spreads the beauty around, I would say. Sometimes it is love. And I would say that realistic is tragic more than it is not tragic because we don’t control a whole lot and because we are going to die. Tragic is an overall sense. But not day to day necessarily. Day to day it is as the poem says: let’s get on with the laundry and let the nuns walk about in their habits if they want to………
Tha k you so much for the poem, its neighbourly nudge and the pictorial juxtapositions. Tho would have liked some billowing white sheets. Have loved the Wilbur poem for years but hadn’t read of his death 2 years ago.
Lovely idea, putting poems on the door.
Thanks! Yes. It seems to hearten people! Sarah
My dear cousin, Jane, is always at her best when sharing warm feelings and generous thoughts with her friends, neighbours, and passing strangers. She might burst open if she couldn’t express her wondrous way of loving and being.