The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

HE – Your breast on my breast, | LUI – Ta poitrine sur ma poitrine,
Eh? Let’s go, | Hein ? nous irions,
With our nostrils full of air, | Ayant de l’air plein la narine,
Into the cool light | Aux frais rayons

Of the good blue morning that bathes you | Du bon matin bleu, qui vous baigne
In the wine of day?… | Du vin de jour ?…
When the whole shivering wood bleeds, | Quand tout le bois frissonnant saigne
mute with love | Muet d’amour

From every branch, green drops, | De chaque branche, gouttes vertes,
Pale buds, | Des bourgeons clairs,
You can feel in things unclosing | On sent dans les choses ouvertes
The quivering flesh: | Frémir des chairs :

You would plunge in the Lucerne | Tu plongerais dans la luzerne
Your bright white dress, | Ton blanc peignoir,
Roses in the air so blue which discerns | Rosant à l’air ce bleu qui cerne
Your great black eyes, | Ton grand oeil noir,

The lover of the field, | Amoureuse de la campagne,
Bubbling everywhere, | Semant partout,
Like the foam of champagne, | Comme une mousse de champagne,
Your crazy laughter: | Ton rire fou :

Laughing at me, suddenly, drunkenly – | Riant à moi, brutal d’ivresse,
I would catch you | Qui te prendrais
Like this – lovely tresses, | Comme cela, – la belle tresse,
Ah! – I would drink | Oh ! – qui boirais

Your taste of raspberry and strawberry, | Ton goût de framboise et de fraise,
Oh flesh of flower! | O chair de fleur !
Laughing at the fresh wind kissing you | Riant au vent vif qui te baise
Like a thief, | Comme un voleur,

And the wild rose, teasing you | Au rose, églantier qui t’embête
Pleasantly: | Aimablement :
Laughing more than anything, oh madcap, | Riant surtout, ô folle tête,
At your lover. | À ton amant !….

Your breast on my breast, | Ta poitrine sur ma poitrine,
Mingling our voices, | Mêlant nos voix,
Slowly, we’d reach the ravine, (water-roaring) | Lents, nous gagnerions la ravine,
Then the forest!… | Puis les grands bois !…

Then, like a little shade, | Puis, comme une petite morte,
Your heart fainting, | Le coeur pâmé,
You’d tell me to carry you, | Tu me dirais que je te porte,
Your eyes half closed… | L’oeil mi-fermé…

I’d carry you, you trembling | Je te porterais, palpitante,
Along the path: | Dans le sentier :
The bird would peek out quickly: | L’oiseau filerait son andante
From the hazelnut tree… | Au Noisetier…

I’d speak into your mouth; | Je te parlerais dans ta bouche..
And go on, pressing | J’irais, pressant
Your body like a little girl’s I was putting to bed, | Ton corps, comme une enfant qu’on couche,
Drunk with the blood | Ivre du sang

That runs blue under your white skin | Qui coule, bleu, sous ta peau blanche
With its tints of rose: | Aux tons rosés.
And speaking to you in that frank tongue… | Et te parlant la langue franche – …..
There!… – that you understand… | Tiens !… – que tu sais…

Our forest smells of sap, | Nos grands bois sentiraient la sève,
And the sun | Et le soleil
Would sprinkle gold-dust over | Sablerait d’or fin leur grand rêve
The green and golden dream. | Vert et vermeil

At night?… We’d head back | Le soir ?… Nous reprendrons la route
On the white road that wanders, | Blanche qui court
Like a grazing flock, | Flânant, comme un troupeau qui broute,
All around | Tout à l’entour

Oh the pleasant orchards with blue grass, | Les bons vergers à l’herbe bleue,
And twisted apple trees! | Aux pommiers tors !
How you can smell a whole league | Comme on les sent toute une lieue
Off their strong perfume! | Leurs parfums forts !

We’d get back to the village | Nous regagnerons le village
When the sky was half dark; | Au ciel mi-noir ;
And there’d be a smell of milking | Et ça sentira le laitage
In the evening air; | Dans l’air du soir ;

It would smell of the cowshed, full | Ca sentira l’étable, pleine
Of warm manure, | De fumiers chauds,
Filled with the slow rhythm of breathing, | Pleine d’un lent rythme d’haleine,
And with great backs | Et de grands dos

Gleaming under some light or other; | Blanchissant sous quelque lumière ;
And, right down at the far end, | Et, tout là-bas,
There’d be a cow dunging proudly | Une vache fientera, fière,
At every step… | À chaque pas…

The grandmother’s eyeglasses | Les lunettes de la grand-mère
And her long nose | Et son nez long
Deep in her prayerbook; the jug of beer | Dans son missel ; le pot de bière
Circled with pewter | Cerclé de plomb,

Foaming among the big-bowled pipes | Moussant entre les larges pipes
Gallantly smoking: | Qui, crânement,
And the frightful blubber lips | Fument : les effroyables lippes
Which, still puffing, | Qui, tout fumant,

Snatch ham from forks: | Happent le jambon aux fourchettes
So much, and more: | Tant, tant et plus :
The fire lighting up the bunks | Le feu qui claire les couchettes
And the cupboards. | Et les bahuts.

The shining fat bottom | Les fesses luisantes et grasses
Of the fat baby | D’un gros enfant
On his hands and knees, who nuzzles into the cups, | Qui fourre, à genoux, dans les tasses,
His white snout | Son museau blanc

Tickled by a gently | Frôlé par un mufle qui gronde
Growling muzzle, | D’un ton gentil,
That licks all over the round face | Et pourlèche la face ronde
Of the little darling… | Du cher petit…..

What sights we shall see, dearest, | Que de choses verrons-nous, chère,
In those hovels, | Dans ces taudis,
When the bright fire lights up | Quand la flamme illumine, claire,
The grey window panes!… | Les carreaux gris !…

And then, small and nestling | Puis, petite et toute nichée,
In the lilacs | Dans les lilas
Dark and cool: the hidden window | Noirs et frais : la vitre cachée,
Smiling in there… | Qui rit là-bas….

You’ll come, you’ll come, I love you! | Tu viendras, tu viendras, je t’aime !
It will be lovely. | Ce sera beau.
You will come, won’t you? and even… | Tu viendras, n’est-ce pas, et même…

ELLE: – But what about work? | Elle – Et mon bureau ?

The passing of the sweatbrowed dayfever;
The fall of the eastrising daystar;
and the call of the strongbeaked hawfinch.

http://artofmanliness.com/2008/05/14/100-must-read-books-the-essential-mans-library/#more-183

http://www.myspace.com/tangerinesubmarine

Life of a Porcelain Doll;

Sitting here, in my room, staring at the fiber-optic rabbit hole, finding art, collecting future memories, here I sit, not with the one I love, not with my babybaby; My love is true, it is true and it is strong, and yet I’m mortal, doomed to die, to die, to die, as is she —

Homer, with his English whispered to him from the dark of the orchestra pit by Mssr. Fitzgerald, said it like this, when Odysseus, ever-cunning, ever-crafty, trapped for seven long years on the Isle of Ogygia, home of Calypso the Hider, must plea one last time for her, immortal, beautiful, and terrible to release him home to Ithaca —

To this the strategist Odysseus answered:

“My lady goddess, here is no cause for anger.
My quiet Penelope–how well I know–
would seem a shade before your majesty,
death and old age being unknown to you,
while she must die. Yet, it is true, each day
I long for home, long for the sight of home.
If any god ahas marked me out again
for shipwreck, my tough heart can undergo it.
What hardship have I not long since endured
at sea, in battle! Let the trial come.”

And that’s how it is; that’s how I love her; words escape me, and times of leaving are near, but a beautiful and golden future unfolds before me — I cannot see it, it scares and confuses me, and somewhere on that road, we both shall vanish from the Earth, but the Golden God of Changes lights the way and I know that over there that yonder hill, she waits for me with a sparkling smile and hoping eyes and I go to her, I go to her, I go to her.
 

Out there In the Marketsquare, Red face flustered:
God’s Word, Anger, Secret signs, Tales of Zion,
Lonely, Dirty, Stone’s target; Shunned and Hated,
Still the Preacher stands. 

Where is your hilltop fastness, Israel’s sons?
Ruined abject meager hearts, stained with corpse ash,
Poor and exiled in a land you know not,
Huddled in shadows.

Can you repair the broken shattered vessels?
Can one lone man praying restore God’s garden?
Black figures on a white field will not alight
the path of unceasing.
 

The young ascetic, Dovber, thin-bearded faster, comes at the end of many journeys to the home of Mr. Israel, famed wonderworker and the Great Master of the Secret Name, spoken of in many towns in the corridors of the Yiddlepriestlings, those silly black dressed shadow race sojourning in the secret pockets and corners of Great Lithwa-Polania –

Dovber, with his double-barrelled bear name, had studied hard the secret writings of the Lion Luria, learned the Twelve Sephiroth, and the secret paths between them, and of how the divine light had shattered the vessels and breathed life into the world — had learned of the sparks that flitted through the universe like fireflies or glowworms (when you gotta glow, you gotta glow), learned that in secret places, soft pockets, where tree and man and beast can sing in special harmonic song the fireflies would gather and allow themselves to be caught and put in new glass jars, sent over from the glassworks in Far Germania — Dovber had learned these things, forsaking distractions like food and drink, turning to ancient liturgy in holy tongues, ancient tall law books and hornbooks, explaining the secret sacred law of the many worlds — and yet the sparks alluded him.

