My Irish Girl by The Linnet's Wings

2009-2369

The Linnet's Wings

WINTER 2013

The Linnet's Wings WINTER 2013

Also by The Linnet's Wings: The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow One Day Tells its Tale to Another by Nonnie Augustine Randolph Caldecott's The House that Jack Built

Published by The Linnet's Wing, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, of transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written prmission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way or trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Visit www.thelinnetswings.org to read more about our publication. ISBN-13: 978-1493758791

How the Three Kings Returned to their Own Country The Travels of Marco Polo/Book 1/Chapter 14

iii

n Persia, is the city of Saveh, from which the Three Magi set out when they went to worship Jesus Christ, and in this city they are buried, in three very large and beautiful monuments, side by side. And about them there is a square building, carefully kept. The bodies are still entire, with hair and beard remaining. One of these was called Jaspar, the second Melchoior, and the third Balthasar. Messer Marco Polo asked a great many questions for the people of that city as to those three Magi but never one could he find that knew aught of the matter, except that these were three kings who were buried there in days of old. However at a place three days' journey distant he heard of what I am going to tell you, He found a village there by the name Cala Ataperistan, which is to say, 'The Castle of the Fire Worshippers.' And the name is rightly applied for the people there do worship fire, and I will tell you why. They relate that, in old times, three kings of that country went away to worship a prophet that was born, and they carried with them three manner of offerings. Gold Frankincense and Myrrh; in order to ascertain whether that prophet were God, or an earthly King, or a physician, For said they, if he take the Gold, then he is an earthly King; if he take the incense then he is God; if he takes Myrrh he is a Physician. So it came to pass when they had come to the place where the Child was born, the youngest of the Three Kings went in first, and found the Child apparently just of his own age; so he went forth again marvelling greatly. The middle one entered next, and like the first he found the Child seemingly of his own age; so he also went forth again and marvelled greatly. Lastly, the eldest went in, and as it had befallen the other two, so it befell him. And he went forth very pensive. And when the three had rejoined one another, each told what he had seen; and then they all marvelled the more. So they agreed to go in all three together, and on doing so they beheld the Child with the appearance of its actual age, to wit, some thirteen days. Then they adored, and presented their Gold and Incense and Myrrh. And the Child took all the three offerings, and then gave them a small closed box; whereupon the Kings departed to return into their own land. And when they had ridden many days they said they would see what the Child had given them. So they opened the little box, and inside it they found a stone. On seeing this they began to wonder

London I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls But most thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse William Blake

Art Title: Journey of the Magi, Artist: James Tissot

what this might be that the Child had given them, and what was the import thereof. Now the signification was this: when they presented their offerings, the Child had accepted all three, and when they saw that, they had said within themselves that He was the True God, and the True King, and the True Physician. And what the gift of the stone implied was that this Faith which had begun in them should abide firm as a rock. For He well knew what was in their thoughts. Howbeit, they had no understanding at all of this signification of the gift of the stone; so they cast it into a well. Then straightway a fire from Heaven descended into that well wherein the stone had been cast. And when the Three Kings beheld this marvel they were sore amazed, and it greatly repented them that they had cast away the stone; for well they then perceived that it had a great and holy meaning. So they took of that fire, and carried it into their own country, and placed it in a rich and beautiful church. And there the people keep it continually burning, and worshiped it as a god, and all the sacrifices they offer are kindled with that fire. And if ever the fire becomes extinct they go to other cities round about where the same faith is held, and obtain of that fire from them, and carry it to the church. And this is the reason why the people of this country worship fire. They will often go ten days' journey to get of that fire. Such then was the story told by the people of that Castle to Messer Marco Polo; they declared to him for a truth that such was their history, and that one of the three kings was of the city called SABA, and the second ofAVA, and the third of that very Castle where they still worship fire, with the people of all the country round about. (Marco Polo: The Travels)

The Linnet's Wings

TAB LE O F CO N TE N TS DECEMBER 201 3

INTRODUCTION

CNF

FOREWORD William Blake: Auguries of Innocence xi

MICRO FICTION (Vernacular) The Statue by Iulian Ionescu 34

How the Three Kings Returned to their Own Country -- From The Travels of Marco Polo London by William Blake iii

EDITOR'S NOTE xii

Tales from an Accountant by Peter Gilkes 27 The Watch and On Your Bike

The Good Father by Marian Brooks 36

ESSAY AND SPANISH

THE LINNET'S WINGS INFORMATION PAGE TRANSLATION xii Cuban Literature: The Garden ofWords by Diana Ferraro 38 FLASH FICTION J e'va Gave U p by Howard Bernbaum 1 POETRY TRANSLATIONS Harmony by Michelle Elvy 5 EN EL CAMPO por Julián del Casal 41 Four Stories by Ian Butterworth 9 UNA MONJA por Julián del Casa 43 CULTIVO UNA ROSA BLANCA por José ESSAY Martí 45 MAD, YOU SAY? SUEÑO DESPIERTO por José Martí 46 A Clear-Eyed Review ofWilliam Blake by Martin LA NIÑA DE GUATEMALA por José Martí 47 Heavisides 15 vii (Translation: Marie Fitzpatrick)

Atist: Raphael Kirchner/Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)/Series: Christmas Pictures

SHORT STORIES Road to Golgotha by Yvette Flis 51 V for Victor by Tom Sheehan 79 With Matchsticks not Money by Deirdre McClay 85

PALMA SOLA por Nicolás Guillén 49 CAÑA por Nicolás Guillén 50 POETRY Freakbeat #1 by Marty Lopez 60 Winging It by Stan Long 62 Moon Catalog by evie robillard 64 Everything Happs Twice by evie robillard 66 After December by evie robillard 67 The Garden in Winter by evie robillard 68 Breakers by Bobby Steve Baker 70 Looking for the source of madder by Maria Isakova Bennett 72 Inspiration by Bobby Steve Baker 74 Transfiguration by Maria Isakova Bennett 76 Rise by James Owens 78

ART Contemporary Kristine Byrne Illustration for Four Stories by Ian Butterworth Digital Photography and Canvas 26,28,30,32 Classic Atist: Raphael Kirchner/Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)/Series: Christmas Pictures -- This Page Title: God Judging Adam, Artist: William Blake 3 Title: Songs of Innocience, William Blake 13

viii

Title: Frosty Morning, Artist: Boris Kustodiev

Title: Isaac Newton, Artist, William Blake 26 Title: All Heil, Artist: Raphael Kirchner 29 Title: The tree in the field, Artist:Konstantin Somov 33 Title: Fishing, Artist: Carl Larsson 35 Title: Fireworks 1, Artist: Konstantin Somov 37 Title:Bird Alkonost, Artist:Ivan Bilibin 41 Title: Dove, Artist: Charles Demuth 43 Title: Children playing with giants, Attist: Francesco Goya 46 Title: Pierrot's Dream, Artist, Raphael Kirchner 47 Title: Study of Palm Trees, Artist: Edward Lear 49 Title: A Piece of Sugar Cane, Artist: Marianne North Title:Otsu-e Paintings Coming Alive Triptych, Artist:Utagawa Kuniyoshi 51 Title: Broken Forms, Artist: Franz Marc 59 Title:The Last Drop, Artist: : Henri de ToulouseLautrec 61 Title: Self-Portrait. Caricature, Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 65 Title: January, Artist: Theodor Severin Kittelsen 67 Title: The Dream, Artist: Franz Marc 69 Title: The Morning After, Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 71 Title: At the Foot of the Scaffold, Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 73 Title: The Irish Girl, Artist: Ford Madox Brown 75 Title: The Mad Cow, Artist: Henri de ToulouseLautrec 77 Title: Kudma, the sorcerer (Costume design for the opera "The Enchantress") Artist: Mikhail Vrubel 81 Title: The Painter and his Family, Artist: Andre Derain 89 EPILOGUE Promose by Bill West 92

Web Sites Researched for this issue: Wikipaintings and Gutenberg

TEAM Managing Editor M. Lynam Fitzpatrick SENIOR EDITOR Bill West EDITORS FOR REVIEW ENGLISH Bill West Nonnie Augustine Yvette Wielhouwer Flis

SPANISH Diana Ferraro Marie Fitzpatrick Consulting on Copy Digby Beaumont Spanish Translations Diana Ferraro Contributing Editors Martin Heavisides Photography Editor Maia Cavelli

Layout and Design Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick

Database Manager Peter Gilkes Offices Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, ROI Motril, Granada, Andalucía Online Offices Provided by Zoetrope Virtual Studio Web Hosting Provided by ddWebsites.com Design© TheLinnetsWings.org 2013 Founded, in Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, in ROI, in 2007 Publisher: M. Lynam Fitzpatick Published by The Linnet's Wings ###

William Blake

William Blake's AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE TO see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage. A dove-house fill’d with doves and pigeons Shudders hell thro’ all its regions. A dog starv’d at his master’s gate Predicts the ruin of the state. A horse misused upon the road Calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain does tear. A skylark wounded in the wing, A cherubim does cease to sing. The game-cock clipt and arm’d for fight Does the rising sun affright. Every wolf’s and lion’s howl

Raises from hell a human soul. The wild deer, wand’ring here and there, Keeps the human soul from care. The lamb misus’d breeds public strife, And yet forgives the butcher’s knife. The bat that flits at close of eve Has left the brain that won’t believe. The owl that calls upon the night Speaks the unbeliever’s fright. He who shall hurt the little wren Shall never be belov’d by men. He who the ox to wrath has mov’d Shall never be by woman lov’d. The wanton boy that kills the fly Shall feel the spider’s enmity. He who torments the chafer’s sprite Weaves a bower in endless night. The caterpillar on the leaf

AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE

Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief. Kill not the moth nor butterfly, For the last judgment draweth nigh.

Tools were made, and born were hands, Every farmer understands. Every tear from every eye Becomes a babe in eternity;

He who shall train the horse to war Shall never pass the polar bar. The beggar’s dog and widow’s cat, Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

This is caught by females bright, And return’d to its own delight. The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar, Are waves that beat on heaven’s shore.

The gnat that sings his summer’s song Poison gets from slander’s tongue. The poison of the snake and newt Is the sweat of envy’s foot.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath Writes revenge in realms of death. The beggar’s rags, fluttering in air, Does to rags the heavens tear.

The poison of the honey bee Is the artist’s jealousy. The prince’s robes and beggar’s rags Are toadstools on the miser’s bags.

The soldier, arm’d with sword and gun, Palsied strikes the summer’s sun. The poor man’s farthing is worth more Than all the gold on Afric’s shore.

A truth that’s told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent. It is right it should be so; Man was made for joy and woe;

One mite wrung from the lab’rer’s hands Shall buy and sell the miser’s lands; Or, if protected from on high, Does that whole nation sell and buy.

And when this we rightly know, Thro’ the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine.

He who mocks the infant’s faith Shall be mock’d in age and death. He who shall teach the child to doubt The rotting grave shall ne’er get out.

Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine. The babe is more than swaddling bands; Throughout all these human lands

xii

He who respects the infant’s faith Triumphs over hell and death. The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons Are the fruits of the two seasons.

William Blake

Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

xiii

AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE

The questioner, who sits so sly, Shall never know how to reply. He who replies to words of doubt Doth put the light of knowledge out.

Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to endless night. We are led to believe a lie When we see not thro’ the eye,

The strongest poison ever known Came from Caesar’s laurel crown. Nought can deform the human race Like to the armour’s iron brace.

Which was born in a night to perish in a night, When the soul slept in beams of light. God appears, and God is light, To those poor souls who dwell in night;

When gold and gems adorn the plow, To peaceful arts shall envy bow. A riddle, or the cricket’s cry, Is to doubt a fit reply.

But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day.

The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile Make lame philosophy to smile. He who doubts from what he sees Will ne’er believe, do what you please.

What is it men in women do require? The lineaments of gratified desire. What is it women do in men require? The lineaments of gratified desire.

If the sun and moon should doubt, They’d immediately go out. To be in a passion you good may do, But no good if a passion is in you. The whore and gambler, by the state Licensed, build that nation’s fate. The harlot’s cry from street to street Shall weave old England’s winding-sheet. The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse, Dance before dead England’s hearse. Every night and every morn Some to misery are born, Every morn and every night

xiv

Web templates that have been designed for those who want to show their writing, photography and/or art portfolio, or indeed anything relating to the arts, in a polished manner. We hope that you might do us a great courtesy and pop in to wwwthelinnetswings.com see what we have on offer.

