An Old Photograph
–Howard Nemerov
Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash
perjury of time
Month: April 2018
LENIN is coming
spring is never summer
Spring Song
–Gavin Ewart
Lovers are rolling over like cats in the sunshine,
allowing their tummies to be tickled,
licking one another,full of the excitement of finding a new person,
happy in the warm emotion.
The questions come later.Soon they will discover there are two different people
involved in these affairs; quite simply,
spring is never summer.
Photo by Jess Watters on Unsplash
lunchtable TV talk: this kind of nerd
Many times, I have claimed that I have ‘given up’ television, and compared to what I used to inhale (night and day viewing, really), I have. I also don’t write obsessively about my thoughts on tv shows I do watch, so it looks like I’m following my own rules.
Yet, if I were to talk to almost anyone else I know, I still watch much more tv (however carefully selected it is now) than most people I know. I recently finished by the heartbreaking but often very funny, and always timely, Hap and Leonard (set in the 80s, yet with timeless and important themes, woven so tightly into the narrative that they never come across as “Important Themes”, such as those you’d see on “very special episodes of…”). It is also one of those shows that gets better with each season, which is one reason why I am pulling for renewal. (As the most recent season ends, there is no word on whether it will come back. But it really deserves to.)
I can’t really say enough about Hap and Leonard and the performances of its two leads, James Purefoy and Michael K. Williams. Both are actors I like anyway, but the humanity and depth of friendship/love for each other that they breathe into these characters puts both of them – and the show – over the top for me. I think it’s a shame that more people haven’t heard of the show. I suspect this may have something to do it with its being on the very quiet Sundance network, where many brilliant shows live quiet, critically acclaimed but often little-seen lives. This was certainly true of Rectify. Despite very few people seeing Rectify when it was on, Sundance let it continue to live – and I hope the same will be true for Hap and Leonard.
In Hap and Leonard, I also enjoy small nods to things in the show that may or may not be intentional, e.g. the sheriff in the racist town portrayed in the latest season is played by Corbin Bernsen, and as Hap and Leonard are driving through town while businesses are boarding up in anticipation of a big storm, the town cinema reader board displays the film Major League as what’s playing. If you don’t know or remember, Bernsen played a vain, aging, jack-ass baseball player in Major League (more similar to his role in LA Law than anything he has done in his later years).
Having sung the praises of Hap and Leonard and told everyone I can about it, I should also sing the praises of an Italian series, 1992 and 1993. Today I tried to moved on to watch 1993, an Italian drama that follows, logically, 1992. When I watched 1992 several years ago, I loved the storytelling and nods to that period in time (and learned a bit more about what was happening in Italy at the time). I have commented before that I am not entirely sure that there were *so many* Italians into the kinds of music that made up the 1992 soundtrack, but I can forgive that. What struck me is how the main character, an ad exec, Notte, whose savvy and forward-looking ability to see trends, leads him to politics and a bold, seemingly out-of-left-field prediction that someone like Silvio Berlusconi had a viable political future, something most others around him do not agree with. In my favorite part of the series, the Notte caused everyone around him to laugh, poking fun at his naivete in thinking that someone as ludicrous as Berlusconi could ever be a politician. One character, if I recall, argues something, through condescending laughter, like, ‘That would be like Schwarzenegger trying to be a politician.’ We all know now, of course, that both Berlusconi and Schwarzenegger went on to have dubiously successful political careers. But now, in the post-Trump era, the warnings about grotesque media figures like Berlusconi becoming politicians, and no one caring about the scandals, wrongdoing, corruption and rumors swirling around them, feel even more prescient and … sad.
I still didn’t get around to watching 1993, as it happens. I didn’t have time to pay as close attention as I would have needed to, so I turned instead to Westworld, which I tried to watch when it was new but couldn’t get into. Sometimes it just takes time, and I have managed to dive in. I don’t have anything particular to say about it because it’s not something that needs more attention or my amateurish praise. It’s far more important that less visible gems like Hap and Leonard get a polish and the chance to shine.
Photo by Peter ᴳᴱᴼ Kent on Unsplash
without passion
Old Marx
–Adam ZagajewskiHe can’t think.
London is damp,
in every room someone coughs.
He never did like winter.
He rewrites past manuscripts
time and again, without passion.
The yellow paper
is fragile as consumption.Why does life race
stubbornly toward destruction?
But spring returns in dreams,
with snow that doesn’t speak
in any known tongue.
And where does love fit
within his system?
Where you find blue flowers.He despises anarchists,
idealists bore him.
He receives reports from Russia,
far too detailed.
The French grow rich.
Poland is common and quiet.
America never stops growing.
Blood is everywhere,perhaps the wallpaper needs changing.
He begins to suspect
that poor humankind
will always trudge
across the old earth
like the local lunatic
shaking her fists
at an unseen God.
