Simplicity

 Image by B. Harvey

 

[Simplicity]

 

“To be very unobtrusive, and very insignificant, always striving for more simplicity.” (Etty Hillesum, April 1942)

 

to be very attentive

and very near, listening

even when at some distance

 

to leave out the extras

and the showy quotes,

to say what needs being said

 

to contribute in your own words

joining all other words in passing

regardless of signature

 

to refrain from grand gestures

and general namedropping

by keeping to the point

 

to set aside every machine

and all their screens and links

and learn to breathe

 

to stop before your inner mood

to register that others too

endure such moods alone

 

to recognise tensions

their sources and hold back

deescalate, dwell and wait

 

to walk very carefully

to belong in the landscape

and observe all things closely

 

to learn when not to speak

when to bite the tongue

and when from talk to stop

 

Patience

 

[Patience]

 

“I still lack the patience to pass my time with flowers and to listen to music and to look at paintings and read the Bible.” (Etty Hillesum, April 1942)

 

magical handful of anemones

forget me nots

vase centred at the window

 

the time it took to take

the time to look

passes already to chat meals books

 

ocean of the great preludes

we comprehend hands

as seconds play over fast

 

and rush away to themes

memory is left alone with

in the time remaining

 

pierce of masterpiece

the colours of shadows

are momentary cheer

 

a weekday afternoon spent

before a genius image

that won’t change anything

 

proverbs eat into my skin

reading them over

hearing their hard edges

 

unbearable miracles

their pages close upon

as the future is faced up to

 

 

Canary

 

[Canary]

 

“That lady of high nobility with the rich profusion of blond curls on her forehead sang like a Japanese canary in labour.” (Etty Hillesum, June 1942)

 

Of the starcrossed lovers she sings

in fallendown cities at evening

sharing last broken words

 

Of the faded glum surrealists

their prim disaster collages

ground by government jackboots

 

Of cocktail circuiteers

rounded into carriages

overcoats by house of forlorn

 

Her range has highpitched planes

incendiary no-name screams

the gap and the explosion

 

Not the composer’s precise intention

an unusual take on the words

forced or matter-of-fact

 

A yellow flame in a coalmine

she sings dressed for the occasion

a kamikaze aria in real time

 

Of sputtering in a coalmine

darkness verse seven all mine

a song in the mind long gone

 

Of a certainty it will end

the soiree of old school set pieces

pointing toward midnight

 

Of her no information available

she held the notes made the bow

and sat again to applause polite that

You

 

[You]

“Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God.” (Etty Hillesum, August 1943)

 

I haggled over existence

revelled in refutations

till the only one listening is you.

 

I was about me for too long

not seeing that everyone ever

even I belongs to you.

 

I rambled and ranted and right

when the words could not go on

come reminders of you.

 

I found myself through caring

days and weeks for others

to find myself staring at you.

 

I left hometown behind

never looking back

nowhere still there is you.

 

I had been torn in old ways

apart confused by new harms

forgetting that there is you.

 

I saw glimpses in leaves

indications in every eye

today’s small glories of you.

 

I counted every object in view

a universe of stun wonders

still alone my desire for you.

 

I wrote endlessly every minute

detail down to the minutest

to end up again with you.

 

I went for broke with words

breaking all the rules

to end up with nothing but you.

 

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.