Woefully, Viola sings and beautiful are her cries
Calling lovers, come and gone, to flash before her eye
Shimmering upon the dust filled air, touching her gentle frame
Each a note of mournful bliss, each one known by name

Strong and clear does her sound ring in solitary company
Uncomparable and unconquerable, untamed in all heartstrings
Cascading in a sorrow that moves the soul to break
Viola bends and tells her story, what music it does make

Crimson is the sheen that covers every inch of her
Melody in tragedy deplicted in each word
Echoing through mind and body, Viola misses not a cue
Lovely, deeply, sensually, Viola calls to you

She said, ‘You are funny, the way you set yourself up the moment we arrive. You look into every room to see if it’s suitable as a place to work. Is there a table? Where are the plugs? Is there a good chair at the right height? If there isn’t, are there cushions to make it so? You are funny.’
 
He countered this, but his excuse didn’t sound very convincing. He knew exactly what she meant, but it hurt him a little that she should think it ‘funny’. There’s nothing funny about trying to compose music, he thought. It’s not ‘radio in the head’ you know – this was a favourite expression he’d once heard an American composer use. You don’t just turn a switch and the music’s playing, waiting for you to write it down. You have to find it – though he believed it was usually there, somewhere, waiting to be found. But it’s elusive. You have to work hard to detect what might be there, there in the silence of your imagination.
 
Later over their first meal in this large cottage she said, ‘How do you stop hearing all those settings of the Mass that you must have heard or sung since childhood?’ She’d been rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem recently and was full of snippets of this stirring piece. He was a) writing a Mass to celebrate a cathedral’s reordering after a year as a building site, and b) he’d been a boy chorister and the form and order of the Mass was deeply engrained in his aural memory. He only had to hear the plainsong introduction Gloria in Excelsis Deo to be back in the Queen’s chapel singing Palestrina, or Byrd or Poulenc.
 
His ‘found’ corner was in the living room. The table wasn’t a table but a long cabinet she’d kindly covered with a tablecloth. You couldn’t get your feet under the thing, but with his little portable drawing board there was space to sit properly because the board jutted out beyond the cabinet’s top. It was the right length and its depth was OK, enough space for the board and, next to it, his laptop computer. On the floor beside his chair he placed a few of his reference scores and a box of necessary ‘bits’.
 
The room had two large sofas, an equally large television, some unexplainable and instantly dismissible items of decoration, a standard lamp, and a wood burning stove. The stove was wonderful, and on their second evening in the cottage, when clear skies and a stiff breeze promised a cold night, she’d lit it and, as the evening progressed, they basked in its warmth, she filling envelopes with her cards, he struggling with sleep over a book.
 
Despite and because this was a new, though temporary, location he had got up at 5.0am. This is a usual time for composers who need their daily fix of absolute quiet. And here, in this cottage set amidst autumn fields, within sight of a river estuary, under vast, panoramic uninterrupted skies, there was the distinct possibility of silence – all day. The double-glazing made doubly sure of that.
 
He had sat with a mug of tea at 5.10 and contemplated the silence, or rather what infiltrated the stillness of the cottage as sound. In the kitchen the clock ticked, the refrigerator seemed to need a period of machine noise once its door had been opened. At 6.0am the central heating fired up for a while. Outside, the small fruit trees in the garden moved vigorously in the wind, but he couldn’t hear either the wind or a rustle of leaves.  A car droned past on the nearby road. The clear sky began to lighten promising a fine day. This would certainly do for silence.
 
His thoughts returned to her question of the previous evening, and his answer. He was about to face up to his explanation. ‘I empty myself of all musical sound’, he’d said, ‘I imagine an empty space into which I might bring a single note, a long held drone of a note, a ‘d’ above middle ‘c’ on a chamber ***** (seeing it’s a Mass I’m writing).  Harrison Birtwistle always starts on an ‘e’. A ‘d’ to me seems older and kinder. An ‘e’ is too modern and progressive, slightly brash and noisy.’
 
He can see she is quizzical with this anecdotal stuff. Is he having me on? But no, he is not having her on. Such choices are important. Without them progress would be difficult when the thinking and planning has to stop and the composing has to begin. His notebook, sitting on his drawing board with some first sketches, plays testament to that. In this book glimpses of music appear in rhythmic abstracts, though rarely any pitches, and there are pages of written description. He likes to imagine what a new work is, and what it is not. This he writes down. Composer Paul Hindemith reckoned you had first to address the ‘conditions of performance’. That meant thinking about the performers, the location, above all the context. A Mass can be, for a composer, so many things. There were certainly requirements and constraints. The commission had to fulfil a number of criteria, some imposed by circumstance, some self-imposed by desire. All this goes into the melting ***, or rather the notebook. And after the notebook, he takes a large piece of A3 paper and clarifies this thinking and planning onto (if possible) a single sheet.
 
And so, to the task in hand. His objective, he had decided, is to focus on the whole rather than the particular. Don’t think about the Kyrie on its own, but consider how it lies with the Gloria. And so with the Sanctus & Benedictus. How do they connect to the Agnus Dei. He begins on the A3 sheet of plain paper ‘making a map of connections’. Kyrie to Gloria, Gloria to Credo and so on. Then what about Agnus Dei and the Gloria? Is there going to be any commonality – in rhythm, pace and tempo (we’ll leave melody and harmony for now)? Steady, he finds himself saying, aren’t we going back over old ground? His notebook has pages of attempts at rhythmizing the text. There are just so many ways to do this. Each rhythmic solution begets a different slant of meaning.
 
This is to be a congregational Mass, but one that has a role for a 4-part choir and ***** and a ‘jazz instrument’. Impatient to see notes on paper, he composes a new introduction to a Kyrie as a rhythmic sketch, then, experimentally, adds pitches. He scores it fully, just 10 bars or so, but it is barely finished before his critical inner voice says, ‘What’s this for? Do you all need this? This is showing off.’ So the filled-out sketch drops to the floor and he examines this element of ‘beginning’ the incipit.
 
He remembers how a meditation on that word inhabits the opening chapter of George Steiner’s great book Grammars of Creation. He sees in his mind’s eye the complex, colourful and ornate letter that begins the Lindesfarne Gospels. His beginnings for each movement, he decides, might be two chords, one overlaying the other: two ‘simple’ diatonic chords when sounded separately, but complex and with a measure of mystery when played together. The Mass is often described as a mystery. It is that ritual of a meal undertaken by a community of people who in the breaking of bread and wine wish to bring God’s presence amongst them. So it is a mystery. And so, he tells himself, his music will aim to hold something of mystery. It should not be a comment on that mystery, but be a mystery itself. It should not be homely and comfortable; it should be as minimal and sparing of musical commentary as possible.
 
When, as a teenager, he first began to set words to music he quickly experienced the need (it seemed) to fashion accompaniments that were commentaries on the text the voice was singing. These accompaniments did not underpin the words so much as add a commentary upon them. What lay beneath the words was his reaction, indeed imaginative extension of the words. He eschewed then both melisma and repetition. He sought an extreme independence between word and music, even though the word became the scenario of the music. Any musical setting was derived from the composition of the vocal line.  It was all about finding the ‘key’ to a song, what unlocked the door to the room of life it occupied. The music was the room where the poem’s utterance lived.
 
With a Mass you were in trouble for the outset. There was a poetry of sorts, but poetry that, in the countless versions of the vernacular, had lost (perhaps had never had) the resonance of the Latin. He thought suddenly of the supposed words of William Byrd, ‘He who sings prays twice’. Yes, such commonplace words are intercessional, but when sung become more than they are. But he knew he had to be careful here.
 
Why do we sing the words of the Mass he asks himself? Do we need to sing these words of the Mass? Are they the words that Christ spoke as he broke bread and poured wine to his friends and disciples at his last supper? The answer is no. Certainly these words of the Mass we usually sing surround the most intimate words of that final meal, words only the priest in Christ’s name may articulate.
 
Write out the words of the Mass that represent its collective worship and what do you have? Rather non-descript poetry? A kind of formula for collective incantation during worship? Can we read these words and not hear a surrounding music? He thinks for a moment of being asked to put new music to words of The Beatles. All you need is love. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Oh bla dee oh bla da life goes on. Now, now this is silliness, his Critical Voice complains. And yet it’s not. When you compose a popular song the gap between some words scribbled on the back of an envelope and the hook of chords and melody developed in an accidental moment (that becomes a way of clothing such words) is often minimal. Apart, words and music seem like orphans in a storm. Together they are home and dry.
 
He realises, and not for the first time, that he is seeking a total musical solution to the whole of the setting of those words collectively given voice to by those participating in the Mass.
 
And so: to the task in hand. His objective: to focus on the whole rather than the particular.  Where had he heard that thought before? - when he had sat down at his drawing board an hour and half previously. He’d gone in a circle of thought, and with his sketch on the floor at his feet, nothing to show for all that effort.
 
Meanwhile the sun had risen. He could hear her moving about in the bathroom. He went to the kitchen and laid out what they would need to breakfast together. As he poured milk into a jug, primed the toaster, filled the kettle, the business of what might constitute a whole solution to this setting of the Mass followed him around the kitchen and breakfast room like a demanding child. He knew all about demanding children. How often had he come home from his studio to prepare breakfast and see small people to school? - more often than he cared to remember. And when he remembered he became sad that it was no more.  His children had so often provided a welcome buffer from sessions of intense thought and activity. He loved the walk to school, the first quarter of a mile through the park, a long avenue of chestnut trees. It was always the end of April and pink and white blossoms were appearing, or it was September and there were conkers everywhere. It was under these trees his daughter would skip and even his sons would hold hands with him; he would feel their warmth, their livingness.
 
But now, preparing breakfast, his Critical Voice was that demanding child and he realised when she appeared in the kitchen he spoke to her with a voice of an artist in conversation with his critics, not the voice of the man who had the previous night lost himself to joy in her dear embrace. And he was ashamed it was so.
 
How he loved her gentle manner as she negotiated his ‘coming too’ after those two hours of concentration and inner dialogue. Gradually, by the second cup of coffee he felt a right person, and the hours ahead did not seem too impossible.
 
When she’d gone off to her work, silence reasserted itself. He played his viola for half an hour, just scales and exercises and a few folk songs he was learning by heart. This gathering habit was, he would say if asked, to reassert his musicianship, the link between his body and making sound musically. That the viola seemed to resonate throughout his whole body gave him pleasure. He liked the ****** movement required to produce a flowing sequence of bow strokes. The trick at the end of this daily practice was to put the instrument in its case and move immediately to his desk. No pause to check email – that blight on a morning’s work. No pause to look at today’s list. Back to the work in hand: the Mass.
 