Editor's Note Welcome to our winter 2013 issue. I hope you enjoy our mix of classic and new work. 'We enjoyed its journey. Martin Heavisides is our essayist this quarter, and he brings us 'A Clear-Eyed Review of William Blake: the wonderful William Blake, whose work 'Auguries' we've added as our Foreword. It's a great read. In our Spanish Section, Diana introduces Cuban Lit. And this is another big WoW!! You must go there. We have contributing artwork, from Kristine Byrne, as well as our classic art. Kristine is based in County Wicklow and kindly contributed illustration for one or our stories. You'll find her work on our gallery page. And we got good news this quarter: 'One Day Tells its Tale to Another' by Nonnie Augustine, has been named to Kirkus Reviews Best of 2013.. I know the work well. She was laid out and edited here in the office. So it's hugs to Nonnie and a big congrats to all involved in the endeavour: Robert Leslie Smith, Robert Knisel. And of course our own team here at 'The Linnet's Wings' who read and edit on a quarterly basis to bring the work to the table that we build on. Cheers Guys:) Now a little bit more about what we're doing here. Six years ago we established 'The Linnet's Wings Literary Magazine' in the Republic of Ireland. She carries an Irish Library number and is supported by an international team of editors who all been with her from the start. We publish literary work: Vocies that speak their essence, and our humanity, in prose, poetry, essay and cnf. We carry a classic and contemporary mix. We produce a a beautiful magazine that few buy --which doesn't bother us -- and many admire. We have a duty of care which we stand over. I want to move her up a notch, and take her to a paying market. In an effort, to raise the necessary monies to do so, I sat down with our data manager, Peter Gilkes, and he and I together, over the last few years designed a web project to support her. Now I need your help. I need you to go in to see what's on offer. Will you help us take 'The Linnet's Wings' onto the next stage of her journey please, and give me a ready to go, or not, with www.TheLinnetWings.com project. Thank you for your time and continued support. Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick Managing Editor/designer/Publisher

xvi

Howard Bernbaum

JE’VA GAVE UP by

Howard Bernbaum

JE’ VA GAVE UP

he sweeping view from the veranda located high up on the hill was magnificent. Starting at the foot of the sweeping lawn the savannah stretched out as far as the eye could see bounded by rain forests whose flora stretched to the azure skies above. The blazing sun penetrated the verdant growth casting slanting shafts of light amidst the shadows. The faint murmur of falling leaves wafting gently down overcame the stillness and formed a carpet home for the many small creatures living therein. Larger animals gracefully made their way between the trees and maze of lianas adorning the towering growth while other species made their home in the trees feasting on the fruit so plentiful and at hand. The Savannah was just as splendid, with natural grasses sweeping to the edges and populations of assorted grazing animals. They were not alone for the lions, hyenas, and other predatory species were part of the scene. Above flew the gentle and the not so gentle avians. An eagle soared over land and lakes casting a sweeping shadow below paralleling the gentle large circles while its eyes stared into the distance in search of this day’s sustenance. The balance in nature was perfection with all species thriving. However, something was missing and that was the heart of the conversation between Je’va and Pete seated comfortably on the veranda. After a pause of eons, Pete softly moaned, in a spasm of ecstasy, “I love it. This is as close to perfection as I’ve ever seen. Almost like the beginning a million years ago or so. Why did you wait so long?” Je’va pondered the question as he too continued gazing with delight at the vista stretching out before them. The sun was warm and a gentle zephyr made it bearable. Life on the veranda was exquisite and he hated the times in the past when he had been called away. The cacophony of demands had been endless. Mostly of a sort not even defined as selfless. The din had ended and he himself sometimes pondered what took so long. After another eon passed he answered with a wry smile “I guess I just gave up.” Although Pete had been a faithful partner to Je’va, a friend of long standing, he had never heard such words before. “You. You gave up? I find that hard to believe. Maybe a better question is what led you to make that awful change in the first place?” Je’va’s answer was almost immediate. “Why did I do it? Well, oh I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess that is the simple answer and, of course, it is the truth. I don’t do the other, you know.” Pete brooded over the response for an eternity. He spoke softly and slowly. “As your gatekeeper, I saw a vast number of people. Even the good ones had so many blemishes they should have been rejected. The preachers and the lawyers were the worst except maybe for

H oward Bern bau m

Title: God Judging Adam, Artist: William Blake

the politicians. Happily, not many of them got as far as the gate. Still, the ones who arrived couldn’t tell the truth even though their eternal fate depended on it.” He walked to the edge of the veranda and breathed in the view. Thus fortified he returned to his chair and continued. “I had a feeling, right from the start the experiment wasn’t going to work. By the second generation there was already a murder and a fratricide, at that. I really had bad vibes at the time. Adam and Eve couldn’t even obey one simple request. How long was it before their descendants decided to challenge your domain and began to build a tower to reach this place? I liked your solution to that one at the time. On the other hand it sure screwed up communication between people. They didn’t understand each other and trust went out the window. Now I’m not too sure. Je’va smiled at that. “Patience my friend. I kept hoping they they’d get better but that crew was the pits. If you remember, I dumped them and started over. Noah was an obedient soul and his children were decent. But even that crew didn’t do as well as I’d have liked. As they learned and their intelligence grew, I hoped they’d figure it out and learn to live in harmony. Somehow a bad gene entered the mixture and they only got worse. Seems they

JE’ VA GAVE UP took each advance and turned it against their neighbors. Amazing.” Pete shrugged. “I had a gut feeling it wasn’t going to work. I could see it at the gate. Each generation was worse than the one before. Yet you allowed it. Why?” “If you remember, I created them with free will. I wanted them to be responsible and gave them the tools to achieve it. I’ve got to admit towards the end I was getting frustrated. I decided to send my son down and teach them the Golden Rule. It is such a simple concept. However it was apparently beyond mankind’s power to grasp. They killed him in a most cruel manner. I’m here to tell you, there was no way he would ever go back.” Pete again got up and walked to the edge of the platform. He stretched and returned to his comfortable lounge. “So why didn’t you end it then? You waited two more millennia.” Je’va leaned back and watched the eagle soaring overhead. Its flight was such grace and perfection. He sighed. “Nobody likes to admit they were wrong, particularly me. I have sort of a reputation to uphold and it goes against the grain to have your creation rubbed in your face. I practiced that same patience I expect of you. All kinds of nutty things took place over those 2000 years. But it all added up to one thing. The world’s populations were easily led into the most obscene warfare. Human life was becoming meaningless, worse yet, worthless. One small class of people wanted everything, money and power. The vast majority of humanity with all their opportunities to learn and prosper willingly gave up their freedom for the promise that big brother would take care of them. As a group they gave up their independence for the promise the state would provide. They did this despite repeated lessons from history that state control invariable ends up in poverty for all.” He sighed a long sigh. “I finally just gave up. People are too stupid to exist.” Pete listened to the end, nodding his head in agreement. “So how did you do it. Armageddon? An apocalypse? That doesn’t seem to be. The world didn’t end. So how did you accomplish this paradise?” Je’va leaned back even further in his recliner and studied the heavens. You know I don’t believe in cruelty or meanness, although sometimes that was the only way. No, I thought it out and the solution was obvious.” Pete leaned towards him, his attitude plainly expressing, so how did you do it. Je’va smiled, got up and walked towards the railing. Over his shoulder he replied, “I simply went back and undid the sixth day.” ###

Michelle Elvy

Harmony Michelle Elvy

Title: After the Floods, Artist: Paul Klee

Harmony

he stood with her sisters, pretty maids in a row, felt cold despite the scorching spring sun. Heard what the man said but didn't register; words from the Lord flew around her like the flighty trill of the robins up above. The birds made more sense. First handful of dirt: Mother. She knew it was her turn next but could not move, frozen by the burning house, same as the night it crumbled. Everything gone, ashes to dust to thousands of trickling mudslides when the cruel rain came the following day. That was three days ago. Now she felt the elemental world closing in: Earth swallowing the dead, sky wailing a dirge, water washing ashes, fire burning her heart. She laughed. Panic? Fear? Was the Lord's message funny? Or was it the preacher's rubbery voice, or the absurdly matching Franklin twins? The wide white collar on Hillary Burch's velvet dress, her tightly wound curls? The acrid stench of spring, the crocus pushing up beside the blacked smudge that was her home? The father they just buried was gone forever (never mind what the preacher said) -- burned up swallowed down washed away. What she knew: Life would be drab without his ear-splitting laugh and crushing hugs. What she didn't know: four women would weave in and out of each other's lives for seventy years more, disconnected by geography but writing the same story in four parts, a grey sorrow filled in with colors of strength and love and beauty. ###

Ian Butterworth

Four Stories

When I was eleven, his nephew came from the island to work.

Four Stories

y father owned a shop. When I was eleven, his nephew came from the island to work. He was eight years older than me, already a big man. He filled the house. In two years we were married. I had seven living children, and three dead. At twenty-seven was my last pregnancy. He'd had enough of me. I was glad. A boy came to stay, from my husband's island. He served in the shop and looked after the house. Each night he studied. His eyes were gentle. He smiled and carried things for me. He joked with my daughter and picked her a flower. She wouldn't leave him alone. I loved to watch him, when he was clean and praying. I breathed the freshness of his newly washed clothes. Once, I was burning up with fever. The boy brought me soup. He bathed my face and stroked my fingers. My husband was watching. He slammed his fist into the side of my boy's head. After this the boy wouldn't look at me. But he still played with my children, and smiled at them. The boy stayed for a year. He left when he married his cousin from the island. She was very beautiful. I was so happy that he could start a new life. ~~~

Ian Butterworth

I was my father's eldest son

Four Stories

was my father's eldest son. He lived from fishing and dreamt that I'd work in an office. I was sent to Male' to study. It was a different place in those days. The rustle of leaves was cooling. The white walls felt warm against my cheek. There was more time. I stayed in the house of my uncle's wife. Inside was dark and quiet. On the wall hung a photograph, brown tones and curling paper. It was of a young woman, laughing and beautiful. She was lovely. I didn't know it was of my aunt until I saw her laugh with her daughters. Then she came to life. I'd been in the house some months when she was sick. I took her food and held her hand. Her eyes filled and she clutched my fingers. She breathed my name. He walked into the room and beat my head against the wall. When I saw her next there was a burn on her face from the soup. She had neither choices nor will. She did her jobs, fulfilled her duties. She was frightened of being disappointed, so she asked for nothing. If there had been magic in this life I would have taken her somewhere and made her laugh. When I married a girl from my island she was so happy for me. She cried for us as we left. That's how I know she loved me, too. More than my own wife ever did. After years working away I returned to Male'. The old man was in hospital, hollowed by cancer. I visited him with my son. I was shocked to see his dying eyes glisten when he saw my boy. She was by his bedside. She held his hand, her tears falling to his parched skin. I couldn't find any words to say to her. She looked at me, and whispered, 'Stay away.' Six days later I heard that he'd died. She'd died years before. ~~~

Ian Butterworth

I could weep at the waste.

Four Stories

haven't long to live. Pain rides through me. My wife is by my side but she can't give me comfort. She is weak, of no use, and I wish she would go away.

She was lovely when we married, looking like a woman. I could make my hands into

a circle and reach almost round her waist. People said I married her for the house. But it's not true. Her shy glances mesmerised me. Her hair, her eyes were so beautiful. I really did love her. I wanted no one else. But I married a child. She never laughed. She never spoke with me. She only replied. She was mine, but there was nothing to own. I thought children would make us better. But she excluded me. When I came into the room their conversations stopped. She hid them from me. I was left alone. I spoke to them but they only gave me answers. If I hurt her, she would notice me. I went with other women, but I never divorced her, though I was entitled to. She filled me with guilt. How can you talk to someone who will not look into your eyes?

Part of me wants to talk of this now. But it would be like telling a corpse. I could weep

at the waste.

~~~

Ian Butterworth

The old man is sick.

Four Stories

y husband has never hurt me. He studied and worked all hours, earning money to support my son and myself. Every day he has worked to bring us comfort. But our lives are false. There is no meaning. On the morning of our marriage, before dawn, his uncle came into my room. He raped me. I'd never even spoken to him. His wife was in the same room. When he left she just turned to the wall. I can never forgive her for that. How could I tell my husband? What choice did I have? I forced myself through the day. On our wedding night I froze. I felt dirty. I couldn't sleep. My husband thought I was just frightened. He fell asleep, holding me, suffocating me with his kindness. For years I dreamt of that morning. I could feel his hand clamped, pressing my mouth; his weight draining my strength. The pain tore me. The worst was that his wife had done nothing. Was that all I was worth? I couldn't understand how my husband continued to love me. We have no other children, though we tried. I would have been proud to have a little girl, all of our own. My husband never knew that he was not his son's father. Many men tried to catch my eye. I was frightened of them all. I am so lonely. I loved my husband, but I could never open myself to his love. I know that I hurt him dreadfully. I wish with all my heart that it could have been different. He's visiting the hospital now, with my son. The old man is sick. When he dies, they'll ask me to pray for his soul.

MAD, YOU SAY?

A Clear-Eyed Review ofWilliam Blake

Martin Heavisides

t would overcomplicate what's intended as a brief and modest introduction to trace the intricate relationship between Blake's two (interdependent) bodies of work, so I'll just note in passing what should be clear to anyone who's seen the travelling Tate exhibition, or better quality reproductions of the illuminated manuscripts: the general dull consensus (in the literary community primarily), that Blake's graphic work was serviceable but of secondary importance, simply won't stand up to careful examination--to careless examination, yes, otherwise how account for the number of sophisticated art generalists I talked to at the time who had seen the Tate exhibition in its temporary home at the AGO and still maintained that he was a major writer of course, but a minor artist whose work served well an illustrative function: so, no doubt, were Da Vinci and Michelangelo. What show did these people impose like a transparency over the visual field before them, to continue maintaining such blatant and resolute twaddle? Luckily, in this case a fixed persuasion that a thing is so will not make it so, not so long as some viewers at least have eyes to see. In a memoir I read recently, a Canadian (expat British) editor and writer mentioned in passing what he was told (in undergraduate studies at Cambridge) was the one important thing always to remember about Blake: "He was a little potty." That's been remembered time and

William Blake Selections again, to a degree hugely detrimental to people's understanding of Blake or--dare I say it?-the world he illuminates in his writings, paintings and other graphic works. There's an innate resistance--partly individual, but to a much greater degree social--to vivid perceptions of common human experience that differ too much from "common sense"--whether it wears the scholar's or the fool's cap, consensus opinion scorns insights too much outside the normative, though oft-times aiming to have it both ways: loving the lyric passion of a spirited visionary, drawing back wherever it challenges too sharply the comfortable or uncomfortable body of received ideas one tends stubbornly to live and die by. Sure he was a powerful and beautiful visionary, especially wherever I don't have to encounter too precisely what he says he's seeing, but any time his perceptions threaten to reanimate the eye on our blind side. . . then the important thing to remember about Blake is that he was a little potty. (Blake's astounding powers of visualization practically compel people to this misdiagnosis if they wish to resist its impelling force.) Robert Graves--normally far from an inastute observer--found evidence of paranoid schizophrenia in the wicked hyperbole of a satirical riposte to a minor German poet contemporary with Blake. (The poem's included in my selection, so you can weigh the evidence yourself. Suffice to say that if Blake believed that by twirling nine times after a nightsoil deposit at the boghouse he'd sent a wave of distraction that traversed the channel and half the continent of Europe to settle on Klopstock and further scatter his already-scantilygathered wits, a spell he reversed out of pity by turning nine times in the reverse direction, he'd be suffering serious delusions. If, on the other hand, he was spinning an elaborate and earthy joke, he was no madder than any other satirist forging wild mocking fantasies within the heated furnace of the imagination. Odd that this point was lost on Graves--dotted throughout the Claudius books are passages of similarly extravagant humour.) In so extreme a case as Antonin Artaud, whose progressively more unhappy derangement became inextricably linked to his insight and vision, the question of madness inevitably attends any estimate of the artist's significance, but in others where momentary derangement crosses the life path of creative originals, the question is of distinctly secondary interest (however schadenfreudian the clutter and buzz of speculation it accumulates in obscuring heaps). In the case of artists as reverberent and prophetically sane as Blake or Swift, the question is an impertinence, a small-minded imposition. The most engaging question about their writing is "When can I read some?", followed closely by "When can I read some more?" Let me make way, then, for a selection, far from comprehensive but a useful quick reminder for readers already familiar with Blake, a solid start on a voyage of discovery for those who aren't yet. Does the Eagle know what is in the pit, Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod, Or Love in a golden bowl? [Thel’s Motto]

Martin Heavisides The Eye altering alters all. As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return ofAdam into Paradise; see Isaiah XXXIV & XXXV Chap: Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell. [The Marriage of Heaven and Hell] Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a Lamb!" So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again;" So I piped: he wept to hear. "Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer!"

The Chimney Sweeper When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

So I sung the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. "Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read." So he vanished from my sight, And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear.

