Dowling Community Garden, Minneapolis.

Dowling Community Garden, Minneapolis.

A happy St. Patrick’s Day to all! If you’re of a more pensive nature than the average pint-hoister, you might want to take a look at another project of mine: I’ve been translating a collection of poems by Michael Davitt from Irish (a.k.a. “Gaelic”) to English. Remember that even though Irish is a strange and parochial language, it is the native tongue of God and His angels, so you might want to learn a little verse in the event that you should show up at the Pearly Gates and need to bluff your way in without benefit of native blarney skills.

Dowling Community Garden, Minneapolis.

Now see these:

• Synecdoche Gothenburg from graciform
• 50 cent view from Sopheava de Lumiere
• 414 from Edmund Leveckis

I never knew the earth had so much gold—
The fields run over with it, and this hill
Hoary and old,
Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.

“Feuerzauber” by Louis Untermeyer

Now see these:

• Beanstalk from HELLO
• Twist from Wood | Stone
• Forward from Aperture First

I finally got my 1912 Graflex working, sort of; the shutter blades aren’t lining up on small apertures, so I’ve slapped a cardboard pinhole on in place of the lens for now. With my first few sheets, I greatly overestimated the pinhole’s ability to collect light; by slowing down even more–this shed sat still for me for a minute and a half on a very sunny morning–I managed to coax enough light into the bellows for some hazy images to form.

Not seen in this picture is the lady who walked up to the shed, opened the door, and went inside. She was incredulous when I told her she could walk in front of the camera without risk of appearing on the film, but when I told her that it would be another minute before I closed the shutter she harumphed grumpily and marched across the garden. I was hoping that she’d leave some interesting, blurry trace, but alas, she was moving faster than the slow light I was gathering.

Now see these:

• Morning from Feldauge
• Cross light from milou
• cutting tuna from BOXMAN fotologue

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

Snow Day by Billy Collins

We have, of course, seen this fence before, in autumn, at night; I suppose I’m playing elegant variations on the Dowling Garden theme.

I feel my heart closing.
It’s not enough to feel this;
I have to try, at least,
to figure out why.

from “So” by Eliza Griswold

who cut the string
that sent the white sheets falling?
Nothing but the long
scissors of the sun
unwraps such thunder. Even
a modest A-frame

in a muffled instant sheds
its wrinkling roofs of snow:
black butterfly below.
As if to make
one more clean break above,
the sky—seconds ago

one continent of cloud—
follows the drift of Spring,
splits and refits like Ming
porcelain. The plate
tectonics alternate:
white and blue, blue and white.

Spring Thaw in South Hadley by Mary Jo Salter

I’m on auto pilot this week, while we visit the Grand Canyon; I’m sure that it will be Spring not just astronomically but meteorologically by the time we get back. Meanwhile, here’s a series from the Dowling Community Garden: it was past the vernal equinox, but that’s hardly a deterrent to Old Man Winter . . .

may be nothing but water, yet
there’s a sacramental
joy in how, converting
to its liquid state,
it’s anything but gentle.
A crash from Abbey Chapel—

Spring Thaw in South Hadley by Mary Jo Salter

I’m on auto pilot this week, while we visit the Grand Canyon; I’m sure that it will be Spring not just astronomically but meteorologically by the time we get back. Meanwhile, here’s a series from the Dowling Community Garden: it was past the vernal equinox, but that’s hardly a deterrent to Old Man Winter . . .

By noon, the ice as thin
as an eggshell veined to show
life seeping yellow,
one’s boots sink in
with a snap; the sap
underrunning everything

Spring Thaw in South Hadley by Mary Jo Salter

I’m on auto pilot this week, while we visit the Grand Canyon; I’m sure that it will be Spring not just astronomically but meteorologically by the time we get back. Meanwhile, here’s a series from the Dowling Community Garden: it was past the vernal equinox, but that’s hardly a deterrent to Old Man Winter . . .

(in a manner reminiscent
of the insubstantial
finger of a sundial)
less to a point in space
than effectively to Time,
the frozen moment.

Spring Thaw in South Hadley by Mary Jo Salter

I’m on auto pilot this week, while we visit the Grand Canyon; I’m sure that it will be Spring not just astronomically but meteorologically by the time we get back. Meanwhile, here’s a series from the Dowling Community Garden: it was past the vernal equinox, but that’s hardly a deterrent to Old Man Winter . . .

not merely in these pine
needles by the fistful
gloved in crystal, but,
from their boughs, the self-
invented digits of
icicles addressed

Spring Thaw in South Hadley by Mary Jo Salter

I’m on auto pilot this week, while we visit the Grand Canyon; I’m sure that it will be Spring not just astronomically but meteorologically by the time we get back. Meanwhile, here’s a series from the Dowling Community Garden: it was past the vernal equinox, but that’s hardly a deterrent to Old Man Winter . . .

Old snows locked under glass
by last night’s ice storm left
curatorial Winter, in
whose hands alone we’d hope
to find the keys,
jangling them in the trees—.

Spring Thaw in South Hadley by Mary Jo Salter

I’m on auto pilot this week, while we visit the Grand Canyon; I’m sure that it will be Spring not just astronomically but meteorologically by the time we get back. Meanwhile, here’s a series from the Dowling Community Garden: it was past the vernal equinox, but that’s hardly a deterrent to Old Man Winter . . .

Dowling Community Garden at night (well, at 5:30 PM, which is the same thing as night in November at the 45th parallel).

Now see these:

• My beautiful laverie, rue Oberkampf from Pariscool (I think I may actually have used this laverie, back in 1999; I sat reading “The Brothers Karamazov” while waiting for our clothes to dry. It’s at least the right neighborhood.)
• Syyskoivikko from luotokuva
• Haybales and Pumpkins from A Walk Through Durham Township

Big Nobel news: congratulations to Doris Lessing, whose unflinching and complex novels and stories about the relations between the races and sexes have finally earned her the nod from Stockholm. If you haven’t read “The Golden Notebook” or “The Cleft”, get to work!

Oh, and some guy with a PowerPoint presentation won some prize or other, too. Kudos to him as well.

Forenoon update:

Here’s the link to the excerpts from Dwight Garner’s 1997 Salon interview with Doris Lessing: ‘I Would Have Become an Alcoholic or Ended in the Loony Bin’