But instead his mind and intention seemed to slip sideways and almost unconsciously he found himself sketching (on the few remaining staves of a vocal experiment) what appeared to be a piano piece. The rhythmic flow of it seemed to dance across the page to be halted only when the few empty staves were filled. He knew this was one of those pieces that addressed the pianist, not the listener. He sat back in his chair and imagined a scenario of a pianist opening this music and after a few minutes’ reflection and reading through allowing her hands to move very slowly and silently a few millimetres over the keys.  Such imagining led him to hear possible harmonic simultaneities, dynamics and articulations, though he knew such things would probably be lost or reinvented on a second imagined ‘performance’. No matter. Now his make-believe pianist sounded the first bar out. It had a depth and a richness that surprised him – it was a fine piano. He was touched by its affect. He felt the possibilities of extending what he’d written. So he did. And for the next half an hour lived in the pastures of good continuation, those rich luxuriant meadows reached by a rickerty rackerty bridge and guarded by a troll who today was nowhere to be seen.
 
It was a curious piece. It came to a halt on an enigmatic, go-nowhere / go-anywhere chord after what seemed a short declamatory coda (he later added the marking deliberamente). Then, after a few minutes reflection he wrote a rising arpeggio, a broken chord in which the consonant elements gradually acquired a rising sequence of dissonance pitches until halted by a repetition. As he wrote this ending he realised that the repeated note, an ‘a’ flat, was a kind of fulcrum around which the whole of the music moved. It held an enigmatic presence in the harmony, being sometimes a g# sometimes an ‘a’ flat, and its function often different. It made the music take on a wistful quality.
 
At that point he thought of her little artists’ book series she had titled Tide Marks. Many of these were made of a concertina of folded pages revealing - as your eyes moved through its pages - something akin to the tide’s longitudinal mark. This centred on the page and spread away both upwards and downwards, just like those mirror images of coloured glass seen in a child’s kaleidoscope. No moment of view was ever quite the same, but there were commonalities born of the conditions of a certain day and time.  His ‘Tide Mark’ was just like that. He’d followed a mark made in his imagination from one point to another point a little distant. The musical working out also had a reflection mechanism: what started in one hand became mirrored in the other. He had unexpectedly supplied an ending, this arpegiated gesture of finality that wasn’t properly final but faded away. When he thought further about the role of the ending, he added a few more notes to the arpeggio, but notes that were not be sounded but ghosted, the player miming a press of the keys.
 
He looked at the clock. Nearly five o’clock. The afternoon had all but disappeared. Time had retreated into glorious silence . There had been three whole hours of it. How wonderful that was after months of battling with the incessant and draining turbulence of sound that was ever present in his city life. To be here in this quiet cottage he could now get thoroughly lost – in silence. Even when she was here he could be a few rooms apart, and find silence.
 
A week more of this, a fortnight even . . . but he knew he might only manage a few days before visitors arrived and his long day would be squeezed into the early morning hours and occasional uncertain periods when people were out and about.
 
When she returned, very soon now, she would make tea and cut cake, and they’d sit (like old people they wer

I hold my viola cradled in my arm
Before a concert
Everyone breathes too fast
The lights glare, the conductor begins.

I roll out of bed at one in the afternoon
My old viola from sixth grade
Lying on top of its case
Begging to be played.

I pick it up every day. I don't know what I play,
I just play.
I make music out of my boredom,
Music that will never be recorded,
Songs that will never be heard again.

Every day, I see the odd instrument
I pick it up and begin.
I have nothing better to do. But mostly,
I don't want it to see it lying there,
Alone.

There is a boy Ash Ketchum
He has a buddy named Pikachu
They came into the Kalos region
So ash can try to be a Pokémon master
They landed in Lumiose city
Where they met Clement and Bonnie
He tried to challenge the gym there
But got kicked out because he had no badges
He’d saved a Garchomp
Because team Rocket tried to control him
He then went to Santalune city
Where he met viola and Serena
He challenged the gym but lost
Because of the moves viola’s Pokémon had
Then he trained with viola’s sister
And her Pokémon, Noivern

The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.
I splashed myself with cold water, and walked over to my dollhouse kitchen to make a cup of hot green tea in my favorite green ceramic mug. I cut myself avocados, laid them across my toast, and sprinkled it with pepper. My brother was still asleep, his covers crumpled under half his body and a leg hanging off the edge. He was dreaming of his favorite thing about the previous day, and that made me smile, as I tucked him back under the protection of his blanket.

The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love.
Not once, but many times. Not with one person, but with multiple. I fell in love with my mom and the way she looked like the happiest woman in the world when she laughed at us, and how from sitting behind her in the car it looked as if she was always smiling because her cheekbones were so high. I fell in love with the way she wiped her eyes with the top of her wrist, as the steam and aroma from the hot food she cooked, floated upwards. I fell in love with my dad and the way he walked through the backyard, moving his hands around as he played out important discussions in his head. I fell in love with my brother and the way he tried to talk to us about CNN news at over the dinner table every night. I fell in love with the way he would impatiently say my name as his eyes lit up, wanting to tell me something that excited him, or that he found funny. I fell in love with a little girl I caught dancing with her sister outside 85, on the way back from my math class. I fell in love with the curly-haired boy in my English class my freshman year, who sheepishly told me he switched back and forth from British and American accents from time to time, because it was just something that was a part of him. I fell in love with my best friend and the way she got so passionate about the importance of history and what she learned from her AP history class, over a Skype call after midnight. I fell in love with everyone I ever met, and saw them as entire galaxies, complex and burning bright yet simple at the same time. Because people are beautiful. People are beautiful.

The morning after I killed myself, I recognized kindness.
I recognized it when there were more than one million words in the English language to choose from, but every time, my neighbors chose the kindest ones. I recognized it in the mother I saw sitting outside the café on a bench, running her elegant fingers through her teenage daughter’s hair, who was telling her about her worries. I recognized it when a homeless lady gave another homeless man all the money she had made that day, simply because he had a daughter to feed. I found kindness in my friend when she ran to the Starbucks across the street to comfort a woman she did not know who was crying after her autistic son had a tantrum.

The morning after I killed myself, I took a walk.
I sauntered along the street, and I saw the bright green leaves of the sugar gum trees, that in a few months would turn gold and orange. The birds were chirping their warbling melodies, and the cool air was feeding my lungs. The sun was still rising, and the sky had a little bit of orange in one corner, and a little bit of pink in another. I sat down on the bleachers of my school, and waited for the sunrise to unfold.

The morning after I killed myself, I held my beautiful grandma’s hands.
I felt how small and cold they were, but what warmth they still preserved as her fingers tightly held mine. My fingers grazed the top of fists, the bumpy veins giving them a delicate texture. I saw the four golden bangles she had never taken off of her left wrist, and I wondered how many dishes those hands had washed, how many clothes they had folded, and how many meals they had made.

The morning after I killed myself, I watched a live symphony.
I sat dazed, in view of the wine-red instruments in front of me, from the contented mold of my chair. I listened to the beautiful wavelengths of sound being produced right in front of me, the music creating my sanctuary. The conductor created the loudest expression of music on stage, despite making no sound. His arms waved as wildly as the sea, but was no less graceful than an ebbing tide. I looked at the depth of the basses, the elegance of the cellos, the poise of the violins, and the dignity of the viola. The fingers of the cellists slid up and down, the strings undulating with every phrase. A pulse was beating within my own veins, and as long the piece lasted, I was the music.

The morning after I killed myself, I looked in the mirror.
I saw my almond-shaped eyes, and how my eyelashes outlined them perfectly. I saw the vertebrae of my spine, and how they looked like a line of marbles, across my back. I saw the curls on the top of my head that I’d hated when I was younger, because they stuck out as if I had my own atmosphere around my head. I saw my knuckles, and how they separated into mountains and valleys. I saw the beauty mark on my left ankle, and the dimple that formed when I smiled. I looked in the mirror, and I finally fell in love with what I saw.

The morning after I killed myself, I tried to get back.
I tried to talk sense into a girl who had made a horrible mistake. I told her about the avocados, and the valleys and mountains that appeared every time she crumpled her fists. I told her about how beautiful her mom was when she laughed, and how warm it felt to hold her grandma’s hands. I told her about how her brother said he always dreamt about his favorite thing about the previous day, and how her friends had so much kindness in them. I told her about the green leaves scattered over the ground, and the pink parts of sunsets. I told her about the orchestra where she would find peace, and the shy boy who switched accents.

May your tea be just the right temperature when you take a sip, and may you happen to glance through the window just when the rays of light are falling perfectly. May you lock eyes with someone just as they send you a warm smile, and may you turn on the radio just as your favorite song starts. May you love the ink pen you pick up, as it glides across paper smoothly, and may you pick up a novel to read that changes your thoughts on something important.

Yo, Beremundo el Lelo, surqué todas las rutas
y probé todos los mesteres.
Singlando a la deriva, no en orden cronológico ni lógico -en sin orden-
narraré mis periplos, diré de los empleos con que
nutrí mis ocios,
distraje mi hacer nada y enriquecí mi hastío...;
-hay de ellos otros que me callo-:
Catedrático fui de teosofía y eutrapelia, gimnopedia y teogonía y pansofística en Plafagonia;
barequero en el Porce y el Tigüí, huaquero en el Quindío,
amansador mansueto -no en desuetud aún- de muletos cerriles y de onagros, no sé dónde;
palaciego proto-Maestre de Ceremonias de Wilfredo el Velloso,
de Cunegunda ídem de ídem e ibídem -en femenino- e ídem de ídem de Epila Calunga
y de Efestión -alejandrino- el Glabro;
desfacedor de entuertos, tuertos y malfetrías, y de ellos y ellas facedor;
domeñador de endriagos, unicornios, minotauros, quimeras y licornas y dragones... y de la Gran Bestia.

Fui, de Sind-bad, marinero; pastor de cabras en Sicilia
si de cabriolas en Silesia, de cerdas en Cerdeña y -claro- de corzas en Córcega;
halconero mayor, primer alcotanero de Enguerrando Segundo -el de la Tour-Miracle-;
castrador de colmenas, y no de Casanovas, en el Véneto, ni de Abelardos por el Sequana;
pajecillo de altivas Damas y ariscas Damas y fogosas, en sus castillos
y de pecheras -¡y cuánto!- en sus posadas y mesones
-yo me era Gerineldos de todellas y trovador trovadorante y adorante; como fui tañedor
de chirimía por fiestas candelarias, carbonero con Gustavo Wasa en Dalecarlia, bucinator del Barca Aníbal
y de Scipión el Africano y Masinisa, piloto de Erik el Rojo hasta Vinlandia, y corneta
de un escuadrón de coraceros de Westmannlandia que cargó al lado del Rey de Hielo
-con él pasé a difunto- y en la primera de Lutzen.

Fui preceptor de Diógenes, llamado malamente el Cínico:
huésped de su tonel, además, y portador de su linterna;
condiscípulo y émulo de Baco Dionisos Enófilo, llamado buenamente el Báquico
-y el Dionisíaco, de juro-.

