13 Feb
You spoke of driving home, and dreaming
Of your face against a horse’s face
A moment wrought
Divine as all that presence found enduring
In the stable, in the winter, in the night.
I find my horses in the morning
Muttering and staring from across the yard.
The half light of a heavy snowfall
Has its way with us.
11 Feb
Didn’t get enough of Christmas? I thought so.
Pretty busy today, so I’m going to throw in something I wrote a while back.
.
.
Season’s Greetings
We choose at times
To view the ever present through a lens
Some do it now and others then
They have another birth or death or day
When sure, there was a star (there are a number).
We bring the forest in and feast
We kill the lamb and cut the tree
Turn to our loves and lovers misty eyed
And sing again for all we’re worth.
It isn’t every day, is it,
That some star rises bright and we are saved?
It isn’t every day
That lowly creatures’ hearts
Burn with the knowing of which way to turn.
Bring me a stronger glass this year
And here is one for you my dear
We’ll light the lamps
And have another look at Christmas.
.
.
12/10
11 Feb
This is the Russo woodstove I bought used 20 years ago, and inserted, with a stainless chimney liner, into the fireplace 3 years ago. In 09/10 and 10/11 I burned 17 face cords of wood per winter, with continuous fire for 190 days each year. No ash pan. Hot clean outs and hot chimney cleaning, rekindle from embers. 1 match per year. It’s wide open and at about 450F here, on it’s way to 700F to clean the tube. Flossing between brushings.
10 Feb
Having raised a couple questions about poetry translation in an earlier post, and getting scant feedback from my multitude of readers, I googled up a nobel prize poetry judging “native language” search. This review of a book by Edith Grossman, Why Translation Matters, is concise, fascinating, answers my questions, and certainly tempts me to purchase the book.
10 Feb
Today’s little discovery was this ruin, among other ruins in an old farm dump up in the hills. At first I thought it was an old chicken coop or pen of some sort
and didn’t take this picture until after I walked a few more feet and realized
It was a truck!
Made all of wood. The body and doors anyway. Didn’t look inside the cab…maybe next time out. I’m guessing it’s an ice truck or milk truck. Feb. 9th and temp. into the 40’s again. These pictures were taken at an elevation of around 1700′, about as high as the hills get around here, and as you can see there is little snow.
9 Feb
I remember one of the first outings with B., when she was about six years old. We set out to explore the ravine and creek that lay across the road from the house, and in descending the steep embankment hand in hand created a very stable four-legged creature, three armed, two brained, two pulsed, and four eyed…..a happy delirium of syncopation. While it was mid-summer, sunny, and hot, we were afforded the great parasol of the forest, green and tattered to allow a scattering of jewel bright places on the brown, leaf- littered ground. We found the creek, as is usual in the summer months, nearly lost in its bed, the ledges of shale that were swept bare by spring floods now dry for several yards on either side of the stream, the stream itself but enough to fill a bath in several minutes. Of course, a smallish stream is like a smallish animal, so charming one must squat to meet it, arms length seeming that just distance to appreciate its leaps and ripples, and their myriad reflections. We headed upstream on the stone, easily crossing the stream with a step when it proved convenient, and pausing often at the invitation of some root or rock that seemed the moment’s miracle.
For skipping up and chattering we hadn’t noticed that the water sliding down and splashing chattered too, and in so doing hypnotized us. Such is moving water’s way. We took our path, thus mesmerized, to an idyllic pool, behind a dam formed from a fallen tree and all the detritus it captured. A pool no bigger than a man sized bed, but deep, and clear, and cold. B. offered this: “It looks so nice”, and so, appraising nuance and attire I questioned, “Do you want to swim?” No other word was said. She slipped as quickly as a frog into the sylvan pool, and left no room for me.
.
.
And surely no room, save that very spot I held in all creation, could have so sufficed my soul.
8 Feb
Old meets new, with phoebe nest
It’s now February 7th and again the temperature has been above freezing for most of the day. In any previous February the temperature soaring above 32F would cause great sighs of relief, driving about with one’s windows down, and for the more hardy, the donning of shorts. This year, however, an air temp. of 35F at midday seems barely tolerable, a gruesome reminder of both the date and the possibility that the mercury could drop another 50 degrees without dipping below seasonal norms. Not to mention a reminder of yesterday, when we frolicked in the sunshine at 53F.
Watched a little of the Super Bowl, but found myself stupefied by the relentless and inane commercials. I had to turn it off, and in so doing missed the night’s polar opposites of spectacle, the seemingly political Clint Eastwood “Halftime” ad and MIA’s digital interface with 100 million people, also at halftime. Seems Ms. MIA is a little angry about something, and I think I’ve discovered what it is. I’m not going to post a link, as I fear that might get me into trouble with my hosts here (didn’t quite finish reading those terms of agreement) , and please be warned that this video was banned from the world’s greatest video server as unfit for family entertainment. It’s vimeo 12082980. Or google the title above. I’ve found the debate over the game’s closing minutes quite fascinating….the accidental or at least too early touchdown, the weighing of odds, chances of botched field goal vs. chance of Brady driving to TD in 57 seconds, the chances of a successful field goal holding up against a 20 second drive by NE to get to kicking range. Almost as interesting as a pretty good baseball game.
