death & the maiden | as the snow thaws

death & the maiden because there emerges from your strong and beautiful hand, like a brooch of mystical diamonds, / the most intoxicating lily of death. delmira agustini — to eros

my dearest reader, February is a month of free-falling. the body of me splinters against the saltwater of its' mouth: I myself become tidal, torn and reconstructed like the ceaseless flux of the waves. I die; again and again I die, only to find myself resurrected among sharp and caliginous blooms. eighty-five leagues separate me from the sea — even so, I feel myself sway, attuned to the fickle moods of the moon.

INDEX one...............for february's tears two.........first quarter : friday 1–7 three.....second quarter : friday 8–14 four......third quarter : friday 15–21 five.......last quarter : friday 22-28 six......a letter to rosalía de castro seven.................shelf selections eight.....odds & ends & ill-fit things

for february's tears

Selene, you alone know my sorrows; you alone loved as I have, and have in kind been gaunted by it all — your hands remember the rose-singe, the fire, the lucent nadir lined along another's teeth. o Lady; once you blessed Circe with many a fragrant night; now I come a-begging, pleading that I be bestowed the same courtesy — let honey run along the temple-steps, let Jove by spring be sweetened; let honeysuckle whisper us sooth. too long we have spooled our sadness into glad song — let our mouths now call it what it is; let us acknowledge our dolour. perhaps, my Lady, we may then find ourselves healed — on our lonesome, or through Love. it matters not which.

first quarter one : soft-footed, soft-formed, February arrives on the roseate wing of a winter gale. of all the months, I find her to be the most perverse — perversity here not being a synonym for amorality, so much as it is one for duplicity. where Janus has two faces, Februa has more than the naked eye may count: here she is a lover, here she is a nurse, here she is the hand holding the knife. I fear her; I revere her. † two : today, I visit a house of thought from whose bowels I am deeply estranged — I am the third of my mother’s five pregnancies, and the only one to survive. it is a strange and uncomfortable thing to contemplate, because I do not know what to feel, much less how. there has always been a notion of sadness, but never a longing for an alternate scenario. perhaps this speaks to my selfishness; or, perhaps, it is an odd sort of filial affection, as mother confesses I was the only child she truly wanted. † three : I lounge, today, overtaken by a curious languour; I think of the he whom I love, and then I think of flowers. February lends itself well to both passion and blossoms — unless one happens to be lonely, which I, unfortunately, am. I feel the onset of a new melancholy creep in, all limber tendrils. † four : over the years I have learned that it is best to embrace my storms. I mirror the moon; I phase in and out of light, always filling only to decant. I used to see this as a sad thing — but the new moon is a signet of renewal. it is from our darkest pitfalls that we are able to see true brightness; and as dangerous as the descent may become, the soar following thereafter is the apex of ataraxia. † five : the listlessness worsens; still, I try my best to remain optimistic. my grandfather used to call hope a poison, and perhaps he was right — but what does that say about a man who drank himself to death? we all have our sought-after, longed-for bitter draughts. let hope be mine; it is the only thing that will not die. I know my melancholy to be chronic; that is to say, unconquerable. so I shall love it instead. † six : a temporary distraction: I may have mentioned this prior, but our neighbor and good family friend, Ms. C, is a peddler of various goods — most notably perfume. she extends an offer I simply cannot refuse. † seven : at the heart of the cave, all that remains to a hermit is prayer. as such, today I steer my poetry in that direction. God, too, is a many-faced fragment; here, it is the Athanatos that I beg for absolution. it is at times like these that my aloneness is startling — such puny creatures flesh assembles!

second quarter eight : desolate still, I decide to direct my energies elsewhere. there is a week left until the fifteenth elapses — an ever-resonating number in my gematria. mayhaps I may use the meanwhile to foregather the third volume of Lingua Flora; I set to work, strangely anxious. I fear I may have forgotten myself. † nine : overexertion; my chronic migraines return with a vice, seizing every cranial suture defining my skull with iron-wrought claws. the chapbook is progressing along despite this — however, I am quite dissatisfied with the quality of the material I have been able to produce thus far. new doubts settle in. I ruminate thoughts of spring, and wonder afresh of renewal. † ten : the day is off to a bad start: my grandmother visits and makes a mess of things, as is her habit; I sleep through the whole ordeal, as is my habit. both of us are quite terrible people. I wake and I am filled with dread — things only ameliorate late in the evening, when I bear witness to some stray shooting stars. I wish upon them, and promptly forget what it is that I asked of the sky; this, too, is my habit. † eleven : I become inconsolable. anxiety is crushing me, sapping away at the remainders of my optimism; I try to cling to what is left of it — a fruitless endeavor. all that remains is for me to curl into myself, husked. were I more inclined to divining sorrow, I would say: the moon is now at four percent luminosity. † twelve : a switch in gears: clinical depression requires a clinical approach. I make the decision to cut the project — not indefinitely, mind you, and definitely not wholly; only until I am able to find the missing pieces of my peace. I have undergone many transformations, but this is by far the strangest; and terrified though I am to admit it, I am lost. I cannot continue to work on a passion project in this state, as there is no passion left within me; to do so would be tantamount to self-betrayal, the worst crime. † thirteen : zero percent — there is no light left. tonight, I cross the threshold into new moon territory. thirteen, again : new moons are a symbol of renewal. perhaps, then, this means I am about to spring. † fourteen : recovery is always so very strange. I take tentative steps toward it, immersing myself in things I know may heal me, such as beautiful poetry, fruits, the voice of my favorite singer — and still I cannot seem to shake the feeling that I am a dream dreaming itself whilst cocooned at the heart of yet another illusion. isn’t that strange? strange, and difficult to articulate; depression depersonalizes me.

