IX

Oh this gradual coming together as sleep lifts away from bodies resting just apart but then a little turn on the pillow knees touch there is the slightest kiss of a nose a mingling of feet hands may rest atop a thigh and touch experimentally This is such bliss all consuming no thought but each body’s press and caress so slightly so gently given until hands and limbs and kisses and the dearest stroking fills us to the brim with that longing which only the deeper kiss can quench Afterwards we watch from our attic bedroom leaves departing their trees

X

The steep steps and Doric pillars eight in all gather us into an entranced gloom only to spill us out into the light and space of galleries filled with Cyprian artefacts an owl with a removable head more porcelain than even your great aunt could look at but in a corner there were these bowls from Syria 12C and earlier Michael Cardew could have thrown and patterned but didn’t One in Iranian green inscribed thus blessing prosperity glory grace joy happiness security and long life to the owner  nothing more surely ever to be wished for ever to be wanted

XI

My Chinese heroine has a soulmate: Jilia’s deer in flight across a page of Somerset Soft White and Tengin mould oh the verse of Hafiz 14C Sufi mystic flowing into the body of this running beast Rejoice you lonely seeker of the scented path out of the wilderness the perfumed deer has come and there was more in different hands paper parchment poems exquisitely rendered into living words In a frame Goethe’s leaves of the Gingo Biloba stuck to his letter of love to married Marianne This leaf from a tree in the East has been given to my garden

XII

Captivating in beauty glowing silvery-white petals flutter down to lay a blanket of snow beneath the flowering trees and miraculously they did and more to make us wonder that negative space could be so powerfully wrought Hiroshige the master in his element of the winter snows eloquent landscapes figures on the Edo to Kyoto road the detail of raised up clogs and warm layered garments of a Geisha walking out with her maid the stone blue waters the pale reflecting skies the delicate embossing of waves and the flow of hillsides the ukiyo-e woodblock prints pictures of the floating world

XIII

Wearing purple and red your near to Advent colours grace this table we lunch at before a final walk through the city full of our time here amongst the towers and chapels and more history and art than we can manage for the time being Again and always whelmed over by your beauty seen against the press and clutter the clustering in the peopled streets the bicycled roads and in this one o’clock restaurant’s clamour how is it that my eyes are wholly on you my ears only hearing your sweet voice my fingers reaching out to touch you again?

In the beginning was the Word…
And only then was the world.
Out of chaos and the darkness,
Out of nowhere and the blackness…
Something more than a miracle happened
Filled with warmth and light that sparkled.

The world got name and became alive!
All around began to thrive.
Not in gratitude, not out of a sense of duty
It believed in truly saints and only beauty.
Eyes opened and stood in delight
It could invite, excite but not to affright.

In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was God.
Earth and sky, the stars and oceans,
Without emotions but with devotions.
Rains and snows, beauty forebodes
And even the dust of not traversed roads.

It would be ridiculous and naive
To dream about the dawns, be a sensitive.
To be the hands on the starry clock,
To make on the land a beautiful woodblock.
As all that had already been put wise.
And in time the Sun could arise.

In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was Peace
Everything could freely breathe.
If you remove it, the chaos will again start,
The universal fear and black exhaustion,
The indifference and world of combustion.

The worm of doubts shouldn’t gnaw the heart!
The rest is later and the second will be smart.
For some it is unusual and one can’t agree
But as to me in different way it could not be.
You have to hear Him to be reborn again.
His Word is saint and everything explain.


In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was Love.
The beginning of all beginnings and all the springs,
The beginning of all the most beautiful things.
The beginning of all the sources and a new start.
You have to hear it and know as it is Gods art.

In the beginning was the Word…

©Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)
The 25th of January, 2013

[A child of indeterminate ***--either a delicate-featured boy or a tomboy-ish girl--, 9 or 10 years old, enters the chamber where the United States Council of Artists is meeting.]

"Is this the United States Council of Artists?"

[The Chairman of the Council responds:] "Yes. Who are you?"

"That doesn't matter. Are all the high arts present? Poetry, Music, the Visual Arts?"

"Yes. . . . There are people from all the various arts here. . . ."

"The Hour of your Doom is upon you."

"What do you mean?"

"You've failed to create with feeling.
Nuclear angst no longer excuses you.
Moral uncertainty, the dissolution of society,
no longer excuses you.
The 'Death of God' no longer excuses you.
Human beings have not changed.
We are not the hollow men.
Great art
comes from the heart;
your superfluities will now depart.

"Painter! Isn't it true that the same day you started work on this [holding up a reproduction of the painting "Incongruities: White Lines, Pink Lines"] you visited a hardware store with a middle-aged clerk whose face was wonderfully sad and quizzical? That as you walked home the pattern of the sun shining through the trees onto the sidewalk was marvelously variegated?


"Composer! Tell me honestly [playing a cassette recording of "Duet in F-Minor for Flute and Woodblock"] that these rhythmless sounds move you. . . . It's made with the head, completely with the head.

"Poet! Isn't it true that you've never written any poems expressing your deepest feelings: your love of your older sister; the painful growing-apart of you and your wife leading up to your divorce; your hatred of the stuffy academics who denied you tenure; the passion you felt for that Australian ******* Corfu last summer. . . . Instead you've written these [holding up a book entitled Root Crops, No Metaphors and reading from it:]

     translucent, magenta-veined root-tips
     push, cell by cell, into humid grit;
     dark green, dark-red-veined crowns
     expand profligately sunward. . . .

"Great art
speaks to the heart;
your superfluities will now depart."

[Another Council member:] "Mr. Chairman, with all due respect to this --surprisingly eloquent-- young person, I suggest that we return to the business at hand which is" [consulting his agenda] "the allocation this fiscal year for haiku in South Dakota."

Last night
I dreamt a dream that should not be dreamt
It was desire having a face
Saw two faces
One unfamiliar
One I knew


This morning
I saw my request to be a friend was accepted
Saw two common friends
One unfamiliar
One was you

Later
I read a poem
For a Japanese woodblock print
Of a woman and the two octopi
It was a dream of the fisherman’s wife.

—Ray Barbee, 1971 -

Barbee's stuff just hits, sounds
straight like a bee-line back
through bedrooms, garages, picks.

Back to when it was man
manipulating ma-
chine, and not the other

way 'round. Just human hands,
white nails, and some strings,
plucking.

And just one here-and-there
hi-hat and one woodblock.
The simple sound of it,

just pins for the groove
to move on.

Fishing boat sails out

in silence of moonlit night

tall reeds gently sway