.
I close my eyes
and see you at the age of 30
beyond the mist of affect
in your blue dress
so slim and Viennese
in the Sharons’ picture gallery
at Tissa’s party
a stormy night in 1974
with the ocean roaring
against the breakwater
I find you there with
all my projections
withdrawn at last
and what appears is
you in your blue dress
in this bewildering recurrent
intensified mind garden
I call creation
because you created it for me
Standing girl with blue dress and green stockings: Egon Schiele, 1913
Girl with blue pillow: Egon Schiele, 1913
Unforgettable--
ReplyDeleteEvery so often this poem works itself up to the front part of my mind, like a favorite song--I search the shelves for my copy of Easter Sunday and read it one more time.
I love the drawings, specially the lower one, it reminds me of this little man called toulous lautrec.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite part of the poem is:
intensified mind garden
I call creation
because you created it for me
Your mind is a gardent that was created for yourself. How beautifull that someone does that, it is because he cares so much for you.
Owen,
ReplyDeleteSweet of you to say so. It's another of my undiscovered minsterpieces from the Church of Private Revelation period. It's not even easy to find in Easter Sunday since the index page number is wrong. (Hidden and esoteric to the end....) Since Easter Sunday it has been stripped of 15 lines. And then resurrected by way of a new ending. All that went on over many years, a sort of intermittent harrowing-and-revival. But as that harrowing process is more or less in the spirit of Egon Schiele, I thought, okay. For confirmation of the revival part, I hereby rely on the rock upon which my new temporary Church of the Order of Lazarus is founded, my friend you.
Mariana,
Many thanks. I've always thought your mind must be a garden. Mine is badly overgrown with weeds and has many fallow sectors. The credit for creation here goes not to a he but to a she. One wouldn't have had it any other way. (The rumours of a He-Creator have I think been greatly exaggerated.)
wow... this is celestial!
ReplyDeleteand all those details make this heavenly feeling so palpable... so concrete...
a reverse movement is experienced here (comparing to the previous poem) and how masterfully it is done...
blue angel
ReplyDeleteblue angle
reverb
cerulean blue
azure too
it's not over
baby blue
says to knife blue
A better ending
ReplyDeleteit's not over you
baby blue
says to knife blue.
"Knife blue" is a color seen at
sunset at Big Sur and in the mountains of New Mexico.
HB,
ReplyDeleteMany thanks. Yes, the details feel palpable to me even now. I find longterm memories of certain moments appear to survive forever, whereas memories of where I put something down five minutes ago are gone--also forever. Perhaps it's best that way, I like the old memories better anyway.
Elmo,
a bit of blue for you
perhaps you were present wholeheartedly in those moments...
ReplyDelete...Yes, that may be the explanation. Fewer of those distracting half-life conditionals and sticky Ifs...
ReplyDeleteThis kind of images from the past are blessings for the heart. They are the treasures we keep jealously and our shelter when we feel "blue".
ReplyDeleteThis particular memory remains vivid to me after almost forty years--a night of storms and heavy surf, in an old house by the breakwater, the northern Pacific roaring at the door, an almost timeless moment... sometimes "history" is cancelled out and we are fortunate enough to hang suspended in such moments, as if for eternity.
ReplyDelete