Requiem
a long time ago
you mailed me your copy of Ulysses
and I tried but
now
many years later
I realize
you were
summoning my muse
to sing
— J.S.
“Requiem”
Tag: in memory
I Remember You
Photograph by Guy Sapiro (1962-2009)
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
— Emily Dickinson
in memoriam
cf. photograph by Cade Prior via Pexels
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
— Langston Hughes, Mother to Son
my lost self
RIP
cf. photograph by Cherry Laithang via Unsplash (edited collage)
like Antaeus
drifting in the darkest night
searching for my long lost self —
my strength
my spirit
myself
and then I touch ground
again
— J.S.
elegy
The Mirror (1975)
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood…
— Joyce, Ulysses
a gift
Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide Magazine, 1961
a gift
you held me and sang
come fly with me,
said the little red sled
and you gave me the wings of a bird
— J.S.
in my heart
cf. photograph by Tookapic via Pexels
I was overcome with remorse…because I hadn’t lived up to her expectations.
— Ionesco, The Hermit
In Memoriam
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colour’d glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity
— Shelley, Adonais (excerpt)
“and other regrets”
and other regrets
I found a picture of your cat
I never knew but
like you
opalescent
ever persevering
on Lear’s heath
storm still.
— J.S.
For Guy
Patricia D. Duncan, “Sunset View of a Horse in Pastureland…” (1975)
As my eyes search the prairie
I feel the summer in the spring.
—Anonymous, “Spring Song” (Tr. Frances Densmore) from Chippewa Music II Bulletin 53 (1913)
“Wildfire” by Michael Martin Murphey
I Remember You
Photograph by Guy Sapiro (1962-2009)
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
—Emily Dickinson
Samuel Johnson — Born This Date, 1709
photograph by Zachary Staines via Unsplash
“…He, and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. Samuel Johnson, set out this morning for London together. Davy Garrick is to be with you early the next week, and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed in some translation, either from the Latin or the French…”
—Letter from G. Walmsley to The Reverend Mr. Colson, March 2, 1737, quoted in Boswell’s Life Of Johnson
Think Of Laura
cf. Photograph by Annie Spratt via Unsplash
“Laura, illustrious by her own virtues, and long celebrated by my verses, I beheld for the first time, in my early youth, on the 6th of April, 1327, about the first hour of the day, in the church of Saint Claire in Avignon: and in the same city, in the same month of April, the same day and hour, in the year 1348, this light of my life was withdrawn from the world while I was at Verona, ignorant, alas! of what had befallen me.”
—Petrarch’s inscription in his copy of Virgil
“Think Of Laura” by Christopher Cross
“Requiem”
Requiem
a long time ago
you mailed me your copy of Ulysses
and I tried but
now
many years later
I realize
you were
summoning my muse
to sing.
–J.S.
Remembering Allan Holdsworth
I was saddened to read recently of the passing of Allan Holdsworth. This is a transcription I did a long time ago of his “In The Dead Of Night” solo. I saw him in the fall of 1983 and remember how much he inspired me.
“Hats off, gentlemen—a genius!”
—Robert Schumann, Review of Chopin’s variations on Mozart’s “Là ci darem la mano,” Op. 2 In “Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung”, Vol. 33, no. 49 (December 7, 1831)
You were the butterfly
Just this once, twice, forever
Know’st thou the excellent joys of youth?
Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing
face?
Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath’d games?
Joy of sweet music…
—Walt Whitman, A Song Of Joys
The memory of you
Peder Mork Mønsted, Winter Landscape (1927)
now
in november
after the light of leaves
the light of snowchrysanthemums
delectable
and white as coconut before the snow
become immortal
—Joan Vayo, “all souls day”
Remembering The Challenger Crew
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
—John Gillespie Magee, Jr., “High Flight”
“I sang in my chains like the sea.”
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
—Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill
I Thought Of Daisy
“…I sang in my chains like the sea”
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
—Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill
John Sapiro 