The Wave

A blog full of poetry, colourful art and age-old wisdom: a rose garden whose leaves cannot be touched by autumnal blasts.

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Sonnet XVII

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were filled with your most high deserts?

Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say ‘This poet lies;

Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.’

So should my papers, yellowed with their age,

Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage

And stretched metre of an antique song:

  But were some child of yours alive that time,

  You should live twice, in it, and in my rhyme.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, also known as Giovanni Battista Salvi (1609–1685): Saint Apollonia, date unknown, oil on canvas, 29.8 x 23.6 cm, private collection, source: christies.com.

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Theodoor van Loon (1581/2-1649): The Adoration of the Shepherds, date unknown, oil on canvas, 207 x 154 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium [Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België (KMSKB); Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique], Brussels, Belgium, source: balat.kikirpa.be and commons.wikimedia.org.

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There Is A Light That Never Goes Out: An African Parable

For this story you will have to travel to a tiny village in Ethiopia. There lived an old man in his cottage. One day he decided to call his three daughters together at his bedside, and he said: “Dear children, I have decided to inherit all my belongings to her who possesses the most WISDOM! The person who will buy something that will fill this small cottage in its ENTIRETY shall have that honour!” Immediately the three children left for the big city, with one golden coin in their hands… The first daughter decided to buy straw. When she returned to her father, she carefully made a big heap of all the straw. But the bundles would fill the cottage only halfway… The second daughter thought to be much smarter: she bought ostrich feathers! But she didn’t succeed either: with all her feathers she would only come as far as three fourth of the cottage… Finally, the youngest daughter. This girl bought something very small. And I know, it’s unbelievable: she had even some money left! But she possessed the most wisdom. Because she bought: a candle! When she returned to her father, she waited until the sun began to fade. The cottage had now become completely dark. Then she lighted her candle, and suddenly a flame appeared: filling the cottage entirely with… LIGHT! :)

Dear reader, I wish you much light-ness in your life, please take care!

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Men Smoking Hookah Pipe, details unknown, Museum of Vank Cathedral [Սուրբ Ամենափրկիչ Վանք – Surb Amenaprkich Vank; کلیسای آمناپرکیچ‎ – Kelisā ye Āmenāperkič], Jolfa Suburb, Isfahan, Iran, 19th century, source: flickr.com/photos/41000732@N04/7433536476 [Adam Jones] and commons.wikimedia.org.

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Jean-Baptiste Jules Trayer [Jules Trayer] (1824-1909): A Breton Infants School [École d’enfants bretons], 1882, watercolour over pencil on paper, 68 x 83.8 cm, private collection, source: bonhams.com and commons.wikimedia.org.

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To Be a Woman

To be a woman

a shadow without form,

extinguished by sunlight,

Wombing meaningless men

in the endless chain of need;

To be worn on rainy days,

like colourless old shoes

groping between pots and pans

eyes in steam,

Streaming more than onion-tears;

to be a woman,

characterless like bamboo stalks,

to be scissored to shape,

a hedge against odd weather

and when asleep to fly

untrammelled like a bird,

to exult in the open air,

tossing between oceans and clouds

dreaming of trees kissed by the sun,

while their gnarled roots sink into the earth;

then to return with the weighted womb,

like a boomerang –  

to believe that shadows have existence.

Shakuntala Hawoldar

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Wilhelm Nicolai Marstrand [Wilhelm Marstrand] (1810–1873): Portrait of Otto Marstrand’s two Daughters and their West Indian Nanny, Justina, in the Frederiksberg Gardens, [detail], 1857, oil on canvas, 89 x 67 cm, private collection, source: bruun-rasmussen.dk and mynewsdesk.com.

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Giulio D'Anna (1908–1978): Ascent of Wings, circa 1931, oil on canvas, 78 x 64.5 cm, private collection, source: 1stdibs.com.

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Chopin Nocturne

I.

 You will come with small words

And sleepy eyes.

You will bring me full treasures of night.

‘See how much bashful joy for your fingers

I have brought,’

You will say

To your silent singer,

Who waits for you

Night after night.

 I will stroke

The daring of your bare feet

When you run away from your father’s home.

I’ll read you all the pretty greetings

I’ve never sent you.