No man living now knows the secret fire that caused Dovber to push open the thin wooden door of his little home and go out into the marketplace to speak, to flow, to cant ecclessial — Dovber was a poor man, but rich in spirit, and perhaps, those who heard his discursions were moved to reach into their pockets and throw the preacher a touch of gold —

The words, the speeches — fire like Isaiah, sinners in the hands of an angry God, visions of a material hell, did not know that death had undone so many, the secrets of the Grey Pit, where shades mingle in famine, unable to eat, to think, to remember, holding only loss in their hearts and no love — this vision of a cold hell he spun out in the marketplace for the wretched and the rich, who gathered around to gawk and stare and take their evening entertainment from this preacherpriest — Yidpriestkids and Oilheader Slavlings alike came to watch thin Dovber in threadbare white shirt — and yet, the gold, the gifts, the promises of food for Dovber’s thin sad-sallow wife and the little pink mewling that didn’t have strength to cry — the gold was not enough for them —

Long into the night, long after the gray wife had given up her daydreams of a young man lusty in her bed touching, the Preacher would stay up, praying, shaking, refusing food, refusing drink, trying to picture the shattered spheres, trying to repair them by force and singleness —

But the spheres were not repaired.

And then, in the marketplace, where the Maggid went to tell the stories of those long nights, he heard of another, of the Wonderworker.

So, hearing these tales on Mondays and Thursdays, when the Holy Script of the Yidlings were recited, young Dovber, thin and weak, set to questing for the Wonderworker and began the long journey through tall mountains, dark forests, strange cities and black nights.

“we have no interest in the next Hunter S. Thompson.” Accessibility is important, and the telling and sharing of stories around a campfire on some prehistoric steppe. Critical awe. Sparkly fascination with shiny baubles and trinkets. English Empire, with Ceylon Tea. Fiberoptic cables beams the world to my wood-desk. Avatars dancing, paper dolls jousting, across liquid crystal displays. Adam names the animals, and we name the toys we made, GI Joe, Transformers, and Thundercats.

Jasper John’s American Flag hangs on my wall. Upside down picture of President Bill Clinton’s campaign photo. The cover of the Allman Brothers Band boxset, Dreams, brown and oldlike — representing wood graind on cardboard, give me the real thing — Steampunk is the beautiful ornate art form that deals with the Real, the Real Wooden Pieces adorned to our lives — sing a song of greenwood, pocket full of tenpence.

This isn’t Hunter, this isn’t Burroughs, or Kerouac, no this old thing is my old thing, winding madness, but yes, critical awe, critical awe and thankfullness, gratitude, sitting in a room on the eigth floor of a killer highrise in Western Philadelphia, home of Unipenn, gleefully ripping my face off.

o sense of wonder, planets, greek word for wandering stars — all the stars were magic to them, but planets are magic most — some things are evident to those who watch — watching every night start to notice the moving — crying orphans, no one was watching, people sitting — blue eyes — cold dark desert worlds with wild wild clouds — great and massive Jove place — grey cowled wanderers, wizards, “remember the time you met the wizard” the magician has three tricks;

Taxpayers and citizens and come on, invisible people sitting in hobo jungles too; harmonica and slide guitar; the new trash, 21st century is the flower pushing up through the cracks of the broken shiny 20th — last few pieces of starcy stuff thrown on a barbeque — do you believe in the future? work like you’ll live till 100, pray like you’ll die today … count your blessings Bobby Long, count your blessings broken city — God knows me and I know God.

Bookwright, Songwright, Wheelwright, and TS says “we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started … and know the place for the first time.”

See what is invisible, and you will know what to write — the invisible stories, the overlooked, the living in the mind, the virtual representations — the ghosts of the minds’eye — beautiful old man, with Robert Frost’s words on my stone memory fossil:

“And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” Robert Frost said that. Robert Frost said that, and now he wanders, a planet in the sky.

“I shall not murder the mankind of her going with a grave truth” – Dylan Thomas

and that’s the rub, aye, isn’t it, a quick blowaway and then gone, and the human mind with its ten trillion neurons, angel hair wires, seeks to make sense of it all. My uncle sits across from me, bone-thin and dying like a Auschwitz refugee — here it comes, the big reveal, where Daddy explains about the time he killed a kitty cat — I’m watching the Love Song for Bobby Long — so convinced of my own grand destiny —

the stupid story of a stolen love // the mistakes we make // the things we leave // lost // lost child // the fatal sinking mistake // the things you can’t take back // broken little body on the side of the road //

“Leave, leave and never come back.” // “I want a better man, Bobby” //

New stories. New beginnings. The things I’ve done — the things I’ve not done — no regrets, no mistakes, no nothings — read too many damn books, too many damn poems, striving pointing against the constraints of mortality — all that there is between me and my uncle is love, an eternal love that has been sanctified by his passing — a part of me rests in the grave, beyond the edge of the world, and that is ok, I realize, that sanctifies me, and bury my body at the foot of a tree and in the summer go sit beneath the shade and tell stories about me and let that be my monument — the love the love and the leaving — and take joy in what there was and comfort in my uncle’s eternal endless rest.