She recently passed and now must be writing amongst the stars. She was an American poet and essayist and won the pulitzer prize for her collection ‘The Wild Iris’.
Last year while in Venice, I bought one of her books. It sat there on the shelf asking me to come to lunch – so who was i to to say no? I walked to Osteria Mocenigo, a place on my path when I stay in La Serenissima…I find many locals, it’s quiet tho along a canal.
I made so many notes during our meal together.
Here’s but one treasure:
AUBADE
The world was very large.
Then the world was small. O
very small, small enough
to fit in a brain.
It had no color, it was all
interior space:nothing
got in or out. But time
seeped in anyway, that
was the tragic dimension.
I took time very seriously in those years,
if I remember accurately.
A room with a chair, a window
A small window, filled with the patterns light makes.
In its emptiness the world
was whole always, not
a chip of something, with
the self at the center.
And at the center of the self,
grief I thought I couldn’t survive.
A room with a bed, a table. Flashes
of light on the naked surfaces.
I had two desires: desire
to be safe and desire to feel. As though
the world were making
a decision against white
because it disdained potential
and wanted in its place substance:
panels
of gold where the light struck.
In the window, reddish
leaves of the copper beech tree.
Out of the stasis, facts, objects
blurred or knitted together: somewhere
time stirring, time
crying to be touched, to be
palpable.
the polished woord
shimmering with distinctions –
and then I was once more
a child in the presence of riches
and I didn’t know what the riches were made of.
What a lovely read amongst so many. Rest in peace, indeed, Louise…