Photo (c) 2013 Ruben Gustav used under Creative Commons license.
simplified by distance
Solar
–Philip Larkin
Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
Of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.
Photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash
“beyond three wild frontiers”
Letter to My Wife
–Miklós Radnóti
Down in the deep, dumb worlds are waiting, silent;
I shout; the silence in my ears is strident,
but no one can reply to it from far
Serbia, fallen into a swoon of war,
and you are far. My dream, your voice, entwine,
by day I find it in my heart again;
knowing this I keep still while, standing proudly,
rustling, cool to the touch, many great ferns surround me.When may I see you? I hardly know any longer,
you, who were solid, were weighty as the psalter,
beautiful as a shadow and beautiful as light,
to whom I would find my way, whether deafmute or blind;
now hiding in the landscape, from within,
on my eyes, you flash–the mind projects its film.
You were reality, returned to dream
and, fallen back into the well of my teen years,jealously question you: whether you love me,
whether, on my youth’s summit, you will yet be
my wife–I am now hoping once again,
and, back on life’s alert road, where I have fallen,
I know you are all this. My wife, my friend and peer–
only, far! Beyond three wild frontiers.
It is turning fall. Will fall forget me here?
The memory of our kisses is all the clearer;I believed in miracles, forgot their days;
above me I see a bomber squadron cruise.
I was just admiring, up there, your eyes’ blue sheen,
when it clouded over, and up in that machine
the bombs were aching to dive. Despite them, I am alive,
a prisoner; and all that I had hoped for, I have
sized up, in breadth. I will find my way to you;
for you I have walked the spirit’s full length as it grew,and highways of the land. If need be, I will render
myself, a conjurer, past cardinal embers,
amid nose-diving flames, but I will come back,
if I must be, I shall be as resilient as the bark
on trees. I am soothed by the peace of savage men
in constant danger: worth the whole wild regimen
of arms and power; and, as from a cooling wave of the sea,
sobriety’s 2×2 comes raining down on me.
Original
Levél a hitveshez (Hungarian)
A mélyben néma, hallgató világok,
üvölt a csönd fülemben s felkiáltok,
de nem felelhet senki rá a távol,
a háborúba ájult Szerbiából
s te messze vagy. Hangod befonja álmom,
s szivemben nappal ujra megtalálom,
hát hallgatok, míg zsong körém felállván
sok hűvös érintésü büszke páfrány.Mikor láthatlak ujra, nem tudom már,
ki biztos voltál, súlyos, mint a zsoltár,
s szép mint a fény és oly szép mint az árnyék,
s kihez vakon, némán is eltalálnék,
most bujdokolsz a tájban és szememre
belülről lebbensz, így vetít az elme;
valóság voltál, álom lettél ujra,
kamaszkorom kútjába visszahullvaféltékenyen vallatlak, hogy szeretsz-e?
s hogy ifjuságom csúcsán, majdan, egyszer,
a hitvesem leszel, – remélem ujra
s az éber lét útjára visszahullva
tudom, hogy az vagy. Hitvesem s barátom, –
csak messze vagy! Túl három vad határon.
S már őszül is. Az ősz is ittfelejt még?
A csókjainkról élesebb az emlék;csodákban hittem s napjuk elfeledtem,
bombázórajok húznak el felettem;
szemed kékjét csodáltam épp az égen,
de elborult s a bombák fönt a gépben
zuhanni vágytak. Ellenükre élek, –
s fogoly vagyok. Mindent, amit remélek
fölmértem s mégis eltalálok hozzád;
megjártam érted én a lélek hosszát,s országok útjait; bíbor parázson,
ha kell, zuhanó lángok közt varázslom
majd át magam, de mégis visszatérek;
ha kell, szívós leszek, mint fán a kéreg,
s a folytonos veszélyben, bajban élő
vad férfiak fegyvert s hatalmat érő
nyugalma nyugtat s mint egy hűvös hullám:
a 2 x 2 józansága hull rám.
Photo by Arūnas Naujokas on Unsplash
wild with love
Touch Me
–Stanley Kunitz
Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.
Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash
“Caught in our archaic caresses”
Voluptas
–Irving Feldman
Strange to be remembering how
—was it twenty-odd years ago?—
you drew back from one of our kisses,
your head turning half away so that
I saw in our bedroom’s half light
your lovely profile and eye staring
out toward and into a passing thought.
Then all of half your mouth to mine again
with overwhelmed gentleness.
We both were overwhelmed and pulled under.
Strange suddenly to remember this
after so many, many kisses,
after such years of rupturing.
Caught in our archaic caresses
(you know, that same old, old thing):
a space of five seconds of fresh time,
when nothing was happening
and nothing was happening yet.
And I now its voluptuary.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
“i lived on air”
To Earthward
–Robert Frost
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on airThat crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of—was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they’re gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stainOf tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash