#171: Poetry by the sea
Hello!
I’m writing to you from a temporary home by the sea, where I am filling my days painting, walking on the beach and scribbling down poems. For a change, this week-long getaway from the city doesn’t feel like escapism. I feel settled and inspired, awaiting eagerly for the full moon tomorrow night so I can walk along the seashore in awe of the magical moonshine on the water.
A quote I’ve been pondering:
I need a life that isn’t just about needing to escape my life.
-Robert Polito
I have come to realise that being in nature feels like a homecoming, no matter what the landscape around me might be. There’s no need for escapism. Do you feel it too?
Poetry Corner
Some seaside poems that washed ashore this week. Can you smell the salt in the air reading them?
Gift by Czeslaw Milosz
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.Offerings by Howard Altmann
To the night I offered a flower
and the dark sky accepted it
like earth, bedding
for light.
To the desert I offered an apple
and the dunes received it
like a mouth, speaking
for wind.
To the installation I offered a tree
and the museum planted it
like a man, viewing
his place.
To the ocean I offered a seed
and its body dissolved it
like time, composing
a life.Invisible Work by Alison Luterman
Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.
There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.Legend by Helena Mesa
During the war, women hid messages
inside white flowers
tucked in their hair. They crossed
enemy lines, slipped the blossoms
into soldiers’ fists. What might
have been a child’s crown
for her communion, an offering
at a grave, might win the war.
The ovule, the style, the stigma—
what seemed to unfurl overnight
took weeks, even years.
Dream your hand plucks the bloom,
its widest petals like porcelain,
and a halo of bees skims your arms.
Upon waking, walk to the docks,
the bloom heavy behind your ear,
and breathe in its sweet persistence,
its scent of sea salt and gutted fish.Treasure by Margarita Engle
The first mango to reach
my mother’s hometown in Cuba
was purchased with its weight
in gold. Stolen by pirates in 1790,
the sun-rich fruit was lost at sea,
but more mangos were ordered,
the long voyage from India
worth a fortune to my ancestors —
farmers who only needed one seed,
a single, firmly rooted vision
of the future’s
towering trees.Poem That Leaves Behind the Ocean by Jim Moore
1
I’ve always wanted to write a poem that ends
at the ocean. How the poem gets there
doesn’t much matter, just so at last
it arrives. The manatee will be there
we saw all those years ago,
almost motionless under the water
like a pendant swaying at an invisible throat, the one my mother used to wear on the most special occasions. My God
is still there, the one I prayed to as a boy:
he never answered, but that didn’t keep me
from calling out to him.
2
I turn off the notification app for good,
no longer needing to know exactly how many gone.
After all, clinging to life
is what we have always done best.
We are still trying to hide
from the truth of things and who
can blame us.
Lists don’t make sense anymore,
unless toilet paper and peanut butter head them.
Last-stage patients are not being told
how crowded the ferry will be
that will take them across the river.
3
We are forbidden cafés, churches, even cemeteries.
Fishing by ourselves, however, is still permitted. As long
as we keep nothing at all. As long as we walk
back home, in darkness, empty-handed,
breathing deeply, having thrown back
what was never ours to keep.
Recommended Listening
Links of the Week
Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy (“Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.”)
What’s one thing you’ve removed from your life that’s made it significantly better?
Ted Lasso's Biscuits with the Boss Shortbread Cookies Recipe
Coming soon: AstaGuru’s Collector’s Choice Modern Indian Art Auction
AstaGuru, India’s premium auction house, is back with another edition of the Collector’s Choice Modern Indian Art Auction on November 20-21, 2021.
If you’ve been thinking about buying art, or starting your own modern Indian art collection, this is your chance! This will be an absolute auction (i.e. a No Reserve Auction where the bidding for all lots in the auction starts at just Rs 20,000) with rare masterpieces by leading Indian modernists like M.F Husain, Jamini Roy, S.H Raza, K. G. Subramanyan, Manjit Bawa and many more.
You can view the full catalogue here and register to bid here.
Ending the newsletter with this evocative photograph by Valdir Cruz and quote by the lovely John Muir: “And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” I get pretty much the same feeling going into the sea. :)
Sea you around,
Rohini
Beautiful painting, Rohini.