Re-posting because I like it so much
Jiao-Xi Presbyterian Church, Taiwan
From Psalm 118
“…This is the day which the Lord hath made;
we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
Jana Preissová in Jiri Menzel's "Capricious Summer"
Sunset across Manhattan (photo by Mike Pont)
J.S. Bach - Violin Partita No. 3 - Prelude
Amina Ross - "Fountain Body / (Catharsis)" (2019)
Kira Scerbin - "Coming" (2021)
Sonata for Two Cellos in G Major - Comp. by Donald Francis Tovey
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
Eero Saarinen - The G.M. Technical Center - Warren, Michigan
Eero Saarinen - The University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance - Ann Arbor
Rachmaninoff - Prelude Op.32 No.5 in G major
Glass Flies ("Vauxhall" glass, Victorian-era, earrings and brooch)
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.’”