photograph by Natalie Parham via Unsplash
I still see
a reflection
in that strip mall shoe store glass
autumn winter sun winds whirling
but mine own
becoming myself
— J.S.
“Dramatis Personae (September, 1978)”
Tag: memories
“my beloved, isiZulu”
photograph by Ben Koorengevel via Unsplash
I can see the house on the hill where we make our own vegetables out back
and drink warm wine out of jam jars
and sing songs in the kitchen until the sun comes up
wena you make me feel like myself again.
— Yrsa Daley-Ward, “sthandwa sami (my beloved, isiZulu)” (excerpt)
“At ten o’clock of a winter eve”
photograph by cottonbro studio via Pexels
I HAD for my winter evening walk—
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o’clock of a winter eve.
— Robert Frost, “Good Hours”
“Narcissus”
photograph by kevin turcios via Unsplash
Near the path through the woods I’ve seen it:
a trail of white candles.I could find it again, I could follow
its light deep into shadows.Didn’t I stand there once?
Didn’t I choose to go backdown the cleared path, the familiar?
Narcissus, you said. Wasn’t thisthe flower whose sudden enchantments
led Persephone down into Hades?You remember the way she was changed
when she came every spring, having seenthe withering branches, the chasms,
and how she had to return therehelplessly, having eaten
the seed of desire. What was itI saw you were offering me
without meaning to, there in the sunlight,while the flowers beckoned and shone
in their flickering season?
— Patricia Hooper
“the docent”
photograph by Pesce Huang via Unsplash
the docent
just before
closing time
i found myself
in european sculpture and decorative arts
lost in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
with so much to learn
and you resplendently reverberant
in a white blouse
like an impressionist painting
— J.S.
The Great Gatsby
photograph by RODNAE Productions via Pexels
I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it…
— The Great Gatsby
“BEFORE the ice is in the pools”
photograph by Korney Violin via Unsplash
BEFORE the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!What we touch the hems of
On a summer’s day;
What is only walking
Just a bridge away;That which sings so, speaks so,
When there’s no one here,—
Will the frock I wept in
Answer me to wear?
— Emily Dickinson
vissi d’amore
photograph by Maksym Kaharlytskyi via Unsplash
Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy who was sitting frightened but graceful on the edge of a stiff chair.
— The Great Gatsby
renaissance
photograph by Jonathan Borba via Pexels
Someone will walk into your life,
Leave a footprint on your heart…
— Gary Lenhart
BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
photograph by Meghan Holmes via Unsplash
The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars.
— The Great Gatsby
Chapter 4
photograph by Dids via Pexels
“It was a strange coincidence,” I said.
“But it wasn’t a coincidence at all.”
“Why not?”
“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”
Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor…
— The Great Gatsby
“Full many a glorious morning have I seen”
Northeastern University, Course Catalog (1986-87)
FULL many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
But, out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.
— Sonnet XXXIII
“Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain”
photograph by Joshua Teichroew via Pexels
THY gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character’d with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity…
— Sonnet CXXII
“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”
photograph by Inga Seliverstova via Pexels
THAT time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
— Sonnet LXXIII
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line…
“Loss”
photograph by Antoine Da cunha via Unsplash
To live without the one you love
an empty dream never known
true happiness except as such youthwatching snow at window
listening to old music through morning.
Riding down that deserted streetby evening in a lonely cab
past a blighted theatre
oh god yes, I missed the chance of my lifewhen I gasped, when I got up and
rushed out the room
away from you.
— John Wieners
“Duet On Mass Ave, June, 1981”
Mohamed Hayibor, Church of Christ, Scientist (2016)
Duet On Mass Ave, June, 1981
over the sound
of summer fountains
I heard your melody
echo
the city
ten true summers we’ll be there and laughing too
bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
but to be young was very heaven!
— J.S.
“thermodynamics”
Jamaica, 1986 (digital edit)
thermodynamics
incandescent light burns
down frayed wires—
spectral radiance.
I move my finger across the frost
on the window.
— J.S.
“Souvenir”
cf. photograph by RODNAE Productions via Pexels
Just a rainy day or two
In a windy tower,
That was all I had of you—
Saving half an hour.Marred by greeting passing groups
In a cinder walk,
Near some naked blackberry hoops
Dim with purple chalk.I remember three or four
Things you said in spite,
And an ugly coat you wore,
Plaided black and white.Just a rainy day or two
And a bitter word.
Why do I remember you
As a singing bird?
— Edna St. Vincent Millay
“His soul has in its Autumn”
photograph by Shaan Johari via Pexels
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
— Keats, “The Human Seasons”
It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference
“His Phoenix”
edited digital collage including photograph by Yoann Boyer via Unsplash
There’ll be that crowd to make men wild through all the centuries,
And maybe there’ll be some young belle walk out to make men wild
Who is my beauty’s equal, though that my heart denies,
But not the exact likeness, the simplicity of a child,
And that proud look as though she had gazed into the burning sun,
And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray,
I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God’s will be done,
I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
— W.B. Yeats
A Million Miles Away
photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash
A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d
Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d
And ached for wings, because I knew the three;
The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name…
— Keats, “Ode on Indolence”
“Full souls are double mirrors”
cf. The Glucksman Library, “Interior of Foundation Building” (edited digital collage)
Full souls are double mirrors, making still
An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.
