Beautiful poem, Henry -- could you post the remainder?
Robin
> Hello Tasmania. My apologies for Stateside excess. Apologies accepted
> (hope, hope). Something from something called "Mendelssohn":
>
> 11
>
> Sometimes you come back to yourself, off-balance.
> We tried to do without you, like Sons of Liberty;
> the island of our pride was really only
> your reflection: a mirror of pine trees, silence.
>
> It's not Narcissus now, no - no one but Odysseus
> (or no one). He loses everything - his youth,
> his looks, his dog - all for a girl named
> Ruth. (Socrates, returning, meets his spouse.)
>
> We sense time passing... this is a fiction
> we find rather moving. Mortal lips
> cradle a tale-within-a-tale, sleeping
> in children's books (your own, your own)
>
> in after-supper's endlessness (head heavy
> like a moon, over the planet of the wavy
> sheets). No longer you: grown Every-
> where (pinpoint of pining memory).
>
> You come back to yourself as someone else,
> scarce saved from oblivion, lethal,
> the waters misted, steaming. Swells
> risen out of silence flock to the western wall's
>
> clear Rose. I saw it standing sheer
> against a lake of azure sky -
> emblem of motherland, eye
> of evening. Ocean's only tear.
>
> In Grandma's diary (robin's-egg blue)
> I read: _a fine summer day again_.
> So we sense disequilibrium. Sand
> through my fingers... I hold it toward you.
>
> 7.14.01
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