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.
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.
Paris, 1984 by John Sapiro
No donkey can cart
what weighs down your heart.
— Anonymous, East African Proverb (Tr. A. M. Juster)
Eastman Kodak Company, “How to make good movies…” (1938)
The many faces of defeat
Invite you home:
They offer you such silence
As has no truck with time.
The face of horrid purpose,
The train of circumstance
There, the door is closed upon;
They shall no more advance.
Yet see in the uncertain sky
Above your uncertain station–
The sign she left you, passing,
Persists in affirmation.
— Ray Smith, “The Sign”
James Jowers, Tompkins Sq. Park (1967)
Nel suo profondo vidi che s’ interna,
legato con amore in un volume…I saw within its depth how it conceives all things in a single volume bound by love…
— Dante Alighieri, “The Divine Comedy: Paradiso”
Alicia Chen, “Girl listening to music by window” (ca. 2015)
Music—the world that might be,
and yet the world as it is. The heart
comes out of hiding, saying to us:
“Listen, you can say anything you want now.
Here is the instrument.”
— Robert Winner, The Instrument (excerpt)
This above all: to thine own self be true
— Hamlet
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
Photograph by Adrienne Crow via Unsplash
Astrophysics (Halley’s Poem)
on a planet that is spinning
things move away from you at 1,037 miles per hour
on your knees
you need something to hold
it only comes near every 75 or 76 years —
it was last seen in 1986
“eppur si muove” she said
— J.S.
Charles O’Rear, “Train passengers bound for St. Louis, Missouri, board a chartered bus…” (1974)
To the couple that were kissing at the Greyhound Bus Station, July, 1981
You probably don’t remember me.
I was standing next to you waiting.
I was the guy with the guitar and the paperback copy of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.
You’re in your sixties now.
You’ve been married for 40 years.
It doesn’t seem possible
Because the sun is still reflecting off the luggage compartment door
And the driver is still getting impatient
And her blonde hair is still glistening in the late afternoon haze
And I knew I was going to be late.
— J.S.
Jamaica, 1986
thermodynamics
incandescent light burns
down frayed wires—
spectral radiance.
I move my finger across the frost
on the window.
— J.S.
Heaven Help Me
(RIP Deon Estus)
unknown photographer, Workers of printing house having a pre-Christmas coffee (1959)
“O Hamlet, what a falling off was there!”
Photograph by Mateo Avila Chinchilla via Unsplash
So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessèd Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
— Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush (excerpt)
from the Toni Frissell collection, Library of Congress (1946)
She didn’t tell me there were rocks
Under the waves
Right off the shore…
Toni Frissell, “Woman wearing headscarf seated at table with drink” (detail) (ca. 1940)
I NEVER saw that you did painting need…
— Sonnet LXXXIII
Rainy day, Paris, August, 1984
WHEN I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words.A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.
— Robert Frost, “A Late Walk”
cf. Richard Avedon, “Carmen, Homage To Munkacsi, Coat By Cardin, Place François-Premier, Paris” (ca. 1957) and Horst Ehricht, “All the rage in Paris” (Maclean’s Magazine, 1977)
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “WFC-AM & WKYS-FM radio operation” (1977)
OBERON:
Sound music.
[Music.]
Come, my queen, take hands with me,
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be…
[Titania and Oberon dance.]
— A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Esther Bubley, “Girl sitting alone in the Sea Grill…” (1943)
I’ve been made blue
I’ve been lied to
When will I be loved?
Polaroid by Andrei Tarkovsky
I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wish’d-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw in gradual vision through my tears
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years—
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ‘ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
‘Guess now who holds thee?’— ‘Death,’ I said. But there
The silver answer rang— ‘Not Death, but Love.’
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese: i
Garry Winogrand, Untitled (ca. 1965)
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice…
— Robert Frost, Fire and Ice
You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine
Feeling bad, stuck inside. Looking at the mystery tree — I’m not sure what kind it is.
Herbert L. Spencer, “Mere Man” (ca. 1934)
EXCEPT the smaller size, no Lives are round,
These hurry to a sphere, and show, and end.
The larger, slower grow, and later hang—
The Summers of Hesperides are long.
— Emily Dickinson
J.M. Bridges, “Left Ashore” (ca. 1935)
W. T. Starr, “The Idler” (ca. 1916)
A poor torn heart, a tattered heart,
That sat it down to rest,
Nor noticed that the ebbing day
Flowed silver to the west,
Nor noticed night did soft descend
Nor constellation burn,
Intent upon the vision
Of latitudes unknown…
— Emily Dickinson
Photograph by John Loengard from “The Magic Of A Summer House” (LIFE Magazine, 1969)
lost
I really miss you
because I need to ask
where do I go
now?