~~~

And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins & set them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun. Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father & never want joy. And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark And got with our bags & our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm; So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

~~~

William Blake Selections

The Schoolboy I love to rise in a summer morn When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the skylark sings with me. Oh, what sweet company!

Holy Thursday ' Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,

The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green; Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow.

But to go to school in a summer morn, Oh! it drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay.

O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own. The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit, And spend many an anxious hour; Nor in my book can I take delight, Nor sit in learning's bower, Worn through with the dreary shower.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song, Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among; Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor: Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring? O, father and mother, if buds are nipped And blossoms blown away, And if the tender plants are stripped Of their joy in the springing day, By sorrow and care's dismay, How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear? Ifyou trap the moment before it's ripe, The tears ofrepentance you'll certainly wipe; But ifonce you let the ripe moment go, You can never wipe offthe tears ofwoe.

~~~

The Little Vagabond Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold, But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm; Besides I can tell where I am use'd well, Such usage in heaven will never do well. But if at the Church they would give us some Ale. And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale; We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day; Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray, Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing. And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring: And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church, Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch. And God like a father rejoicing to see, His children as pleasant and happy as he: Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel.

~~~

Martin Heavisides To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love All pray in their distress; And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love Is God, our father dear, And Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love Is Man, his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart, Pity, a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man of every clime That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form In heathen, turk or jew. Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.

The Smile There is a Smile of Love

And there is a Smile of Deceit And there is a Smile of Smiles In which these two Smiles meet And there is a Frown of Hate And there is a Frown of disdain And there is a Frown of Frowns Which you strive to forget in vain For it sticks in the Hearts deep Core And it sticks in the deep Back bone And no Smile that ever was smild But only one Smile alone

That betwixt the Cradle & Grave It only once Smild can be But when it once is Smild Theres an end to all Misery

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments. When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth. How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five? [from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell] The terror answerd: I am Orc, wreath’d round the accursed tree: The times are ended; shadows pass the morning gins to break; The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands, What night he led the starry hosts thro’ the wide wilderness: That stony law I stamp to dust: and scatter religion abroad To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves; But they shall rot on desart sands, & consume in bottomless deeps; To make the desarts blossom, & the deeps shrink to their fountains, And to renew the fiery joy, and burst the stony roof. That pale religious letchery, seeking Virginity, May find it in a harlot, and in coarse-clad honesty The undefil’d tho’ ravish’d in her cradle night and morn: For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life; Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil’d. Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not consumd; Amidst the lustful fires he walks: his feet become like brass, His knees and thighs like silver, & his breast and head like gold.

[from America: a Prophecy]

The Divine Image

William Blake Selections They became what they beheld

That from his body it neer could be parted

"When Klopstock England defied" Uprose terrible Blake in his pride For old Nobodaddy aloft Farted & Belchd & coughd Then swore a great oath that made heavn quake And calld aloud to English Blake Blake was giving his body ease At Lambeth beneath the poplar trees From his seat then started he

Till to the last trumpet it was farted

And turnd himself round three times threet The Moon at that sight blushd scarlet red The stars threw down their cups & fled And all the devils that were in hell Answered with a ninefold yell Klopstock felt the intripled turn And all his bowels began to churn And his bowels turned round three times three And lockd in his soul with a ninefold key

Then again old nobodaddy swore He neer had seen such a thing before Since Noah was shut in the ark Since Eve first chose her hell fire spark Since twas the fashion to go naked Since the old anything was created And in pity he begd him to turn again And ease poor Klopstocks nine fold pain From pity then he redend round And the ninefold Spell unwound If Blake could do this when he rose up from shite What might he not do if he~~~ sat down to write

~~~

What is it men in women do require? The lineaments ofgratified desire. What is it women do in men require? The lineaments ofgratified desire.

AND did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!

And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills?

I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.

[preface to Milton]

The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible; but when the New Age is at leisure to pronounce, all will be set right, and those grand works of the more ancient, and consciously and professedly Inspired men will hold their proper rank, and the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration. Shakspeare and Milton were both curb’d by the general malady and infection from the silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword. Rouse up, O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the Camp, the Court, and the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental, and prolong corporeal war. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors! Architects! suffer not the fashionable fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the expensive advertising boasts that they make of such works: believe Christ and His Apostles that there is a class of men whose whole delight is in destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just and true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live forever, in Jesus our Lord.

Martin Heavisides THE CAVERNS of the Grave I’ve seen, And these I show’d to England’s Queen. But now the Caves of Hell I view, Who shall I dare to show them to? What mighty soul in Beauty’s form Shall dauntless view the infernal storm? Egremont’s Countess can control The flames of Hell that round me roll; If she refuse, I still go on Till the Heavens and Earth are gone, Still admir’d by noble minds, Follow’d by Envy on the winds, Re-engrav’d time after time,

Ever in their youthful prime, My designs unchang’d remain. Time may rage, but rage in vain. For above Time’s troubled fountains, On the great Atlantic Mountains, In my Golden House on high, There they shine eternally.

[from The Rossetti Manuscript]

~~~ Why ofthe sheep do you not learn peace? Because I don't want you to shear my fleece.

A Memorable Fancy An Angel came to me and said: 'O pitiable foolish young man! O horrible! O dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art going in such career.' I said: 'perhaps you will be willing to shew me my eternal lot & we will contemplate together upon it and see whether your lot or mine is most desirable.' So he took me thro' a stable & thro' a church & down into the church vault at the end of which was a mill: thro' the mill we went, and came to a cave: down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way till a void boundless as a nether sky appear'd beneath us & we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity; but I said, 'if you please we will commit ourselves to this void, and see whether providence is here also, if you will not, I will?' but he answer'd: 'do not presume, O young-man, but as we here remain, behold thy lot which will soon appear when the darkness passes away.' So I remain'd with him, sitting in the twisted root of an oak; he was suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the deep. By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance, was the sun, black but shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew, or rather swum, in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption; & the air was full of them, & seem'd composed of them: these are Devils, and are called Powers of the air. I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said, 'between the black & white spiders.' But now, from between the black & white spiders, a cloud and fire burst and rolled thro' the deep black'ning all beneath, so that the nether deep grew black as a sea, & rolled with a terrible noise; beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking east between the clouds & the waves, we saw a cataract of

William Blake Selections blood mixed with fire, and not many stones' throw from us appear'd and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent; at last, to the east, distant about three degrees appear'd a fiery crest above the waves; slowly it reared like a ridge of golden rocks, till we discover'd two globes of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away in clouds of smoke; and now we saw, it was the head of Leviathan; his forehead was divided into streaks of green & purple like those on a tyger's forehead: soon we saw his mouth & red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence. My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill; I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight, hearing a harper who sung to the harp; & his theme was: 'The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind.' But I arose, and sought for the mill, & there I found my Angel, who surprised, asked me how I escaped? I answer'd: ' All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper, But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I shew you yours?' he laugh'd at my proposal; but I by force suddenly caught him in my arms, & flew westerly thro' the night, till we were elevated above the earth's shadow; then I flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun; here I clothed myself in white, & taking in my hand Swedenborg's, volumes sunk from the glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to saturn: here I staid to rest & then leap'd into the void, between saturn & the fixed stars. 'Here,' said I, 'is your lot, in this space, if space it may be call'd.' Soon we saw the stable and the church, & I took him to the altar and open'd the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I descended driving the Angel before me, soon we saw seven houses of brick; one we enter'd; in it were a number of monkeys, baboons, & all of that species, chain'd by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but witheld by the shortness of their chains: however, I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were caught by the strong, and with a grinning aspect, first coupled with, & then devour'd, by plucking off first one limb and then another till the body was left a helpless trunk; this after grinning & kissing it with seeming fondness they devour'd too; and here & there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off of his own tail; as the stench terribly annoy'd us both, we went into the mill, & I in my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was Aristotle's Analytics. So the Angel said: 'thy phantasy has imposed upon me, & thou oughtest to be ashamed.' I answer'd: 'we impose on one another, & it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics.' [from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]

~~~

Nail his neck to the cross: nail it with a nail. Nail his neck to the cross: ye all have power over his tail.

An Old Maid early ere I knew Aught but the love that on me grew. And now I’m cover’d o’er and o’er And wish that I had been a whore. Oh! I cannot, cannot find The steadfast courage of a virgin mind; For early I in love was cros’t Before my flower of love was lost

The Chimney Sweeper A little black thing among the snow, Crying " 'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe! "Where are thy father and mother? say?"— "They are both gone up to the church to pray. "Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter's snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. "And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,

Martin Heavisides Who make up a heaven of our misery."

The Tyger Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? Grown old in love from seven till seven times seven I oft have wish’d for Hell for ease from Heaven.

Then he swore a great & solemn Oath To kill the people I am loth But If they rebel they must go to hell They shall have a Priest & a passing bell The King awoke on his couch of gold As soon as he heard these tidings told Arise & come both fife & drum And the [Famine] shall eat both crust & crumb The Queen of France just touchd this Globe And the Pestilence darted from her robe But our good Queen quite grows to the ground And a great many suckers grow all around

The Mental Traveller I travelled through a land of men, A land of men and women too, And heard and saw such dreadful things As cold earth wanderers never knew. For there the babe is born in joy That was begotten in dire woe, Just as we reap in joy the fruit Which we in bitter tears did sow; And if the babe is born a boy He’s given to a woman old, Who nails him down upon a rock, Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

Let the Brothels of Paris be opened With many an alluring dance To awake the Physicians thro the city Said the beautiful Queen of France

She binds iron thorns around his head, And pierces both his hands and feet, And cuts his heart out of his side To make it feel both cold & heat.

Then old Nobodaddy aloft Farted & belchd & coughd And said I love hanging & drawing & quartering Every bit as well as war & slaughtering

Her fingers number every nerve Just as a miser counts his gold; She lives upon his shrieks and cries— And she grows young as he grows old,

William Blake Selections Till he becomes a bleeding youth And she becomes a virgin bright; Then he rends up his manacles And pins her down for his delight. He plants himself in all her nerves Just as a husbandman his mould, And she bcomes his dwelling-place And garden, frutiful seventyfold.

Until he can a maiden win. And to allay his freezing age The poor man takes her in his arms: The cottage fades before his sight, The garden and its lovely charms; The senses roll themselves in fear, And the flat earth becomes a ball,

An aged shadow soon he fades, Wandering round and earthly cot, Full filled all with gems and gold Which he by industry had got.

The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away— A desert vast without a bound, And nothing left to eat or drink And a dark desert all around.

And these are the gems of the human soul: The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye, The countless gold of an aching heart, The martyr’s groan, and the lover’s sigh.

The honey of her infant lips, The bread and wine of her sweet smile, The wild game of her roving eye Does him to infancy beguile.

They are his meat, they are his drink: He feeds the beggar and the poor And the wayfaring traveller; For ever open is his door.

For as he eats and drinks he grows Younger and younger every day; And on the desert wild they both Wander in terror and dismay.

His grief is their eternal joy, They make the roofs and walls to ring— Till from the fire on the hearth Alittle female babe does spring!

Like the wild stag she flees away; Her fear plants many a thicket wild, While he pursues her night and day, By various arts of love beguiled.

And she is all of solid fire And gems and gold, that none his hand Dares stretch to touch her baby form, Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

By various arts of love and hate, Till the wide desert planted o’er With labyrinths of wayward love, Where roams the lion, wolf and boar,

But she comes to the man she loves, If young or old, or rich or poor; They soon drive out the aged host, A beggar at another’s door.

Till he becomes a wayward babe And she a weeping woman old. Then many a lover wanders here, The sun and stars are nearer rolled,

He wanders weeping far away Until some other take him in; Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,

The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy To all who in the desert roam, Till many a city there is built,

Martin Heavisides And many a pleasant shepherd’s home. But when they find the frowning babe Terror strikes through the region wide; They cry, ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!’ And flee away on every side. For who dare touch the frowning form His arm is withered to its root, Lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee And every tree does shed its fruit; And none can touch that frowning form, Except it be a woman old; She nails him down upon the rock, And all is done as I have told. [from The Pickering Manuscript] Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Why Was Cupid a Boy? Why was Cupid a boy, And why a boy was he? He should have been a girl, For aught that I can see. For he shoots with his bow, And the girl shoots with her eye, And they both are merry and glad, And laugh when we do cry. And to make Cupid a boy Was the Cupid girl's mocking plan; For a boy can't interpret the thing Till he is become a man.

A Poison Tree

And then he's so pierc'd with cares, And wounded with arrowy smarts, That the whole business of his life Is to pick out the heads of the darts.

I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.

'Twas the Greeks' love of war Turn'd Love into a boy, And woman into a statue of stone-And away fled every joy.

And I watered it in fears, Night and morning with my tears; And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles.

The Human Abstract

And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright. And my foe beheld it shine. And he knew that it was mine, And into my garden stole When the night had veiled the pole; In the morning glad I see My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Pity would be no more If we did not make somebody Poor; And Mercy no more could be If all were as happy as we. And mutual fear brings peace, Till the selfish loves increase: Then Cruelty knits a snare, And spreads his baits with care. He sits down with holy fears,

William Blake Selections And waters the grounds with tears; Then Humility takes its root Underneath his foot.

Ruddy and sweet to eat; And the Raven his nest has made In its thickest shade.

Soon spreads the dismal shade Of Mystery over his head; And the Catterpiller and Fly Feed on the Mystery.

The Gods of the earth and sea Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree; But their search was all in vain: There grows one in the Human Brain.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,

Title: Isaac Newton, Artist: William Blake Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren, whom, tyrant, he calls free: lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that wishes but acts not! For every thing that lives is Holy. [from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]

Please to pay for me my best thanks to Miss Poole tell her that I wish her a continued Excess of

Happiness—some say that Happiness is not Good for Mortals & they ought to be answerd that Sorrow is not fit for Immortals and is utterly useless to any one a blight never does good to a tree & if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit let none say the fruit was in consequence of the blight. [from a letter to William Hayley]

~~~

Peter Gilkes

TALES FROM AN ACCOUNTANT The Watch by

Peter Gilkes True stories are very often the hardest to believe. This is a one that I remember from my days as an accountant.

arry was an antique dealer with a shop and home in Dudley in Birmingham, in the West Midlands. An non-smoker and tea-totaller, his only vice was his motor car – a white Rolls Royce. This he’d drive while wearing a crumpled raincoat and carpet slippers. The number plate of his ‘roller’ was WBA2 and twice a month Harry would hire out himself and his car and drive a bride to the church, with two provisos – the wedding had to be a two – Wedding Bells At 2 and payment for his services had to be made out to his favourite charity whom he never told where he received the anonymous donations when he handed the cheques over each month. Harry was an eccentric. In an effort to find ‘valuable’ antiques to sell from his business premises, he used to put small adverts in selected newspapers offering to purchase old furniture and curiosities. One day he received a letter from a old dear who lived in Scotland. A long drive from the West Midlands, however Harry was used to travelling to meet his requirements and owned a second vehicle, a camper van that he used while driving long distances to view ‘valuables.’ Arriving at this ladies house in Scotland she told him that her husband had died, and she was moving to a smaller house nearer her daughter. This could not accommodate the

The Watch furniture that she and her husband had acquired over the years so she wanted to sell it. The furniture was old, but of no real value, and certainly not worth transporting back down south. This of course meant that Harry had to disappoint the dear old lady, which saddened him, but business was business. Apparently not too upset the lady enquired what she owed Harry for his trip up to see her; of course there was no charge. But being of ‘old stock’ the lady was not prepared to accept this, and so insisted that he choose something small that he had seen in the house to take as payment. After much debate Harry picked up an old watch that was not working and told her he would accept it as payment in full. This, she found acceptable, and Harry slipped the watch into his raincoat and made his way back to Dudley. Another business ‘habit’ Harry had, was to periodically clear old stock from his shop to make way for new, by loading his third vehicle, a large furniture van, and taking such contents to be auctioned. On such an occasion, some three months after his visit to Scotland, Harry had just about unloaded his van when he reached in his pocket and found the watch. This he thought was an ideal opportunity to off load it and so he put it in the auction along with the other items. His furniture and other curiosities sold quite well, and he was rubbing his hands anxious to get away, but he had to wait until the last item, the watch, was auctioned. To his complete amazement the watch sold for £3,500. It turned out that purely by chance there were two ‘watch’ experts in the auction room who knew the true value of this watch, and between them they pushed the price up, until one of them gave way. That is the end ofthe tale, except to mention that Harry tried to reach the old Lady to share his good fortune (without success), and two days later a Customs & Excise officer visited his shop to check his bookkeeping records and make sure he had recorded the sale ofthe watch in his records. It just goes to show that the Government never seem to miss out on an opportunity to share our good fortune!

~~~

Peter Gilkes

Title: All Heil, Artist: Raphael Kirchner

Resignation Letter

On Your Bike Resignation Letter My role was to look after the accounts and the computer software used by everyone in the company to handle the day-to-day adminstration of unit trusts. The computer package provided by a third party company was named Quasar, the relevance of which you will see in a minute. My immediate boss, David, was a great guy, and above him was the p.a. to the chairman of the group, Graham.. David handed in his notice as he had been offered a position as managing director of the Woolwich Unit Trust Company. I had hoped to offered his position, but as it turned out Graham decided not to replace him but to split his duties between myself and a colleague. My incentive was a £1,500 per annum raise. Disgusted with this offer I also resigned and this was my resignation letter. Dear Sirs, After being completely demoralised, especially following Graham's highly illogical judgement, kindly let me offload permanently Quasar, realistically starting today. Under valued widely X 1500. Yours Zealously, Peter

Iulian Ionescu

Title: The tree in the field, Artist:Konstantin Somov

The Statue

THE STATUE by

Iulian Ionescu would stop every morning in the park, on the way to work. Not to eat, not to exercise, not even to admire the nature. I would stop to talk to her.

First I'd drop both kids at the school, nicely dressed, lunch bags packed, hoping each day they'd be learning something other than hitting each other. Then I'd take a little detour, some half-way between the school and my job, to get to the park. A few times I'd find my bench occupied, so I'd circle up and down the path, hoping it would free-up, giving up after about fifteen minutes. Other times I'd find it empty, so I'd sit down, lean back and stare at her for a while. Long, wavy hair, straight shoulders, and a tight dress. Just perfect. Then I'd tell her about the kids. I'd tell her everything-- their progress, the new wacky things they did, all of it. I'd tell her about the Sunday brunches with my mother, and all about the neighbors. She'd listen, patiently, looking back at me in silence. Today I sit on that bench again, staring at the empty pedestal in disbelief. The statue is gone, just like Jessica. I get up and put one last bouquet of flowers at the base of the pedestal and, as I wipe a tear away, I realize I am finally ready to tell the children their mother is never coming back.

Marian Brooks

Title: Fishing, Artist: Carl Larsson

The Good Father

The Good Father By

Marian Brooks rank Evans walked waist-deep into the Atlantic Ocean. He cast his line and splashed his way back to shore allowing more slack. He anchored his fly rod firmly into the damp sand and sank into his beach chair. He applied sunscreen to his nose, plunked on his Eagles cap and settled in with the local newspaper. It was mid-September, just past Labor Day, and the beach was pleasantly deserted.

Frank watched Brady out of the corner of his eye. The boy was busy adding the finishing touches to an elegant castle, drizzling wet sand onto the turrets. He’d carved windows, bridges and tunnels with an old kitchen knife using one part sand and one part water just as his father said. But before long the sea would claim the fortress no matter how high the towers or how deep the moat. Brady hoped that for once his father would be wrong. Frank’s line vibrated. He struggled to his feet and reeled in his catch. “Dad, look! You’ve got two of ‘em!” “Brady, Grab the pole! Wait until your friends see this!”Frank reached for his camera. The boy smiled broadly. His two front teeth were missing and his Batman swim suit looked as if it were going to drop to his ankles at any moment. "Now, that would be some picture," Frank thought. He released the small bluefish from their hooks and tossed them back into the ocean. He waded out once more and cast his line. Within a few minutes, he felt another tug. “A strike, Dad!” This time Frank allowed Brady to do battle with the fish. An intense skirmish ensued but eventually the seven-year old prevailed landing a half-pound sea bass; another photo op. With Brady’s permission, Frank flipped the tiny bass to a tenacious seagull squawking nearby. The large gull swallowed the fish, waited and then served it up in bite-sized pieces to his hungry chicks. ###

Spanish Translations: Diana Ferraro

Title: Fireworks 1, Artist: Konstantin Somov

Cuban Literature: The Garden of Words

C UBAN LITERATURE: The Garden of Words By

Diana Ferraro

Spanish Translations: Diana Ferraro

n one of his most famous poems, Nicolás Guillén describes Cuba as “A long, green lizard with eyes of stone and water”(“Un largo lagarto verde con ojos de piedra y agua”)giving, at the same time, a lesson on the nature of Cuban literature: a constant imagery, an inexhaustible richness of vocabulary, an elegant ease, and an ironic take on life which is the true self of one of the most powerful Latin American literary heritages. Cuba was the last of Spanish colonies to become independent, by the end of 19th century, after the Spanish-American war, and in consequence, it was weaned later than other countries from the body of Spanish language and culture, of which it inherited the original splendor, very close to its spirit and genius. The most striking feature in the Cuban postcolonial literature is the high consciousness of sound and rhythm, that is, the musicality which has been constantly used as one more instrument of language not only in poetry but in novels. In the 20th century, many writers have masterfully used this instrument, such as the poet Nicolás Guillén who dared even to play with an invented African dialect intertwined to the Spanish, honoring the Black man as a big part of Cuban population, and the novelist Alejo Carpentier . In Guillén’s “Canto Negro ,” “Black Song” we can appreciate the almost impossible to translate verses while we hear their music: “¡Yambambó, yambambé!/Repica el congo solongo, /repica el negro bien negro;/congo solongo del Songo/baila yambó sobre un pie. /Mamatomba, serembe cuserembá. /. . . Tamba, tamba, tamba, tamba, /tamba del negro que tumba;!tumba del negro, caramba, /caramba, que el negro tumba:/¡yamba, yambó, yambambé!”. Alejo Carpentier, as the

talented, gifted writer and musicologist he was, chose a different approach than the playful trade with words to build a powerful body of work with an elegant, sensuous turn in long, majestic sentences, carefully structured as musical lines, in novels meant to bring to life the Caribbean history and culture, one of them “Los pasos perdidos, ” “The Lost Steps” which also introduces music as a subject and matter. The literary history of the island starts as early as the 16th century with Fray Bartolomé de las Casas and his “Historia de Indias, ” and goes through all the expected literary imported movements, including Romanticism in the 19th century, represented by José María de Heredia whose poem “Al Niágara” is inspired on the Niagara Falls (the Romantic love for Nature and the foreign!) and the novels of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, a feminist avant-la-lettre. But it’s only by the end of the 19th Century, with José Martí (1853–1895)-also a hero of the Independence- and Julián del Casal (1863- 1893,) that Cuban literature starts to bloom with its unique personality. Through the 20th century, when we have to account not only the independent Cuba become a Republic and the American intervention but the Revolution of 1959, poets such as Agustín Acosta and Dulce María Loynaz bloomed among many others and though the most popular Cuban poet remains Nicolás Guillén, the most respected has been the remarkable José Lezama Lima, not only the owner of immense poetical resources but the founder in 1940 of

Cuban Literature: The Garden of Words Revista Orígenes a magazine of Cuban and universal poetry and, above all, the author of Paradiso,

a novel which can be considered one of the masterpieces of Spanish literature. The main Cuban novelist, reigning above all the rest, is the powerful Alejo Carpentier, the author of “El reino de este mundo”, “The Kingdom of this World” and “El Siglo de las luces”, ”The Century of Lights”, complex, meaningful novels which allude to Caribbean history and politics. Carpentier’s accent on the Caribbean culture, so prone to mystery and metaphysical epiphanies, made of him the first writer of magical realism. Often rebels and exiles, Cuban writers have been at odds with the disturbing history of their country. José Martí set the intellectual example of the writer engaged with freedom, when he braved Spain and worked for the Independence. In the contemporary days, not everyone agreed with the Cuban socialist revolution, creating thus two Cubas, the Cuba on the island and the spiritual Cuba in exile. Both Cubas have remained united in the character of its literature, not a small feat, preserving the richness of the inherited language as well as the buoyant personality of the Cuban people. While Lezama Lima and Carpentier never left the island (but as an ambassador) some of their outstanding contemporary colleagues couldn’t endure the lack of freedom under the Revolution: Severo Sarduy left the island to live in Paris and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, another distinguished, gracious writer with the gift of a playful language, chose London. Most of the younger writers who didn’t accept the Cuban revolutionary regime or who were persecuted by it, chose the United States, such as Reinaldo Arenas, the author of the marvelous autobiography “Antes que anochezca”,“Before the Night Falls” While the most recent Cuban literature of exiles includes writers like Eliseo Alberto (who lived and died in Mexico,) Zoe Valdés (who lives in Paris,) and Daína Chaviano (United States,) who all write in Spanish, there’s a new Cuban literature written in English, by the bilingual writers who grew up in the continental spiritual Cuban community of the United States, and whose early thinker and leader was the essayist Gustavo Pérez Firmat("Life on the Hyphen"). Having lost their homeland, they recreated a mythical Cuba which has borne some new literary fruits, in the shared garden of words where no one dares to say what will happen in the end, when the English language is touched by the magic wand of Cuban sound. One close experiment has been performed by a Caribbean brother, the Dominican Junot Díaz and his wise and revolutionary use of Spanglish sound and there’s more to wait for whenever tropical trees and flowers are at stake. They grow with endless energy, and we rejoice in them if we’re lucky enough to know they exist. ###

Spanish Translations: Diana Ferraro

EN EL CAMPO por Julián del Casal Tengo el impuro amor de las ciudades, y a este sol que ilumina las edades prefiero yo del gas las claridades. A mis sentidos lánguidos arroba, más que el olor de un bosque de caoba, el ambiente enfermizo de una alcoba. Mucho más que las selvas tropicales, plácenme los sombríos arrabales que encierran las vetustas capitales. A la flor que se abre en el sendero, como si fuese terrenal lucero, olvido por la flor de invernadero. Más que la voz del pájaro en la cima de un árbol todo en flor, a mi alma anima la música armoniosa de una rima. Nunca a mi corazón tanto enamora el rostro virginal de una pastora como un rostro de regia pecadora. Al oro de las mies en primavera, yo siempre en mi capricho prefiriera el oro de teñida cabellera.

El rocío que brilla en la montaña no ha podido decir a mi alma extraña lo que el llanto al bañar una pestaña. Y el fulgor de los astros rutilantes no trueco por los vívidos cambiantes del ópalo la perla o los diamantes.

No cambiara sedosas muselinas por los velos de nítidas neblinas que la mañana prende en las colinas. Más que al raudal que baja de la cumbre, quiero oír a la humana muchedumbre gimiendo en su perpetua servidumbre.

Title:Bird Alkonost, Artist:Ivan Bilibin

Cuban Literature: The Garden of Words

IN THE COUNTRY by Julián del Casal I own the impure love of cities and to this sun lighting over ages I prefer the brightness of gas.

The dew shining on the mountain could never tell to my puzzled soul what tears said when bathing a lash.

My languorous senses are enchanted not by the smell of mahogany woods but by the sick ambiance of a bedroom.

And as for the glow of radiant stars I would never barter the shining changes of opal, pearls and diamonds.

More than the tropical forests I rejoice in the somber suburbs that surround the ancient capitals. As for the flower that blooms on the trail like an earthly morning star I forget it to favor a greenhouse flower. More than the voice of a bird on top of a blossoming tree, my soul cheers up with the harmonious music of verses. Never my heart is enamoured by the virginal face of a shepherdess as much as by the face of a great pecheress. To the gold of wheat by springtime I would always be capricious and prefer the gold of dyed manes. I wouldn’t trade silky muslin for the veil of sharp mist that morning fastens on the hills. More than the torrent running from the height I want to listen to the human crowd moaning on its perpetual servitude.

Spanish Translations: Diana Ferraro

Title: Dove, Artist: Charles Demuth

UNA MONJA por Julián del Casal Muerden su pelo negro, sedoso y rizo, los dientes nacarados de alta peineta y surge de sus dedos la castañeta cual mariposa negra de entre el granizo.

Cual tímidas palomas por el follaje, asoman sus chapines bajo su traje hecho de blondas negras y verde raso,

Pañolón de Manila, fondo pajizo, que a su talle ondulante firme sujeta, echa reflejos de ámbar, rosa y violeta moldeando de sus carnes todo hechizo.

y al choque de las copas de manzanilla riman con los tacones la seguidilla, perfumes enervantes dejando el paso.

Cuban Literature: The Garden of Words

A NUN by Julián del Casal Her black, silky, curled hair bitten by the high mother-of-pearl toothed comb, between her fingers a castanet springs up like a black butterfly from hail. A large Manila shawl, with a straw-colored background, tied to her undulating waist casts amber, pink and purple reflections shaping on her flesh every possible spell. Like shy doves in the foliage her clogs show under her gown made of black lace and green satin, and when the manzanilla glasses clink they rhyme with their heels the seguidilla, with nervous perfumes as they step.

Spanish Translations: Diana Ferraro

CULTIVO UNA ROSA BLANCA por José Martí Cultivo una rosa blanca en junio como en enero para el amigo sincero que me da su mano franca. Y para el cruel que me arranca el corazón con que vivo, cardo ni ortiga cultivo; cultivo la rosa blanca.

I TEND A WHITE ROSE by José Martí I tend a white rose in June as in January for the truthful friend who offers me his honest hand. And for the cruel one who snatches the heart by which I live neither thistle nor nettle I grow; I still tend the white rose.

Cuban Literature: The Garden of Words

I DREAM AWAKE by José Martí I dream with my eyes wide open, and day and night I always dream. And over the foam of the large rough sea, and over the curled sands on the desert and from the thrusting lion, king of my chest, cheerfuly riding on my submissive neck, I always see afloat a child who calls me!

Children playing with giants, Artist: Francesco Goya

SUEÑO DESPIERTO por José Martí Yo sueño con los ojos Abiertos, y de día Y noche siempre sueño. Y sobre las espumas Del ancho mar revuelto, Y por entre las crespas Arenas del desierto Y del león pujante, Monarca de mi pecho, Montado alegremente Sobre el sumiso cuello, Un niño que me llama Flotando siempre veo!

Spanish Translation: Marie Fitzpatrick LA NIÑA DE GUATEMALA por José Martí Quiero, a la sombra de un ala, contar este cuento en flor: la niña de Guatemala, la que se murió de amor. Eran de lirios los ramos; y las orlas de reseda y de jazmín; la enterramos en una caja de seda;

Allí, en la bóveda helada, la pusieron en dos bancos: besé su mano afilada, besé sus zapatos blancos. Callado, al oscurecer, me llamó el enterrador; nunca más he vuelto a ver a la que murió de amor.

Ella dio al desmemoriado una almohadilla de olor; él volvió, volvió casado; ella se murió de amor. Iban cargándola en andas obispos y embajadores; detrás iba el pueblo en tandas, todo cargado de flores; Ella, por volverlo a ver, salió a verlo al mirador; él volvió con su mujer, ella se murió de amor. Como de bronce candente, al beso de despedida, era su frente -¡la frente que más he amado en mi vida! Se entró de tarde en el río, la sacó muerta el doctor; dicen que murió de frío, yo sé que murió de amor.

Title: Pierrot's Dream, Artist, Raphael Kirchner

Cuban Literature: The Garden of Words

THE MAID OF GUATEMALA by José Martí In the shade of a wing I want to tell this blooming story: the maid of Guatemala, she that is dead from love. There were bouquets of lilies, and fringes of mignonette and jasmin; we buried her in in a silk box; She gave to the forgetful a scented pin cushion; He returned, returned married, She died of love.

There in her iced coffin: she was put on two pews, I kissed her tapering hand, I kissed her white shoes. Silent, at dusk the undertaker called me never more have I returned to see she who died for love.

Bishops and ambassadors carried her on a stretcher, behind the village people went round, they all carried flowers, To see him again, she went out to the balcony, he returned with his wife, she died for love. Like the burning bronze, to the farewell kiss her forehead was -- her forehead that I’ve loved the most in my life In the afternoon she went into the river, the doctor took her out dead; they said that she died of the cold, I say that she died for love.

Spanish Translations: Diana Ferraro

PALMA SOLA por Nicolás Guillén La palma que está en el patio, nació sola; creció sin que yo la viera, creció sola; bajo la luna y el sol, vive sola. Con su largo cuerpo fijo, palma sola, sola en el patio sellado, siempre sola, guardián del atardecer, sueña sola. La palma sola soñando, palma sola, que va libre por el viento, Title: Study of Palm Trees, Artist: Edward Lear libre y sola, suelta de raíz y tierra, suelta y sola, cazadora de las nubes, palma sola, palma sola, LONE PALM By Nicolás Guillén palma. The palm in the courtyard was born alone; lonely palm dreaming, it grew up without me seeing it, The lone palm, it grew up on its own; that it runs free in the wind, under the sun and the moon, free and alone, it lives alone. unburdened from roots and soil, free and alone, With its long fixed body, huntress of the clouds, Lonely palm, lone palm, Alone in the closed courtyard, lone palm, Always alone, palm. Guardian of the evening, It dreams alone. 47

Cuban Literature: The Garden of Words

Title: A Piece of Sugar Cane, Artist: Marianne North

CAÑA por Nicolás Guillén El negro junto al cañaveral. El yanqui sobre el cañaveral. La tierra bajo el cañaveral. ¡Sangre que se nos va!

CANE by Nicolás Guillén The black man close to the cane field. The yankee on the cane field The earth under the cane field. Our blood

Yvette Flys

Road to Golgotha Yvette Flys

Title:Otsu-e Paintings Coming Alive Triptych, Artist:Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Road to Golgotha

m dying,” my father said and my heart pounded. I’ve been surrounded by death all my life. I’m tired of it. I gathered him close to offer solace. His thin lips parted, he sucked breath into his mouth and said “I need you to go to the old homestead.” “I don’t know where it is.” I’d heard of my parents first home, but had never seen it. They lived well there. In a paradise, father had often said. They’d been blessed in their early years, but later had been forced to move. “I’ll give you directions.” Father grabbed my hands and held them tightly. His body had always been old, but now it was frail. He searched my face; his eyes darted from one of mine to the other. “Really Dad, I’ll go whenever you want.” I’d always done as he’d asked. “Now? Seth, can you go now?” “Of course.” I wanted to see the place where he and Mother had been happy. She even smiled then, I’d heard, and had done so often. “Good.” Father nodded to the bureau where the single sheet of computer paper rested under a thin layer of dust. “You’ll need those directions. Go now. Go quickly. I don’t have much time.” I grabbed the instructions, kissed his parchment cheek, and left. His words, complete with elaborate serifs and curlicues, shivered on both sides of the page, a well-defined sign of his age, and I read them. I wished he’d mapquested directions because he hadn’t been out of the house for decades. Some of those roads might be closed or renamed by now. The drive was easy, three hours down Highway 1. Not too long a drive, and all I thought about on the road was. Why hadn’t they told me how close we’d lived? The chicken scratchings on the backside of the paper had been harder to read. He must have hurried to add them as an afterthought. I struggled to decipher, not only the words, but what they meant.

Yvette Flys Dear Seth, There’s a tree in the middle ofthe garden. It should have long pods hanging from the branches. Bring me back three seeds from one ofthem. When you return, ifI’m dead, place them in my mouth before you bury me. Try to return before that. Love, Adam P. S. Do not eat ofthe tree.

* Dusk approached as I drove along the Spanish fence. Golden sunlight tipped the stucco peaks that rose in a wall hands had formed so many years ago. Tapered shadows from spearpoints on top of the wall stretched eastwards, and the illusion of dangerous teeth was not lost. I drove along that fence for a long time. When I turned north, following the wall, gates rose before me, tall cast-iron spikes that topped an intricate weaving of black petals and geometric designs. Time had done its work. Thorny brambles and rosebushes climbed the gate and transformed it into a barricade that only the most determined could pass. I was determined. My father’s wishes would be obeyed. I took in a deep breath and walked around the back. I wrapped my hands onto twisted spokes and shook the gate. It rattled loudly, but the earth held fast against the roots of shrubs that had grown against it. I put weight into my hands and pushed hard. The ground did not give, but from within the garden, I heard the cackle of a murder of crows. Their combined wings thrummed on the air and I was afraid. I fell back. My bottom bumped against the Buick and at that moment, the gates creaked open. A slender gardener stood before me, a shovel in his hand, a threadbare baseball cap perched on the back of his head. The fine creases of his pointed face had filled with sweat and soil, and the knees of his well-worn dungarees were stiff with dried mud. He raised a grey eyebrow and approached. “Why have you come?” Perspiration and hard work had lent him a particular reek. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” I stammered. “I didn’t know anyone was here.” “I’m always here,” he said. “You are not welcome.” He moved to leave and I hurried to speak. “My parents lived here long ago.” The gardener spun towards me and peered into my face. “Your parents? Are they well? You must be Seth.” His shovel had disappeared and he braced me by the shoulders. Maybe

Road to Golgotha he braced himself. I couldn’t tear my gaze from his. I stood spellbound as he asked, “How are Adam and Eve?” I had to answer. “Mom died years ago. I believe these are Dad’s end-of days. He’s sent me here for something.” “He could not come himself.” It was more a statement than a question, but I answered anyway. “No, he’s dying.” “He needs the seeds then.” Everyone knew about the seeds but me. I was alone, felt more confused than my age should allow but would not admit to this naivete. “Yes, he needs them now. The tree is past its bloom?” “As he knew it would be. Come.” He turned and slid through a break in the greenery. I followed, and after I passed through, the hedges closed with a soft shushing. I glanced back and could not see where we’d just been. Before me, the garden spread out in a jungled disarray, trees and plants and grasses and vegetables randomly placed. Rabbits and deer peered through the few branches that showed the last bit of the newly passed day. If the gardener was always here, he must have relaxed often. “I don’t relax,” the gardener said. “I work steadily, but your vision may not be the same as mine.” Before I could think, before I could decide not to react, (he’d read my mind, his vision seemed to be disordered), he stopped in front of an ancient tree. Its roots split the ground, twisting up in angular bends, nearly touching the laden branches that folded towards the earth. Large leaves rustled softly in the night air, and teased and danced over pendulous seedpods. I stopped and stared. An aroma rose from the tree, fragrant, like Mom’s chicken soup when I had the flu. I breathed in the heady scent and knew nothing else. My father’s illness was gone. The task before me disappeared. I knew nothing but the smell, as satisfying as the back of my first girlfriend’s neck. Her skin was soft, velvet petals warmed by an ocean breeze. She sang to me at night, her voice spiced and slurred by the ginger wine we drank. “You need to harvest the seeds now.” The gardener’s voice pulled at me and I shook my head. Father would be dead soon. “Yes …” “Don’t worry about the smell. Don’t think of it at all. I’ll talk you through this. Try not to breathe.” Don’t breathe? Was he crazy?” I needed air, and this air was delightful. I filled my lungs. Sandalwood and myrrh, with an under note of eucalyptus. She used to touch my hand gently, and then pull at my smallest finger when she wanted to get nuzzled. “Seth, don’t do this.” The gardener moved between the tree and me. He grabbed my forearm and pulled me away. “I should have warned you, you cannot know.” He chaffed at my wrists. My head began to clear. “I’ve got to get back. My father.” “Listen Seth, you must resist. You don’t know the power of this place, that tree; you must

Yvette Flys hold fast and think only of your task.” “The seeds. I need the seeds.” I looked at the tree. Its leaves trembled and gestured. If I squinted my eyes, they seemed to beckon me towards them. Hands reached out, hands that belonged to diaphanous women with long sinuous legs and translucent bodies. They wanted me to tell them stories. They wanted me to make love to them and … “Don’t focus on the tree, Seth; just think of your father. Think of your mother. Think of your country – whatever you need to distract you from the temptations, but don’t think of the tree.” ”My father is dying.” I spoke the obvious, as though it had never been said, and the words cut into my passion, dripped acid into my burgeoning lust. “What’s happening to me?” “You prove your humanity.” That was no kind of answer, but it was the only one offered. The gardener nudged me towards the tree. “Don’t think, just take any seedpod. Don’t think, don’t feel, just do. Act blindly and believe that you will do well.” I closed my eyes, did not breathe, and stumbled forward. My father had asked; that’s all I needed to know. I loved him, I would love him forever, and his time, nearly over, had been well spent with me. I raised my arms, and turned my hands upwards. I took another tentative step. A warm, softly molded curve fell onto my palms. When I lowered my hands, the pod came with them. It felt hot and soft, and heavier than its size suggested. Like her breast. Under the desirous, eager flesh of the fruit, my fingers sensed a heartbeat. I wondered what it would taste like. My mouth needed to taste it. I began to shake. * My hand, cradling the succulent pod, lifted slowly towards my opened mouth. Drool collected under my tongue, and as I readied my teeth to bite, the gardener clamped wiry fingers around my wrists and hollered, “No!” I looked at him and froze. His eyes blazed, a bead of sweat collected on the tip of his sharp nose and fell. “Has your father not warned you?” Dazed, I recited, “Do not eat of the tree…” The gardener turned, and with my wrist in his hand, led me to a small moonlit meadow in the center of the garden. A tall stone table stood under a pomegranate tree. Lichen crawled up over its legs and along the sides, but none grew on the top, where an obsidian bowl lay inverted over the matching handle of a long blade. “Drop it in here,” he said as he righted the bowl. “It’s only the fruit, not the seeds, that must worry you.” I let the pod slip from my hand. It fell with a thunk that echoed off the blackened trees and collected in the surrounding foliage, whistling around me, like the whine a wetted finger makes on a crystal glass. The fruit itself absorbed silver moonlight and cast off bright reds and golds and heat. But

Road to Golgotha I no longer needed to take it in me. My thoughts cleared as I stared at it and I spoke, not moving my gaze from the swirling colors. “What now?” “You need to cut the fruit and remove the seeds for Adam,” the gardener said. “Try not to touch it. As you’ve seen, this is mighty powerful stuff.” “Yes,” I answered, “But…” “Don’t talk now. Just cut and then pocket the three seeds.” I cast my eyes to this slender, soil encrusted man, but he stopped me. “We can talk later.” And he moved away. I took the knife into my hand. It was heavy, but well made and balanced. I poked the pod and the whistling ceased. The fruit shrank into itself with an outburst of gas, then split open. The flesh dissolved into smoke, and the smoke drifted off. Six seeds remained in the bowl. I plucked three, the fattest ones, put them in my shirt pocket, and faced the gardener. “Now we can talk,” he said, and smiled. He brushed detritus from his hands and offered one to me. “It’s about time I introduced myself. I’m Michael.” * We sat on fallen logs, under the cold night air. I made a fire. He roasted ears of white corn and sweet potatoes among the coals. His mood had lightened. A smile played over his lips. His dark eyes captured the firelight and glowed. He told me of my parents when they were young – my father, vibrant and strong – a master of his universe, and my mother - so beautiful, with a surety that she was the most perfect woman in the world. I looked to the space between my feet when he asked me how she died. “In silence,” I replied. “As she grew to do everything.” I paused, and then before he could ask, continued. “She was not happy. One day she lay down, and she never got up again.” “I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m not surprised. She paid for her actions and we will leave it at that.” His determined silence confused me. I asked for clarity, but he merely shook his head. Cicadas clattered in the distance suddenly, and I asked, “Michael, can you tell me what happened at the tree?” He laughed. “Only what you already know, I suppose.” The gardener stretched for a slender stick and nudged it at the snapping coals. “Your father asked for seeds from the tree. I’ve waited here forever; I knew he’d need them. Knew you’d need help too, and here you are and there are the seeds. What else is there?” “Why did I feel that way? I didn’t act right, couldn’t think right.” “It’s the nature of that tree - it searches out your secret desires to know, and it feeds on that want. That’s why I won’t touch it. I couldn’t resist.” Michael paused and stared to the west. “But you must leave now.” He stood, and I stood too. We walked toward the overgrown front gate. “Your father waits.”

Yvette Flys “Why does he want them? What are these seeds?” “He can tell you that better than I.” The gardener passed in front of me and spread his hands wide. The shrubbery opened before him. He jerked the heavy iron gate open, and as I drove off, Michael watched, stepped back, and the gate closed. * Night had passed while I’d been in the garden. I felt I hadn’t been behind those walls for that long. The sun had risen, and the colors of the sky had faded to those middle-of-the-day blues and whites. That’s all I knew. Everything else was a jumble of remembered sensation and concern. The seeds weighed heavily in my pocket as I drove home. I thought of Father’s note. Miles passed, the sun moved westward, I had the seeds in my pocket. The honk of an oncoming car snapped me back to attention and I realized I’d been drifting. I tried to focus. My heart pounded and blood felt hot in my veins. I needed to have been home weeks ago, I thought, and then laughed. I’d just left yesterday. Surely all was fine. Surely it was. Still, I raced home. It took forever and no time at all to come home. Maybe the night of conversation with the gardener, or lack of sleep played with me, but I felt weary and out-ofsorts when I arrived. I tired to pull myself together, to calm down. I noted that the grass needed trimming, checked and emptied the mailbox, and entered, just as though I’d never been sent on that quest. Just as if my father had asked me to look for the telephone bill. I entered his room, letters in my hand, and said, “Dad, here’s a note from our governor. He wants our votes next month.” My father lay on the bed, his hands folded over his chest, his head tipped back flat on the mattress, no pillow nestled his shiny crown. Light through the window glistened on the stubble that had grown on his bony jaw and chin. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. I rushed to his side, took his cold wrist in my hand and searched for his pulse, but knew, the moment I felt his flesh, that he was gone. My body slumped over his. I circled his thin shoulders with my arms, clasped his body to my chest, and wept. When my pain eased, tears had plastered the scant hairs on his head to the skin that stretched over his scalp. I wondered when he’d died, how long he’d lain alone on his bed, while I’d ventured into his past, while I’d entertained false dreams and had spoken with the gardener. I laid him back on the bedding, kissed his forehead, and told him that I loved him. I remembered the seeds. My hand slid into my pocket and felt for them. Smooth. Warm. Were they vibrating against the tips of my fingers or was I shaking? I took them out of my pocket, stared at the three of them for a while and then said, “What the hell.” Two of them I shoved under his tongue, right before I called the coroner. The other I tossed out the window. Maybe it would grow for me. That fruit, it smelled so … end-

Road to Golgotha Golgotha: According to the non-canonical Testament ofAdam, Adam knew his death approached and asked his son Seth to travel to the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden and bring him three of its seeds. Seth met the archangel Michael, who led him to the tree. Seth collected the seed and came home to find Adam had died. Seth placed the seeds in Adam’s mouth and buried him. Much later, the three seeds germinated and grew to become the trees that would be carved into three crosses at Calvary.

Marty Lopez

Title: Broken Forms, Artist: Franz Marc

Marty Lopez

Freakbeat #1 You have to escape through a snare-hollow of night. The daylight ruins all sense of fuzz on happiness. After our spouses have died from thump-heavy sex, or rolled over like forgetful children, we tap a Morse Code against the walls of our apartments, your bedroom against my thin ear. We flee to The Mercy Club where The Oblong Cyrcles are playing "Isn't It a Blammy-Shame?" We dance until our heads fall off, until the dense human vapor rolls off the skin, until we admit our love-hate for kitchen sink and empty rooms. At last call, an angry compressed vocal through the speakers, we feel the grass grow beneath our wounds. But we are only wobbly guests and sheepin-love are destined to be shorn. Dawn is a music sheet of bleeding pink. Back home, our spouses beat us up, until we are as broken as our secret stash of scratched LPs. Steadfast in corners, we remain deeply grooved.

Stan Long

Title:The Last Drop, Artist: : Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Stan Long

Winging It Dying in September did she fly south with the cranes their cries carried far telling as they flew the roof-tops in v's it was not over yet did she wish me well the schism between the beloved and the living I step into the night wave at my departing love it is the end I think on wings what better way to go in the company of cranes in September a date we'll keep again I'll know her by those voices in the night

evie robillard

Title: Young woman on the shore, Artist: Edvard Munch

evie robillard

Moon Catalog The moon’s the first note you play on the piano, the chord your hands can never quite master. The Unfinished Symphony, a work in progress, the Miraculous Pitcher, the world’s oldest coin trick, a game of solitaire on a glass-topped table. The moon’s a flower forever unfolding, a button forever becoming undone. The moon is the ship that never comes in, the moon is the cat that never comes back. The moon’s n old lady hanging out her panties, the moon is the wet dream that won’t wash away. The moon is a verb conjugating itself, the moon is the poem you’re afraid to write. A note in a bottle, a letter to Santa, the phone call that comes when you’re not home. The moon is the drunkard who dances alone. It’s all four corners, the winning ticket, the hit that always clears the fence. A litany, a rosary, a four-part invention, the perfect equation. The andante, the encore, the solo, the coda, the moon is the fat lady who brings down the curtain, the moon is the symphony with just enough notes. --evie robillard—

evie robillard

Title: Self-Portrait. Caricature, Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

evie robillard

Everything Happens Twice That bird sitting dazed on the railing has flown into your window before. The dead-end street you’ve turned onto— you did that just last month. The boss calling you to his office has nothing new to say. There are only so many scripts. Everything happens twice. The friend who borrows your raincoat will borrow your raincoat tomorrow. The parent who never loved you enough is doing it from the grave. You are writing the very same poem over & over again they are playing that old, old song but it’s never the very last dance. So smile at the guy who drinks too much— the one with forget-me-not eyes. Sleep with the one who calls you by another woman’s name. ¬--evie robillard—

evie robillard

After December A little boy asks his mother What comes after December? All he can think of is darkness. A dark field, or a wall. Stairs going down and down. A sky without stars. Still, the boy reasons, his mother has lived through many Decembers; even he has encountered December, before, he’s almost positive. January, says his Mom. After December there’s January. And then she takes his hand and walks with him down the street and into the rest of his immense, unknowable life.

Title: January, Artist: Theodor Severin Kittelsen

evie robillard

The Garden In Winter The girl and her brother are back, their mittens and scarves bright in the leafless garden. And their laughter, their shrieks as they run, hiding and seeking and making b elieve outside my window. Taller than I’d remembered, the girl’s legs not-at-all boyish, tiny breasts, I am sure, budding under the jacket; tiny eggs stirring in warm, dark places. One of these days she’ll leave her brother behind, will put up her hair and be off. And the boy will stand, as he stands now, in the frozen lilac that isn’t a lilac, but some sort of castle or cage; the girl will not see him, or hear him, she will not be there.

Bobby Steve Baker

Title: The Dream, Artist: Franz Marc

Bobby Steve Baker

Breakers the child prefers to be alone with the furious flaming waves that spark and lick the sky followed like thunder by a succulent undertow leaving no time for nonsense but in periodic calm he gives perfunctory recognition to the muffled gurgles and chirps of the shore mother the mother up to her ankles and no more always yelling nonsense like too deep too far come back he cups his ear as Admiral Nelson held the scope to his blind eye and led the British fleet to victory equally no reason to heed the shore mother distracting to listen to there are tasks at hand diving into breaking waves near twice his height giving up control to each disorienting choreography from the sea god always the desperate urge to live come up again and breathe that life defining breath the child wants just the chance to question that next breath

Maria Isakova Bennett

Title: The Morning After, Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Maria Isakova Bennett

Looking for the source of madder The promise of new paintings drew me through the door, once there, the warmth of his turf fire, its sweet soil odour, held me – his walls were crowded with her twisted torso. He passed me a note, a recipe for pigment A , the suggestion of food made me hungry, and we ate into the early hours. Afterwards we talked of torubia tinctorum, and of fabrics drenched rose and brown; roots were soft under our feet in that space – part room, part warehouse. He kept muttering alizarin like a code, and on the walls were letters and numbers C and H and O, four and eight and twelve. I escaped while he slept. But every May I make alizarin from his recipe – and paint my body red.

Bobby Steve Baker

Title: At the Foot of the Scaffold, Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Bobby Steve Baker

Inspiration what was it I wanted to write about just a minute ago before the dog woke up cold snout under my arm whimpering for a rub before the November rain beating on the glass of the kitchen door became so insistent before I contemplated that the wine was all I remembered of dinner earlier that night a flash of deep attachment to the humanizing of the bayonet of lidless nights—that’s all that’s left that and the florescent ballast buzz of piecing together a lovely sleepless night

Maria Isakova Bennett

Title: The Irish Girl, Artist: Ford Madox Brown

Maria Isakova Bennett

Transfiguration Come up to Linsford, he said, lets make up for lost time, Let’s sin he meant.

