Pebble

 

[Pebble]

 

“I should like to write a whole book about a pebble and about a purple pansy.” (Etty Hillesum, June 1942)

 

In the Book of the Pebble

the author takes a hard look

with both eyes open at the object:

 

stone smooth as a cornea

she forgets to blink

thinking about how it shines.

 

Her words roll or falter, bloom

speaking if possible

of everything, in bold surges.

 

She holds it in her hand

or it holds her firm with gravity

and is all there is, she knows.

 

So many blues and fibre

envelope the second half

readers miss her original reference

 

to the purple pansy

as she gazes at that face-up flower

in her Amsterdam flat

 

the thunderous waters that

day and night wear away the stone,

blue and sinuous the waters.

 

No reviews exist of this work

sometimes also referred to as

the Book of the Purple Pansy.

 

No reviews, in fact no notices

having never been published

or written in dark blue ink swirling

 

on sheets of a manuscript weighed

by a pebble that could be

the whole world, hard and round.

 

Tomorrow she will be off

visiting friends and foes with other

more pressing concerns

 

readers find in an alternative title,

her diaries left in desk drawers,

postcards thrown from transit trains.

 

Image: page 445 of 'Etty: the letters and diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943', published by Eerdmans and Novalis in 2002. The book is set in Occupied Netherlands. Her father's witticism about "the cycleless age" is footnoted in the book thus: "the cycleless age: The order, dating from 22 June 1942, that all Jews should hand in their bicycles, did not apply to the Jews in Amsterdam. For them, the order took effect on 20 July1942."

Inferno

Iso-mandala No. 272 (early 2021)

[Inferno] 

“Dante’s Inferno is a comic opera by comparison.”

(Etty Hillesum, July 1942)

 

Longing for a normal day

making do with what they’ve got

anything for a quiet life

 

two classical personages

pretend-humble stumble

upon the average psychopath

 

locked in frozen pits forever

dead spit of what sin is.

Remarks they make help clarify

 

as the next avalanche

sweeps they themselves very them

off the isthmus

 

between the cape of no hope

and the islands of remorse

there forever condemned to write

 

quaint in dainty terza rima

the truth of no way out

and no way back.

 

Brought up in all the right schools

trained in how a joke saves years

they had not imagined this:

 

the long abnormal weeks

there to make sense of the abyss,

quietly talking to absence

 

where every day could be the last

there beneath the latest rubble

or refugees on no known path

 

at the gates of Kyiv

eyeless in Gaza

and what next year in Jerusalem

 

texting meaning by the light of a torch

attending to the near and dear

near or far, needing food and sleep.

Reality

 

[Reality]

“A line of verse has as much reality as a cheese coupon or chilblains.” (Etty Hillesum, December 1941)

 

Sometimes reality seems to have

no beginning or end

but we do.

 

Experience teaches how reality

inspires intense research;

other days it’s just shut the door.

 

Running one way is one way

while everyone else is running

the other towards reality.

 

The loudest voice in the room

is worth distinguishing from

the silence that is beyond words.

 

Reality is work and vice versa,

testing the body to the limit;

it is rest, pondering change.

 

O the follies accomplished

and the heavens found with something

tangible as reality.

 

When it’s hot it’s hot.

Reality is whatever’s there

in the cold light of day.

 

Humans are landscapes

breathing invisibility deep

and taking the medicine.

 

Innocent words cover lots of

territory, trialled and transcendent,

but to be scrunched and thrown away.

 

 

 

President

 

Epiglottis

George Washington got his

stuck in one of history’s what-ifs

 

Undetermined

Jimmy Carter turned the page

or was it simply old age

 

Processes

by which American presidents

met pressured ends

 

Assassination

dismissed by shotgun

how the West was won

 

Expletive

one after another or in noxious groups

foul mouths on permanent loops

 

Cardiac

not ones to wear their heart-on-sleeve

exited without a by-your-leave

 

Library

calm where scholars are wont to go

with the eternal, well what do you know?

 

Dementia

their gold rhetoric turned to garble

verbal cues for losing of marbles

 

Vanity

gone as the glowing face breaks up

from suffocating make-up

 

Airliner

filled with Qatari gilding

flying into a building

 

Pedestal

toppled having ignored all portents

died of unimportance

 

Ghostwriting

or at the least on the shelf

not feeling too good myself

Seventy

  

[Seventy]

 

“may haiku seventy”

 

nothing to say for itself

seventy

then this word torrent of years

 

leaves and hailstones then raindrops

seventy

at a time fall from the skies

 

so many books to read at

seventy

so few hours in the day

 

at the birthday party for

seventy

old talk turns to falls units

 

the world is not seven but

seventy

times seven awesome with age

 

were simeon and anna

seventy

when the child confirmed their hopes

 

while in news just to hand see

seventy

is the age when life begins

 

people also ask: how do you spell

seventy?

what’s the word for 70?

 

blood thinners beta blockers

seventy

gout inhibitors aspirin

 

the bedroom study kitchen

seventy

the bathroom laundry garage

 

what journeys to recall at

seventy

names and faces remembered

 

cities of gold in time’s light

seventy

buried in the mind to mine

 

could you take from all your words

seventy

that said all that need be said

 

seventeen in a haiku

seventy

in a psalm about to end

 

to hold to all the past at

seventy

or pass on to the future

 

unknown obscure empty

seventy

yet known true full, to oneself

 

we are meant to understand

seventy

but we don’t, altogether