— Middlemarch, Epigraph to Chapter LXXII
“My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.”
photograph by Kindel Media via Pexels
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.
— Sonnet L
“Savez-vous quelque bien qui console du regret d’un monde?”
Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay
Again I feel the words inspire
Their mournful calm; serene,
Yet tinged with infinite desire
For all that might have been—
— Matthew Arnold, “Obermann Once More”
“Beyond Hammonton”
photograph by Jéssica Oliveira via Unsplash
Night is longing, longing, longing,
beyond all endurance.
— Henry Miller, from the Epigraph
“La Fraisne”
photograph by Les Anderson via Unsplash
Once when I was among the young men …
And they said I was quite strong, among the young men …
Once there was a woman …
… but I forget … she was …
… I hope she will not come again.… I do not remember …
I think she hurt me once, but …
That was very long ago.
— Ezra Pound
“Ophelia”
photograph by Jizo via Pexels
Ophelia
strutting
now
fretting
his hour
upon the stage
now
the time gives it proof —
I did love you once
— J.S.
“A Winter’s Tale”
photograph by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels
Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow,
And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;
Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go
On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf
Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;
But she’s waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half
Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.Why does she come so promptly, when she must know
That she’s only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;
The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow –
Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?
— D. H. Lawrence
Tithonus
photograph by Taylor Grote via Unsplash
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall…
— Tennyson
“The Passions that we Fought with and Subdued”
photograph by John Moeses Bauan via Unsplash
The passions that we fought with and subdued
Never quite die…
— Trumbull Stickney
“Susan other”
photograph by Manuel Meurisse via Unsplash
Susan other
Susan other
glinting fires
swim in your iris
while I,
the rocks at low tide
Öd’ und leer das Meer
— J.S.
“Days of Our Years”
photograph by Craig Whitehead via Unsplash
It’s brief and bright, dear children; bright and brief.
Delight’s the lightning; the long thunder’s grief.
— John Frederick Nims
“Samson to his Delilah”
photograph by Mariano Nocetti via Unsplash
Could not once blinding me, cruel, suffice?
When first I look’d on thee, I lost mine eyes.
— Richard Crashaw
“Nothing Gold Can Stay”
photograph by Florencia Viadana via Unsplash
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
— Robert Frost
“Song in the Songless”
photograph by Scott Webb via Unsplash
They have no song, the sedges dry,
And still they sing.
It is within my breast they sing,
As I pass by.
Within my breast they touch a string,
They wake a sigh.
There is but sound of sedges dry;
In me they sing.
— George Meredith
“ONCE, in a house on egypt street”
“Edward?” said Abilene.
Yes, said Edward.
“Edward,” she said again, certain this time.
Yes, said Edward, yes, yes, yes.
It’s me.
— Kate DiCamillo, The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane
All my instincts, they return
The grand façade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside…
“turning point II”
cf. photograph by Joanna Nix-Walkup via Unsplash
turning point II
where did you park your car?
— J.S.
“Long Neglect Has Worn Away”
Carol Highsmith, “Family Day on the grounds of the Alabama River Pulp Company” (2010)
Long neglect has worn away
Half the sweet enchanting smile;
Time has turned the bloom to gray;
Mold and damp the face defile.But that lock of silky hair,
Still beneath the picture twined,
Tells what once those features were,
Paints their image on the mind.Fair the hand that traced that line,
“Dearest, ever deem me true”;
Swiftly flew the fingers fine
When the pen that motto drew.
— Emily Brontë
“We’ll go no more a-roving”
photograph by Artem Maltsev via Unsplash
SO, we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.
— Byron
Fern Hill
photograph by Zachary Nelson via Unsplash
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means…
— Dylan Thomas
“Go Now”
photograph by pasja1000 via Pixabay
With the love of the storm he burns,
He sings, he laughs, well I know how,
But forgets when he returns
As I shall not forget her ‘Go now’.
— Edward Thomas
“I so liked Spring…”
cf. photograph by Ana Markovych via Unsplash
I so liked Spring last year
Because you were here; –
The thrushes too –
Because it was these you so liked to hear –
I so liked you.This year’s a different thing, –
I’ll not think of you.
But I’ll like the Spring because it is simply Spring
As the thrushes do.
— Charlotte Mew
“Schrödinger’s Reverie”
photograph by Nicate Lee via Unsplash
Schrödinger’s Reverie
she
is not here
and here
at the same
time
— J.S.
Idea 61
photograph by Christian Lue via Unsplash
SINCE there ’s no help, Come, let us kiss and part!
Nay, I have done. You get no more of me!
And I am glad, yea, glad, with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly, I my self can free.
Shake hands for ever! Cancel all our vows!