third quarter fifteen : I feel a little safer and more confident in the thought of my recovery; the poetry I am writing feels good again on my tongue, under and all around my fingers. I receive reassurances — warmer yet, I receive loving gestures. Alex hovers around me as mother-hens do, and, although digital, his presence is most welcome; it is a rare and precious thing, to have a friendship as enduring as ours. † sixteen : today I begin chronicling my fragmentary thoughts in a journal; I mean for their manner to be vaguely linear, but we shall see how that resolution fares in the long run. “Death”, I write, “is not the opposite of Life; Stillness is. I reason thus as Absence alone may constitute the antithesis of Presence — and although Death and Life are mirrors, a reflection is not an opposite; the two are merely distinct captures of the same essence. […] Death, you see, lives in the flowers. Life lives everywhere else.” † seventeen : I relent to exhaustion: my body belongs to Hypnos for most of the day. motionlessness suits me when I am as erratic as I have been these past few weeks — these past few months, really. quietude suits me always; and by now this surely is a broken mantra, but I must posthaste learn the art of taking it slow, lest these cycles of burning be the death of me, lest such death be more than mere metaphor. † eighteen : today, I rise early; not quite with the sun, but close. as the last surviving light-bulb in our house combusted on Saturday, and we have not been able to get the fragments out of the socket to replace it, I depend on daylight to accomplish the breadth of my chores. I bustle about like a bee. † nineteen : a hunger moon, tonight — and with it the season of Pisces is ushered in. I feel myself grow calm at last; the evening is a balm against my fevering eyelids. still, this warm weather has me fearing for the flowers: I have noticed buddings on the trees, and should they open now, the returning frost will doubtless kill many a blossom. my tranquility is thus bittersweet; I contemplate upon powerlessness. † twenty : quaint dreams plague my nights: birds, bird-bones, birdeyes; a forest dyed red, lucent and achingly carmine. it isn’t that I have never had such dreams — even the most mundane of them carry an element of oblique — rather, it is the lack of tangible malevolence throwing me off-axis. † twenty-one : at last, light. for so long have I sat in the dark that turning on the switches strikes me as strange; light itself, artificial or otherwise, tires my eyes. what shall I do with these new nights?

last quarter twenty-two : I am a creature of rite more than I am one of habit; there are things I treasure deeply, and which I have turned into tradition. one of them is conversing with the moon — luna, kind She to whom I so oft compare my undeserving self to. tonight I do just that, opening my heart to her in the dark. I was wrong to give in to apprehension; my vespers have remained unchanged. † twenty-three : something calls me out into the garden — an instinct, or perhaps an unemembered dream. the amaranth is so beautiful this time of the year, especially at dusk; so desolate, and so beautiful, and so like my melancholy. it is an oddly hopeful image: all those barren branches still fertile even in stillness, still heaving with eternity. their deathlessness sets me ashiver — I want . . . I want. † twenty-four : Dragobetele sărută fetele! today, Romania celebrates its’ own flavor of a Lovers’ Day. not much of note happens in cities, but in the countryside people still do hold to some of the old customs, the old cutume; I have not seen any girl-chasings in quite a while, myself, but I have seen people gather snow to wash their hair and faces — folk magic, this, meant to keep a person lovely through the year. † twenty-five : meteorologists deliver sad news; or glad ones, I suppose, if you are a fancier of warm weather. tonight is the last breath of winter — and I, ever so in love with the season, for all its’ grief and grievances, am quite predictably in mourning. February fades in my arms; I will her to stay, even though I know we have run out of time. slowly, the town is overrun with flowers. † twenty-six : apropos of flowers — I am asked to help with gardening. granted, the job is legumicultură, “market gardening” in plain English, which at a glance is less enchanting than floriculture; still, the work is delightful. between preparing potatoes for germination and seeding greenhouse tomatoes, it is a great way to spend the better part of my day. after I clock off, my mother and I shop for the approaching First of March — that is, Măr ișor, which I will tell you more about in next month’s newsletter. † twenty-seven : the day is spent in leisurely solitude: I tend to our houseplants, I press flowers; I clean my jewels, mindful of the frail faux stones on my heavier earrings; I make and hold a good, simple dinner. † twenty-eight : February has been quite the heart attack, has it not, my dearest Reader? alas — all things must kiss their death, and the children of Time are no exception. until next time: be well, be well.

a miña rosa———

How large and fragrant looms your shadow! The continent is clothed in you, even in this age where the Romantics and romanticists lie half-buried, halfforgotten. Still: you spoke to the people, and so the people remember.