A clock ticked counterpoint to sleet and thawing snow. Light stained glass: rose and fell in waves the Irish sea in the Irish sky. I still see him squinting at the panes, He was a looker in profile. Images riffled through my head holly leaves like saucers of light, snowdrops along a path, daffodil shadows grazing a shed – the house open to a purple sky – lichen skirting boards, and always – sun shafting through arched windows lighting our damp skin, a taste of snow and rust, the shadow of a shed, holly leaves jagged waves. Rain like black ink, a bed of lichen a Celtic knot, his hands, our lips, The sky – a series of white planes

James Owens

Title: The Mad Cow, Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

James Owens

Rise It comes unsought -- only unsought.

toward each others’ hands, and the sun through thin cloud has just enough day left

It comes uninvited -- only uninvited and by preference at the core of sorrow, when sorrow without relief to burn the glass of a stone church slumps into the mind like thick, free of its gray blur, obvious mud: the sick child, the fallen marriage, the failing so that gold and blue now flash and yearn, and the sky god who hides his fragments trembles, ready. in debris, weeks when you learn sorrow is the only possibility. It comes like this. One evening you trudge along, broken, a street chosen because choice doesn't matter, watching your numb shoes -- and for no reason at all the late-spring light lifts itself up from the late-spring lawns, and the two sullen teens, glaring as you pass, move

Tom Sheehan

V for Victor by

Tom Sheehan 77

V for Victor

saw it all, from the very beginning, heard it all, too, every word rising on the air … in our first classroom, in church, everywhere it happened, you name the place and I was there. Unannounced it came. From the heavens it must have come, taking over his soul, his body, his mind for a few bare minutes of magic. Once, and once only, every five year like clockwork, it came on him, as if grabbed by the heavenly spheres or ignition itself lighting up his lungs from the inside. My pal Victor, classmate for 16 years of schooling, teammate for 8 years, inseparable companion, fifth year custodian of miracles that made him, for the nonce, an extraordinary singer without explanation, an indescribable tenor so gifted I have to place the cause on an element beyond us mere men. V for Victor, dit dit dit dah, dit dit dit dah, dit dit dit dah . I never saw the miracle coming, in any of the situations. Neither did he, but it took hold of him and wouldn’t let go until the last word fell from his lips, from his throat, from his lungs, and to depart then forever from him. No song was ever repeated, making the miracle even more mysterious, as he could not even recall the scenario within a half hour of its happening. I often thought I hoped I’d be there when it was over. Or maybe I didn’t hope so. It’d be sad enough to hear the last of it, knowing at that moment he’d be gone before another five years had passed. You think I’m off my rocker, I’ll bet, but I’ll tell you I have not missed a word. Not that I was clued in on the moment of coming (I rarely knew it was coming until I was out of college and back home for good) and then the math of it hit me. So, because he was my best friend, because he was so loyal in his own right, a trusted teammate, a productive teammate, a leader, I started keeping a journal, plotting the next revelation, the next miracle. His musical renditions were all glorious, out of this world, infused with so much talent it shook me. Perhaps it was a part of his emotional and physical make-up that brought up a message from within, carried it off so it could be shared. There just had to be something in the air, surrounding him, waiting for his hand or eye or lung to breathe it in so it could be let loose. The time it happened when he was 15 years old, and not the first time I had been a witness, was the first time I thought his surroundings or the company he shared dictated his revelation, his sharing, his improbable gift. It was as though it was needed, not by Victor but by those about him. I tried to trace that import from the third incident. We were sophomores in high school, and every Wednesday evening, five of us, all teammates and classmates, would gather at Paul Barbanti’s house where his mother fed us the ultimate in Italian meals. She and her daughters loved to cook, to feed us and her son during the football season. The good old smells of rich sauce were deep and delicious and flooded the house, all the rooms, the hallways, the bathrooms, probably the cellar and the attic, calling on the appetites, not letting go until cake or pie hit the table. Mr. Barbanti sat at the head of the huge table partly in the kitchen and partly in the dining room where it was extended to accommodate we weekly guests, with a jug of wine, an old cider jug, in place beside his chair … a deep, delicious Dago Red he called it, made in his own garage from his own grapes off his own backyard vines, a recipe from Italy come by boat fifty years earlier. That Dago Red, barreled in the garage, was often a target for theft of a pint or so, late at night, Barbanti house lights all dimmed or shut off, the four of us pals mischievously out on Saugus town. Heavy, Buhda’d in his chair, the classic icon of the East Saugus Italian community, stonemason, violinist of sorts, warm as sin, Mr. Barbanti, by habit, often by choice, talked to his wife in beautiful Italian, almost

Tom Sheehan

Title: Kudma, the sorcerer (Costume design for the opera "The Enchantress") Artist: Mikhail Vrubel

musical, as if it had come directly from La Scala. I loved to hear him speak, sonorous at some moments, secretive another, yet a tenor’s carry in his voice. I dreamt about learning Italian, but did not follow through with my intent. I think the

result is the way I listen to opera now, putting in my own words for those being sung, making my own dreamscapes, composing my interpretation of an aria. When Mr. Barbanti spoke all commotion in the kitchen stopped, kettles stopped singing, pans stopped banging and clanging, glasses and plates stopped clattering. Sentences stopped in midstatement as if a gavel had smashed down on the countertop. “Angelina, that sausage will be the best ever served in this room, I am sure of it,” as interpreted by his son in a low whisper, and the order it indefinably contained, would be understood, the tone set for the evening, the feast ready for us princes. So it was on that night, the table cleared, a hum in Mr. Barbanti’s throat coming musically across the room, a tune from old Italy most likely, that the ignition started in Victor’s chest. The younger people in the house that evening were in the hallway to the upstairs, set off to the side of the kitchen, some sitting on steps, a couple standing, all gabbing, comrades at ease, sated, our mouths in a sweet and sour taste after being curried by meatballs and gravy and the inevitably delicious strawberry shortcake. That’s when Victor stood up at the foot of the stairs, at attention to an invisible order, unsaid direction, with no outward sign, no outward expression, no full giveaway on his part. Alertness told me I was again to be witness to the miracle only he could accommodate. It was likely a moment, I was sure, that Victor did not know was coming, from wherever it was loosed, from what housing or crucible or dais where it was issued, as if on demand to be a living moment of time. It came in Italian, rich as Naples I’d guess, abruptly, suddenly, rising from him who could not speak Italian, who could not read music, who had not sung a song, unknown to him but a few seconds before, for the previous five years. Instantly I remembered the last time, when he was ten, when I was once again at his side in such a situation, and here I was once more, right there in front of him as the unmusical Victor, grabbed by an unknown power, unknown force, unknown capability, unknown talent, broke into a song I

V for Victor

had heard a hundred times but never from Victor … never before from him and, as time would prove, never to come from him again. He sang about what a wonderful, beautiful day it was: but it came in the Mother Tongue, La Scalapowered, as beautiful if no more beautiful than Caruso himself: Che bella cosa è na jurnata 'e sole, he sang, sonorous, rising up the hallway and through the whole house, n'aria serena doppo na tempesta! It was majestic, soaring, tilted the whole house on an edge. Pe' ll'aria fresca para gia' na festa. . . Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole. Eyes opened wide at 'o sole mio . Mouths agape at a boy singing in Italian who knew no real Italian other than a few curses, how to greet the day, say hello or goodbye, say supper was late. Ma n'atu sole cchiu' bello, oi ne', 'o sole mio sta nfronte a te! 'o sole, 'o sole mio sta nfronte a te! sta nfronte a te!

A glorious song it was from the first note to the last note, a glorious sound loosed in the house, probably the first time ever the words rose in such incredible beauty within that brick house now set with fantasy or mystery. I had no name for it. And heavy, chair-bound, stunned by beauty, Mr. Barbanti rose from his seat, his eyes also wide in amazement, a huge smile beginning on his face. "Mama mia", he said a number of times, and again as the song was finished, as Victor turned slowly, shaking his head in his own sense of wonderment, wondering again where this power had come from, this sweep of energy that came up out of him, this talent beyond measurement, this music and these words he had never known, and him also suddenly knowing he would never sing this song again as long as he lived. That knowledge must have also come to him from some distant place, must have been understood. “You’ve been holding out on us, Victor?” Mr. Barbanti said. “All these times at dinner you never sang such a song, such a beauty of a song, and in a voice only the Maestro would own. I never knew you could sing. My God, son, do you know what this house has heard tonight? What I have not heard since I left Italy and my one night in La Scala, night of forever, Caruso out there in the light by himself, and that glorious voice raising the very heavens. What else do you have hidden? What songs hide there? Do you know la Donna e mobile? The Barber ofSeville? Turondo? Sorrento ?" He must have known something else, been aware of some secret of the ages, because he blurted out, “Quick, son, before it is gone. Before the words go away.” Had he been witness himself to such an outburst before? Had such a dream been realized in his presence, or by him, in that old Italy of his, the Italy rich with the glorious tenors, for now he had been in the presence of another magnificent voice? And I knew exactly what was going to happen, as it happened before, five years before and five years before that … Victor fled. Out the door of the Barbanti house he flew, down the street we saw him go, as if he was at Manning Bowl and the goal line was all of 80 yards away. Flew, he did, into a kind of reclusion where the upstart evening might somehow be put in a proper place of mind, if such a place existed for him. I doubt that it ever did, for on the following day he’d have no memory of the happening. There would be no note left hanging for him to hear (being tone deaf to begin with), no single article of his delivery, no reception remembered. A song would come and go, and every five years of his lifetime, as I had come to measure them. It was his destiny, his fate, his mystery. I was the chosen observer. The huge smile slowly leaving his face, wonder beset by awe and deepest curiosity, Mr. Barbanti said, “What happened here? Did I really hear what I just heard? Tell me what I heard. Please, somebody, explain it to me. My God, where did Victor go? Why did he go? Something is terribly wrong here or terribly right, but it’s all amazing. What have we seen, or heard? I am not alone in this, am I? Did you not all hear it?” He stood beside his deep, comfortable chair, a man up from his throne, caught up in wonder a young man had freed in his house. “Mama mia, ” he said again, “Blessed Mother.”

Tom Sheehan

He seemed happier than he might have ever been in his whole life. His wife and daughters were still speechless in the kitchen. Not a glass tinkled during the whole song, or yet. Not a clatter of a pan, though Angelina, the 14-year old, said boldly in her eyes she had fallen in love at the moment. “Yes, Papa,” she said, “like The Gloria. ” Still standing, amazement yet written all over his expression, he pointed at me and said, “He’s your closest pal, Tom, right? What do you know?” Unwavering, steady as a post, he waited an answer, his eyes beginning to get red, and a story on his face. I tried to explain it to him, and to all the others, though mysteries like this, or miracles, were things I did not handle well myself. “I first saw it happen in kindergarten. Victor, never having joined in a song that I can remember, suddenly one day stood up from a circle of little green chairs we sat in and began to sing a song called, I think, My Dog Blue. It was beautiful, so beautiful, that for three or four weeks the teacher, inviting the principal and the music director into her classroom, tried to get Victor to sing the song again. It never came back to him. He never knew a word of the song, even though he tried. It just would not come back to him from wherever it had come from in the first place.” I paused, trying to remember some feeling I had back then. “They pushed hard at it, all of them. One of them finally must have said, ‘Maybe we push him too hard. Let’s sit back and see what happens.’ It just went away after a while.” From the kitchen, a dish towel still in her hands, Angelina said, “Nothing ever happen after that? Once I heard about a boy in the Armitage School, in West Cliftondale, who sang a song at recess that brought the neighbors right out of their houses, and the teachers from inside the school all tumbled into the schoolyard to hear the boy sing one song. I don’t know what that song was, or the boy’s name, but I’ll bet it was Victor.” Her eyes flashed their new-found joys again, as if she was laying claim on Victor for evermore. “Were you there, Tom?” Mr. Barbanti said. Did you hear that one too? What was it, the name of the song he sang that time? Do you know what’s going on with him?” “I was there,” I said. “That time he sang a troubadour’s song, in the old Irish I guess. I don’t think anybody in the schoolyard knew any of the words, but later on I heard that Mr. Dineen, the retired mailman sitting on his porch across the street from the schoolyard, was crying all the time, sitting in his old chair, his chin resting on his hands on the porch railing, just crying his eyes out. And they said he had been here for more than fifty years.” Mr. Barbanti said, “That’s his piece of the miracle of this young man of ours, Tom. I wish I could have been there to hear that one. So, the Maestro doesn’t own him outright, does he? What a pity. Nor La Scala herself. What comes after this? How will you know where to be, if you go to different schools, take jobs in a different places, how will you be at his side? You are fated, I assume, to be the only one to be in all his outbreaks, if I can call them that.” The weight of him was deep into his chair, but he was uncomfortable once more, his face still shining with glistening curiosity, searching out causes and explanations. He stood again, preparing to put a demand into the air. “You keep me advised on what happens to that pal of yours. Make sure you tell me. If you ever get a clue on the next time, tell me.” The king had spoken beside his throne, the echoes undoubtedly ringing yet in his ears. Thus, I departed under oath that night to keep him informed of his personal La Scala tenor, if and when I would still be privy to such an undertaking, my calendar marked for five years hence. We left his house that night, the season over on the weekend, and never went back; Paul hurt his back in an accident a few months later and never played ball again. We drifted apart after that, except for Victor and me. And five years to the day, in church one Sunday morning. At the altar the priest said, “Please be advised that Peggy has had a bad cold and is just recovering.

