The Creation of Desire (Leonore Wilson)

Suppose there was an eighth day
after God had rested, when he retained some vigor
and without knowing it, out of sheer boredom,
he dreamt of the lascivious:
thought of rumps and necks
and breasts releasing such energy
that the sun in the heavens grew jealous.
Suppose God after rinsing his great shoulders
and shaking his head, said there must be
something beyond me, some wild strength
in matter that rises, swells like the surf,
so that the heart bends in ecstasy,
something that will make the flesh blossom
vibrate, seethe unequivocally, yes
some yearning, deepening in man
so he is pulled out of himself, out of
the thousand threads that hold him fast,
so every fiber of his body
will whinny and shimmer and birth,
something that will lure him back to me
among the wet grasses and
spongy tussocks, some booming
in his breast, some pulsing and thudding
such that he will praise in unrelenting
hallooing, so that he will razzle
the feather of laughter, and gorge on pleasure,
he will detect it everywhere, even in the shadow’s
splatter, so audacious will he be with
delirium in each nanosecond of happiness he will
speak in proclamations and so on the eighth day God
invented desire out of the sound of rain
and a man and woman running a bit,
out of lightflecks and spores and
bejangled roots and riffled leaves and in the brightest day alive
henceforth desire came.

“The Work of Happiness” by May Sarton

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall–
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
has stood a life’s span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

Shifting the Sun

\

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn’t.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

~ Diana Der-Hovanessian ~

The Invisible Island (Roland Penrose)

Arvo Part: Pari Intervallo

The Secret – Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ebb

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.”

New York exhibit of last works by Picasso