Fui discípulo de Gautama, no tan aprovechado: resulté mal budista, si asaz contemplativo.
Hice de peluquero esquilador siempre al servicio de la gentil Dalilah,
(veces para Sansón, que iba ya para calvo, y -otras- depilador de sus de ella óptimas partes)
y de maestro de danzar y de besar de Salomé: no era el plato de argento,
mas sí de litargirio sus caderas y muslos y de azogue también su vientre auri-rizado;
de Judith de Betulia fui confidente y ni infidente, y -con derecho a sucesión- teniente y no lugarteniente
de Holofernes no Enófobo (ni enófobos Judith ni yo, si con mesura, cautos).
Fui entrenador (no estrenador) de Aspasia y Mesalina y de Popea y de María de Mágdalo
e Inés Sorel, y marmitón y pinche de cocina de Gargantúa
-Pantagruel era huésped no nada nominal: ya suficientemente pantagruélico-.
Fui fabricante de batutas, quebrador de hemistiquios, requebrador de Eustaquias, y tratante en viragos
y en sáficas -algunas de ellas adónicas- y en pínnicas -una de ellas super-fémina-:
la dejé para mí, si luego ancló en casorio.
A la rayuela jugué con Fulvia; antes, con Palamedes, axedrez, y, en época vecina, con Philidor, a los escaques;
y, a las damas, con Damas de alto y bajo coturno
-manera de decir: que para el juego en litis las Damas suelen ir descalzas
y se eliden las calzas y sustentadores -no funcionales- en las Damas y las calzas en los varones.

Tañí el rabel o la viola de amor -casa de Bach, búrguesa- en la primicia
de La Cantata del Café (pre-estreno, en familia protestante, privado).
Le piqué caña jorobeta al caballo de Atila
-que era un morcillo de prócer alzada: me refiero al corcel-;
cambié ideas, a la par, con Incitato, Cónsul de Calígula, y con Babieca,
-que andaba en Babia-, dándole prima
fui zapatero de viejo de Berta la del gran pie (buen pie, mejor coyuntura),
de la Reina Patoja ortopedista; y hortelano y miniaturista de Pepino el Breve,
y copero mayor faraónico de Pepe Botellas, interino,
y porta-capas del Pepe Bellotas de la esposa de Putifar.

Viajé con Julio Verne y Odiseo, Magallanes y Pigafetta, Salgan, Leo e Ibn-Batuta,
con Melville y Stevenson, Fernando González y Conrad y Sir John de Mandeville y Marco Polo,
y sólo, sin De Maistre, alredor de mi biblioteca, de mi oploteca, mi mecanoteca y mi pinacoteca.
Viajé también en tomo de mí mismo: asno a la vez que noria.

Fui degollado en la de San Bartolomé (post facto): secundaba a La Môle:
Margarita de Valois no era total, íntegramente pelirroja
-y no porque de noche todos los gatos son pardos...: la leoparda,
las tres veces internas, íntimas, peli-endrina,
Margarita, Margotón, Margot, la casqui-fulva...-

No estuve en la nea nao -arcaica- de Noé, por manera
-por ventura, otrosí- que no fui la paloma ni la medusa de esa almadía: mas sí tuve a mi encargo
la selección de los racimos de sus viñedos, al pie del Ararat, al post-Diluvio,
yo, Beremundo el Lelo.

Fui topógrafo ad-hoc entre El Cangrejo y Purcoy Niverengo,
(y ad-ínterim, administré la zona bolombólica:
mucho de anís, mucho de Rosas del Cauca, versos de vez en cuando),
y fui remero -el segundo a babor- de la canoa, de la piragua
La Margarita (criolla), que navegó fluvial entre Comiá, La Herradura, El Morito,
con cargamentos de contrabando: blancas y endrinas de Guaca, Titiribí y Amagá, y destilados
de Concordia y Betulia y de Urrao...
¡Urrao! ¡Urrao! (hasta hace poco lo diríamos con harta mayor razón y con aquese y este júbilos).
Tras de remero de bajel -y piloto- pasé a condueño, co-editor, co-autor
(no Coadjutor... ¡ni de Retz!) en asocio de Matías Aldecoa, vascuence, (y de un tal Gaspar von der Nacht)
de un Libraco o Librículo de pseudo-poemas de otro quídam;
exploré la región de Zuyaxiwevo con Sergio Stepánovich Stepansky,
lobo de donde se infiere, y, en más, ario.

Fui consejero áulico de Bogislao, en la corte margravina de Xa-Netupiromba
y en la de Aglaya crisostómica, óptima circezuela, traidorcilla;
tañedor de laúd, otra vez, y de viola de gamba y de recorder,
de sacabuche, otrosí (de dulzaina - otronó) y en casaciones y serenatas y albadas muy especializado.
No es cierto que yo fuera -es impostura-
revendedor de bulas (y de mulas) y tragador defuego y engullidor de sables y bufón en las ferias
pero sí platiqué (también) con el asno de Buridán y Buridán,
y con la mula de Balaám y Balaám, con Rocinante y Clavileño y con el Rucio
-y el Manco y Sancho y don Quijote-
y trafiqué en ultramarinos: ¡qué calamares -en su tinta-!,
¡qué Anisados de Guarne!, ¡qué Rones de Jamaica!, ¡qué Vodkas de Kazán!, ¡qué Tequilas de México!,
¡qué Néctares de Heliconia! ¡Morcillas de Itagüí! ¡Torreznos de Envigado! ¡Chorizos de los Ballkanes! ¡Qué Butifarras cataláunicas!
Estuve en Narva y en Pultawa y en las Queseras del Medio, en Chorros Blancos
y en El Santuario de Córdova, y casi en la de San Quintín
(como pugnaban en el mismo bando no combatí junto a Egmont por no estar cerca al de Alba;
a Cayetana sí le anduve cerca tiempo después: preguntádselo a Goya);
no llegué a tiempo a Waterloo: me distraje en la ruta
con Ida de Saint-Elme, Elselina Vanayl de Yongh, viuda del Grande Ejército (desde antaño... más tarde)
y por entonces y desde años antes bravo Edecán de Ney-:
Ayudante de Campo... de plumas, gongorino.
No estuve en Capua, pero ya me supongo sus mentadas delicias.

Fabriqué clavicémbalos y espinetas, restauré virginales, reparé Stradivarius
falsos y Guarnerius apócrifos y Amatis quasi Amatis.
Cincelé empuñaduras de dagas y verduguillos, en el obrador de Benvenuto,
y escriños y joyeles y guardapelos ad-usum de Cardenales y de las Cardenalesas.
Vendí Biblias en el Sinú, con De la Rosa, Borelly y el ex-pastor Antolín.
Fui catador de tequila (debuté en Tapachula y ad-látere de Ciro el Ofiuco)
y en México y Amecameca, y de mezcal en Teotihuacán y Cuernavaca,
de Pisco-sauer en Lima de los Reyes,
y de otros piscolabis y filtros muy antes y después y por Aná del Aburrá, y doquiérase
con El Tarasco y una legión de Bacos Dionisos, pares entre Pares.
Vagué y vagué si divagué por las mesillas del café nocharniego, Mil Noches y otra Noche
con el Mago de lápiz buido y de la voz asordinada.
Antes, muy antes, bebí con él, con Emmanuel y don Efe y Carrasca, con Tisaza y Xovica y Mexía y los otros Panidas.
Después..., ahora..., mejor no meneallo y sí escanciallo y persistir en ello...

Dicté un curso de Cabalística y otro de Pan-Hermética
y un tercero de Heráldica,
fuera de los cursillos de verano de las literaturas bereberes -comparadas-.
Fui catalogador protonotario en jefe de la Magna Biblioteca de Ebenezer el Sefardita,
y -en segundo- de la Mínima Discoteca del quídam en referencia de suso:
no tenía aún las Diabelli si era ya dueño de las Goldberg;
no poseía completa la Inconclusa ni inconclusa la Décima (aquestas Sinfonías, Variaciones aquesas:
y casi que todello -en altísimo rango- tan Variaciones Alredor de Nada).

Corregí pruebas (y dislates) de tres docenas de sota-poetas
-o similares- (de los que hinchen gacetilleros a toma y daca).
Fui probador de calzas -¿prietas?: ceñidas, sí, en todo caso- de Diana de Meridor
y de justillos, que así veníanle, de estar atán bien provista
y atán rebién dotada -como sabíalo también y así de bien Bussy d'Amboise-.
Temperé virginales -ya restaurados-, y clavecines, si no como Isabel, y aunque no tan baqueano
como ése de Eisenach, arroyo-Océano.
Soplé el ***** bufón, con tal cual incongruencia, sin ni tal cual donaire.
No aporreé el bombo, empero, ni entrechoqué los címbalos.

Les saqué puntas y les puse ribetes y garambainas a los vocablos,
cuando diérame por la Semasiología, cierta vez, en la Sorbona de Abdera,
sita por Babia, al pie de los de Úbeda, que serán cerros si no valen por Monserrates,
sin cencerros. Perseveré harto poco en la Semántica -por esa vez-,
si, luego retorné a la andadas, pero a la diabla, en broma:
semanto-semasiólogo tarambana pillín pirueteante.
Quien pugnó en Dénnevitz con Ney, el peli-fulvo
no fui yo: lo fue mi bisabuelo el Capitán...;
y fue mi tatarabuelo quien apresó a Gustavo Cuarto:
pero sí estuve yo en la Retirada de los Diez Mil
-era yo el Siete Mil Setecientos y Setenta y Siete,
precisamente-: releed, si dudaislo, el Anábasis.
Fui celador intocable de la Casa de Tócame-Roque, -si ignoré cuyo el Roque sería-,
y de la Casa del Gato-que-pelotea; le busqué tres pies al gato
con botas, que ya tenía siete vidas y logré dar con siete autores en busca de un personaje
-como quien dice Los Siete contra Tebas: ¡pobre Tebas!-, y ya es jugar bastante con el siete.
No pude dar con la cuadratura del círculo, que -por lo demás- para nada hace falta,
mas topé y en el Cuarto de San Alejo, con la palanca de Arquimedes y con la espada de Damocles,
ambas a dos, y a cual más, tomadas del orín y con más moho
que las ideas de yo si sé quién mas no lo digo:
púsome en aprietos tal doble hallazgo; por más que dije: ¡Eureka! ...: la palanca ya no servía ni para levantar un falso testimonio,
y tuve que encargarme de tener siempre en suspenso y sobre mí la espada susodicha.

Se me extravió el anillo de Saturno, mas no el de Giges ni menos el de Hans Carvel;
no sé qué se me ficieron los Infantes de Aragón y las Nieves de Antaño y el León de Androcles y la Balanza
del buen Shylock: deben estar por ahí con la Linterna de Diógenes:
-¿mas cómo hallarlos sin la linterna?

No saqué el pecho fuera, ni he sido nunca el Tajo, ni me di cuenta del lío de Florinda,
ni de por qué el Tajo el pecho fuera le sacaba a la Cava,
pero sí vi al otro don Rodrigo en la Horca.
Pinté muestras de posadas y mesones y ventas y paradores y pulquerías
en Veracruz y Tamalameque y Cancán y Talara, y de riendas de abarrotes en Cartagena de Indias, con Tisaza-,
si no desnarigué al de Heredia ni a López **** tuerto -que era bizco-.
Pastoreé (otra vez) el Rebaño de las Pléyades
y resultaron ser -todellas, una a una- ¡qué capretinas locas!
Fui aceitero de la alcuza favorita del Padre de los Búhos Estáticos:
-era un Búho Sofista, socarrón soslayado, bululador mixtificante-.
Regí el vestier de gala de los Pingüinos Peripatéticos,
(precursores de Brummel y del barón d'Orsay,
por fuera de filósofos, filosofículos, filosofantes dromomaníacos)
y apacenté el Bestiario de Orfeo (delegatario de Apollinaire),
yo, Beremundo el Lelo.

Nada tuve que ver con el asesinato de la hija del corso adónico Sebastiani
ni con ella (digo como pesquisidor, pesquisante o pesquisa)
si bien asesoré a Edgar Allan Poe como entomólogo, cuando El Escarabajo de Oro,
y en su investigación del Doble Asesinato de la Rue Morgue,
ya como experto en huellas dactilares o quier digitalinas.
Alguna vez me dio por beberme los vientos o por pugnar con ellos -como Carolus
Baldelarius- y por tomar a las o las de Villadiego o a las sus calzas:
aquesas me resultaron harto potables -ya sin calzas-; ellos, de mucho volumen
y de asaz poco cuerpo (si asimilados a líquidos, si como justadores).
Gocé de pingües canonjías en el reinado del bonachón de Dagoberto,
de opíparas prebendas, encomiendas, capellanías y granjerías en el del Rey de los Dipsodas,
y de dulce privanza en el de doña Urraca
(que no es la Gazza Ladra de Rossini, si fuéralo
de corazones o de amantes o favoritos o privados o martelos).

Fui muy alto cantor, como bajo cantante, en la Capilla de los Serapiones
(donde no se sopranizaba...); conservador,
conservador -pero poco- de Incunables, en la Alejandrina de Panida,
(con sucursal en El Globo y filiales en el Cuarto del Búho).

Hice de Gaspar Hauser por diez y seis hebdémeros
y por otras tantas semanas y tres días fui la sombra,
la sombra misma que se le extravió a Peter Schlémil.

Fui el mozo -mozo de estribo- de la Reina Cristina de Suecia
y en ciertas ocasiones también el de Ebba Sparre.
Fui el mozo -mozo de estoques- de la Duquesa de Chaumont
(que era de armas tomar y de cálida sélvula): con ella pus mi pica en Flandes
-sobre holandas-.

Fui escriba de Samuel Pepys -¡qué escabroso su Diario!-
y sustituto suyo como edecán adjunto de su celosa cónyuge.
Y fuí copista de Milton (un poco largo su Paraíso Perdido,
magüer perdido en buena parte: le suprimí no pocos Cantos)
y a la su vera reencontré mi Paraíso (si el poeta era
ciego; -¡qué ojazos los de su Déborah!).

Fui traductor de cablegramas del magnífico Jerjes;
telefonista de Artajerjes el Tartajoso; locutor de la Esfinge
y confidente de su secreto; ventrílocuo de Darío Tercero Codomano el Multilocuo,
que hablaba hasta por los codos;
altoparlante retransmisor de Eubolio el Mudo, yerno de Tácito y su discípulo
y su émulo; caracola del mar océano eólico ecolálico y el intérprete
de Luis Segundo el Tartamudo -padre de Carlos el Simple y Rey de Gaula.
Hice de andante caballero a la diestra del Invencible Policisne de Beocia
y a la siniestra del Campeón olímpico Tirante el Blanco, tirante al blanco:
donde ponía el ojo clavaba su virote;
y a la zaga de la fogosa Bradamante, guardándole la espalda
-manera de decir-
y a la vanguardia, mas dándole la cara, de la tierna Marfisa...

Fui amanuense al servicio de Ambrosio Calepino
y del Tostado y deMatías Aldecoa y del que urdió el Mahabarata;
fui -y soylo aún, no zoilo- graduado experto en Lugares Comunes
discípulo de Leon Bloy y de quien escribió sobre los Diurnales.
Crucigramista interimario, logogrifario ad-valorem y ad-placerem
de Cleopatra: cultivador de sus brunos pitones y pastor de sus áspides,
y criptogramatista kinesiólogo suyo y de la venus Calipigia, ¡viento en popa a toda vela!
Fui tenedor malogrado y aburrido de libros de banca,
tenedor del tridente de Neptuno,
tenedor de librejos -en los bolsillos del gabán (sin gabán) collinesco-,
y de cuadernículos -quier azules- bajo el ala.
Sostenedor de tesis y de antítesis y de síntesis sin sustentáculo.
Mantenedor -a base de abstinencias- de los Juegos Florales
y sostén de los Frutales -leche y miel y cerezas- sin ayuno.
Porta-alfanje de Harún-al-Rashid, porta-mandoble de Mandricardo el Mandria,
porta-martillo de Carlos Martel,
porta-fendiente de Roldán, porta-tajante de Oliveros, porta-gumía
de Fierabrás, porta-laaza de Lanzarote (¡ búen Lancelot tan dado a su Ginevra!)
y a la del Rey Artús, de la Ca... de la Mesa Redonda...;
porta-lámpara de Al-Eddin, el Loca Suerte, y guardián y cerbero de su anillo
y del de los Nibelungos: pero nunca guardián de serrallo ni cancerbero ni evirato de harem...
Y fui el Quinto de los Tres Mosqueteros (no hay quinto peor) -veinte años después-.

Y Faraute de Juan Sin Tierra y fiduciario de

the magnolia was a bit of a *******
(as far as trees can be *******)
and like very many other things—
like japanese candy from the Fugi Mart in Greenwich
                                      (across from the McDonald’s and next to
                                             the music shop where I got my viola)
and like pokemon cards and nintendo gaming systems
and like Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” on a pink CD in a Hello Kitty radio
—that ******* of a magnolia was a distinctive taste
of the years I spent growing up in my house at the end of Wyndover Lane.

the ******* thing was almost perpetually in bloom.

it barged into both spring and autumn
(it didn’t give a **** about timing)
those pink and white spongy petals padding the ground
and at first you think it’s ******* beautiful
sitting in the crook of the trunk where it split into
                                                                two large
                                                       separate branches
tilting your chin back to catch a glimpse of blue between fat blossoms

then the petals start rotting
water-retentive little *******
and you can’t sweep ‘em away because they stick to the patio
brown clumps slipping under rubber soles
my dad lets loose a string of curses
and the magnolia shakes with laughter

I tried pressing the petals in a notebook once
while I was in that naturalist phase it seems all little girls go through
when you make fairy houses out of bark in the backyard
and put flowers between the pages of books because it feels
oh-so-much-more significant
than picking a pretty thing and showing it to mom

but the magnolia seeped through my spiral ring
and when I opened it up a month later they were dry tan papery things
not at all velveteen and rosy
and there were garish pink bloodstains all through the ten pages
on either side
magnolias don’t preserve well
except, honestly they do don’t they

then of course there’s that childhood tragedy that everyone has
when your dog got hit by some soccer mom’s suburban
or your teddy bear was lost in an airport
or maybe you just liked to cry because some things
were just really worth the tears at the time

but when I came home and found out they cut down my ******* ******* of a magnolia

I bawled

there wasn’t
even
a
stump.

I woke from the deepest of daydreams,
my eyes focusing after being long glazed over.

It’s late in the afternoon-- the light pours through the window—
it draws across above my left shoulder.  

The tea kettle whistles
like a freight train in the background.

She’s in the kitchen, but I can easily see
her veiny hands dropping the Earl Grey tea ball
into the scolding water.

—her hands, like old softly crumpled white paper.  

The same routine, every day since
great granddad passed in 1961.

Rock forward, rock backward.

What time could it be? Was I out for long?
Fresh cut grass, the familiar smell of lawn and moth ball
I so readily identify with this old Victorian house built by my family.

Evermore, the scent of kerosene dances
with the freshness of bologna and tomato sandwiches
on lightly toasted pumpernickel bread.

Where’s that 1000 piece puzzle with kittens in a basket?
Long gone?

I guess it’s been over a decade since me and my sister
last conquered that puzzle and strategically placed
connected and sectioned chunks  
back in the box for easy assemblage on future rainy days.

Rock forward, rock backward.

Her first step from kitchen tile to wood planks
sets off a chain reaction of creeks and moans
that only wood of this age and wear can produce.  

She enters the sitting room, puts the tea tray atop
the white baby grand piano: “tea time, honey,”
she whispers with a crooked smile and sad eyes.

Rock forward, rock backward.

Pennsylvania, 1948-1949

The garden of Nature opens.
The grass at the threshold is green.
And an almond tree begins to bloom.

Sunt mihi Dei Acherontis propitii!
Valeat numen triplex Jehovae!
Ignis, aeris, aquae, terrae spiritus,
Salvete!—says the entering guest.

Ariel lives in the palace of an apple tree,
But will not appear, vibrating like a wasp’s wing,
And Mephistopheles, disguised as an abbot
Of the Dominicans or the Franciscans,
Will not descend from a mulberry bush
Onto a pentagram drawn in the black loam of the path.


But a rhododendron walks among the rocks
Shod in leathery leaves and ringing a pink bell.
A hummingbird, a child’s top in the air,
Hovers in one spot, the beating heart of motion.
Impaled on the nail of a black thorn, a grasshopper
Leaks brown fluid from its twitching snout.
And what can he do, the phantom-in-chief,
As he’s been called, more than a magician,
The Socrates of snails, as he’s been called,
Musician of pears, arbiter of orioles, man?
In sculptures and canvases our individuality
Manages to survive. In Nature it perishes.
Let him accompany the coffin of the woodsman
Pushed from a cliff by a mountain demon,
The he-goat with its jutting curl of horn.
Let him visit the graveyard of the whalers
Who drove spears into the flesh of leviathan
And looked for the secret in guts and blubber.
The thrashing subsided, quieted to waves.
Let him unroll the textbooks of alchemists
Who almost found the cipher, thus the scepter.
Then passed away without hands, eyes, or elixir.


Here there is sun. And whoever, as a child,
Believed he could break the repeatable pattern
Of things, if only he understood the pattern,
Is cast down, rots in the skin of others,
Looks with wonder at the colors of the butterfly,
Inexpressible wonder, formless, hostile to art.


To keep the oars from squeaking in their locks,
He binds them with a handkerchief. The dark
Had rushed east from the Rocky Mountains
And settled in the forests of the continent:
Sky full of embers reflected in a cloud,
Flight of herons, trees above a marsh,
The dry stalks in water, livid, black. My boat
Divides the aerial utopias of the mosquitoes
Which rebuild their glowing castles instantly.
A water lily sinks, fizzing, under the boat’s bow.


Now it is night only. The water is ash-gray.
Play, music, but inaudibly! I wait an hour
In the silence, senses tuned to a ******’s lodge.
Then suddenly, a crease in the water, a beast’s
black moon, rounded, ploughing up quickly
from the pond-dark, from the bubbling methanes.
I am not immaterial and never will be.
My scent in the air, my animal smell,
Spreads, rainbow-like, scares the ******:
A sudden splat.
I remained where I was
In the high, soft coffer of the night’s velvet,
Mastering what had come to my senses:
How the four-toed paws worked, how the hair
Shook off water in the muddy tunnel.
It does not know time, hasn’t heard of death,
Is submitted to me because I know I’ll die.


I remember everything. That wedding in Basel,
A touch to the strings of a viola and fruit
In silver bowls. As was the custom in Savoy,
An overturned cup for three pairs of lips,
And the wine spilled. The flames of the candles
Wavery and frail in a breeze from the Rhine.
Her fingers, bones shining through the skin,
Felt out the hooks and clasps of the silk
And the dress opened like a nutshell,
Fell from the turned graininess of the belly.
A chain for the neck rustled without epoch,
In pits where the arms of various creeds
Mingle with bird cries and the red hair of caesars.


Perhaps this is only my own love speaking
Beyond the seventh river. Grit of subjectivity,
Obsession, bar the way to it.
Until a window shutter, dogs in the cold garden,
The whistle of a train, an owl in the firs
Are spared the distortions of memory.
And the grass says: how it was I don’t know.


Splash of a ****** in the American night.
The memory grows larger than my life.
A tin plate, dropped on the irregular red bricks
Of a floor, rattles tinnily forever.
Belinda of the big foot, Julia, Thaïs,
The tufts of their *** shadowed by ribbon.


Peace to the princesses under the tamarisks.
Desert winds beat against their painted eyelids.
Before the body was wrapped in bandelettes,
Before wheat fell asleep in the tomb,
Before stone fell silent, and there was only pity.


Yesterday a snake crossed the road at dusk.
Crushed by a tire, it writhed on the asphalt.
We are both the snake and the wheel.
There are two dimensions. Here is the unattainable
Truth of being, here, at the edge of lasting
and not lasting. Where the parallel lines intersect,
Time lifted above time by time.


Before the butterfly and its color, he, numb,
Formless, feels his fear, he, unattainable.
For what is a butterfly without Julia and Thaïs?
And what is Julia without a butterfly’s down
In her eyes, her hair, the smooth grain of her belly?
The kingdom, you say. We do not belong to it,
And still, in the same instant, we belong.
For how long will a nonsensical Poland
Where poets write of their emotions as if
They had a contract of limited liability
Suffice? I want not poetry, but a new diction,
Because only it might allow us to express
A new tenderness and save us from a law
That is not our law, from necessity
Which is not ours, even if we take its name.


From broken armor, from eyes stricken
By the command of time and taken back
Into the jurisdiction of mold and fermentation,
We draw our hope. Yes, to gather in an image
The furriness of the ******, the smell of rushes,
And the wrinkles of a hand holding a pitcher
From which wine trickles. Why cry out
That a sense of history destroys our substance
If it, precisely, is offered to our powers,
A muse of our gray-haired father, Herodotus,
As our arm and our instrument, though
It is not easy to use it, to strengthen it
So that, like a plumb with a pure gold center,
It will serve again to rescue human beings.


With such reflections I pushed a rowboat,
In the middle of the continent, through tangled stalks,
In my mind an image of the waves of two oceans
And the slow rocking of a guard-ship’s lantern.
Aware that at this moment I—and not only I—
Keep, as in a seed, the unnamed future.
And then a rhythmic appeal composed itself,
Alien to the moth with its whirring of silk:


O City, O Society, O Capital,
We have seen your steaming entrails.
You will no longer be what you have been.
Your songs no longer gratify our hearts.


Steel, cement, lime, law, ordinance,
We have worshipped you too long,
You were for us a goal and a defense,
Ours was your glory and your shame.


And where was the covenant broken?
Was it in the fires of war, the incandescent sky?
Or at twilight, as the towers fly past, when one looked
From the train across a desert of tracks

To a window out past the maneuvering locomotives
Where a girl examines her narrow, moody face
In a mirror and ties a ribbon to her hair
Pierced by the sparks of curling papers?


Those walls of yours are shadows of walls,
And your light disappeared forever.
Not the world's monument anymore, an oeuvre of your own
Stands beneath the sun in an altered space.


From stucco and mirrors, glass and paintings,
Tearing aside curtains of silver and cotton,
Comes man, naked and mortal,
Ready for truth, for speech, for wings.


Lament, Republic! Fall to your knees!
The loudspeaker’s spell is discontinued.
Listen! You can hear the clocks ticking.
Your death approaches by his hand.


An oar over my shoulder, I walked from the woods.
A porcupine scolded from the fork of a tree,
A horned owl, not changed by the century,
Not changed by place or time, looked down.
Bubo maximus, from the work of Linnaeus.


America for me has the pelt of a raccoon,
Its eyes are a raccoon’s black binoculars.
A chipmunk flickers in a litter of dry bark
Where ivy and vines tangle in the red soil
At the roots of an arcade of tulip trees.
America’s wings are the color of a cardinal,
Its beak is half-open and a mockingbird trills
From a leafy bush in the sweat-bath of the air.
Its line is the wavy body of a water moccasin
Crossing a river with a grass-like motion,
A rattlesnake, a rubble of dots and speckles,
Coiling under the bloom of a yucca plant.


America is for me the illustrated version
Of childhood tales about the heart of tanglewood,
Told in the evening to the spinning wheel’s hum.
And a violin, shivvying up a square dance,
Plays the fiddles of Lithuania or Flanders.
My dancing partner’s name is Birute Swenson.
She married a Swede, but was born in Kaunas.
Then from the night window a moth flies in
As big as the joined palms of the hands,
With a hue like the transparency of emeralds.


Why not establish a home in the neon heat
Of Nature? Is it not enough, the labor of autumn,
Of winter and spring and withering summer?
You will hear not one word spoken of the court
of Sigismund Augustus on the banks of the Delaware River.
The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys is not needed.
Herodotus will repose on his shelf, uncut.
And the rose only, a ****** symbol,
Symbol of love and superterrestrial beauty,
Will open a chasm deeper than your knowledge.
About it we find a song in a dream:


Inside the rose
Are houses of gold,
black isobars, streams of cold.
Dawn touches her finger to the edge of the Alps
And evening streams down to the bays of the sea.


If anyone dies inside the rose,
They carry him down the purple-red road
In a procession of clocks all wrapped in folds.
They light up the petals of grottoes with torches.
They bury him there where color begins,
At the source of the sighing,
Inside the rose.


Let names of months mean only what they mean.
Let the Aurora’s cannons be heard in none
Of them, or the tread of young rebels marching.
We might, at best, keep some kind of souvenir,
Preserved like a fan in a garret. Why not
Sit down at a rough country table and compose
An ode in the old manner, as in the old times
Chasing a beetle with the nib of our pen?

please be impatient with me for I am Female, Age 19   Please be impatient with me.  Three quarters woman in a body, a quartered quartet.  The crying viola, off tempo, present but unavailable.  The boys want me. The men, more, more.  The women most of all.  The American Girl dolls on the shelf dusty, witnesses to all my demander’s impatience to take, to own, possess & desire my poses all to pleasure them, wanting  many morsos (small bites).  
Then, when discarded, my body reeks of
con-f u s i o n.  A perfect conjugation,  an imperfect conjunction;  Conning my mind into letting my body be-fused.  

The dolls weep real tears in the city of my mind;  flipping out, they too, are impatient with me, and flip me off for they have no good words to express their utter chagrin.

A great many people cross the Liffey and dance on the shore,
At Ringsend the Pigeon House falls to earth, the dust settles,
Cuchulain leaps from Bull to Bull and retreats into the mountains.  
I linger for some time watching the waters pass beneath ha’penny bridge.
I’ll find me a garret, and in that garret,
Curse in undertones Windows Vista,
******* to the **** stanzas of Homer,
Drink cold coffee with the blood of a nation,
Finally, say with surety,
Here is a poem which has taken everything, and given nothing,
Here is everything that meant something to somebody at some time.

Laughter,
Rib Punching,
Bone Popping,
Innocent Laughter,
The Purest Form Of Happiness,
Jarred Inside My Soul,
Packed For A The Trip I'll Make Someday,
As I Go Up A Yonder,
I Will Release This Music,
Like A Million Balloons,
Sound Made From The Cello Of Love


Smiling,
Eye Squinting,
Cheek Bursting,
Perfect Smiles,
The Purest Form Of Any Type Of Love,
Slow Motion,
The Strings On The Violin Of Life,
Strum A Steady Heartbeat

Thinking,
Head Grasping,
Stinging Thoughts,
Swarm My Mind,
Our Future,
Our Path On This Ever Stretching Road,
The Bass,
The Harmony Of Our Actions,
The Layout Of Our Life

Words,
Peacemaking,
Heartbreaking,
My Drug,
My Addiction,
I Love Hearing Your Voice Responding To Mine,
I Can Pick Your Voice From A Crowd,
If You Are Afraid To Be Loud,
Whisper,
I Can Still Hear The Viola,
The Viola Of Life's Orchestra,
Each Word,
Each Note,
Deciding The Fate Of Our Song

You Are My Companion,
My Family,
You Are The Music Of My Life,
And I Never Want To Hear,
The Silence,
Ever Again

******* in you nose can do that,
This is the rosebush, the fuschia,
the striding spiderweb of summer.
Your trees from the ocean and sky,
and sepals turned sences.
A spindle-spinning wheel,
turning sunflowers to liquid honey,
yum - yum - yum !
Oh the tastes of nature,
hidden in burrow holes,
with small mice chittering their teeth,
through chestnut temples!
A crucified sunflower, soft-spoken ochre,
the pumpkins turning fields to dust
and growing seeds of castles.
Three blades of grass in
tasseled soil.
Three green-squash faces
among the fields burgundy,
growing eyeballs.
Viola splashes wave,
Palo Santo fragrance,
Filling the nostrils with
Happiness!
Day-to-day ecstatic twirls
Twists and twirls,
a steep staircase to
the waterfall's epicenter.
The soul of the falls tumbling
across the sealed creek,
oiled with the feathers of soils.
The queen of frozen loganberries
gazes with approval,
watching seperate streams congeal, spiral,
and form starry nights
beneath the sky.
Lime scent comforting
the ☀ of rivers!

*Written by: Lotus and Simon

he spends his time
rowing through the
rugged, blockaded channels
of my catharsis,
the bitter staccato
of ****** habit.

his love
can be as jagged
as gashes in an
Elvis Costello record
thrown against the wall--
the frayed words of the last love song
Billie Holiday ever uttered.

he is two
exclamation points lit on
fire, kerosene pumping through
tautly wound muscles and
caressing our funny bones with
sandpaper.

he is
dulcit woodwind melodies
and jilted viola strings,
epic poetry and grindhouse theaters,
McQueen gowns and thrift store bargains,
the kiss on the forehead
and the nudge for a *******.

he is a double helix.

he is the beginning
and end of every sentence.

.
                                      V
                              i      i o       i
                           o        l a         o
                          l           V            l
                         a          i   o           a
                        V          l    a           V
                         i           V   i            i
                         o           o  l            o
                           l            a            l
                              a      ­  V        a
                                        V
                                        
                                        
                       ­                 
        .

Mind if I play pretend?*

What if it was you and me
on a breezy hill

         overlooking nothing but grass

                                                       grass

grass waving to the wind
like waves that never crash

would you sit beside me
and stare at it
be silent
comfortable enough
in each others' thoughts?

I would watch you
from the corner of my eye
and you would be
smiling

(I always have you smiling in my mind)

your perfect bangs ruined
tousled
yet beautiful.

I'd watch your magic eyes
flashing
shining
bright.

boy with the old poet's soul.

looking at the same field
yet you'd see it better
than I

you will capture the parts that contain the unexplainable
and hold it
in your heavenly rucksack

while all I have are
eyes bending the light,
making sense of the colors.

your mouth will not open
you do not tell me what you see

but you free what you've trapped
in your poetry

and there do you give

you to me.

the night i found a woodland pigeons roosting
on my guttering, tried to catch it given
the maxim: better a robin in your hand,
than a dove on your roof, but failed, and
to my surprise, felt no feeling of failure,
nothing competitive, and the world needs this
at this moment, the shattering of the clocks,
for a moment, to hold your breath and take
snapshots of the world as if drowning -
with a held breath, and ninja gymnastics
slowly edging toward the pigeon perched
in the guttering... do people understand that
poetry isn't about competing in the Olympics?
you can't laurel crown a poet of ability
among others, just like you can't discourage others
from the freedom to write it, however ridden with
orthodox methodology, or however concerned
with the purity of a narrative...  nor can you
have poetic prodigies - poetry takes time,
it takes fermentation, it's not one of those first
come first served allocations of ability...
it takes years, experience, i'm not talking about
a viola player in an orchestra, reduced to
muscle work, sure, you can be the muscular equivalent
of a viola player in an orchestra in poetry,
that's the easy part, tweak a few things in your
imitation and we're set to go... you'll be known
as pseudo-Plato or some other grand name...
you can't become a prodigious poet, i.e. if your
mother or father was a poet... this is the only
place where Sartre's existence precedes essence
takes form, elsewhere it doesn't,
the most evident i.e. is time flies when you're
having fun - the presupposed essence of time
defines the supposition of having fun and
the non-existence of time - the two together are
what's required of a proposition taking form -
fiddling with the prefix doesn't concern anyone that
much, i.e. a preposition is lodged between
the presupposition (preposition) and supposition -
as i said before, systematisation is a method of
economising vocabulary - a boa constriction, a restraint,
imagine yourself being a pauper while writing out
lavish decking, chairs, marble toilets and gold-gilded
toilet seats, tacky stuff according to the failing
of the concept of money, once gained: to lavish out
on things, to keep the merchant class constantly busy
and adaptable - what with the Koranic procedures
we can be assured that there will be a constant
confidence in producing, selling, exchanging,
or the tonne of food thrown out because it didn't sell.
like growing vegetables, you probably ingest
5 nutritious poems a day, the rest you throw out...
you take a fat poem, a protein poem, whatever,
there's always a variation on what poem fills
the carbohydrate allowance, but the rest is thrown out...
a thinking man's poem is fibrous, that means:
slow on digestion, reminding, an agitating gnat
or mosquito; but it truly is a case of having to be
an entertaining narrator, without character study -
or character concern - in that i lend myself
to the poetic practice of ensō - one smooth stroke
and the narrative is finished - also a culminating point
of worth consideration, name revelation 13 -
and the suggestion: what the contemporary affairs
would also suggest -
it's kinda funny when you think about it...
isn't the beast from the sea Moses and the beast
from the earth Jesus?
early Christianity probably wasn't prone to iconoclasm,
only when it reached popularity this
iconoclasm play a key role...
but what does John actually write?
in our modern tongue? Moses (the dragon) and
Jesus (the beast), as stated in the tale:
the transfiguration, or the shifting of power -
who is able to make war against the beast?
the Antichrist (some words have been kept in
straitjackets, use them, they either think you're
mad, or religiously psychotic, under-use them
and they fall into the wrong hands... bit of a juggle,
but coming from a religious school education,
i'd keep such words categorised in controversy
as euthanasia and abortion); so unto the beast...
a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies
(sermon on the mount), and the deadly wound was
healed (the crown of myrrh, and the resurrection),
and they worshipped the dragon and they
worshipped the beast - many do still preserve
"tact" of kneeling before an icon, esp. in orthodox
tradition... and the blasphemies,
well, i'm not sure Jesus was crucified for nothing...
see how people can make you look silly when you
use parts of their vocabulary? you write Jesus
and immediately you can't think of an Eddie Izzard
sketch... you're trapped with how other people
over-use certain words, keep them "sacred" in order
that they might be treated as sustenance...
some people write the word tomato or potato and
get a meal out of it, others write Jesus and they
win the ******* lottery with their flock of goody-two-shoes
fanning their ***** in packed churches in the Bible Belt.
then there's John doing a bit of Spartacus -
if any man have an ear, let him hear -
by the way hunter s. thompson was keen to study this
book too... he that leads into captivity...
and when did i not felt being captive under Christianity?
they catch you early on, get you educated in *******
and then release you into the world as mince meat;
it's all a fatal exercise in / of metaphor -
i'm not surprised rushed toward the book of Genesis
for a stability of thought, trying to
write an equivalent of Paradise Lost, i.e. Paradise
Regained basing it solely on the book of Revelation
with is complex use of metaphors would drive
anyone mad... so far i'm stumbling, we have
the dragon giving power to the beast of the sea
(Jesus' harem of nuns, water, juiced up *****)
and then we have the beast of the earth -
then there's the many deceptions or "miracles"
that Jesus did - any magician will gladly succumb,
altogether the purposes of any image,
not a statue, but an image, basically a sphinx on paper,
how ancient worship of statues and building them
turned into a worship of oil-on-canvas...
from 3D into 2D... by the time we reach 1D we are
talking the big bang... oh, right... we're talking
about the origins of the universe already...
i'll test you: compose me a Milton-like poem working
from the book of revelation and never touching on
the book of Genesis - let's face it, the only poetically
riddled book of the New Testament is the book
of Revelation... and it truly is a ****-up for any poet
to consider... easier to be a novelist and joke
at the bible being accessible in every motel room
across America... such books are agitators,
they're implants, something you get rid off in your
spare time, bite out the access of such books to your mind
like a dog with rabies... praying:
just so i don't have to wear the Golgotha geometry,
just so i don't have to wear the Golgotha geometry...
in summary? to me the dragon is Moses
(every Greek would side with the Egyptians given
Alexandria and whatnot), armed with all the physics
bending plagues (yes, i think they're true,
Darwinism is no better at their myth of Tarzan,
given we're watching sprinting 100 metres in under
10 seconds, everything starts to look ridiculous given that),
yes, both assumptions are quiet honestly absurd,
it just depends where you want to begin with:
the clash of fur versus tanned buttocks,
or the clash between female genital mutilation
versus male genital mutilation...
i told you, i am circumcised during ***, i roll the *******
back, and hey pesto! a helmet!
i think i better change the concept of enso into
a concept of the waterfall, just for the exotica (but there's
no exotica in globalisation, it's hard keeping
history and learning to get together without
some part of us rebelling to rekindle ancient wrestling),
aha! taki! can you imagine what would have been
if the Egyptians were able to keep their ideograms?
they wouldn't ever have kept them to see them off
on the evolutionary sprint to success, they weren't
using matchsticks like the Chinese were using
and kept on using, waiting for numbers to prop up
and tell you Hong Kong was 1 million light years away
from Beijing... because it was all d'uh to them
and the Mongolian harmonica imitation of the steppe
idiot laughing at a horse taking a **** like
a male dog taking a ****, giddy up on the leg over.
i'm well surprised the Chinese ideogram is alive...
it's a source for many ideas, without me even wanting to
travel there... they built the great wall of China with their
ideograms, the wall itself was unnecessary to protect
the people from Mongolian optometrists...
that's the key in Chinese, using matchsticks the sounds
are pretty much basic: Xi Lung Chi - or Chang Chewy Lo,
pretty crap, isn't it? i agree, their strength comes
best expressed by their proficiency in less matchsticks
included in the Jenga of 1, 2, 3, i mean the bendy bits,
we Europeans have to first remember the aesthetic,
then the dyslexia antidote to get our ideas out and into
the open, for the Chinese every ideogram is
not a letter but another bright new idea... eo or ea-,
whatever... 1 billion of them content with the scraps
of individuation waiting for them... with us it's
about conquering the world, but our **** doesn't sell
in Mongolia... when was the last time
you picked up a newspaper and read news from
Mongolia? the 13th century and Genghis Khan?
probably. god, feels great to unwind without
paying too much attention on the book of revelation,
every time i muster the strength to consider
religious topics i immediately feel i'm claustrophobic
and want to get out...
that book is still but a fatal exercise in metaphor -
it's overly-poetic, the book of Genesis is full of
princely imagery, but the book of Revelation
is not compatible with imagery, a garden and three
characters makes imagining it far more easily
than the three characters in the book of Revelation
on a beach... when i think of a garden i think
of vineyards and pear orchards, i.e. wine and cider -
when i think of the beach i only think of
hot dog selfies of a girl's tanned legs... and that
ain't helping... and why people vacate on beach
resorts but are scared of swimming in the sea,
and only want the sea as a canvas when swimming
in the hotel swimming pool.

Sweet cherry wood
Clean strings
The bow was so light
My soul was joyful
I could feel the passion welling
Inside me
I lay the bow against the string
And draw out a long sighful note
And then I jump into a series of slurrs
Rocking to the sound
I'm being swept away
Enveloped on the arms of the sound
So sweet and melodic
I was being drowned in the music
My arm was pumping the strings
Drawing every inch of beauty from it
I close my eyes and lose myself
To the song
To the beat
My heart beating fast
Racing with the strokes of my bow
Until I come to a crescendo
And then end my song mournfully

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Walter, I just want to sit on my *** and **** and think about Dante.*
—Samuel Beckett

All this fractures the Wolf. The ancient leaves
amid the ancient woods, wind riffling wind
in eddies she can see but she can’t hear,
the braying of a fatted calf which she
could eat, if she could hear thy call, O Wolf.

The tympani pretend to be a thunder roll,
the crashing cymbals mean to simulate
the distant lightning, all the strings—cello,
base, violin and viola—play the
pizzicato of rain commencing…

The Wolf sits to watch—what?—the floodlights fill
the stadium? the baton poised? the crowd
about to have their daily dose of not
quite silence served up yet again? She hates
that they have come to watch a prophecy.

It’s raining full blast now, the Wolf’s exchange
for music, how things balance out, how rain
fornicates in the forest, with its pools
and puddles, how it tenders lakes and rivers
and shadows… It can’t be! Ahead she sees him.

She sees Dante, the poet of the prophecy,
the one she has to drown.  It’s why she’s deaf.
She will not hear him wail. **** him so he will rot
in hell before the other poet comes. **** him
and spare the world another poem about

another world. The rain and music grow
so dense around her soul. She is so quick,
too quick for him to flee. She drags him still
alive, drags him to the lake of his heart.
Sink and die. In Paradise only bubbles rise.

The tympani pretend to be a thunder roll,
the crashing cymbals mean to simulate
the distant lightning, all the strings—cello,
base, violin, viola—play it soft,
so soft, as if the rain is about to start…

The Wolf and I walk the slopes of hell.
When Farinata and Cavalcante
rise up to ask her, ‘Who were thy ancestors?’
and ‘Where Is *****?’ she howls. O Wolf.
O Tuscan. She howls.

Ci sono matrimoni ti adoro e poi ci sono i matrimoni ti adoro .drop-dead cose bellissime che sono così assolutamente bella .siete quasi a corto di parole.Questo è uno di quei matrimoni.Una serata italiana mozzafiato con una splendida attrice sposarla focoso produttore musicale sposo .il tutto circondato da familiari .amici e momento dopo momento di "Miss Havisham incontra Florence and the Machine " pretty ( SI ) .E 'il tipo di giornata che sarà quasi certamente passerà alla storia SMP e si può vedere tutto catturato beauitfully da Matthew Moore nel pieno galleria .

Condividi questa splendida galleria ColorsSettingsHistoric VenueStylesRomanticVintage

Da Sposa.Come attrice e sceneggiatrice dal commercio in Hollywood era destinato fin dall'inizio che il nostro matrimonio sarebbe stato una produzione.Invece del matrimonio norma mio marito ed io stavamo cercando di creare il set di un film che sarebbe davvero trasportare i nostri ospiti in un altro mondo .

Oltre al fatto che siamo entrambi persone molto artistici in generale .Zach ed io sono piuttosto contrario.ehm.voglio dire gratuito .Zach è più di un ragazzo jeans e t -shirt .E sono più di una Jimmy Choo e vintage sequined vestito da cocktail tipo di ragazza .Così.quando è arrivato il momento di sposarsi .volevamo trovare un modo per fondere i nostri due gusti : lui .casual e me.fantasia .Lui .rilassata e me .drammatico .

Entrambi abbiamo subito concordato un matrimonio di destinazione perché sapevamo che volevamo che il matrimonio sia intimo.E abbiamo voluto l'evento per essere più di una vacanza collettiva di una sorta di omaggio al nostro coupledom .E non posso dirti quello che una decisione perfetta che fu.Abbiamo optato per l'Italia .un piccolo paese vicino a Lucca chiamato Borgo a Mozzano dove avevo trascorso del tempo in un college di canto lirico .( . Te l'avevo detto che ero toity hoity ) Borgo a Mozzano è in Garfagna - i monti selvaggi e selvagge della Toscana .

Sono ossessionato con la grandiosità sbiadita si possono trovare in Italia - e la villa che abbiamo scelto per il matrimonio (Villa Catureglio ) incarna proprio questo - edera a crescere senza di pietra antichi .ulivi dappertutto .quella luce splendida che sembraesistere solo in Italia .Per noi .non c'è niente di più bello di patina e abbiamo voluto fare che l'attenzione estetica del matrimonio .

A tal fine .i colori del matrimonio sono



tirati direttamente dalla decolorazione della pietra dal salmone al grigio al blu al verde .C'è un intero caleidoscopio di colori solo nella pietra .Volevamo la decorazione di nozze per avere un tatto organico ad essa come se fosse parte della villa .
Il tema per il matrimonio è stata Miss Havisham incontra Florence and the Machine .La descrizione mi piace dare è il matrimonio dovrebbe apparire come se fosse istituito un centinaio di anni fa e poi solo dimenticato .Nel corso del secolo gli elementi ha assunto l'edera e muschio ha cominciato a crescere nel l'arredamento .l'età sbiadito la tovaglia .E ora il matrimonio è quasi una sensazione spettrale ad esso .Per me non c'è niente di più romantico della storia Havisham di un matrimonio congelato nel tempo .E mi piace l'accostamento di bellezza e decadenza .

Abbiamo ovviamente avuto un po ' di una sfida tirare fuori questa visione dall'altra parte del mondo .Inoltre .abbiamo voluto utilizzare uno stile più eclettico decorazione di solito si può affittare da fornitori di nozze ( in particolare in Italia .dove l'estetica matrimonio sembra essere per lo piu vestiti da sposa ' permette di trasformare la villa in un club di Miami ! ' ) .Così abbiamo dovuto ottenere creativo che è dove abbiamo avuto così tanto divertimento .Io e mia mamma .insieme con i nostri wedding planner .pettinate attraverso diverse Thrifts negozi a Firenze di raccolta ( ad un prezzo abbastanza ragionevole) antiquariato favolosi che abbiamo usato per decorare il tutto .Abbiamo trovato splendidi vecchi specchi che abbiamo appeso nella limonaia .Siamo andati in un vecchio magazzino di tessuto a Prato e aveva le tende fatte per la cappella e altrove.Abbiamo anche trovato il tessuto lì per fare la nostra bella pizzo tovaglia di tela !La sua incredibile come se siete disposti a caccia .si possono trovare cose incredibili ad una certa sconto .Pettinatura attraverso depositi di risparmio italiane potrebbe non essere il paradiso per tutti .ma per me e mia mamma è stata veramente !

Zach .ovviamente .a condizione che la musica .che era un misto di corrente di musica indie con musica dal 1920 per la cena per riflettere il nostro desiderio che il matrimonio si sentono sia d'epoca e indie .Abbiamo finito per avere 55 dei nostri amici più cari e familiari .e non avrebbe potuto essere più perfetto .Abbiamo tutti trascorso alcuni giorni insieme prima del matrimonio .

Il matrimonio è iniziato nella cappella privata in loco : una splendida .piccola cappella di pietra abbiamo trasformato in una scatola gioiello etereo .Abbiamo comprato un po ' di velluto stupendo e tessuto di seta floreale da un magazzino a Prato .che abbiamo trasformato in tende romantiche per vestire le finestre .La cappella era piena di Kartell Louis Ghost in armonia con l'atmosfera un po ' spettrale del matrimonio .

Le damigelle d'onore camminato lungo la navata nella splendida marina .1930 ispirato abiti da David Meister come il nostro indie amico musicista rock ( mio cugino ) ci serenata con le versioni acustiche delle nostre canzoni preferite ( "C'è l'Amore " di Firenzee la macchina ." primo giorno della nostra vita " di Bright Eyes .ecc ) e 'stato così incredibilmente speciale per avere mio cugino cantare per noi .

** indossato un abito di Reem Acra ( Olivia ) che scorre in avorio con maniche argento cappuccio bordato .Mia mamma e mia sorella e ** preso a Kleinfeld in un trunk show .Il look era molto presto Grey Gardens glamour del 1930 .Pensate Poco Edie quando era giovane e bella e piena di promesse .O signorina Havisham in gioventù .

Una volta sposati.ci siamo spostati nel cortile della villa per cocktail e antipasti .Qui abbiamo avuto una splendida sorpresa in programma per i nostri ospiti .In lontananza .hanno iniziato a sentire una band che suona celebrativo della musica tradizionale italiana .La musica gradualmente si avvicinava sempre di più fino a quando attraverso l'ingresso alberato oliva villa apparve una marching band di 30 elementi ( concerto bandistico ) !Tradizionalmente .in matrimoni italiani .la banda del paese suona dopo la cerimonia e quindi abbiamo avuto la band Lucca locale non solo per noi !Sono un gruppo favoloso composto da tutti.da 8 anni a 80 anni di età che suonano musica tradizionale popolare italiana con una perfetta imperfezione .

Il look del momento dell'aperitivo era stupendo !Le bevande erano servite nella Limonaia (dove sono memorizzati i limoni durante l'inverno ) .La limonaia è onestamente da morire - è così Giardini di Miss Havisham / grigio con bellissime porte francesi che si aprono in questo spazio magico coperto di edera e altri vitigni appesi .Inoltre abbiamo decorato le pareti con un miscuglio di bellissime .specchi antichi d'oro che abbiamo comprato a diversi negozi di spedizione intorno a Firenze tutte in diverse dimensioni e forme .tra cui un gigantesco specchio antico ( 6 ​​metri di altezza ).che poggiava sul pavimento .Abbiamo chiesto il fiorista per portare ancora più edera da aggiungere alle pareti e tessere intorno gli specchi per farli sentire come se fossero lì da secoli .Sono sicuro che io sono l' unica sposa che ha chiesto il fiorista per rendere il luogo un aspetto più decrepito .ma onestamente .hanno fatto il più magnifico lavoro .Fiori Toscana ( il migliore !) Hanno fatto i fiori .

decorare l'interno della limonaia sono stati sedie antiche e divano acquistati al mercato dell'antiquariato di Lucca .Abbiamo finito per trasformare la limonaia in una grande e formale salotto che era stata troppo presa dagli elementi .La vestiti da sposa giustapposizione di mobili antichi con la limonaia rustico e il suo pavimento sporco di terra è esattamente il tipo di contraddizione abbiamo giocato con tutto il matrimonio tutto .

Dopo le bevande è venuto a cena.I nostri ospiti hanno camminato attraverso la villa - su un altro bel cortile alberato con alberi di ulivo decorati con centinaia di candele appese .Tra gli alberi .c'era un lungo tavolo coperto da una tela di pizzo splendida avevamo fatto in una tovaglia di tessuto che abbiamo comprato da un magazzino all'ingrosso a Prato .Il tavolo era decorato con candelabri e vasi antichi .pieni di arrangiamenti romantici e selvaggi fiori traboccanti sul tavolo .come l'edera salì i candelabri .Kartell sedie fantasma linea la tabella interrotto solo dalla sedia antico occasionale alle due estremità - e un divanetto d'epoca al centro del tavolo per la sposa e lo sposo .Veramente il tavolo era un capolavoro .E come gli ospiti mangiavano .abbiamo avuto 1920 riproduzione di musica che ha appena aggiunto all'atmosfera .

Invece di una società di catering .siamo stati fortunati a trovare ( grazie ai nostri wedding planner ).un famoso chef per cucinare il pasto per noi .E ' fondamentalmente la Paula Deen d'Italia e che ha fatto un lavoro impeccabile .L'abbiamo presentato con un po 'una sfida .perché volevamo un pasto completamente vegetariano .Ma lei tirò fuori splendidamente !

Dopo cena la torta è stata istituita nel grande salone della villa circondata da splendidi muschio e posto su una base antico con una splendida patina - abbiamo acquistato da un vicino cantiere di salvataggio .La torta è stato ispirato da Wedgewood con intricati avorio dettagli su ogni livello completo di cammei fatti a mano dal nostro artista torta maestro .Melanie .e sormontato da una corona di ispirazione vintage .E ' stata veramente mozzafiato.(E assaggiato incredibile come bene ! )

Dopo aver mangiato .abbiamo camminato lungo una passerella a lume di candela .giù la proprietà alla loggia ( una veranda coperta di sorta ) - in pietra antica .Abbiamo trasformato questa sala in sala sigari / grappa .Abbiamo voluto contrastare la pietra semplice e maschile con la decorazione femminile e morbido .Abbiamo drappeggiato le finestre aperte con ricco tessuto in velluto .E abbiamo acquistato un assortimento di mobili antichi da negozi di spedizione per vestire lo spazio come lampadari splendidi pendevano dal soffitto .

Poi sulla danza .Abbiamo convertito abiti da sposa on line il vecchio fienile in pietra in una pista da ballo / club - completo di photobooth !Qui abbiamo avuto la più divertente giustapponendo il moderno con l'antico .Una barra incandescente con avvolgono una delle colonne centrali della stalla .come il barista ci ha servito bevande.Lampadari di cristallo appesi alle pareti .Abbiamo decorato la stalla con decorazioni semplici e moderne - divani moderni bianche pulite - tutto arredamento bianco contro la pietra - come abbiamo ballato nella notte .Uno dei lighting designer premiere in Toscana illuminato lo spazio in blu e viola per aiutare a completare la trasformazione.

nostro matrimonio è stato davvero la notte più magica che mai.I nostri fotografi .Matteo e Katie hanno fatto un lavoro impeccabile come catturare la bellezza e l'atmosfera della manifestazione .Fotografia

: Matthew Moore Fotografia | Fiorista : Toscana Flowers | Abito da sposa: Reem Acra | Cake: Melanie Seccaini | Coordinamento evento: matrimoni Internazionale | Hair + Trucco : Katie Moore di Matthew Moore Fotografia | Luogo : Villa CatureglioMatthew Moore Fotografia .L'Arte Della Torta di Melanie Secciani .Toscana Fiori e matrimoni internazionali sono membri del nostro Little Black Book .Scopri come i membri sono scelti visitando la nostra pagina delle FAQ .Matthew Moore Fotografia VIEW PORTFOLIO L'Arte Della Torta di Melanie ... vedi portfolio Toscana Fiori vedi portfolio Matrimoni internazionale VIEW
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in memoriam Woodrow (Woody) Rifenburgh*      

The soft purr of a Piper Cub
drifted over Italy's southern hills.
Soul stirred by the landscape’s song,  
the young army pilot gently spoke.

“It’s mighty peaceful up here.”

Touching wheels to the tarmac,
Woody shed his flight suit
for an engineer’s desk
and placed a viola beneath his chin.

For three score years
Woody molded horsehair and wire into string song
steadying the orchestra’s midriff
with the vibrations of his spirit.

On Christmas Eve he played for the coming child,
fell stricken and flew his last flight
on instruments at Memorial.  

Early New Year’s morn one could almost hear
the faint soft purr of a Piper Cub
as it banked to the right around the moon
and merged with the waiting heavens.

The ellipse of a cry
travels from mountain
to mountain.

From the olive trees
it appears as a black
rainbow upon the blue night.

Ay!

Like the bow of a viola
the cry has made the long
strings of the wind vibrate.

Ay!

(The folks from the caves
stick out their oil lamps.)

Ay!

It’s nearly two in the morning and the place is finally quiet. I can’t do early mornings like I reckon he does. Even a half-past nine start is difficult for me. So it has be this way round. I called Mum tonight and she was her wonderful, always supportive self, but I hear through the ‘you’ve done so well to get on this course’ stuff and imagine her at her desk working late with a pile of papers waiting to be considered for Chemistry Now, the journal she edits. I love her study and one day I shall have one myself, but with a piano and scores and recordings on floor to ceiling shelves . . . and poetry and art books. I have to have these he said when, as my tutorial came to a close, he apologised for not being able to lend me a book of poems he’d thought of. He had so many books and scores piled on the floor, his bed and on his table. He must have filled his car with them. And we talked about the necessity of reading and how words can form music. Pilar, she’s from Tel Haviv, was with me and I could tell she questioned this poetry business – he won’t meet with any of us on our own, all this fall out from the Michel Brewer business I suppose.

This idea that music is a poetic art seems exactly right to me. Nobody had ever pointed this out before. He said, ask yourself what books and scores would be on the shelves of a composer you love. Go on, choose a composer and imagine. Another fruitless exercise, whispered Pilar, who has been my shadow all week. I thought of Messiaen whose music has finally got to me – it was hearing that piece La Columbe. He asked Joanna MacGregor to play it for us. I was knocked sideways by this music, and what’s more it’s been there in my head ever since. I just wanted to get my hands on it. Those final two chords . . . So, thinking of Messiaen’s library I thought of the titles of his music that I’d come across. Field Guides to birds of course, lots of theology, Shakespeare (his father translated the Bard), the poetry and plays of the symbolists (I learnt this week that he’d been given the score of Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande for his twelfth birthday) . . . Yes, that library thing was a good exercise, a mind-expanding exercise. When I think of my books and the scores I own I’m ashamed . . . the last book I read? I tried to read something edifying on my Kindle on the train down, but gave up and read Will Self instead. I don’t know when I last read a score other than my own.

I discovered he was a poet. There’s an eBook collection mentioned on his website. Words for Music. Rather sweet to have a relative (wife / sister?)  as a collaborator. I downloaded it from Amazon and thought her poems were very straight and to the point. No mystery or abstraction, just plain words that sounded well together. His poetry mind you was a little different. Softer, gentler like he is.  In class he doesn’t say much, but if you question him on his own you inevitably get more than the answer you expect.  

There was this poem he’d set for chamber choir. It reads like captions for a series of photographs. It’s about a landscape, a walk in a winter landscape, a kind of secular stations of the cross, and it seems so very intimate, specially the last stanza.

Having climbed over
The plantation wall
Your freckled face
Pale with the touch
Of cold fingers
In the damp silence
Listening to each other breathe
The mist returns

He’s living in one of the estate houses, the last one in a row of six. It’s empty but for one bedroom which he’s turned into a study. I suppose he uses the kitchen and there’s probably a bedroom where he keeps his cases and clothes. In his study there is just a bed, a large table with a portable drawing board, a chair, a radio/CD, his guitar and there’s a notice board. He got out a couple of folding chairs for Pilar and I and pulled them up to the table.

Pilar said later his table and notice board were like a map of himself. It contained all these things that speak about who he is, this composer who is not in the textbooks and you can’t buy on CD. He didn’t give us the 4-page CV we got from our previous tutor. There was his blue, spiral-bound notebook, with its daily chord, a bunch of letters, books of course, pens and pencils, sheets of graph and manuscript paper filled with writing and drawings and music in different inks. There was a CD of the Hindemith Viola Sonatas and a box set of George Benjamin’s latest opera and some miniature scores – mostly Bach. A small vase of flowers was perilously placed at a corner . . . and pinned to his notice board, a blue origami bird.

But it was the photographs that fascinated me, some in small frames, others on his notice board, the board resting on the table and against the wall. There were black and white photos of small children, a mix of boys and girls, colour shots of seascapes and landscapes, a curious group of what appeared to be marks in the sand. There was a tiny white-washed cottage, and several of the same young woman. She is quite compelling to look at. She wears glasses, has very curly hair and a nice figure. She looks quiet and gentle too. In one photo she’s standing on a pebbly beach in a dress and black footless tights – I have a feeling it’s Aldeburgh. There’s a portrait too, a very close-up. She’s wearing a blue scarf round her hair. She has freckles, so then I knew she was probably the person in the poem . . .

I’ve thought of Joel a little this week, usually when I finally get to bed.  I shut my eyes and think of him kissing me after we’d been out to lunch before he left for Canada. We’d experimented a little, being intimate that is, but for me I’m not ready for all that just now; nice to be close to someone though, someone who struggles with being in a group as I do. I prefer the company of one, and for here Pilar will do, although she’s keen on the Norwegian, Jesper.

Today it was all about Pitch. To our surprise the session started with a really tough analysis of a duo by Elliott Carter, who taught here in the 1960s. He had brought all these sketches, from the Paul Sacher Archive, pages of them, all these rows and abstracts and workings out, then different attempts to write to the same section. You know, I’d never seen a composer’s workings out before. My teacher at uni had no time for what she called the value of process (what he calls poiesis). It was the finished piece that mattered, how you got there was irrelevant and entirely your business and no one else’s. So I had plenty of criticism but no help with process. It seems like this pre-composition, the preparing to compose is just so necessary, so important. Music is not, he said, radio in the head. You can’t just turn it on at will. You have to go out and find it, detect it, piece it together. It’s there, and you’ll know it when you find it.

So it’s really difficult now sitting here with the beginnings of a composition in front of me not to think about what was revealed today, and want to try it myself. And here was a composer who was willing to share what he did, what he knew others did, and was able to show us how it mattered. Those sheets on his desk – I realise now they were his pre-composition, part of the process, this building up of knowledge about the music you were going to write, only you had to find it first.

The analysis he put together of Carter’s Fantasy Duo was like nothing I’d experienced before because it was not sitting back and taking it, it was doing it. It became ours, and if you weren’t on your toes you’d look such a fool. Everything was done at breakneck speed. We had to sing all the material as it appeared on the board. He got us to pre-empt Carter’s own workings, speculate on how a passage might be formed. I realised that a piece could just go so many different ways, and Carter would, almost by a process of elimination choose one, stick to it, and then, as the process moved on, reject it! Then, the guys from the Composers Ensemble played it, and because we’d been so involved for nearly an hour in all this pre-composition, the experience of listening was like eating newly-baked bread.  There was a taste to it.

After the break we had to make our own duos for flute and clarinet with a four note series derived from the divisions of a tritone. It wasn’t so much a theme but a series of pitch objects and we relentlessly brainstormed its possibilities. We did all the usual things, but it was when we started to look beyond inversion and transposition. There is all this stuff from mathematical and symbolic formulas that I could see at last how compelling such working out, such investigation could be . . . and we’re only dealing with pitch! I loved the story he told about Alexander Goehr and his landlady’s piano, all this insistence on the internalizing of things, on the power of patterns (and unpatterns), and the benefit and value of musical memory, which he reckoned so many of us had already denied by only using computer systems to compose.

Keep the pen moving on the page, he said; don’t let your thoughts come to a standstill. If there isn’t a note there may be a word or even an object, a sketch, but do something. The time for dreaming or contemplation is when you are walking, washing up, cleaning the house, gardening. Walk the garden, go look at the river, and let the mind play. But at your desk you should work, and work means writing even though what you do may end in the bin. You will have something to show for all that thought and invention, that intense listening and imagining.

Awake, the empty chamber of my mind
Calls out to paired and endless sky
The thought of you, a galloped course
The heels of your palm, struck with force
I cannot claim the earth as mine,
Just as she do flee the pick of eye
To wallow in sorrows of course divine
Calls out my heart, with verses hoarse.

I have but land to wander soon,
My passions held in heaven's sent
The ancient glass of sky full hue
The earth's embrace a lover's swoon
The soft edges of aluminium bent
These are the ways I'll remember you.

I am a sheet of music
I start quietly building on the quartet of Strings
the Violin starts a shimmering sound
backed up with the viola
the solemn sound of the cello
and the ground breaking bass
united in harmony

There is a rest a break in note
I am part of a Symphony an overture
out of the heart of the music
a quiet roll
the timpani building in sound
full orchestra building in amazing ******


Fireworks, Percussion, Brass, Woodwind, Strings
Combined together in unity
performing to the quality levels of sound
the amazing Tchaikovsky in 1812

Creativity and Imagination
shaking the core of the earth