I am beginning to understand why these sonnets are not translated with much aesthetic sense in concert and liner notes. This one provided quite the wrestling match.

Il prete rosso

nell'estate

(Vivaldi's Summer Sonnet)

Under the merciless sun
shepherds languish
and so too, their flocks;
the pine tree burns.

A cuckoo raises her voice in song,
turtledove and finch form trio,
their warbling accompanied by the whisper
of an affable west wind.
But sweet-tempered Zephyr
is soon overtaken;

Boreas sweeps in
armed for battle.
A small shepherd weeps,
frightened by the winds
and by what lies ahead.
His limbs tremble
in fear of the oncoming storm
and of a furious swarm
of gnats and flies.

Ah, but his trembling is just,
a summer squall,
fearsome and fulminate,
cuts across the sky.
Spears of wheat fall
as hailstones reap
the proud fruit of

a poor farmer's labor.

(Image: Van Gogh, Wheatfield with a lark)

In the Garden of the Red Priest
(Vivaldi's Spring Sonnet)

Spring arrives in exultation;
small birds greet her with song
and the brooks, kissed by the breath of Zephyr,
flow and murmur in sweet response.

Dark clouds appear,
announced by lightning and the
reverberation of thunder.
The sky is shrouded in black.

At last, sweet silence
broken by birdsong;
the meadow replies
in a dulcet rustle of leaves and grass.

The goatherd sleeps with
trusted dog by his side;
Nymphs and Shepherds

dance in delight,
led by by the drone of
a double reed pipe
Such is the rejoicing
at the radiant arrival
of Spring.


(Image: Georgia O'Keefe, Red Canna)

Red Priest at Winter

(Vivaldi's Winter Sonnet)

Frozen,

shivering amid

the silvery snow,
we run from the wind’s cutting breath;
we batter and stomp our feet while
our teeth chatter in the bite of the wind.

Later we sit,

contented by the fire,

while rain falls with fury
on one hundred souls outside.

Outside again, we step gently,
cautious lest we fall to the ground.

We dash across the frozen pond
romping and racing
we fall jump up run
until the ice splits.
Inside, we hear the rushing winds
feel them course through the house
in spite of bolted windows
in spite of the locks on our doors.
Sirocco and Boreas,
the wind gods play at war.
This is winter,
but even in winter

we find joy.

(Image: New York Times....Justin's park.)

"Meandering— what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?"

Early spring and
I stumbled upon
the palest pink blossom
bent near
breathed its pristine sweetness
a small bee intruded
a great buzzing and busywork
more bees
a muzzle
amuzzabuzz of bees
a droning over pink

One pale pink blossom
Such optimists…

(Quote: Dennis Kelly)

(Image: Jing Ling)

Doxology for Ares

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?





They married beneath the linden tree
In the lower south forty-four,
She stood a stoic in her second day dress
As her soldier went off to the war.

O Yes she was washed but he was
bathed and baptized
bathed as he lay in the blood of his comrades
baptized in the blood of his brothers at arms
white blood black blood blue blood grey
no distinction
corpuscles mingled in fearful miscegenation
rivulets flowed into rivers
He was Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.

They laid him beneath the linden tree
In the lower south forty-four,
She stood dry-eyed as she bid him good-bye
Her soldier come home from the war.

Twenty years gone and
a thousand Sunday mornings spent
musing on the meaning of his life
questioning his death
days were her mind would revisit
the conflagration and the green
of the overgrown grass would jeer at her barren heart
while cornflowers mocked the memory
of his blue eyes.

He pledged her his life and days when
the worst came upon her
she envied the ancient Baucis
standing guard beside her groom
her linden roots enfolding bones and blood
absorbing death creating life
So two Shall be One.

She should have found her rest there
Beneath the linden tree,
When they buried her heart in a plain pine box
Gettysburg ‘63.

When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

(Are You Washed In the Blood, c. Elisha A. Hoffman 1878)
(Image: Geneviève de Nangis-Regnault, published in Paris, 1774 - 1780 as "La Botanique")

The Subversive
1953

"To Whom It May Concern: The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later." - John Cage

October onlookers
discomfited by white--
by shadows rising from white,
by the intrinsic recognition
that the shades of this life
are overtaken too soon
and conquered by those of the After.
Onlookers with Expectations of Beauty
or of an Afternoon’s Escape
instead greet Seven Specters
with fingers pointing
the predictable path to the grave
Seven Specters address
the inevitability of death.
Seven specters and
who understood this primal disquietude?
Fire and ice are so very nice
But oh to be pursued by shadows,
to give into temptation,
surrender to cool white.
The critics shook their heads
only Cage had an answer...
4’33 minutes
of silence.

A most interesting perspective the work of Rauschenberg:

http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/erasuregenteel.htm

Leaves of Grass

I’ve seen the ghosts at Gettysburg,
spirits of heroes mown down in their youth
in sacrifice celebrated by Whitman,
the poet prescient in his vision of
atoms and blood-fed grass.

I’ve seen the ghosts at Gettysburg,
young men swept away
by love of country
or love of God,
ghosts whose father mother sister brother
comb the fields in attitudes of desperation,
whose wives and sweethearts
weep away their beauty
as they wander the graves
in search of truth.

I’ve seen the ghosts at Gettysburg
Rebel and Fed
called forth by tears.
They rise through the miasma
greet one another in the haze,
greet one another in blades of grass
atoms mingling,
greet one another as kindred spirits,

as confraternal souls

destined forever to walk

as ghosts at Gettysburg.

(Image: The Battle of Gettysburg, 1884, Paul Dominic Philippoteaux.)