for Tina Smit 1925-2012
Yesterday, Sunday, I took these photos for today’s blog, the day of Tina’s funeral. I hope they capture the essence of Mark Strand’s words, but also hint at the importance for those of us still alive — and for those children about to be born — that we have no choice but to live and seek out beauty (and humour) in the craziness of today’s world.
The Old Age of Nostalgia
Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with a purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies in the perfumed heat of a summer night.
Mark Strand
Dream Testicles, Vanished Vaginas
Horace, the corpse, said, “I kept believing that tomorrow would come and I would get up, put on my socks, my boxer shorts, go to the kitchen, make myself coffee, read the paper, and call some friends. But tomorrow came and I was not in it. Instead, I found myself on a powder-blue sofa in a field of bright grass that rolled on forever.” “How awful,” said Mildred, who was not yet a corpse, but in close touch with Horace, “how awful to be so far away with nothing to do, and without sex to distract you. I’ve heard that all vaginas up there, even the most open, honest, and energetic, are shut down, and that all testicles, even the most forthright and gifted, swing dreamily among the clouds like little chandeliers.”
Mark Strand
Both prose poems are from Strand’s book ‘Almost Invisible’
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