photograph by Jonathan Borba via Pexels
Someone will walk into your life,
Leave a footprint on your heart…
— Gary Lenhart
renaissance
Tag: music
“One half of me is yours, the other half yours— Mine own, I would say— but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.”
photograph by Andrik Langfield via Unsplash
The horses started up, amid farewells and hand-wavings from the bystanders; and then, as Frau Chauchat sank smilingly back against the cushions of the sleigh, her eyes swept the facade of the Berghof, and rested for the fraction of a second upon Hans Castorp’s face. In pallid haste he sought his loggia, thence to get a last glimpse of the sleigh as it went jingling down the drive toward the Dorf. Then he flung himself into his chair…
— The Magic Mountain (Tr. H. T. Lowe-Porter)
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
“O despairer, here is my neck, By God, you shall not go down!”
photograph by SHVETS production via Pexels
I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
O despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
— “Song Of Myself”
“Who goes with Fergus?”
photograph by Tim Foster via Unsplash
Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
— W. B. Yeats
“Come, And Be My Baby”
cf. photograph taken from video by cottonbro studio via Pexels
The highway is full of big cars
going nowhere fast
And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn
Some people wrap their lies around a cocktail glass
And you sit wondering
where you’re going to turn
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
— Maya Angelou
“Bird-Understander”
photograph by Jordan Whitt via Unsplash
Of many reasons I love you here is one
the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alrightso you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal all the people
ignoring it because they do not know
what to do with it except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to deathit makes you terribly terribly sad
You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or (failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the birdAll you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly uselessbut you are wrong
You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them songThese are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurtyou have offered them
to me I am only
giving them backif only I could show you
how very useless
they are not
— Craig Arnold
“cry I can no more”
photograph by Ryan Byrne via Unsplash
NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come…
— Gerard Manley Hopkins
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
“Dreams”
photograph by Yan Krukov via Pexels
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
— Langston Hughes
“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…
I get confused ’cause I don’t know where I stand
photograph by Jared Sluyter via Unsplash
To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans,
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading
moment’s mirth
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights;
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost, why then a grievous labor won;
How ever, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquishèd.
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona
For rain that’s fallen halfway down the sky I apologize
photograph by Joshua Sukoff via Unsplash
Admiringly, my liege. At first
I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart
Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue;
Where the impression of mine eye infixing,
Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,
Which warped the line of every other favor,
Scorned a fair color or expressed it stol’n,
Extended or contracted all proportions
To a most hideous object. Thence it came
That she whom all men praised and whom myself,
Since I have lost, have loved, was in mine eye
The dust that did offend it.
— All’s Well That Ends Well
“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
“To me, fair friend, you never can be old”
photograph by Anthony Tran via Unsplash
TO me, fair friend, you never can be old
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion…
— Sonnet CIV
“The mystery of your loneliness”
photograph by João Jesus via Pexels
Now I see
The mystery of your loneliness and find
Your salt tears’ head.
— All’s Well That Ends Well
I remember the night the Green–Schwarz mechanism was discovered
Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1984-85
String Theory
I remember the night the Green–Schwarz mechanism was discovered —
It was a stormy summer night in 1984.
The lightning that flashed across the equations on the blackboard
also flashed across my curtains,
two oranges on the dining room table,
a Pat Metheny album on the blue shag carpet.
I, too, thought I had solved something.
I, too, thought I was free of anomalies.
But the next day I still couldn’t figure it out.
— J.S.
“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.
“Soli Deo Gloria”: Grand Central, December, 1982
Grego, Street Musician (2014)
“Soli Deo Gloria”: Grand Central, December, 1982
onrushing out into the
42nd street passage
huddled in the corner
frayed and fallen
drifted from the street
in pieces and broken-down
Yamaha nylon string guitar
the third Brandenburg
reverberated, echoed, re-echoed
transfixed and transfigured
I put all my money in his well-worn open case
It was almost Christmas
— J.S.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, BWV 1048 – III. Allegro by TXGQ
“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.
“Think Not All Is Over”
photograph by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels
Think not, when the wailing winds of autumn
Drive the shivering leaflets from the tree,—
Think not all is over: spring returneth,
Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.Think not, when the earth lies cold and sealed,
And the weary birds above her mourn,—
Think not all is over: God still liveth,
Songs and sunshine shall again return.Think not, when thy heart is waste and dreary,
When thy cherished hopes lie chill and sere,—
Think not all is over: God still loveth,
He will wipe away thy every tear.Weeping for a night alone endureth,
God at last shall bring a morning hour;
In the frozen buds of every winter
Sleep the blossoms of a future flower.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Flirtation”
photograph by Christian Lue via Unsplash
Outside the sun
has rolled up her rugsand night strewn salt
across the sky. My heartis humming a tune
I haven’t heard in years!
— Rita Dove (excerpt)
“A Drinking Song”
cf. Charles O’Rear, “Passengers enjoy the view in the observation car…” (1974)
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
— Yeats
“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
“Flower-gathering”
cf. LIFE Magazine (1963)
I LEFT you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?All for me? And not a question
For the faded flowers gay
That could take me from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little while
That I’ve been long away.
— Robert Frost
“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 chainless soul with courage to endure.”
photograph by Emmeline T. via Unsplash
’Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul
With courage to endure.
