The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world, determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

this warm spring morning,

the strand a blur of sandy light,

and the square white

of the lighthouse–separated from us

by the bay’s ultramarine

as if it were nowhere

we could ever go–gleams

like a tower’s ghost, hazing

into the rinsed blue of March,

our last outpost in the huge

indetermination of sea.

It seems cheerful enough,

in the strengthening sunlight,

fixed point accompanying our walk

along the shore. Sometimes I think

it’s the where-we-will-be,

only not yet, like some visible outcropping

of the afterlife. In the dark

its deeper invitations emerge:

green witness at night’s end,

flickering margin of horizon,

marker of safety and limit.

But limitless, the way it calls us,

and where it seems to want us

to come. And so I invite it

into the poem, to speak,

and the lighthouse says:

Here is the world you asked for,

gorgeous and opportune,

here is nine o’clock, harbor-wide,

and a glinting code: promise and warning.

The morning’s the size of heaven.

What will you do with it?

- Mark Doty

I am posting this poem to remember a rather idyllic state of mind, one that does not come quite often, when one grows wearier by the moment, requiring the weary to understand the moment, and yet hating the weariness. So much like this poem, you can get wearier by the moment, but then the moment comes, what with you do with it?

I wish to run and run and sleep and sleep
In motels or inns or any bed with a bath
Let my legs replace my head
Mind not I have no roof
Mind-less I can better rest.

Many nights

I swing from this emotion to that
As memories take on as many takes
In those years when each year could only be worse -
In nocence, that funny word that should be spelled separate
For becoming adults and knowing
Se crets, its no tion, its pa in
As well as its curious way

From that to this.

When birds fly over the sky or in my head
I think of where and when
This has become my river -
If each weed a drop
I gather them all
Until there is no bank for the water to rise.

The current plays me over
And knee deep I keep looking.

Oh, but it is dirty!
– this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color–
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO–SO–SO–SO

to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

Filling Station
Elizabeth Bishop

The dreams of the young. I once wanted to study Elizabeth Bishop. And that was all I wanted for myself. Now I want so much more. Yet I’m unable to specify one.

The dreams of the young remain with them.

I HAVE A CRAZY

Crazy love of things.
I like pliars,
and scisssors.
I love
cups
rings
and bowls -
not to speak, of course,
of hats.
I love
all thing,
not just
the grandest,
also
the infinite
ly
small-
thimbles,
spurs,
plates,
and flower vases.

Oh yes.

Amo las cosas loca,
locamente.

Ode To Things (oda a las cosa)
Pablo Neruda

Did you notice how smart the enamel drinking jar is? I’m not surprised if people in the past, at a certain moment in time, was smarter than us today. Oh yes. Amo las cosas loca, locamente.

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You cannot play things as they are.’

The man replied, ‘Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.’

And they said then, ‘But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.’

The Blue Guitar
Wallace Stevens

If you repeat this over and aloud and hear yourself in the crack, you will.
If not, Stevie’s Vintage Lingerie is quite uplifting.

We use this book to prop up a light at the window display, not because it is not good, but because it has the potential to look salacious. Of course it is for sale.

Ah, Love, you smell of petroleum
and overwork
with grease on your fingernails,
paint in your hair
there is a pained look in your eye
from no appreciation
you speak to me of the lilacs
and appleblossoms we ought to have
the banquets we should be serving,
afterwards rubbing each other for hours
with tenderness and genuine
olive oil
someday. Meantime here is your cracked plate
with spaghetti. Wash your hads &
touch me, praise
my cooking. I shall praise your calluses.
We shall dance in the kitchen of our imagination.

by Judy Grahn
‘Ah, Love, you smell of petroleum’

(taken from What Sappho Would Have Said)

From between the ’50s to the ’70s, browse the rest of our vintage lingerie if you are one to mind what’s naked to the eye. I also know they are even better to take out of the intended context of lingerie dressing, to unintended dressing!

If I love you -
I never behave like a climbing trumpet vine
Using your high branches to show off;
If I love you -
I never mimic infatuated little birds
Repeating monotonous songs into the shadows,
Nor do I look at all like  wellspring
Sending out its cooling consolation all year round,
Or just another perilous crag
Augmenting your height, setting off your prestige.
Nor like the sunlight
Or even spring rain.
No, these are not enough.
I would be a kapok tree by your side
Standing with you – both of us shaped like trees.
Our roots hold hands underground,
Our leaves touch in the clouds.
As a gust of wind passes by
We salute each other
And not a soul
Understands our language.
You have your bronze boughs and iron trunk
Like knives and swords,
Also like halberds;
I have my red flowers
Like heavy sighs,
Also like heroic torches.
We hare cold waves, storms and thunderbolts;
Together we savor fog, haze and rainbows.
We seem to always live apart,
But actually depend upon each other forever.
This has to be called extraordinary love.
Faith resides in it:
Love -
I love not only your sublime body
But the space you occupy
The land beneath your feet.

by Shu Ting
March 27, 1977
Poetry Magazine (Shikan), no. 5 (May 1982)

The above poem is from The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry since the Cultural Revolution, available in Stevie’s book section. This poem hast to be one of the most beautiful poems I’ve come across in a while. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been reading poetry for too long; a cluttered head does not know the grass, the ocean, the land beneath the feet. Or maybe I like the outburst of romance and nature, undifferentiated. These are the best lines for me:

I have my red flowers
Like heavy sighs,
Also like heroic torches.

It’s like looking and seeing.

The three ships-in-the-bottle we have in Stevie… do you like them as much as I do? I don’t know who will want to buy them, but I keep looking out for them. Everywhere!

Above is a small ceramic wall vase of a pair of deers, and a ‘secret’ drawer made out of a tree stump…
Below is a really old deep trinket case that springs open when you unclasp it, and a sprightly Old Spice Brilliantine glass container.

You can’t really tell from the photo but this curio cupboard is a lovely small size, well, the width of two bedside clocks, and the old wooden trinket case below is smaller than your palm.

I love not only your sublime body
But the space you occupy
The land beneath your feet.