Farewell to Romney

.

U.S. 50 leading west out of Romney, West Virginia: photo by John Vachon, 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

When the interloper ambled
importunately across
the path of the religious parade
in downtown Romney West
Virgin-i-ay
heads turned
and there were hard looks
a cold mean January day
stern serious faces fixed
toward the future's
thin ray of promise
for everyone
of more of the same

Religious parade, Romney, West Virginia: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939

 

 

Religious parade, Romney, West Virginia: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939

Main street, Romney, West Virginia: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939

Religious parade, Romney, West Virginia: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939

Religious parade, Romney, West Virginia: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939

Indian Mound Cemetery at edge of Romney, West Virginia: photo by John Vachon, 1942

Photos from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

This post for the poet Ed Sanders: "Would somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?" (August 2012)

William Empson: Ignorance of Death

.

Mann, aus dem Fenster springend [Man Jumping From a Window]: Gerhard Richter, 1965, graphite on paper, 35.5 cm x 27.8 cm (Gerhard Richter Art)

Then there is this civilising love of death, by which
Even music and painting tell you what else to love.
Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death

Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
The Communists however disapprove of death
Except when practical. The people who dig up

Corpses and rape them are I understand not reported.
The Freudians regard the death-wish as fundamental,
Though "the clamour of life" proceeds from its rival "Eros."

Whether you are to admire a given case for making less clamour
Is not their story. Liberal hopefulness
Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.

Because we have neither hereditary nor direct knowledge of death
It is the trigger of the literary man's biggest gun
And we are happy to equate it to any conceived calm.

Heaven me, when a man is ready to die about something
Other than himself, and is in fact ready because of that,
Not because of himself, that is something clear about himself.

Otherwise I feel very blank upon this topic,
And think that though important, and proper for anyone to bring up,
It is one that most people should be prepared to be blank upon.


William Empson: Ignorance of Death, from The Gathering Storm, 1940

  Mädchen am Strand [Girls on the Beach]: Gerhard Richter, 1967, graphite on paper, 25 cm x 32.8 cm (Gerhard Richter Art)

20.9.1985: Gerhard Richter, 1985, graphite on paper, 21 cm x 29.7 cm (Gerhard Richter Art)

20.9.1985: Gerhard Richter, 1985, graphite on paper, 21 cm x 29.7 cm (Kunsthalle Emden, Emden, Germany)

28.2.1986 (1): Gerhard Richter, 1986, graphite on paper, 21 cm x 29.7 cm (Gerhard Richter Art)

28.2.1986 (2): Gerhard Richter, 1986, graphite on paper, 21 cm x 29.7 cm (Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland)

28.2.1986 (3): Gerhard Richter, 1986, graphite on paper, 21 cm x 29.7 cm (Gerhard Richter Art)

Myopia Falls

.

Praekestolen, Geiranger Fjord, Norway, c. 1890: photochrome print, Detroit Publishing Co., 1905 (Library of Congress)

The happenings of the world are like shimmering fish leaping through the falls.
I cannot bend the happenings of the world to my will: I am completely powerless.

Silvefos, Hardanger Fjord, Norway, c. 1890: photochrome print, Detroit Publishing Co., 1905 (Library of Congress)

A tidy simulation credible in
proportion to your myopia falls over everything.

 

Vorinfos, Hardanger Fjord, Norway, c. 1890: photochrome print, Detroit Publishing Co., 1905 (Library of Congress)



It begins then to be possible to imagine that

The World and Life are one.

Buierbrae Glacier, Odde, Hardanger Fjord, Norway, c. 1890: photochrome print, Detroit Publishing Co., 1905 (Library of Congress)

From Elegies of the Far North

.

 View from Bárrás, Finnmark Fylke, Norway (II): photo by Villie Miettinnen, 4 September 2006

Who, if you cried out, would hear you in this village of the stone deaf
and eternally benumbed? Would they, to humour you
in your bewildered questionings, interrupt their rude
drinking games, their gropings in the violent dark of the cottages? and even if one
of the maids of the village, caught up in the solitude
which holds in its gentle palm the space around you at every moment of this world, her rustic
dirndl stained by the splashed droppings of the cattle she so lovingly tends, were to 
leave off early from the labours of the husky barn
and press you against her breast heart: you would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. 

Rilke in the Far North

.

A small mountain pond and fells surrounding Bárrás, Finnmark Fylke, Norway: photo by Villie Miettinnen, 4 September 2006

Lord: it's not time yet. The shrunk summer has slipped

Beneath the sundial floor

And the shadows say: three thirty; quarter to four; four

Fifteen; four thirty. And so on.

The water is a reflecting mirror below the violet slopes at the foot

Of the ashen peaks

And the villagers have retired within the safe enclosure of

Their cottages. If you have no home

Nor place to stay, do not knock on any door. No one

Will answer. Now the sun is going down

And the feeling of winter approaching

Lies upon the hills like hoar frost. Reading, writing

Long letters to yourself, wandering absently in circles, none

Of these things helps. And dry leaves are not yet blowing in that oddly

Menacing way that happens when night falls.

 

Dürer: The Quarry

.

