Festina lente

One of the many rewarding moments on my trip to the lovely and enthralling city of Krakow this summer was an unplanned visit to the Remuh synagogue and its Renaissance-age cemetery. Founded nearly 500 years ago in the 1550s and used until the end of the 18th century, the cemetery has a remarkable collection of  centuries-old stelae, headstones and stone coffins discovered during conservation works. It is surrounded by an outer wall built largely out of unmatched pieces of incomplete gravestones.

The site is located in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of the city, very close to the hotel where we were staying, so María and I decided to go with our daughters one morning. As it turned out, later that day we would visit Auschwitz, where, for reasons both hideous and obvious, there are no tombs or graves. So, though unintended at the time, the trip to this graveyard would in retrospect seem fitting and proper, a moment to visit and pay our respects to the ancestors of some of the so many who perished at the death camp.

While strolling amongst the gravestones, I was struck by a custom I had never seen before: visitors would place small stones on top of the tombstones and stelae. The inscriptions on the stones are largely etched in Hebrew and many are badly faded, so I had no idea who was in the graves we were filing past, whether man, woman or child, or in what year or century they had died. Nevertheless, I instinctively felt moved to search the ground for the right pebble and place it atop one of the tombstones, joining in a rite whose meaning was unknown to me, yet at the same time familiar, perhaps in much the same way that most ancient secrets are...

My bare Christian head
capped by a yarmulke,

I stand before
the undecipherable.

Strangers gather to string necklaces
of gravel whispers on a stone throat

and listen to its ancient tongue,
swallowed whole but still wagging.

Stones that clink like flint chalices,
vessels of mute blessings,

in each stone a word embalmed
(in the beginning was the word).

Soft stones of alchemists
quarried from secrets guarded

in the sliver of space between
molten lead and frozen mercury.

My own pebble is hewed
from poems I never learned

but have always known
yet fear I will not sing.

Worried fingers warm
my rounded stone

before I perch it atop
the roof of this tilting stela,

repeating a rite felt more
than understood,

above illegible words
chiseled in a language

I will only know
the day I meet

the stranger who today
for some reason

has chosen me
to remember him

in this petrified choir
on this verdant morning.

Come now, time.
Come blow on our ember stones.

© Lorenzo — Alchemist’s Pillow

Written for Tess Kincaid's Magpie Tales prompt for this week. Click on this link to see the other magpies.

Through a glass, lightly

Buxom smile
in a diffident corset,
she sat for one
now stands for the mega-art-millioned.

More than a portrait,
Leonardo slipped a perverse lens,
a re-fractious looking glass,
into the centre of impossible scales.

Gioconda, coy grin on one still pan,
balancing a world agawk
swinging wildly on the other.
Leonardo: master optician, engineer,
prankster.

                          © Lorenzo — Alchemist's Pillow

* * *

 

Mona Lisa crowd — photo by Jack Holmes

This piece was written for this week's magpie tales prompt, the hyped and hyper arch-famous image of the Mona Lisa (La Gioconda). To see what other participants in Tess Kincaid's writing group are offering, and perhaps give it a try yourself, go see Mag 59. This is also my first attempt at the new genre started by Ruth at synch-ro-ni-zing: Nouvelle 55, "flash fiction, based on a piece of art, in 55 words".

Pondering a lamp New Englandly ...

This week, willow of Life at Willow Manor has used the photo to the left as visual prompt for her creative writing blog, 'magpie tales'. For some reason, in my mind the lamp has conjured up the image of Emily Dickinson, perhaps because she is said to have written so many of her poems by lamplight. So, although I do not have anything in the way of my own ‘creative writing’ to offer for the lamp, I am embedding a beautiful video excerpt from a very promising new documentary on Emily Dickinson called Seeing New Englandly. Written and narrated by the poet Susan Sinvely and produced by Ernest Urvater, under the auspices of the Emily Dickinson Museum, the film had its first public showing just last week.

I learned of this film from Maureen E. Doallas’s bountiful blog Writing Without Paper, which I enthusiastically recommend to everyone. In addition to being a fine poet herself, Maureen is a treasure trove of information and links to the worlds of painting, dance, theatre, art, poetry, photography and much, much more. Her daily posts overflow with such treats. A case in point is her recent post on Emily Dickinson, where in addition to the video embedded below you can find a wealth of resources on the beloved poetess from Amherst, Massachusetts. Thanks so much, Maureen.



Seeing New Englandly (opening) from Ernest Urvater on Vimeo.

