#58 - Dispatched from Alipore
GIF by Nikita Ermakov
The Round by Stanley Kunitz
Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
“Light splashed . . .”
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
Other poems I read last week:
"Rumours buzz around them like flies. Some say
they’ve taken over the old airport in Athens,
roaming its runways, loping around
the abandoned planes, cocking their legs
on the clumps of grass growing through the cracks
in the tarmac. Somebody has actually seen them,
sleeping on the unmoving baggage carousels
and chewing the dead cables, howling
under the announcement boards
proclaiming flight details of planes long gone." -from The Dogs in Greece are Different by Laura Scott "Do not think I am not grateful for your small kindness to me.
I like the small kindnesses.
In fact I actually prefer them to the more
substantial kindness, that is always eying you
like a large animal on a rug
until your whole life reduces
to nothing but waking up morning after morning
cramped, and the bright sun shining on its tusks." -Gratitude by Louise Gluck
"In this small box, my love,
you’ll not find a ring,
but instead, a brave little bee.
He’ll be dead by morn, having given his life
defending his flowers against me.
I felt his sting
while picking the small purple pansies
growing wild along the roadside,
in hopes of an afternoon bouquet for you.
And I grieved the sting,
more for him than me," -from The Bee Box by Lowell Parker
"Night-life. Letters, journals, bourbon
sloshed in the glass. Poems crucified on the wall,
dissected, their bird-wings severed
like trophies. No one lives in this room
without living through some kind of crisis.
No one lives in this room
without confronting the whiteness of the wall
behind the poems, planks of books,
photographs of dead heroines.
Without contemplating last and late
the true nature of poetry." -from Origins and History of Consciousness by Adrienne Rich
Recommended Listening:
Tonight You Belong To Me - The Lennon Sisters
Return To Me - Perry Como and Dean Martin
Egh-Choh-Choh - The Barry Sisters
Links of the Week:
Follow (A YouTube show featuring conversations with the best creative minds across the country.)
The 100-Year-Old Instant Camera in Afghanistan Faces Extinction
At age 101, this woman released her first collection of poems
Change A View On the Overlooked Eroticism of Mary Oliver
Mister Rogers Makes a Record Survival Toolkit for Indian Freelance Journalists The Paradox of Peanuts
Watch: GIFs by Nata Metlukh + The Wrong End of the Stick
Instagram lovin':
#followme (a documentary on Instagram about Instagram)
Nature Treasures
I'm sending this newsletter out from my Alipore home. And sending this out feels extra special because I just discovered that The Alipore Post was recommended in IVM Podcasts!
Go to 6:30 on the Art Imitates Life episode and hear the lovely Rutika Yeolekar recommendcept me! It's so sweet and kind, I almost cried listening to it. Thank you, Rutika! :)
Goodnight.
-Rohini