The Red Poppy (a warning to the addicts of ‘peak experiences’ facilitated today by social media?)

 

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Poppies, 1890s, detail, watercolour, ink and graphite on paper. 

Hilma af Klint, 1862-1942, Swedish. On display at the Guggenheim, NY in 2018/2019.

She left an extraordinary record of her spiritual pilgrimage in works of abstract expressionism avant l’heure, held together, not to be commercialized; and only in recent years on display.  

 

 

The Red Poppy

Louise Glück , American born 1943, Nobel Laureate, Literature, 2020

From The Wild Iris, 1992.

 

 

These poppies are growing in a little community park in South Philadelphia

 

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me.

 

                  I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.

What could such glory be
if not a heart?

 

Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you

 

 

permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again?

 

                   Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do.

 

                          I speak
because I am shattered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 thoughts on “The Red Poppy (a warning to the addicts of ‘peak experiences’ facilitated today by social media?)”

    1. Thank you, Luisa. But believe me, the magic is in the clever little digital cameras which react to colour and light!

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