— Emily Bronte, “The Old Stoic”
“Fear not, Cesario. Take thy fortunes up.”
photograph by Richard Jaimes via Unsplash
Fear not, Cesario. Take thy fortunes up.
— Twelfth Night
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
“The Squire of Low Degree”
photograph by Robin Edqvist via Unsplash
It was a squyer of lowe degré
That loved the kings doughter of Hungré…
— “The Squire of Low Degree”
There’s no other
photograph by Jackson Simmer via Unsplash
’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall.
— Measure for Measure
“My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.”
photograph by Kindel Media via Pexels
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.
— Sonnet L
“I would not creep along the coast”
photograph by National Cancer Institute via Unsplash
I would not creep along the coast but steer
Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.
— Middlemarch, Epigraph to Chapter XLIV
“For the rain it raineth every day.”
photograph by Kalle Saarinen via Unsplash
But when I came, alas, to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.
— Twelfth Night
“WHY, who makes much of a miracle?”
photograph by Jason King via Unsplash
WHY, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky…
Or talk by day with any one I love…
— Whitman, Leaves of Grass (“Miracles”)
“O, step between her and her fighting soul”
photograph by Liz Fitch via Unsplash
O, step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
I Can Help
photograph by Edward Howell via Unsplash
“Oh, rescue her! I am her brother now,
And you her father. Every gentle maid
Should have a guardian in each gentleman.”
— Epigraph to Middlemarch, Chapter VIII
“The Milleres Tale”
cf. photograph by Christian Wiediger via Unsplash
He hadde moore tow on his distaf
Than Gerveys knew…
— Chaucer, “The Milleres Tale”
“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”
“Thel’s Motto”
photograph by Mikita Yo via Unsplash
Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl?
— William Blake, from “The Book of Thel”
“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”
cf. video by Yaroslav Shuraev via Pexels
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
— Gerard Manley Hopkins
“an ever-fixed mark”
photograph by Ron Lach via Pexels
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
— Sonnet CXVI
“SUCCESS is counted sweetest”
photograph by Zane Lindsay via Unsplash
SUCCESS is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
— Emily Dickinson
Free Rein
Frank T. Merrill, “Hercules frees Prometheus from the rock” (1904)
Meanwhile, during the first flush of success and before the release of “Fantastic,” we’d decided that Wham!’s creative reins should rest solely with George if we were to achieve the scale of success we believed was in our reach. I had long recognized his ability… The decision still smarted a little, but it was the right one: George was so clearly developing into a writer of rare ability; indeed it was the desire to realize the potential of that gift which drove him to become a solo artist, free of our band’s constraints…
— Andrew Ridgeley, “Wham!, George Michael and Me: A Memoir”
“Beyond Hammonton”
photograph by Jéssica Oliveira via Unsplash
Night is longing, longing, longing,
beyond all endurance.
— Henry Miller, from the Epigraph
“Convalescence”
photograph by Oveth Martinez via Unsplash
From out the dragging vastness of the sea,
Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous seaweed strands,
He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands
One moment, white and dripping, silently,
Cut like a cameo in lazuli,
Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands
Prone in the jeering water, and his hands
Clutch for support where no support can be.
So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch,
He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow
And sandflies dance their little lives away.
The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch
The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow,
And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.
— Amy Lowell
“no measure”
photograph by Raychan via Unsplash
CONRADE:
What the goodyear, my lord, why are you
thus out of measure sad?DON JOHN:
There is no measure in the occasion that
breeds. Therefore the sadness is without limit.
— Much Ado About Nothing
“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
“Instructions on Not Giving Up”
photograph by Johan Godínez via Unsplash
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
— Ada Limón
“Orpheus in the underworld”
photograph from “Documerica” via Unsplash
Orpheus in the underworld
Eurydice
a fever,
longing still
I turned back
seeing the sun again
and you were gone
— J.S.
“GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him—”
photograph by Jan Tinneberg via Unsplash
“GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him—
Tell him the page I did n’t write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.“Tell him it was n’t a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him—No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it,
And then you and I were silenter.“Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing ‘day!’
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended—
What could it hinder so, to say?
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow,—happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!”
— Emily Dickinson
“I flipped through one story after another until finally I came to a story about a fig-tree.”
photograph by Cody Doherty via Unsplash
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
— Plath, The Bell Jar
Antony and Cleopatra
photograph by Alisa Anton via Unsplash
The barge she sat in like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them. The oars were
silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold, of tissue—
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
— Antony and Cleopatra
“The better angels of our nature”
photograph by Samantha Garrote via Pexels
“…when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
— First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
Troilus and Cressida
photograph by Andrej Nihil via Unsplash
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion…
— Troilus and Cressida
“Kind Are Her Answers”
photograph by Hello Revival via Unsplash
Kind are her answers,
But her performance keeps no day;
Breaks time, as dancers
From their own music when they stray:
All her free favors
And smooth words wing my hopes in vain.
O did ever voice so sweet but only feign?
Can true love yield such delay,
Converting joy to pain?
— Thomas Campion
“The Soul has Bandaged moments”
photograph by Joe Pohle via Unsplash
The Soul has Bandaged moments –
When too appalled to stir –
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her –
— Emily Dickinson
“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.
John Sapiro 