Breathless, you ran over a black bridge,

I shall never let you go back.

 ‘At dawn the first splinters of day

Will warm my cold windowpane.

Wrapped in quiet darkness,

A frightened dove

Will open its eyes.

And I shall barely be near you,

Just barely, so you’ll seek my voice.

I shall enter your thoughts

Like a story of once-upon-a-time.

I shall dream myself into you

Like a silent tree in the dusk.

Like a tremor of a twig,

Barely,

Like a sleeping tree.’

 II.

 At twilight our lives come together

And sit in shadow.

We are silent. Forbidden to speak.

Your wise mind is the white wine

Of my being.

I sip the cool drink

And write down your every thought.

 Oh, wonderful, wonderful.

How our days pair

And become nights.

A quiet shore sings far away,

But we never believed in that way.

 ‘Oh, wonder, nightly wonder,

We age separately

Year in, year out,

And grow together in young joy.

How well you invent me

On the waves of your silent words.

So what if I don’t exist?

If you don’t exist?

The night alone is here.

In it we are

Planted like one shadow of a tree

Barely.’

 Jacob Glatstein [Yankev Glatshteyn; Jakob Glatstein; Jacob Glatshteyn] (1896–1971)

  Translation from the Yiddish by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav

  Shopen-Nokturn

 I.

 Vest kumen mit kleyne reyd

un shleferike oygn,

vest mir brengen fule oytsres nakht.

Ze. Vifl shemevdike freyd far dayne finger

hob ikh mitgebrakht.

Azoy vestu zogn

tsu dayn shvaygndikn bazinger,

vos vart af dir ile nakht.

 Tsertlen vel ikh

di gevagtkayt fun dayne borvese fislekh.

Ven vest antloyfn fun tatns hoyz,

kh’vel dir leyenen ale shenste grislekh,

vos kh’hob dir keyn mol nisht geshikt.

Eyn –otem bistu gelofn iber a shvartser brik,

Kh’vel dikh shoyn keyn mol nisht lozn geyn tsurik.

 In der fri veln ershte toglekh

varemen di kalte shoyb.

Tsugedekt mit a shtiln tunkl

vet efenen di oygn a dershrokene toyb.

Un ikh vel koym zayn lebn dir,

azoy koym az du vest zukhn mayn kol,

un ikh vel zikh dir ayndakhtn

vi a maysele fun amol.

Un ikh vel zikh dir ayndrimlen

vi in farnakhtn a shvaygndiker boym.

Vi a tsiter fun a tsvayg.

Koym.

Vi a shlofndiker boym.

  II.

 In di farnakhtn kumen undzere lebns antkegn

un zitsn in shotn.

Mir shvaygn. S’iz undz reydn farbotn.

Dayn klug trakhtn iz der vayser vayn

fun mayn zayn.

Kh’zip dem kiln getrank

un shrayb op dayn yeder gedank.

 O vunderlekh, vunderlekh.

Vi s’porn zikh undzere teg

un vern nekht.

Fun vaytn zingt a shtiler breg,

ober mir gleybn keyn mol nisht yenem veg.

O vunder, nakhtiker vunder,

mir eltern zikh bazunder,

yor-ayn yor oys,

un tsuzamen vern mir yunge freyd.

Vi voyl du trakhts mikh

af di khvalyes fun dayne shtume reyd.

Iz vos az ikh bin nishto?

az du bist nishto?

Di nakht aleyn iz do.

Un in ir zaynen mir

farflantst vi eyn shotn fun a boym.

Koym, koym.

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Isidor Kaufmann [איזידור קאופמן‎](1853-1921): Portrait of a Rabbi with a Young Pupil, oil on panel, date unknown, 21 x 26.7 cm, private collection, source: sothebys.com.

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Alexandre Antigna (1817-1878): The Death of the Pauper [La Mort du Pauvre], 1849, oil on canvas, Musée Charles de Bruyères, Remiremont, France, source: fineartamerica.com and remiremontinfo.fr.