To see what other ‘magpie tales’ participants have seen by the light of this lamp, click here.

* * *

I am honored to have been named Blogger of Note at the Words of Wisdom blog (WOW) for October 6th. I would like to thank Sandy and Pam, the kind and energetic souls behind that excellent meeting place dedicated to allowing bloggers who "enjoy reading and writing great content to find each other", and extend a warm welcome to new readers visiting my blog for the first time from WOW.

Sandy and Pam have asked me to provide links to three posts here that I think might interest new visitors to the alchemist’s pillow. So here goes …

For readers interested in my poetry you can read Dream shavings  or Making a rainstick. For writing on Spanish society and culture, I would suggest my post of this past Saturday, Tertuliante por excelencia. And if you are interested in humor, try My braggadocio screeches louder than your braggadocio.

Also, if you would like to know a little bit more about the blogger behind the lapis lazuli elephant, I recommend the interview I did just a few days ago with by my much esteemed blog friend Bonnie at her Original Art Studio.

But that’s enough about me; if you like, leave a comment and I will try to return the visit to your blog.

I would like to thank Joanny of the blog Live, Dream, Love for having nominated me as a WOW Blogger of Note. In addition to being an inspired blogger herself, Joanny has been a kind and supportive friend for nearly as long as I have been writing here on the alchemist’s pillow. Thanks Joanny.

So to one and all, welcome to the alchemist’s pillow, please make yourself at home, look around and enjoy your visit here …

Tomatoes at dawn

Voice of the Nightingale — La Voix du Rossignol
(1923 film by Wladyslaw Starewicz)

You stay with me, Larry. You can carry the basket. I’ll hold the tomatoes in my apron like the little chickens in the henhouse and then you put them in the basket. When it’s full, carry it to Ramón … he’ll box them at the end of every row and pile up the boxes on the donkey cart.

Look, that is one is ready. Just right. Pinch the little stem right next to the tomato, just a little pinch and twist, right off the vine. Good! When the tomato is ready, a tiny pinch and twist will do, no need to yank … Doesn’t that smell beautiful? Those are little green sighs the plant gives off when you find the tomatoes. That smell is green, a little sour, the way green is. True green. Morning green. Just when you think your nose is so full of the dawn grass and dew and couldn’t possibly hold any more fragrances, you shake the vine and touch the tomato, the leaves sigh, and the air turns green. It caresses your cheeks and floats into your nose, right up to your eyes. Breathe it in. You feel how it gets up there right between your eyes? Keep it there awhile. It’s better than coffee this early in the morning. And the damper the plants, the more that fragrance will stay with you. Yes, pinch right there, see? … Right between your green eyes.

Look how they hide under the leaves. Look for them with your hands, shake the vines a bit. That’s it, gentle but don’t be afraid… brush the leaves like you want to tickle them. They laugh and they sigh. We can’t hear them, but our noses can. That’s the way. Good.

Don’t worry about the water, the wetter the better. Dew on glorious days like this is medicine. A tweeting bird told me just before sunup that today was a magnificent day for finding the best tomatoes. The very first thing I saw when I woke up was a nightingale on my bedpost. Singing! Singing for me. He was looking right at me and singing. You know, I said “good morning little mister singing bird”, and he didn’t get frightened or fly away. No, the tiny thing just kept warbling his morning song. And when he was finished, I laughed and hummed a lullaby, an old Asturian lullaby that I used to sing to your mother. The same one I sang to you the other night, the one with the great big crashing thunderbolts when we played games with the candle shadows. Remember? And he stayed there while I hummed. Then he chirped some more and we did a chorus together. When we were done, l laughed and clapped. He took a little bow right there on the bedpost, very respectful, a real gentleman, and then he flew out the balcony. Just flitted away in a blink. So I knew today was special and we had to come. I told your Tía Tutul, “María Jesús, we have to go down to the patch right now with Larry and his cousins and pick tomatoes today”. We can have breakfast afterwards … A glorious day.

This is like playing hide and go seek with the tomatoes, except they really want you to find them. They’re just playing. The leaves aren’t as happy when you find the fruit, but they understand that the tomatoes have to go. It’s not a bitter sigh, just a bit of farewell sorrow laced into the sweet laughs. Just make sure you tickle them. Now the tomatoes definitely want you to find them. They fill up with the sun all day and with the night air and the morning mist and they get so red and plump and full of themselves that they’re near to bursting. And they will if we don’t find them. They’re so plump and proud … they’re just playing silly when they hide. I bet the tastiest ones are the worst hiders.

