Monet - Three Paintings

1) “Stacks of Wheat, Snow Effect” (1890 / 1891)
2) “Landscape with Figures, Giverny” (1888)
3) “Stacks of Wheat (End of Day, Autumn)” (1890 / 1891)

Monet - Two Paintings

1) Boats on the Beach at Etretat - 1885

2) The Departure of the Boats, Etretat - 1885

Devotion: The Burnt-Over Districts

Late fall in the villages of Pompey, Preble, Oran, Delphi Falls,

      churched

river and woods. In Homer and Ovid, the localities

      and principalities

of central New York, the hollows and corners of the

      burnt-over districts

visited by angels in the 1800's who led us to greatness: awakenings,

gold, portents and lies, heaven, women's suffrage, and bundling

with the other in the love beds while we waited for the lamb,

the dove, the velvet of the ten-point buck grunting through

      the underbrush

to rut. We learned in divine time a year's a day.

      We learned obedience

and had charismatic children. And now the boy's an angelic

eighteen days or six thousand years, as he leaves to serve.

He did what we told him: blocked for punts—no one likes to

      block for punts—

and when his friends crashed the truck in a ditch, he waited

      for the cops

and took the rap, nice kid, because he did the act of deliverance

      one does

in central New York and made the vows, pledged, testified,

      and swore

and participated in the sport greater than the coming of the dead,

and escorted the exaggerated girl to the prom where he

      was befuddled

with organza and tulle and he did not forget the corsage, an orchid

in a box he stared into: the white outer whorl and the inner whorl

and pouted purple lip. He butterflied the pollen with the lashes

      of his eyes.

The flower was his terror. He was not meant to be the

      indwelling beauty

of things and surely he was not meant to be the wind in Iraq

      with three others

in his division and become the abstract shape of a god formed from a blood clot.

I've seen the pictures, the vague shapes that ripple in the heat

until I was terrified. It looked like he still moved. Remember fall

in Delphi? All ardent and catastrophic and counter, elbows flailing,

he ran in the flat places scraped from the gold hills and valleys.

- Bruce Smith

 

Lantau

While sitting prostrate before the ivory feet of the great Buddha, I spilled almost an entire can of Diet Coke on the floor. I quickly tried to mop up the mess with my long hair. I peeked over my left shoulder: the short nun said nothing and averted her eyes; to my right the skinny old monk was consumed by a frightful irritation of his own. He was at once swatting and dodging two bombarding hornets that were fascinated by his newly shaved head. “I hope he’s not allergic.” I chuckled softly. And beyond us was the motherless Asian sea, glittering with the promise of eternity.

- Marilyn Chin

Pilgrim Bell

My savior has powers and he needs.
To be convinced to use them for good.
Up until now he has been.
A no-call no-show. The menace.
Of ecstasy like a hornets nest buzzing.
Under ice. Like scabs of rust.
On a plane wing. I am younger than.
I pretend to be. Almost everyone.
Is younger than I pretend to be. I am a threat.
And full of grief even.
In my joy. Like a cat who kills.
A mouse at play and tries.
To lick it back to life. The cat lives.
Somewhere between wonder.
And shame. I live in a great mosque.
Built on top of a flagpole. Up here.
Whatever happens happens.
Loudly. All day I hammer the distance.
Between the earth and me.
Into faith. Blue light pulls in through.
The long crack in my wall. Braids.
Into a net. The difference between.
A real voice and the other kind.
Is the way its air vibrates.
Through you. The violence.
In your middle ear.

- Kaveh Akbar

Buildings

I see their streaked faces and recessed entryways, their windows
washed white by the rain. How cheerful, how brave
your voice was as you asked if I wanted anything from Whole Foods,
where you had to go, amid all the other Wednesday clutter—
turning back, you paused in the door, backlit by the morning gray.
Between us lay five years of love, which you talked about
as a quantity, that accumulates. And that morning was the beginning
of that night, morning, day, and night, those thirty-six hours
ten months ago now, when you convulsed with a new, raging sorrow
which I surprised you by returning, but more viciously, finding, as I broke
from the self I’d made, charring ecstasy—hours of weeping and reasoning,
of fucking, drinking, and takeout, hours of storming out and creeping back
and kissing dead lips once more to be sure, hours I refuse to remember
that hardened into the low city I walked out into, already retreating from me.

- Noah Warren

Four from Ivan Presser's "Intimate Lighting" (1965)

“You see? People enjoy different things everywhere.
But sorrow is the same everywhere.
You know the saying—
’With one sad song, you’ll go around the world.’”