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my father moved through dooms of love

my father moved through dooms of love through sames of am through haves of give, singing each morning out of each night  my father moved through depths of height this motionless forgetful where turned at his glance to shining here; that if(so timid air is firm)  under his eyes would stir and squirm newly as from unburied which floats the first who,his april touch drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates  woke dreamers to their ghostly roots and should some why completely weep  my father’s fingers brought her sleep: vainly no smallest voice might cry  for he could feel the mountains grow. Lifting the valleys of the sea  my father moved through griefs of joy; praising a forehead called the moon  singing desire into begin joy was his song and joy so pure a heart of star by him could steer  and pure so now and now so yes  the wrists of twilight would rejoice keen as midsummer’s keen beyond conceiving mind of sun will stand, so strictly(over utmost him so hugely) stood my father’s dream his flesh was flesh his blood was blood: no hungry man but wished him food; no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile uphill to only see him smile. Scorning the Pomp of must and shall my father moved through dooms of feel; his anger was as right as rain his pity was as green as grain septembering arms of year extend  yes humbly wealth to foe and friend  than he to foolish and to wise offered immeasurable is proudly and(by octobering flame beckoned)as earth will downward climb, so naked for immortal work  his shoulders marched against the dark his sorrow was as true as bread: no liar looked him in the head;  if every friend became his foe he’d laugh and build a world with snow. My father moved through theys of we, singing each new leaf out of each tree  (and every child was sure that spring danced when she heard my father sing) then let men kill which cannot share, let blood and flesh be mud and mire,  scheming imagine,passion willed, freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

  giving to steal and cruel kind,  a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,  to differ a disease of same, conform the pinnacle of am though dull were all we taste as bright, bitter all utterly things sweet, maggoty minus and dumb death  all we inherit,all bequeath and nothing quite so least as truth —i say though hate were why men breathe— because my Father lived his soul  love is the whole and more than all

  Edward Estlin Cummings

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Matteo Rosselli (1578–1650): Portrait of Saint John the Evangelist, date unknown, [detail], oil on canvas, 66 x 50.5 cm, private collection, source: hampel-auctions.com.

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Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, also known as Giovanni Battista Salvi (1609–1685): The Madonna and Child (after Raphael [1493-1520]) [Madonna della sedia], circa 1630-1669, oil on canvas, 635 x 508 mm, Saltram Collection, Saltram, Devon, England, United Kingdom, source: artuk.org and nationaltrustcollections.org.uk.

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The Examiners

Where the house is cold and empty and the garden’s overgrown,

 They are there.

Where the letters lie unopened by a disconnected phone,

 They are there.

Where your footsteps echo strangely on each moonlit cobblestone,

Where a shadow streams behind you but the shadow’s not your own,

You may think the world’s your oyster but it’s bone, bone, bone:

 They are there, they are there, they are there.

 They can parse a Latin sentence; they’re as learned as Plotinus,

 They are there.

They’re as sharp as Ockham’s razor, they’re as subtle as Aquinas,

 They are there.

They define us and refine us with their beta-query-minus,

They’re the wall-constructing Emperors of undiscovered Chinas,

They confine us, then malign us, in the end they undermine us,

 They are there, they are there, they are there.

 They assume it as an impost or they take it as a toll,

 They are there.

The contractors grant them all that they incontinently stole,

 They are there.

They will shrivel your ambition with their quality control,

They will desiccate your passion, then eviscerate your soul,

Wring your life out like a sponge and stuff your body down a hole,

 They are there, they are there, they are there.

 In the desert of your dreaming they are humped behind the dunes,

 They are there.

On the undiscovered planet with its seven circling moons,

 They are there.

They are ticking all the boxes, making sure you eat your prunes,

They are sending secret messages by helium balloons,

They are humming Bach cantatas, they are playing looney tunes,

 They are there, they are there, they are there.

 They are there, they are there, like a whisper on the air,

 They are there.

They are slippery and soapy with our hope and our despair,

 They are there.

So it’s idle if we bridle or pretend we never care,

If the questions are superfluous and the marking isn’t fair,

For we know they’re going to get us, we just don’t know when or where,

 They are there, they are there, they are there.

 John Whitworth

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Otto Bache (1839-1927): A Broholmer Dog looking at a Stag Beetle [En broholmerhund ser på en eghjort], 1871, oil on canvas, 82 x 112 cm, Nivaagaard Museum [Nivaagaards Malerisamling], Nivå, Denmark, source: commons.wikimedia.org.