Now smell your hands. What do you feel? Promise me you won’t forget that smell all day, even when the sun is higher and hotter. You can sigh it out the rest of the day, little by little, breath by breath, tomato by tomato. Then at lunch when you meet that green perfume again in your salad, your smile will say “Hello mister green air and plump red tomato, I know you!” and I’ll see it in your smile. Promise me, alright? I’ll be watching … and I’ll give you a wink.

When you write home later, tell your mom you got up early with abuela today and came to play hide and go seek with the tomatoes down in the north patch just past the apple orchard. She’ll remember that. Oh yes, she’ll remember that. There are days when it seems they all want to be found at the same time… caress and tickle those leaves … she’ll remember. Gentle, don’t squish. Good, good.

No, not yet. Those aren’t ready, but you’ve got a good eye, they will be soon. Tomorrow or the next day, we’ll get them then. They could win a prize. They’re bigger than your hand. Bigger than my hand. Bigger than Ramón’s hand! Remember the spot. Remember.

Our daughter María writing her memoirs at the age of two in Mareo (1995)

This piece is for this week willow’s magpie tales prompt on “tomatoes”. It is inspired by the memories of early mornings picking tomatoes at Mareo, my grandmother’s farm in northern Spain on my first summer there at the age of 11, a summer that changed my world and life. The fantasy world abuela created for me and her six children and large and loving brood of grandchildren and great grandchildren is still very much with me, and I continue reaping those tomatoes and recollections today. The German poet Rilke once wrote something to the effect that the genuine homeland of every man is his childhood. This is the only kind of 'patriotism' I practice. The only one nightingales sing of in the sleepless dawn.

Abuela — four generations illuminated
by Saint John Eve's bonfire (1979)

This memory stroll back to the tomato patch has touched off a gentle riot of reminiscing about the farm … the barn where we sometimes slept as an adventure on full-moon nights … gathering hay and riding the hay wagon … milking cows brought warms squirts of fresh milk arcing to splash teeth, lips and cheeks and run down my chin … the apple orchard was my preferred reading room, I would climb up an apple tree and spend afternoons reading there …

Abuela sunning herself on the terrace.
One of my last photos of her.

 I think I will make this the first in a series …

To see what other magpie tales participants have done with their tomatoes click here.

In my garden — magpie tales 17

willow's photo prompt
for magpie tales 17

When memory elopes on feathered wings, there is no such thing as an empty nest ...

Tonight

my daughters sing

soft cinquains in the wind,

while watered gardens whisper prayers

to stone.

To see what other participants have written in response to this week's prompt, click on the photo caption. This cinquain was gently inspired by willow's moving "lamb chop" poem, featured in my "Caught our eye" sidebar.

Magpie Tales 13

This week's writing prompt for Magpie Tales was the foreboding eye shown here to the left. Magpie Tales is a blog begun by willow of Life at Willow Manor, dedicated, in her words, "to the enjoyment of writers, for the purpose of honing their craft, sharing it with like minded bloggers, and keeping their muses alive and well".



Never to rest or know the peace of sleep,
salt night with tears or bathe in tidal dreams;
damned to see all and to by all be seen,
naked and alone, great Eye in heaven.

Frightened outcast forever left behind
by prayer periscope of nursery rhymes;
on what lost orbit and by what bent lens,
did the scared dyslex into the sacred?

Perched atop a pyramid, we all fell
at his feet in praise of the all-seeing eye.
Cyclops banished Apollo and mighty
Zeus himself from the gouged unblinking sky.

Petrified stare of a lonely tyrant
never cradled in a child’s honeyed gaze;
what stern unflinching prison stone is this
for the sensual orb of human bliss?

Fling the chimeless bell in the fire and flee
from the flames! Hurl him at the sun, follow
his arc through clouds blown across the valley,
restore him to the earth’s tender hollow

where mossy lids will bring moist balm to soothe
the weary king, so the ancient chorus
may race chariots in the blinding wind
while he learns the sweetness of slumber. For

when the thorns were thrust down upon his brow,
even Jesus veiled his eyes in tears and worked
his greatest miracle in a bouldered cave
hidden away, unseen, unseeing, returned.


And, now, I encourage you, without batting an eye, to go see what other magpie tales partcipants have offered us this week.

