E.J. Scovell, Evening Garden #poem #fear #nature #mondaymotivation

“Our salient into wild creation” the room a small fortification that presses into the garden. I have enjoyed evening walks in the dusk in large gardens and woods and felt scared when you all of a sudden can’t see leaves anymore, hardly the path, only dark grey tops of trees against nothing. The loveliness of dusk. And then a different space. Where you can feel how wild the trees are. And the soft padded coyotes. And somewhere hangry bears. A life most of us know little of.

The Evening Garden

Not dark nor light but clear,
But lucid with no source of light,
But breathing with no flow of air
The garden journeys into night.

Late gangling flowers lean—
Anemones, tobacco flowers—
Over the gravel, over the brown
And silken leaves that mulch the grass.

More than I did, I now
Leave in the lighted room undrawn
The curtains. More than it used to do
The garden presses on the pane,

Or seems it does, in this
One hour when all is seeming, when
It wars with shadowy lights in the glass,
And losing, is most potent then—

Only in this one hour,
Tidal, returns—day’s utmost edge—
Pressing with eyes of question or power
Gold wild-cat eyes on the window-ledge.

Walled plot of fruit trees, flowers,
What strength it wields, how hard it bears!
Why should it not bear hard? It has
Behind it all the universe.

The lighted room is small.
Now we exist: and now we fashion
A garden and a girdling wall,
Our salient into wild creation.

 

For more reading on this fab poet go here at Mezzo Cammin, Women Poet’s Time line!

 

Federico García Lorca– Romance Sonambulo.

Those beautiful. Tuna cloud, trembling, tambourines… I think part of the poem is about drowning and loneliness, but he writes about it so that you feel there is much going on around that place, in the water, at the water, the trees and mountains are the same area.

Temblaban en los tejados
farolillos de hojalata.
Mil panderos de cristal
herían la madrugada.

Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.
A thousand crystal tambourines
struck at the dawn light.

Federico García Lorca— Romance Sonambulo

Different translation by Nimms:

Over the roofs, a shimmer
like little tin lamps, and glassy
tambourines by the thousand
slitting the glitter of dawn.

Dejadme subir al menos
hasta las altas barandas;
¡dejadme subir!, dejadme,
hasta las verdes barandas.
Barandales de la luna
por donde retumba el agua.

–At least let me climb up,
up to the high balconies;
Let me climb up! Let me,
up to the green balconies.
Railings of the moon
through which the water crashes.

Verde que te quiero verde.
Grandes estrellas de escarcha
vienen con el pez de sombra
que abre el camino del alba.
La higuera frota su viento
con la lija de sus ramas,
y el monte, gato garduño,
eriza sus pitas agrias.
¿Pero quién vendra? ¿Y por dónde…?
Ella sigue en su baranda,
Verde came, pelo verde,
soñando en la mar amarga.

Green, how I desire you, green.
Big stars of frosted vapors
come with the fish of the shadows
that opens the path of daybreak.
The fig tree fondles its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its acrid thorns.
But who will come? And from where?
She remains on her veranda
green flesh, a green coat,
dreaming in the bitter sea.

Scott Horton translated that part.

Completely different translation by John Frederick Nims:

Green it’s your green I love.
The stars are frost, enormous;
a tuna cloud floats over
nosing off to the dawn.
The fig tree catches a wind
to grate in its emery branches;
the mountain’s a wildcat, sly,
bristling its acrid cactus.
But – who’s on the road? Which way?
She’s dreaming there on her terrace,
green of her cheek, green hair,
she dreams of the bitter sea.

“Why He Stroked The Cats” by Merill Moore.

Merrill Moore, a psychiatrist in Boston, born in 1903 in Columbia, Tennessee, is one of the poets I love most.

His poem “Why He Stroked The Cats” always fills me with such happiness over language (laconic) and imagery, I have read it many, many times.

I have posted it before and here it is again- Why He Stroked the Cats
He stroked the cats on account of a specific cause,
Namely, when he entered the house he felt
That the floor might split and the four walls suddenly melt
In strict accord with certain magic laws
That, it seemed, the carving over the door meant,
Laws violated when men like himself stepped in,
But he had nothing to lose and nothing to win,
So in he always stepped. Before him went
Always his shadow. The sun was at his back.
The ceilings were high and the passageway was so black
That he welcomed the great cats who advanced to meet him,
The two of them arching their soft high backs to greet him;
He would kneel and stroke them gently under their jaws,
All that is mentioned above being the cause.
–Merill Moore