6 Feb
The half moon had risen, but the overcast was sufficient to mask its location in the sky and reduce its illuminative power by another half. The dog, dun as the clots he traversed, was dimly visible at twenty yards, but only because he was in motion. I willed my eyes to extract from the moorland the slightest hint of brown, as relief from the monochrome, as a token of warmth and life in the bleak winter world I could feel but scarcely see.
Keeping the dog close, alternately cooing and trilling in the tones he seemed least likely to ignore, I bade him to hurry with the satisfaction of his needs. We are not wont to let him roam free during the day, in fact he spends a good portion of each day inside the house to prevent his running afoul of the lawless types, lately found in such abundance everywhere. The day’s schedule had not allowed for any lengthy outdoor privileges, and it was my belief that the dog had used his short runs to little advantage.
For many minutes we journeyed away from the house and on down the winding road, past a favorite deer carcass with but a sniff and a small scolding, all the way to Gilbert’s house, which was, as ever, deserted. The distance traveled was not a quarter what we often cover on a summer walk or even on a cold winter day, but I found myself under-dressed and unwilling to continue the outbound leg of our walk, that portion which most reliably produces defecatory results. I turned about toward home, whistling and clapping for the dog to follow, which he did, as he is as nearly perfectly behaved as a dog can be. The return home, being uphill, is somewhat more arduous, and little was said as I bent to the hill, still keeping my hands in my pockets against the cold, the dog zigzagging as usual, covering three times the distance I walked.
We neared the house again, the road leveling and the curves behind us, and I began to mutter my last reminders to my charge about the consequences of his most significant inaction. Suddenly, from the valley, the sound of the village fire siren rose in its haunting crescendo, howling at the top of its register in the stead of some unfortunates, then lowering to consider another yell. It cycled up again and on the third occasion of its cry I heard, from an opposite direction, what I briefly took to be an echo. Alas, it was the wolves! Joining their alarm to that of the siren! I looked to the dog, my only companion in this moment that seemed to me unique and wholly primal. He glanced at me, and in the center of the cold and howling night, he circled on the spot once, crouched, and shat.
The walk route, looking outbound, Gilbert’s house in distance far right.
5 Feb
A nice sunny Sunday morning, so I took the dog for a long walk. Passed a couple sights I would have liked to photograph, but was w/o camera. Grabbed it once I got back to to the house and headed out again…..in a different direction. The Brachiopod filled boulder will have to wait.
Beaver country……..rodents are everywhere
I guess this is a chapel, in the West Hill Cemetery, it seems to have too many windows for a vault, but maybe the vault is under the floor. Don’t know the story on why this architecture was chosen. I suppose Mission always makes sense in a cemetery. The only sign other than that visible “cemetery rules” sign is a small plaque telling that the NYDAR was responsible for Revolutionary War soldiers being interred here. I assume that means in the cemetery and not in the building. Took a couple shots through a clear side window to the interior view of the stained glass in front. I’m so pleased to have just discovered the photo resizer in the editor here. I’m sure you will be relieved as well.
The glass did the photoshopping here. This is just a crop.
4 Feb
Wislawa Szymborska is gone, she was gone before I even knew she was here. I only learned of her life and work through blog eulogies and obituaries, which says quite a bit about my literary awareness, as she was a Nobel laureate and referred to by some as “the Mozart of Poetry”. She was Polish, and so for us non Polish speakers her works are only available in translation. I’ve wondered from time to time about how poetry translation “works”, and reading a couple of samples of Szymborska’s poetry has piqued my curiosity again. Here is a very beautiful translation into English of a stanza from ” I’ve Been Working on the World” (Poems New and Collected; translated by S.Baranczak and C.Cavanagh):
“When it comes, you’ll be dreaming
that you don’t need to breathe;
that breathless silence is
the music of the dark
and it’s part of the rhythm
to vanish like a spark.”
I haven’t tried to find the text in the original Polish as I’m sure I wouldn’t know how to pronounce the words properly anyway, and this leads to the heart of my question. Much poetry, this translation certainly, relies on rhythm and sound for effect, and one wonders at the difficulty of matching both meaning and sound, concurrently, while translating poetry. For example, take the quoted verse and imagine translating it back into Polish. It appears that we will immediately want to find a Polish word meaning “dream” that rhymes, at least in some way, with a Polish word meaning “breathe”. And next a Polish word meaning “dark” that rhymes with one meaning “spark”. If that doesn’t seem sufficiently difficult, consider that we might like to try to preserve the beautiful cadence of the English version. Certainly art is involved in the work of the translator, and it must be certain that a translator’s work is imbued with his or her own poetic inclinations. I have not researched whether Nobel prizes are awarded based strictly on native language readings, or whether there is a Nobel category for translators too. I did find this one quite cursory and fascinating page on poetry translation: http://www.bokorland.com/journal/30liter.htm
mykwerks 