Willow Mill: Albrecht Dürer, 1496-1498, watercolour and gouache on paper, 251 x 367 mm (Kunsthalle, Bremen) 

To drift away from them, without slipping
always into these recursive
eddies -- the helpless leaf spinning
in the unseen current, the descent
beyond the tranquility of the millpond
into the unexpected hidden maelstrom,
the concealed swirling mêlee, all these late
disorienting riverine reminders
discerned from the anxious banks
during the departure from the outskirts
of the quiet village, perched
at the edge and margin of
the known world, back
.....................and again down down 
into the middle
ages. And after night

fall: forever the restless flood
of the memoria, the walls
of the town quarry crumbling, collapsing
the stove-in temporal
node detaching from the landlocked
superstructure, breaking away
gradually, in sections
much as a thawing northern ice-floe
separating itself from the mass
and tumbling into oceanic empty space...
those depths... is this history then?

Quarry: Albrecht Dürer, 1506, watercolour and gouache on paper, 225 x 287 mm (British Museum, London)

J. V. Cunningham: Consolatio Nova

.

The Auto Junkyard: photo by Walker Evans, from Fortune, April 1962 (via full table)

To speak of death is to deny it, is
To give unpredicated substance phrase
And being. So the discontinuous,
The present instant absent finally
Without future or past, is yet in time
For we are time, monads of purposes
Beyond ourselves that are not purposes,
A causeless all of momentary somes.
And in such fiction we can think of death.

 

J.V. Cunningham: Consolatio Nova (1967), from The Collected Poems and Epigrams, 1971

Robert Herrick: Memorials of the Obscure

.

Grave on the high plains, Dawson County, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, March 1940

Upon a Child. An Epitaph

But borne, and like a short Delight,
I glided by my Parents sight.
That done, the harder Fates deny'd
My longer stay, and so I dy'd.


Upon a child

Here a pretty Baby lies
Sung asleep with Lullabies:
Pray be silent, and not stirre
Th'easie earth that covers her.


Upon Prew his Maid

In this little urne is laid
Prewdence Baldwin (once my maid)
From whose happy spark here let
Spring the purple Violet.

 

Grave and headstone in mountain cemetery.  Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, June 1940

 

 

Grave and headstone in mountain cemetery.  Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, June 1940

 

 

Newly-dug grave, Rochester, Pennsylvania: photo by John Vachon, January 1941

 


Grave, Kempton, West Virginia. The cemetery is on the top of a hill behind the town photo by John Vachon, May 1939

 

 

Old grave near Cruger, Mississippi: photo by Russell Lee, September 1938

 

 

Decoration of grave in Spanish-American cemetery, Penasco, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, July 1940

 

   

Mexican grave, near Santon, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

 

Spanish-American grave in rural section of Bernalillo County, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, April 1940

 

 

Grave in the cemetery at Santa Rita, New Mexico. Santa Rita is a copper mining town, inhabitants mostly Mexican: photo by Russell Lee, April 1940

 

   

Mexican grave, Raymondville, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

   

Mexican grave, Raymondville, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

   

Mexican grave, Raymondville, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

  

 

Mexican graves, Raymondville, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

 

Mexican grave, Raymondville, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

  

Mexican grave, Raymondville, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

  

Mexican grave, Raymondville, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

 

New Mexican graves in cemetery, Raymondville, Texas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939

 

  

 

Decoration of graves at New Roads, Louisiana on All Saints' Day: photo by Russell Lee, November 1938

 

 

Decorated graves in cemetery at New Roads, Louisiana on All Saints' Day, with chickens eating the flowers: photo by Russell Lee, November 1938

Robert Herrick 1591-1674): Upon a Child. An Epitaph; Upon a Child; Upon Prew his Maid, from Hesperides, 1648

Photos from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

Andrew Marvell: Green Thought

.

Mountain Hemlock (Tsuga mertensia), Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 26 September 2007

Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The Mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does streight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other Worlds, and other Seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green Thought in a green Shade.



Andrew Marvell (1621-1678): The Garden, stanza VI

Dew on foliage of Subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa), Eunice Lake, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 20 September 2004

Engelmann Spruce (Picea engelmannii), foliage, French Creek Trail, Wenatchee Mountains, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 9 October 2005

Grand Fir (Abies grandis), foliage underside, with Bigleaf Maple (fall foliage), Grand Fir and Douglas-fir behind. Kachess Ridge Trail, Wenatchee National Forest, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 9 October 2005

Yellow Cedar (Cupressis nootkatensis), cones and foliage, with Subalpine Fir trees beyond, Crystal Peak Trail, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 25 September 2005



Water-Parsley, aka Pacific Water-dropwort (Oenanthe sarmentosa), Loop Road, Washington Park, Anacortes, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 3 July 2009

Douglas Squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii) on a Pacific Silver Fir (Abies amabilis) branch, Crystal Lakes Trail, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 22 October 2008

American Snowshoe Hare (Lepus americanus), Deer Park Road, Olympic National Park, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 3 July 2008

Hoary Marmot (Marmota caligata), Wonderland Trail, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 24 August 2007



American Black Bear (Ursus americanus), Mount Rainier National Park, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 12 August 2008
 


Columbian Black-tailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus), Coast Deer, male, Olympic National Park: photo by Walter Siegmund, 3 July 2008

Northern Maidenhair Fern (Adiantum pedantum), Sycamore Access trail, Squak Mountain State Park, Issaquah, Washington: photo by Walter Siegmund, 15 May 2007