The lack of direction in our lives is startling, a kind of 'way'...I guess. Of course, there are paths chalked out by religion, tradition; others that are marked out by professional commitments, the need to simply get by in the world. The seasons and other greater circles working in you. Some ancient feeling down in the bones, caused by some particularly melancholy ancestor no doubt-if that doesn't sound too melodramatic for a lovely Spring morning.
All the leaves are swept up, for no apparent reason. Even before the sun has spread its warmth before us. You read a few lines on 'ethics' but that doesn't hold your attention. How could they?! Knowing is not understanding. Putting your Jewish hat on: the 'fist philosophy' is not a philosophy at all. Take off your hat, step in doors.
Little r is surprised to see the birds so active in the morning.
"Come down from there!" she calls out to them. "Why don't you catch them, then, and bring them to me?" she asks, like a little princess.
Because each thing in the world has its own scope for freedom, its own angle to the universe, I try to reply.
"Oh...but that's no good" she says, not quite sure of herself. At last, I've caught her off balance. She wants to narrow down the angles, bring them back to herself, see the birds close up. Another bird flashes by,waist-high, its red breast like a sudden pulse of life.
She continues, "if I could just hold one for a while..then when she flies off, in whatever direction she likes, she'll come back to my hands, or at least remember me."
When you write again in your diary
Remember
To see the golden leaf in the summer sun
Or perhaps the blue rock-orchid
On one of our absent wanderings
On Table Mountain
I who have mingled my blood with the blood of
The sun at evening in Lisbon
Have carried you with me like a mirror
And I have written you
On the open page
Of my desolation
Your nameless word
When you write again in your diary
Remember
To see in my eyes
The sun that I now cover for always
With black butterflies.
---Ingrid Jonker.(courtesy of Bree)
song, courtesy of Roxana.
3 comments:
does little r really talk like this? she sounds so much like the black sun himself! :-)
i so like this:
I who have mingled my blood with the blood of
The sun at evening in Lisbon
Have carried you with me like a mirror.
i wish you a lovely spring :-)
yeah, strange, isn't it! :-) but no, i mean yes, she did say the first two things. the third i made up, but I'm sure that's what she would have said since i read those words in her eyes.
love the poem...the tension between visibility and invisibility.
thank you so much for dropping by! I've missed your comments -whether you believe that or not! (always were such a mistrustful child! )
:-))
spring here lasts for a week then its' a long, awful summer.
so you still believe that you can read the words hidden in women's eyes?!! poor b,when will you learn! :-P
(just teasing you, of course, you wrote a fabulous story, as always).
about missing my comments, well that's another story :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y9BogafmFCs#!
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