Torrential rain on Thassos Island, Greece: photo by Edal Anton Lefterov, 2011
...The evenings of the ancients
Were like mine,
...This evening of cold rain.
Rain falling: photo by Axel Drouin, 2005
...The winter rain
Shows what is before our eyes
...As though it were long ago.
Rain falls: photo by Tomasz Sienicki, 2004
The evenings of the ancients / The winter rain: Yosa Buson (1716-1783), translated by Reginald Horace Blyth
Yes the familiarity with such days
ReplyDeleteShades of
false dream flickering
idols of yesteryear
tomorrows unknowns flitting lifeless
bloodless through the eye
Somehow we are all their vision
the bickering petty lot
of us And they?
They must love themselves very well
or remain ghosts
Tom,
ReplyDelete"rain/ shows what is before our eyes. . . "
break between storms this morning, the world is green (white in mountains, almost 4 feet of new snow in last 24 hours)
3.17
light coming into sky above black plane
of ridge, shadowed green leaf on branch
in foreground, wave sounding in channel
portrait against white wall,
no reference to color
that to which, so that from
which is, that itself
grey white fog against invisible ridge,
whiteness of gull standing on sandspit
I did a double take--thought these were paintings at first--guess all that rain blurred my eyesight.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful poems, pictures. Not enough rain in here although a pipe keeps leaking onto the porch (at a friend's place) and I keep waking up satisfied that it is raining.
ReplyDeleteOne umbrella —
the person more in love
gets wet.
— Keisanjin
The anciency of rain -- waiting for a late bus that never comes, thick evening mist in dimly lit streets vacated of life save for that indicated by puffs of breath emanating from the doorway-sleeper bundles, the vagrant nation awakening to cough and quarrel, a blurry host of bickering ghosts between our old eyes and the always changing world.
ReplyDeleteYou never know
ReplyDeletewhat’s going to
come out of the weather:
These are perfect pairings of words and pictures. Last night, when it didn't rain but but Mars was out red, clear and distant, but close, it felt quite a bit like this. Being behind hedges of heavy colds made the feeling even stronger. Curtis
ReplyDeleteCurtis,
ReplyDeleteIt's been another bizarro non-starter early spring here this year -- much as last, when all through this time, huge comma-shaped masses of cold wet air welled up from the Sea of Japan, looped round the Aleutians and then barreled down the coast to make landfall around the Golden Gate, as though the bridge were a suction machine. This past week there has been a chain of deluges, and now as the last cold front passed through it's temps in the thirties, electrical storms & small hail. The pattern locked into place. We've been in the Golden State much of the past half century, but this new Leaden Springtime phenomenon is new. We take it as an indicator of climate change. Others though take it as an indicator of great business for the mountain ski resorts.
I take it as.....I have no idea about anything any more. (It's actually reached that point.) On Saturday Jane and I were driving across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. It was a bright and sunny day and below bridge roadway level a long white cloud lay completely across and down the length of the Hudson like a giant oblong pillow. It was extremely beautiful and about the most remarkable thing I've ever seen on the river. When we reached our destination (a haircutting place), a lot of people were talking about it, which was kind of a relief because it was so very unusual it seemed like a dream. Curtis
ReplyDeleteYou know we are fellow sleep-problematics, Curtis (well I fear I'm even a bit farther gone than you), and as such, I could easily identify with an inclination toward imaginally reclining on that dreamy cloud, and never ever waking up. For a while.
ReplyDelete