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Friday 25 May 2018

Joseph Ceravolo: The Catskills | The Catskills: An Interpretation | Even Superman

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blackhead,black dome MT 7 (7) | by daniel sanijoa

blackhead, black dome MT 7 (7) [NY]: photo by dan Kong, 29 May 2015

Joseph Ceravolo: The Catskills 

I climbed to the top of Blackhead Mountain
My mind had been thinking
of the world below.
I was only eighteen.
Suddenly overcome with her,
I studded the imagination
with backtracks into life.
The scene below became a distant lagoon.
O dreams of migration!
dreams of migration
sneaking up behind me.
I was only eighteen.
She touched my neck:
it lifted my insides into flames,
and me not thinking what I'd do
sprang from the top
toward the endless field below.
I was only eighteen.

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): The Catskills, from Millenium Dust (1982) 


North-West at Blackhead Mountain Range | by andyarthur

North-West at Blackhead Mountain Range [NY]: photo by Andy Arthur, 2 May 2010

Sheridan Mountain Beyond Devil's Clove | by andyarthur

Sheridan Mountain Beyond Devil's Clove Blackhead Mountain Range [NY]: photo by Andy Arthur, 8 May 2010

Joseph Ceravolo: The Catskills: An Interpretation 

In that burgeoning season, as I crossed the mountains, I paused to look back from the place where Petrarch wrote his letter to Laura, and the sight of the long valleys stretching out behind me, over which Vergil had passed, reminded me that what sprang from the top, in that season, was always a certain not thinking what to do, which in that season I was accustomed to permit myself. For so I had been taught.  But now, as the sun began its slow descent from zenith, when I looked down into the distant bluish-green valleys rolling away into hazy purple twilight mists and fields already in shadow far below, I fell into vertigo. It was in this state that I took up pen and paper. 


South Mountain Ridge | by andyarthur

South Mountain Ridge Blackhead Mountain Range [NY]: photo by Andy Arthur, 8 May 2010 

(Have I mentioned that when the events narrated above occurred, I was 118 years old, had still not received even the most elementary instruction in English - then a barbaric tongue employed only by northern savages - and the Renaissance was coming on toward me like a runaway ghost train, promising to invalidate and delegitimize the very ground upon which, trembling pitifully as I leant huncht upon a crooked stick, I had always laid out the cloth for a refreshing picnic lunch, in traversing the Alps?)


North-West | by andyarthur

Rocket Man | by Sona Maletz

3 comments:

tpw said...

"The Catskills"---terrific poem. When I was 16, I spent the summer in the Catskills, and the same thing happened to me.

Mose23 said...

Looking at some of the photos sent me searching for a Palestinian film based on the Deir Yassin massacre. Couldn't quite find the thing (there's a fair few documentaries). Saw it at a local cinema on a very ropey print.

The eyes of Mike Pence harry sleep away.

a certain not thinking what to do - such a lovely cluster of words

TC said...

All of a sudden I want to be 16, and in the Catskills!

The moment of not thinking what you'd/I'd/anybody'd do is the decisive moment. The moment we always miss most! The moment very few poets ever have the courage to capture!