The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.
Their kind across the desert range
Where tulips spring from stones,
Not knowing they will suffer change
Or vultures pick their bones.
Their strength's eternal in their sight,
They overtake the deer in flight,
And in their arrogance they smite;
But I am sage, if they are strong:
Man's love is transient as his death is long.
Yet oh what powers to deceive!
My wit is turned to faith,
And at this moment I believe
In love, and scout at death.
I came from nowhere, and shall be
Strong, steadfast, swift, eternally:
I am a lion, a stone, a tree,
And as the Polar star in me
Is fixed my constant heart on thee.
Ah, may I stay forever blind
With lions, tigers, leopards, and their kind.
Virginia Woolf -English novelist, essayist and critic. Innovative novelist, perceptive critic, and pioneering feminist essayist, Virginia Woolf made a major contribution to the development of the novel with her impressionistic style and characters.
My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest
Every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before.
Undisturbed by the affairs of the world I live at ease,
Woodmen's singing rarely reaching me through the trees.
While the sun stays in the sky, I mend my torn clothes
And facing the moon, I read holy texts aloud to myself.
Let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith.
To enjoy life's immensity, you do not need many things.
All of the woodblock printing and painting output of the German artist emil Orlik. There are pages and pages of his prodigious output of intaglio, woodcut, woodblock-printing and painting while in Japan and Europe.....
Almost all the considerable in-depth information to be found about Emil Orlik is written in German. To enhance knowledge of this unique and important artist whose career spanned almost fifty years from the 1880s to the 1930s, Limited Edition Graphics in London have collected together biographical material which is presented here in English. Orlik's prints and some related images have been placed in categories which make it easy to follow the progress of Orlik's work. Inventory items can be found at the top of the thumbnail image pages of each category, followed below by archival material of prints previously sold or scanned from diverse sources.
Emil Orlik: Title page of Lafcadio Hearn "Kwai-Dan"
Orlik translated Hearn's book of strange tales from Japan from English to German
Emil Orlik: Der Japanische Maler Kano Tomonobu - The Japanese Painter Kano Tomonobu
Emil Orlik: Japaner bei der Rast im Gebirge - Japanese Resting on the Mountainside
This Is the First Thing
This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.
--Philip Larkin
Emil Orlik: Tempelgarten in Kyoto
Full Moon and Little Frieda
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.
David Hinton's translations are second to none and you'll not do poorly to grab anything with his imprint upon it. Noodle about his pages to witness his skill in coaxing forth the words of the ancients.
Wheel-Rim River
1 Elder-Cliff Cove
At the mouth of Elder-Cliff, a rebuilt house
among old trees, broken remnants of willow.
Those to come: who will they be, their grief
over someone's long-ago life here empty.
5 Deer Park
No one seen. Among empty mountains,
hints of driftng voice, faint, no more.
Entering these deep woods, late sunlight
flares on green moss again, and rises.
6 Magnolia Park
Autumn mountains gathering last light,
one bird follows another in flight away.
Shifting kingfisher-greens flash radiant
scatters. Evening mists: nowhere they are.
Photo of mine from 1932 of Meher Baba who was born in Pune, India to a Zoroastrian family. His given name was Merwan Sheriar Irani. He was the second son of Sheriar Mundegar Irani, a Persian Zoroastrian who had been a wandering Sufi dervish before settling in Pune, and Sheriar's young wife, Shireen. From 1925 to the end of his life, Meher Baba maintained silence, and communicated by means of an alphabet board or by unique hand gestures With his mandali ('circle' of disciples), he spent long periods in seclusion, often fasting, but he would intersperse these periods with wide-ranging travels, public gatherings, and works of charity, including working with lepers, the poor, and the mad. After suffering as a passenger in two automobile accidents, one in the United States in 1952 and one in India in 1956, his capacity to walk became seriously limited. In 1962 he invited his western followers to India for a mass darshan called The East-West Gathering. Despite deteriorating health, he continued his "universal work," which included fasting, seclusion, and meditation, until he died on January 31, 1969. His samadhi (tomb-shrine) in Meherabad, India has become a place of international pilgrimage.
What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.
No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.
So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.
But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and Cream
of Wheat, its curl of butter right
in the middle of its forehead, he paid for our dresses
with his metal sweat, sweet in the morning
and sour in the evening. I love the I,
frail between its flitches, its hard ground
and hard sky, it soars between them
like the soul that rushes, back and forth,
between the mother and father. What if they had loved each other,
how would it have felt to be the strut
joining the floor and roof of the truss?
I have seen, on his shirt-cardboard, years
in her desk, the night they made me, the penciled
slope of her temperature rising, and on
the peak of the hill, first soldier to reach
the crest, the Roman numeral I--
I, I, I, I,
girders of identity, head on,
embedded in the poem. I love the I
for its premise of existence--our I--when I was
born, part gelid, I lay with you
on the cooling table, we were all there, a
forest of felled iron. The I is a pine,
resinous, flammable root to crown,
which throws its cones as far as it can in a fire.
--Sharon Olds
Sitting Outside
These lawn chairs and the chaise lounge
of bulky redwood were purchased for my father
twenty years ago, then plumped down in the yard
where he seldom went when he could still work
and never had stayed long. His left arm
in a sling, then lopped off, he smoked there or slept
while the weather lasted, watched what cars passed,
read stock reports, counted pills,
then dozed again. I didn't go there
in those last weeks, sick of the delusions
they still maintained, their talk of plans
for some boat tour or a trip to the Bahamas
once he'd recovered. Under our willows,
this old set's done well: we've sat with company,
read or taken notes--although the arm rests
get dry and splintery or wheels drop off
so the whole frame's weakened if it's hauled
across rough ground. Of course the trees,
too, may not last: leaves storm down,
branches crack off, the riddled bark
separates, then gets shed. I have a son, myself,
with things to be looked after. I sometimes think
since I've retired, sitting in the shade here
and feeling the winds shift, I must have been filled
with a child dread you could catch somebody's dying
if you got too close. And you can't be too sure.
Koko by Yoshida Hiroshi from the Japanese Print Gallery
The Coming of Light
Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.
I like them
11:48am
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