Supernaturally

For M
(inspired by Harry Martinson's Höstdikt
and M's rose heap)

Flowers drop with supernatural grace
handkerchiefs for wet noses
that snuff out every last space
in a heap of fallen roses.
Heaven spits cold
on a bell of cress
before washing and drying
her evanescent dress.

Summer play

For N, O & U
Inspired by Harry Martinson's "Sommarspel"

This is where summer's green path went.
Coaxed by the sun in the field
poppy petals, opiate flags, unfolded.
Cricket played at last a passage
Despite all winter ants warning.

Like the poppy, she too is dead now,
but they lived their brief life there
where summer was within,
grounded in its own life,
at home in her green house.

A room with a view

Christian Bonos purchased a concrete bunker designed by Albert Speer to house his collection of contemporary art (see my blog entry May 10, 2010).
The SPCA picks up strays dogs and tries to find them new owners.
The social welfare department places children who need nurturing in summer camps and foster homes.
Bag ladies and gentlemen scavenge and recycle aluminum cans and bottles.
We find drooping plants - herbs, vegetables and flowers - on sale at local garden stores. We replant them in the allotment space that O has hewn from bedrock (and reinforced with concrete), water and nurture them, and love watching them grow.
A lot is whatever you make of it.

Calm before the storm

Moved back into my apartment today. And even though today's gusty winds managed to knock over a big pot of sunflowers and cosmos on my corner balcony, their sturdy stalks proved resilient. We're upright.

ps. Remember the calm before the lightening storm
Före åskstormen by Harry Martinson (my translation)

The sky goes black in the July night
Branches flare in distant lightening
The dragonfly that rested on a calming stone
seeks refuge over charred waters.

Alms

There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another,
either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye. Lord Acton





To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.
John Ruskin






Work is love made visible.


And if you cannot work with love [...]
it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple …



and take alms of those who work with joy.
Kahlil Gibran

Dig where you are 2

My potatoes (middle box) needed earthing up in early June.
Back box: Jerusalem artichokes. Front box: lettuce, chard and ruccola.

Growing on an allotment.




























Less than a month later we could begin to harvest potatoes, and the slugs had yet to discover the lettuce that is now harvested daily despite them (slugs are hunted every evening under a flashlight and disarmed with garden scissors).

Cultivating my garden today

Dear Polly (a.k.a. maternal Grandma Evelyn),

As Eyafällajökull continues to erupt on Iceland, her plume of ashes - however threatening - is apparently not overhanging, at least not here and not now. Flights between Stockholm and the United States seem to be arriving and departing on schedule. Peace is.

I am writing from my home in the neutral territory to which I return, year after year. The cherry tree blossoming in our garden, overlooking a delta of the Baltic Sea, is a witness to that place. Petals fall.

As a young student of the 1960s at Berkeley, the vibrant epicenter of student revolt, I adopted history as a major. What was I thinking? Was I out of touch with the times? Was I not really there? During my two-term introduction to historical methodology, I chose to dig into the Age of the Enlightenment. In that vein, I took a course in the winter of 1968 in modern French history that introduced me to Voltaire’s perspectives on optimism (Candide), which he concluded by advocating that “we must cultivate our garden”.

If claims to be truly contemporary are a current fetish in the modern museum of modern art world, then I believe that my own life incarnates that fetish.

I promise to write to you again soon about where I'm coming from...

yours,