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows,
That we one jot of former love retain!
Now at the last gasp of LOVE’s latest breath.
When his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies;
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes:
Now, if thou wouldst! when all have given him over,
From death to life, thou might’st him yet recover!
— Michael Drayton
“Do you still remember: falling stars”
photograph by Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash
Do you still remember: falling stars,
how they leapt slantwise through the sky
like horses over suddenly held-out hurdles
of our wishes—did we have so many?—
for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere;
almost every gaze upward became
wedded to the swift hazard of their play,
and our heart felt like a single thing
beneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance—
and was whole, as if it would survive them!
— Rilke
Once In A Very Blue Moon
remembrancer
cf. photograph by Matt Moloney via Unsplash (edit)
The heart asks more than life can give,
When that is learned, then all is learned
— Sara Teasdale, “Moonlight”
“Delia 1: Unto the boundless Ocean of thy beauty”
Maclean’s Magazine (1967)
Unto the boundless Ocean of thy beauty
Runs this poor river, charged with streams of zeal:
Returning thee the tribute of my duty,
Which here my love, my youth, my plaints reveal.
Here I unclasp the book of my charged soul,
Where I have cast th’accounts of all my care:
Here have I summed my sighs, here I enroll
How they were spent for thee; look what they are.
Look on the dear expenses of my youth,
And see how just I reckon with thine eyes:
Examine well thy beauty with my truth,
And cross my cares ere greater sum arise.
Read it sweet maid, though it be done but slightly;
Who can show all his love, doth love but lightly.
— Samuel Daniel, “Delia 1: Unto the boundless Ocean of thy beauty”
“one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face”
Northeastern University Course Catalog (1974-75)
WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
— Yeats
“you awoke to find your black feathers rooted in the lake’s early freeze.”
photograph by jurien huggins via Unsplash
One white morning, you awoke to find
your black feathers rooted in the lake’s early freeze.
Your friends had fled…
— Margo Button, “With No Explanation” (excerpt)
“Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe”
photograph by Leslie Jones via Unsplash
Green apples dancing in a wash of sun—
Ripples of sense and fun—
A net of light that wavers as it weaves
The sunlight on the chattering leaves;
The half-dazed sound of feet,
And carriages that ripple in the heat.
The parasols like shadows of the sun
Cast wavering shades that run
Across the laughing faces and across
Hair with a bird-bright gloss.
The swinging greenery casts shadows dark,
Hides me that I may mark
How, buzzing in this dazzling mesh, my soul
Seems hardening it to flesh, and one bright whole.
O sudden feathers have a flashing sheen!
The sun’s swift javelin
The bird-songs seem, that through the dark leaves pass;
And life itself is but a flashing glass.
— Edith Sitwell
“Mindful of you…”
photograph by Lisa Fotios via Pexels
MINDFUL of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,
And all the storms that the four seasons bring.You go no more on your exultant feet
Up paths that only mist and morning knew,
Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
Of a bird’s wings too high in air to view,—
But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair,—and the long year remembers you.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay
“spiritus mundi”
Northeastern University Course Catalog (1978-79)
spiritus mundi
things
fell
apart
— J.S.
If he could hold her so close in his arms…again
Northeastern University Course Catalog (1985-86)
hearing your voice
reminds me
one summer
so long ago
was that me
as the radio played
nothing stands between love and you
— J.S.
Chapter 6
cf. photograph by Ivan Samkov via Pexels
He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…
— The Great Gatsby
“Ceci n’est pas une intersection.”
Photograph by Daniel Monteiro via Unsplash
Ceci n’est pas une intersection.
In the warm twilight
I am translated
refracted
at the red light
the song on the radio
preternatural
holding, as ‘twere,
the mirror up to nature
and unravels my heart
— J.S.
Chapter 8
photograph by Inga Seliverstova via Pexels
He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy’s house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty.
He left feeling that if he had searched harder he might have found her—that he was leaving her behind…
— The Great Gatsby
“Life Savers”
photograph by Leon Bublitz via Unsplash
Life Savers
the train rolled around the bend
Life Savers refracting in the glass
autumn aurorae
I ran all the way down the station stop
my heart in my head
and said
I love you
— J.S.
“The Sun-Dial”
cf. video by kokokara via Pexels
Every day,
Every day,
Tell the hours
By their shadows,
By their shadows.
— Adelaide Crapsey
Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels)
The Stranger
photograph by Johnny Cohen via Unsplash
For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a “fiancé,” why she had played at beginning again…
— Albert Camus
But if I close my eyes it’s only yesterday
cf. video by Alena Darmel via Pexels
When youth’s bright sun has once declined
And bid his smiling day expire,
Mem’ry, thy torch steals up behind,
And sets thy hidden stars on fire.
— George Moses Horton, Memory
Trimalchio’s lament
cf. yearbook page by Bruce Detorres via flickr
“And she doesn’t understand,” he said. “She used to be able to understand. We’d sit for hours—”
He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers.
— The Great Gatsby
John Sapiro 