— J.S.
Mrs. W. M. Gatch, “Waiting for the train” (ca. 1893)
Midnight Train To Georgia by Gladys Knight & The Pips
Educational Screen Magazine, 1954
Sometimes she tries to hide it from me
But when she starts talking over my head
It makes me dizzy…
ca. 1996
…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.
— Dickens, A Christmas Carol
The U.S. National Archives, “A youngster, clutching his soldier father, gazes upward while the latter lifts his wife from the ground to wish her a ‘Merry Christmas.’ The serviceman is one of those fortunate enough to be able to get home for the holidays.” (December, 1944)
photograph by John Sapiro
Entering the Thimble Shoal Channel Tunnel, March, 1985
Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
— Melville, Moby Dick
Stephen Schwartz Performs “Corner of the Sky”
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
— The Great Gatsby
Ladies’ Home Journal, 1948
And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long…
— Keats, Modern Love (excerpt)
Business Screen magazine, 1971
Scan the shape of this dim shadow, once a man
And Oedipus . . . but I was different then.
— Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus (Tr. Murray)
Paris, August, 1984
Nothing should remain unsaid between us
— Robert Frost, To E. T. (excerpt)
The Blue Distance by Mary Chapin Carpenter
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself…
— Clement Clarke Moore, A Visit from St. Nicholas
“Cool Yule” by Louis Armstrong
A great dog.
Oh, how I wish we were back on the road again…
“Me And You And A Dog Named Boo” by Lobo
August, 1984
To be sure, it is sheer madness… to return to the sites of one’s youth and try to relive at forty what one loved or keenly enjoyed at twenty. But I was forewarned of that madness… I hoped, I think, to recapture there a freedom I could not forget. In that spot, indeed, more than twenty years ago, I had spent whole mornings wandering… I was alive then.
— Camus, Return To Tipasa
“Free Man In Paris” — Joni Mitchell
Provincial Archives of Alberta, “Marten River Provincial Park, Alberta” (1970)
Lux Aeterna
suddenly the memory reveals itself
so then, what is time?
time past is time presentI begin again with that summer
(borne back ceaselessly)
(It avails not, time)wind waves
sun clouds glinting
forsaking the fragile
unredeemable future
I call to you
J.S.
“Come Back To Me” by Janet Jackson
cf. LIFE, 1964
Esther Bubley, “Jitterbugs…” (detail) (1943)
Frances Benjamin Johnston, “2 scenes from Pastoral Plays: Strephon casts off Chloe” (1906)
U.S. National Archives, “St. Valentine’s Day Hop…” (detail) (1975)
“You’re wearing a new dress,” he said, as an excuse for gazing at her. And now he heard her answer.
“New? You are conversant with my wardrobe?”
“I am right, am I not?”
“Yes. I recently had it made here, by Lukaek, the tailor in the village. He does work for many of the ladies up here. Do you like it?”
“Very much,” he said, letting his gaze pass over her again before casting his eyes down. “Do you want to dance?” he added.
“Would you like to?” she asked, her brows raised in surprise, but still with a smile…
—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
“Do You Want To Dance” by Bette Midler
William Strode, “Magazines And Newspapers Litter The Intersection Of Sixth & Broadway…” (1972)
You must tell me something that you are sure is true —
I don’t care much what it may be, I will take your word for it.
Things get into a muddle with me…
—Mary Temple, letter to John C. Gray
cf. LIFE, 1964
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself…
–Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
I go on my way to-night, If I can; if not, to-morrow; emigrant train ten to fourteen days’ journey; warranted extreme discomfort…
I have been steadily drenched for twenty-four hours; water-proof wet through; immortal spirit fitfully blinking up in spite…
I am not beaten yet, though disappointed. If I am, it’s for good this time; you know what “for good” means in my vocabulary— something inside of 12 months perhaps; but who knows? At least, if I fail in my great purpose, I shall see some wild life in the West and visit both Florida and Labrador ere I return. But I don’t yet know if I have the courage to stick to life without it. Man, I was sick, sick, sick of this last year.
—Letter from Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin (on board s.s. “Devonia,” an hour or two out of New York, August, 1879)
“Through The Fire” by Chaka Khan
Toni Frissell, “A couple walking along the Seine River in Paris” (detail) (between 1940 and 1969)
Left: Underwood & Underwood, “…a country farm-yard in Ireland” (ca. 1903)
Right: L.M. Melander & Bro., “Another button off” (ca. 1875)
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
Kenneth W. Williams, “What’s This?” (ca. 1938)
John Sapiro 