Magpie Tales 9 — Lipstick

Magpie Tales 9

Magpie Tales was begun by our beautiful blog friend willow, of Life at Willow Manor, "dedicated to the enjoyment of writers, for the purpose of honing their craft, sharing it with like minded bloggers, and keeping their muses alive and well". This week's writing prompt is the photo to the left.

So what is a man to do with lipstick? Well there are only two possibilities really — either a murder mystery where the gotcha clue is the lipstick or a haiku. There may be other possibilities but none come to my tawdry mind.

As for the murder mystery ... I ain't confessin' yet,  so you get the haikus. Three of them.

smeared lipstick
sipping lipstick wine
my lips tick midnight time while
her lips tickle mine

Lipstick on window from The Two Dog Blog

intransitive lips

disembodied kiss

lives an intransitive love

lips with no object

Broken Heart Canyon — © Marylee Pope (1x.com) Click on photo to enlarge.

tongue in cheek

skiing on gloss lips

I slide deep down into her

heart broken canyon

Actually there are other possibilities, and very good ones at that, so pucker up and go check them out at magpie tales by clicking on the caption of the lipstick photo at the top or here.

Nails

Photo: time after time © pop-aj from Onexposure

if somewhere a mad poet should raise a terrible axe

as the great owl hoots
the mighty axe rises to the moon
its steel face gleaming cold
in a final fell swoop
through the dark forest
thwunkkk
it bites the warm and supple wood

the avenging elm
shakes the imprisoned axe
makes it shiver like a mad tuning fork
calling out to the infinite
family of nails

countless mineral slivers
silently burrowed in timber
all awaken and begin
to hum and tremble
steel spikes quiver everywhere
wood tremors surge
through our carpentered world

crosses fall apart
becoming scattered rail ties
rafters shake
swallows flee quaking homes
mirrors release their looking glass
trapped reflections
shatter into jagged shards

I emerge from the ruins of my house
toppled logs kneel around me
listening to the moon owl’s song
lodged in the wounded
wooded heart of midnight

Magpie Tales 6 — Nails

This week's magpie tales deals with 'Nails'. Magpie Tales is a blog begun by willow, of Life at Willow Manor, and, in willow's words, "dedicated to the enjoyment of writers, for the purpose of honing their craft, sharing it with like minded bloggers, and keeping their muses alive and well". To see what other magpie scavengers have done with nails, click on the photo caption.

Stella by starlight ...

It is often said that we men are incapable of doing two things at once. This strikes me as grossly unfair, patently absurd and obviously untrue, given that few people would question our ability, say, to drink and make fools of ourselves all at the same time. So in that spirit I have decided to do a combination post for TFE's current poetry bus prompt at The People's Lost Republic of EEJit and for willow's Magpie Tales 5.

TFE's instructions were that we had to begin a poem with the memorable lines ...

"She was wearing Stella McCartney,
I was drinking Stella Artois"

... to which he added the helpful information that "If anyone from Mars or Carlow are looking in, Stella McCartney is a fashion designer and daughter of famous ex Beatle, Ringo Starr. Stella Artois is a Belgian medicinal cure for warts and walking straight."

And the Magpie Tales 5 prompt was the 'handy' photo shown above.

So drum roll please ... and here goes — two things at once, neither of them very meaningful on their own, but when combined, completely and utterly useless and irredeemably forgettable.

Maniacal mannequin Belgian beer blues

she was wearing Stella McCartney,
I was drinking Stella Artois
for weeks I would steal away nightly
through mad glass wondering who art thou?

by day she was clad in designer clothes
at night she was my naked nymph to behold
a wave of her hand from where no hair grows
hailing my taxi her body unrobed

yesterday Stella’s head and hands were gone
Venus de Milo with a dinosaur smile
imagine the delight in my love song
when I spotted her hand in the trash pile

her hand beckoned me to blessed wedlock
so I brought her home on the ides of march
to open bottles of Belgian hemlock
happily saved from fashion’s tides of starch

so now we stay at home and drink serene
squeezing the juice of tedium’s lemons
to wash and paint my yellow submarine
the handiest cure for delirium tremens

now I am wearying Stella McCartney
and she is stinking of Stella Artois

Well, I apologize for that and if you think yourselves capable of doing two things at the same time, I encourage you to go visit Magpie Tales 5 here and TFE's poetry bus here and see what other participants have done with these prompts.

A scale trued by memory ...

The photo prompt for this week's Magpie Tales is the beautiful 1 kg clunker shown here.