V for Victor

Help her out if you can.” His eyebrows were part of the announcement. The procession started down the main aisle, Peggy singing. Obviously her recovery was not complete. She sang terribly, a dissonance creating a stir in the church, not approaching a sense of music. The priest flinched at the altar at her feeble attempts. And Peggy, unable to let go, tried to continue. “Oh, what is this?” Victor said to himself, as he sat beside me and something happened in his gut, at the back of his head, coming like an incomplete statement. He didn’t know what it was, something breaking loose, coming apart, gaining its own force. Again, I knew. Then, in a crowning moment of some distant demand, he was jump-started like an old Ford or Chevie rescued from inertness; loose wires connected, a nerve touched into reality, a collection of breath taken in, and a stampede of energy loosed. One vein must have leaped across another vein. A nerve, twisted in the mix, lost its old harmony of things, its natural order, and found another setting. The new torrent came from a place he did not know in his body or in his psyche. Victor stood up to help Peggy through the song. It was a revered hymn, one usually solemn and suddenly brought to heavenly acceptance, as Victor, my old pal Victor, began to sing, a most remarkable tenor, sonorous and golden-toned, operatic, like Pavarotti or Domingo or Carreras or blind Andrea Bocelli, a tenor the church had never heard. The priest cried at the beauty of the song. Peggy’s mouth stuck open, an “Oh” caught up in awe. Every person in the church turned to look at Victor in the back row singing in that glorious tenor voice, everything freed from the fateful ignition, the magnificent torrent loosed from him. It is five years later as I write this. I am in the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. Victor and I joined the army two years ago. I went to Afghanistan, Victor to Iraq. Accidentally, the pain in my legs determining my mindset, I just looked at the calendar. It’s been five years and a day since my dear friend sang one of his songs. The silence is deafening.

###

Deirdre McClay

With Matchsticks Not Money by

Deirdre McClay 83

With Matchsticks not Money

aire turned her key in the lock, and stood alone in the hallway. Through the stained glass panes, the light changed the colour on her coat, and the room had that familiar smell of wood polish over roses. Everything was as usual, from her Grandma’s vase (an heirloom it was said) to her Dad’s overcoat still hanging from the hall stand. To the right, was the door of his veterinary surgery. Dropping her rucksack, Maire headed to that door; it was locked, but the rattle of her arrival drew her Mum from the kitchen. Kitty smiled as she approached, drying her hands on a tea towel. Ach, Maire. How was your flight? Sure Martin could’ve collected you at the airport.” “I’m fine Mum, don’t fuss.” Maire approached and kissed her, but Kitty stiffened. “Alright … ” she muttered. “But look at you, you’ve put on a little weight, dear. What have you been at over there? And, you’re tired looking.” “It’s nothing, just the journey over, Mum.” Maire took off her coat and hung it beside her Dad’s. One year on and it still held a faint whiff of cigarette. “I’m making the dinner, dear. Come on into the kitchen and have some tea. I’ve made scones the way you like them.” And Kitty turned away. The kitchen was damp from the cooking. Kitty had been busying herself, and the table was set with all the best fare. “The weather’s been fine here. Is it the same in Glasgow?” she said, getting to the tea. “Yes,” Maire replied sitting down. “But tell us, how are you?” “Ach, I manage, but you know yourself, it’s lonely. Orla visits with the wee ones…Martin tries too, but he’s busy at work,” and she moved to the sink where she’d left off peeling the potatoes.

Deirdre McClay

Maire watched her put on the rubber gloves before lifting the peeler. She noticed her mother’s hands, nails clipped short and unpolished. It wasn’t like Kitty, she was brusque and dapper, and looked after her hands. Maire could never be bothered with her own. She’d work with them bare, even out on calls with her Dad. “What will we do with you - the changling?” Kitty would say. Now, the same woman dawdled over peeling the potatoes. “Let me help you there, Mum. Looks like you’ve been on your feet all morning.” “No dear,” Kitty answered, “sure you know I like them peeled just right.” Maire felt a surge of anger; she’d been wound up the whole journey over, thinking and waiting. Her mother still had that tongue on her. Foot and mouth disease, her Dad’s joke, the only form of it he’d ever had to treat. But he treated it by ignoring it. “Why don’t you go upstairs and change for dinner? The others will be here soon,” continued Kitty. “Sure you must have something nicer than that in your rucksack.” That was it. Maire was away. “No. I’m going out for a walk – it’ll clear my head,” and she left the kitchen. God, how she missed her Dad, for he knew how to handle her Mum. And he’d have a proper welcome for the prodigal daughter: a hug at least. Or, had he hogged the welcome for so long that her Mum had forgotten how? “What’s wrong?” Kitty called after her, but Maire ignored her. She was already heading out the front door, through the rose garden, spilling petals. Later, Maire stopped to sit on a wall. She craved a smoke but it wasn’t worth the hassle she’d get from Kitty over the smell. The sunshine filled her face, and she closed her eyes taking deep breaths trying to dispel her anger. It was like she’d never been away. How could she hide from it for a year, and then come back home just to pick up where she’d left off? Her Dad would’ve known what to do. To think she spent all last summer on call with him, and now this, the lack of him. But their final call together, that had been some handling with the auld boy, eighty if he was a day, and a mad calf. Sick? It wasn’t too sick to scramble clean out of the crush at the sight of a syringe. A wild black thing with the horns still on, never handled much, and a full grown calf at that. They’d only made it mad. It raced round the cattle shed as they cleared to the edges, the auld boy retreating to a cubicle. Then it was on the auld boy, at him with the head and he was done for. “Run,” her Dad screamed. And he lifted a fence post. Then he clattered the beast clean over the head. Three times it took before it was off again. Maire cleared to an adjoining shed. There was a gate between the two, and she was safe. Instead, she listened to the commotion next door, terrified for her Dad. And next thing it cleaned the gate, straight through it in one blind charge, her Dad after it with the fence post. “Climb the wall.” he cried. And there was no-where else to go. So she ran to the shed wall and clambered on top. She stood with her back to the iron cladding watching him chase the thing from the shed. It ran full tilt into some machinery on the floor before disappearing into the cubicle house and out the door. “Don’t think that calf’s too sick,” said her Dad on leaving. “Best say nothing to your Mum, if you know what I mean.”

With Matchsticks not Money

Maire welcomed the memory; it calmed her. So, she stood up and walked home. Sure enough, Orla’s car was parked outside, and Maire wondered if her absence had embarrassed Kitty. Would she have called her odd, raising her eyebrows in that way she did? Maire closed the front door, and Orla came. “Maire, Mum said you’d gone to stretch your legs.” They hugged. It was strange to be welcomed in her own home. “How’s Glasgow, and college? Come in…tell all.” They huddled together like they did for secret news, Orla with her arm around Maire’s shoulders, drawing her in. The children buzzed in: Laura all smiles and curls, and David, lanky and fidgety. “Ah, look at you two - aren’t you just great? I would hardly know you. Well, who wants their present first?” “Me,” they shouted together, all raised hands and tippy toes. Maire hugged them and then pulled two crumpled presents from her rucksack. The noise drew Kitty to the hallway. “Ah, your back, dear, and you’ve seen the children. Aren’t they getting big? David will soon outgrow his auld grandma - he can beat me at gin-rummy now, you know.” And she reached out, cupping her grandson’s head, pulling him to her. “Did you have a pleasant walk? Dinner’s ready, never mind your change of clothes.” The table should’ve creaked under all the food. She’d made enough for twenty. Maire observed as Kitty served the feast; she insisted on doing it all herself, even carving the lamb which had always been her Dad’s job. Maire never understood these conventions: odd household tasks reserved for him. That was the nature of middle-aged marriage, she supposed, lives measured in daily habits - all the more difficult now that he was dead. Maire’s routine hadn’t been touched in the same way. But, it had grounded today when that plane landed her back home. She carried her own bags and took an Ulsterbus to the house. An old lady gave her a tissue when Maire cried beside her on the coach. After dinner Kitty asked Maire and Orla to tidy up while she took the children into the living room. Maire volunteered to wash. “So how’ve you been over there, really.” enquired Orla, drying the crystal with care. “Tell all. How’s this new man of yours? Are you bringing him over soon?” “Huh, Mum wouldn’t approve. He’s studying philosophy. I might as well land home married cos there’ll be a row about it anyway,” she clattered at the dishes, eyes fixed on the sink. “Ach, Maire! Mum’s not that bad.” “Isn’t she? I can wash the dishes after her, but I still can’t peel potatoes right.” “What’s got into you?” said Orla, turning to face her. “You’re worse than ever, wound far too tight. For God’s sake, she’s lost her husband, and sure you’re still her baby…maybe she can’t cope with you off doing things for yourself.” Maire turned from the sink. “Well, there might be something in that. She’s nicer to you. No wonder you defend her.”

Deirdre McClay

Title: The Painter and his Family, Artist: Andre Derain

With Matchsticks not Money

“What? You’re the one she talks about non stop. And since you told her you were coming to visit, well, I never hear the end of it. Sometimes I wonder if she’s selling the bloody house just to get you home.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Maire, getting back to the dishes. “It’s not ridiculous. She misses you, but she tells everyone how clever you are. Over in Scotland studying veterinary, so busy studying you don’t get home.” “Huh, she tells everyone except me.” “Well, maybe if you came home more often she might get the chance. Look at the effort she’s made for you. She’d let the house and garden go, but now she’s them perfect again. She’s at those roses steady.” Maire stopped washing. “Oh…I didn’t know. Everything looked the same.” “Well, it’s not, Maire. She needs you.” “I’m sorry…. I could see today how she’s slowed up.” “Well, Martin and I didn’t want to annoy you about it all over the phone, but..” “Now girls - can anyone join in?” It was Martin; he hugged Maire. “Oh, you’ve grown in the year, Sis.” “What… you mean outwards?” laughed Maire. “Huh, that’s just typical,” said Orla. “You have a laugh with him.” “What did I miss?” grinned Martin, “I thought you two were thick as thieves. Now, what about this boy of yours? When’s he coming over?” “Boy? What age do you think he is? Anyway, I’m not bringing him near here, you’d frighten him just for the craic.” “Oh, so it’s serious then... sure isn’t it my job to slag off the boyfriends?” “What’s that?” interrupted Kitty. “Ach, you know… reminiscing and all that,” replied Martin. “Well, when you’re finished here come on into the living room. The children want a game of cards.” When they’d cleared up, they went into the living room. The children were seated either side of Kitty at the table. She’d already dealt a hand, so they took their places. Gin rummy was David’s favourite and he liked to win. Maire watched her Mum, how she huddled to the hands of the children, helping them along. They giggled and nudged each other like three old pals sharing secrets. Laura was younger and needed more help, but Kitty leaned in offering advice, touching her hands in encouragement. Maire looked about the room. The walls were cluttered with framed photographs of all sizes and events: portraits of the grandchildren, wedding and graduation shots. Maire wondered where her own graduation photograph would hang, and who would sit in her Dad’s spot? Would the new owners tend the roses? “How come you never taught us to play cards, Mum?” teased Martin. “I don’t know,” replied Kitty, “I suppose there never was enough time.” “Oh but she taught me,” responded Maire. “Maybe the youngest has some fringe benefits.” Then, David noticed Maire staring. “Aunt Maire, did you know that Grandma is the best

With Matchsticks not Money

gin-rummy player in Belfast?” he asked. “She can play poker too and she’s going to teach me… with matchsticks, not money,” he added. Maire smiled at him. “Good boy, David,” she said, “you listen to your Grandma.” By eight o’clock the whole family had left, and Maire was tempted to go to bed. She was about to retire, when her Mum came into the living room with two glasses of wine. Kitty handed one to Maire and settled herself on the sofa opposite. “I thought we might talk, if you’re not too tired,” Kitty said. “I like a glass at night now, it helps me sleep,” she continued, nodding towards the glass. “Hope you don’t mind?” Kitty rarely drank, Maire thought, and so she was surprised at her candour. “I need your help with clearing the surgery, dear. The whole house needs to be done, but the surgery worries me. I don’t know what to do with the stuff … whether it’s useful to anybody, you know.” “So you want me to go through it for you?” asked Maire. “Well, yes. It’s just, I thought you might want your Dad’s stuff, now that you’re qualifying. You know, his clients ask after you, and there’s still only a locum in place. The practice could be yours if you want … I could help you find a new premises.” “Oh right,” said Maire, shifting in her seat. “To be honest, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing yet. Might be small animals you know….by the way, I tried the surgery door earlier…it was locked.” “Yes,” replied Kitty. “I don’t go in there anymore.” The next morning Maire unlocked the surgery door. It was all still the same, the little waiting room with six hard chairs and last year’s magazines on an old coffee table. She walked through to the surgery area. The place was full of equipment and medicine. Kitty came to the door with two mugs of tea. “Doesn’t the new vet ever use this place?” asked Maire, setting her mug on the operating table. “No,” replied Kitty, “it’s different now. I didn’t want people in day and night - I’ve done with all that." Maire lifted a stethoscope from the table. “This is all I want, Mum, a wee reminder. I’ll help you box the rest. The new vet could at least use what medicine is in date… and the rest, well I’m sorry, I can’t carry it all with me.” “Sure, I could keep it for you in the new house…for when you come back,” said Kitty. “You are coming back to me after graduation, aren’t you?” But Maire had already turned and left the room. END

Bill West

Title: Sunset study of Hampstead, looking towards Harrow, Artist: John Constable

Bill West Promise Pray for me upon this sea of night Marie Celeste rocking empty like a cot contents forgot. Face and hands gone and a kiss mouths the dark Moses drifts drawn from water. In dreams I burn in tongues hell from heaven darkness breaks and light is fled. But dawn lifts wide bright clouds and words fly rustling like birds beaks sprigged greeting rainbows.

The Linnet's Wings Digital Edition www.TheLinnetsWings.org www.TheLinnetsWings.com