août

Something about the arrival of August is very romantic. Perhaps it is the  slow decline of summer, planning the last bit of vacation, admiring the freckled shoulders of the women on the train. Whatever it is, I find myself wanting to get out the chessboard and play long games with Przemek by moonlight We sit late into the night drinking wine and discussing combinations. Every night I go to bed intending to rise at 5 am and write poetry, but I have yet to be successful at rising this early.


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this morning

This morning
even my morning glories
are hiding.
not wanting to show their sleep-mussed hair.

Ono No Komachi translated by Jane Hirshfield
The Ink Dark Moon

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stable

This morning I woke up early and drove Tadzio to a horse stable on the outskirts of town. He shouted with delight as he spotted the horses in the early morning light. I left him there for an all day pony camp. I would like him to know the quiet carefulness of horses, the scratchy tickle of hay, and the one-eyed fierceness of barn cats. 

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twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore

Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long
hair,
Little streams pass'd over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended trembling from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun,
they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with the pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

Song of Myself, XI
by Walt Whitman

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of durable kindness

Not the saint
transfixed
at the painting's center,
but the face
of the boy half blocked
by his mother's shoulder.

Not that huge gate
swung open,
but the pin on the hinge.

The intricate
carved stones placed inside
the chimneys.

The village of women
across the mountain,
fitting
embroidered orchards
into the husband's shoes.

The boy is
watching the hawk
glimpsing the rabbit.
The rabbit is savoring
the half-nibbled flower.

Because the grass is wet
we know it is morning.
The mother holds
purple grapes in her hand,
in case her son
grows restless or hungry.

Later,
when it is over,
it will be hot,
but by then
the dark-nosed donkey
will be asleep.

-"Of Durable Kindness" by Jane Hirshfield  The Lives of the Heart
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a story about the body

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused and considered answers to his questions.

One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity- like music - withered very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I could."

He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top, the rest of the bowl - she must have swept from the corners of her studio - was full of bees.

Robert Hass " A Story About the Body"


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The Empty Mountain Resort

This year instead of our usual tradition of eating too many hot dogs and suffering through the heat and fireworks, we spent the Fourth of July at a strangely empty resort at the foot of the mountain. As we wandered about the quiet grounds and admired the freshly set banquet tables outside the white pavilion, we mused that it felt like someone had planned a party and then the volcano had erupted. The stillness combined with the careful maintenance of the place gave everything an unreal, magical air.

In the evening we watched the clouds roll in silently over the hills. The forest was quiet and cool, and we had a delicious dinner with wine and oysters and Spanish guitar. I fell asleep watching the flames in the fireplace, and listening to a conversation in Russian drifting in from outside and through the fir trees. I felt happier than I have felt for a long time.

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