Never alone

never alone,

the dark iron weight bobbed up

and down on the bronze plate

in the company of river fairies,

arrowheads and lunar sails

no, señor kilo never danced alone

as he proclaimed his dense message,

the only thing we need to know about him:

I weigh exactly one kilogram

Abril would always surround him

with small river washed stones

she gathered every Sunday morning

after mass in the shady bend

of the stream behind the village church,

La Pedrera,

that sat in pious silence at the edge

of the meadow

the other pan brimmed with potatoes

and onions I would carry back home

happy to heed the daily commandment

“go see Abril and bring me one kilo of each”

with steady hands that always

smelled of moss from river rocks

Abril would hold up the scale

dangling from a jangling chain

and load my end

with the earth blessed offering

for that night’s tortilla

while señor kilo concentrated

on holding up and down

his end of the see-saw bargain

and then,

so I would know the deal was fair

that what’s right was right

and lighter than right

she would add a couple of river polished stones

to señor kilo

she may not be able to read or write,

she might be named for the

month of her birth and not for a saint

because her parents were not wed,

never were and never would be,

but the deal was oh so fair

as señor kilo and his sleek pebbles

locked anew into still balance

with my next meal

her eyes would lock on mine

and hold me gently in

her streaming mists

in a trembling voice that cooed

like a warm throated bird

warbling smooth water stories

gurgling her river song

she would tell me

one stone was the earring

dropped by a Xana nymph fairy

while she danced on the river

in the coming of spring

this one is a sail

made of June moon

that floated down to the church

to celebrate my communion

another was an arrowhead

flung by an ancient warrior

in September’s waning sun

and here is the eye of a star that

fell to earth when her constellation

was shaken by a winter wind

I remember meadow frozen drops of dew

I remember petrified tears

señor kilo now sits alone on the edge of my desk

holding down telephone bills and unopened envelopes

in awkward perfect balance with the computer

that loads down the other end

I now buy potatoes and onions from I know not where

I pick them out myself, wearing plastic gloves,

and weigh them on

perfectly calibrated digital scales

but when life

seems to tip off-kilter

I see señor kilo

under lightly prancing Xanas

dancing their naked ear lobes

under showers of arrows

shot by blind stars

and then my scales will

momentarily

lock into perfect balance

though they teeter

on an ever sharpening

spike

Photo of me, 3 years old, near my grandmother’s farm in Asturias, Spain, presumably looking for Xanas and arrowheads.

Do stay a while, take my hand and stroll with me, and then go see what other Magpie Tales participants have put on their scales by clicking here.

One year later (Feb 18, 2011), I am linking this post-poem to One Stop Poetry, where Peter Marshall has asked us to dig up old poems from or about our childhood or youth. To see Peter's own poem and what other participants at One Stop Poetry site have done for A Saturday Celeberation: Your Past, click here.

We will break in the sun till the sun breaks down ...

Today I was going to post an entry for willow's second Magpie Tales visual prompt, this box of matches to the left, to share with you an eerie tale of an old flame set off by that match long ago ...

... but for now it has been preempted by the news we received earlier today that Barry Fraser's mother passed away last night, less than one week shy of her 91st birthday, mercifully, while in the sweet rest of sleep.

Just a few days ago, many of us were clanging bells to chime out our best wishes for Barry as he celebrated the end of his chemotherapy sessions. So for now I'll help myself to one of willow's matches to light a candle in Rosanna's memory ...

Photo by Umberto Verdoliva from Onexposure

And as is so often the case, when words fail me, I turn to Dylan Thomas. Again and again, I return to Dylan Thomas.

Click on play to hear the poet himself recite And Death Shall Have No Dominion ...

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Rest in peace, Rosanna, and be well Barry. See Barry's blog for his loving and lovely tribute.


And by all means, click here to see what other magpie scavengers have ignited with that lone spent match ...

Magpie tales

Today marks the debut of willow's Magpie Tales blog, "dedicated to the enjoyment of writers, for the purpose of honing their craft, sharing it with like minded bloggers, and keeping their muses alive and well".

Her first prompt was the pewter creamer shown in this photo with the simple instruction "write a short fictional account or poem using the picture as your inspiration".

So, willow, here goes ...

In memory loving

between sleep and waking

when dreams alloy

with sun scented curtains

from the leaden shadow

she comes akimbo

hand on hip

a smile

a curl

a lip

the pewtersmith

lays a wreath

upon her breast

Good luck with Magpie Tales, willow! To see what other bloggers have found in the pewter prompt click here.