Something of you is enrooted in the soil. It always will be.

My own chest, wretched and frail as it is, harbors for you a love of the sincerest kind. I respect you as young children respect the saints on a church’s walls — it is all awe, all the simple glamours so characteristic of innocent fancies.

I dream you on your bed of thistles, and then I dream myself lying by you.

I dream a Heaven seamed with purple, each thorn-wreathed bloom a mouth opened, singing, singing; I dream, and I dream, and I dream.

There is little to me but dreams — outside of language, that is. I seek new vernaculars in strange, hidden places: the nonverbal appeals to me in a way only the milk of my mother tongue ever has. There is a language to ruin, as there is a language to grass; and sacrifice itself seems to me to be little but that.

I think flesh itself to be a language of blood.

There is little sense to me, here, but I think this all to be something you would have understood: not with the mouth, perhaps, and not with the mind; but with the sinew. You were a champion of history. Your bones know my meaning.

Ah, miña rosa. Perhaps someday we will meet in the dust.

de entre cardos, una admiradora

shelf selections

Ah, thy beautiful hair! So was it once braided for me, for me; Now for Death is it crowned, […] lord and lover of thee; [...]

Lov’st thou Death? Is his face fairer than Love’s […] ?

Seest thou light in his eyes […] ?

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Choriambics It is no secret that I am a fan of Swinburne’s; nor is it a secret that I count him among the greatest masters of verse. His second series of Poems and Ballads, wherein Choriambics may be found, is one of the poetry collections sitting nearest and dearest to my sighing heart.

You were pale [...] / You seemed To hear death passing by...I who had opened Your wound bit on it — did you feel me? — As into the gold of a honeycomb I bit!

Delmira Agustini, The Vampire “El vampiro” was originally bound in the 1910 collection Cantos de la mañana (Morning Songs). Above, it is cited in Alejandro Cáceres’ translation, as penned in Selected Poetry of Delmira Agustini: Poetics of Eros, a bilingual edition which explores her expression of passion.

He followed [...] feeling that wherever she led he would follow, follow, because he had given over his will into those outstretched hands, that had quite taken possession of his heart, and soul, and senses.

Queen Marie of Romania, The Dreamer of Dreams Translated into English by Carmen Sylva and accompanied by the wonderful illustrations of Edmund Dulac, the 1900 edition of The Dreamer of Dreams is an enchanting fairy-tale of love and love’s mad chasings. The prose is, in and of itself, a jewel worthy of crowning.

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so. […] Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. […] I allowed pleasure to dominate me.

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis Some of you may have encountered this letter of Wilde’s before; here I am speaking to those of you who have not. Written from the Gaol, this is his moment of utmost sincerity — perhaps because rather than something meant for the public eye, De Profundis addressed two people only: himself, and his sorrow (Lord Douglas).

“...and there are moments when a patient needs to be told that the breakdown, fear of which is wrecking his life, has already occurred.” [...] it is the fear of a mourning which has already occurred, at the very origin of love, from the moment when I was first “ravished”.

Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments Although some of the sources Barthes was influenced by are less than reputable (Freud), I find the fragmented soliloquies collected in A Lover’s Discourse — which is, in essence, a thought journal circling the ever-elusive Other — to be most delightful. The book is not only a window into his psyche, but also something of a looking-glass: I relate to many of the conclusions he draws.

Ovid tells us that violets were strewn as offerings at the Roman feast of the Feralia, kept for their dead. Fairest and sweetest of flowers!

What more praise can be given? [...] could any flower [...] replace them? [...] the very soul of Spring would have passed away with them.

Miss Ildrewe, The Language of Flowers Over the years, I have accrued a sizeable collection of books on the language of flowers and its’ poetry; of all, this 1865 publication is my favorite. There is something very soothing about the prose through which each bloom and its’ meaning are presented; Ms. Ildrewe is a wonderful story-teller, as well as an impassioned garden aficionado.

odds & ends

to celebrate the month of Love, a curious anecdote: did you know that the patronage of Saint Valentine overlaps that of the pagan god Apollo? this is perhaps a less surprising observation when one takes into account just how much Christianity, like Judaism, borrows from preexistent myth and folk lore. nevertheless, it is true: from plagues to love, the two divide amongst themselves flesh and its’ dominion.

I for one suspect that the courtly writers of the fourteenth century sought inspiration in Greek legend when they wove the stories surrounding the saint, as this is when his feast day first began being associated with romance.

after their hit debut, Communion, Years & Years returned in July of last year with Palo Santo, an album that is all about love and confounded desire; I am partial to Sanctify.

a closing fragment

dolour speaks to me in tongues — calls me by many a honeyed name, wreathes my brow with tulips; o, how lovely the anoint and lovelier still the hands which give it —— Fiore, of all Junonian handmaids, thou alone may call thyself beloved truly.