Friday, March 13, 2015

Then he paints the tree

Trees and sunsets today, art and friendship.


Windows and Palm Trees by Paul Klee

An excerpt of The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House
By Howard Nemerov
in memory of the painters Paul Klee
and Paul Terence Feeley


...He views the tree,
The great tree standing in the garden, say,
As thrusting downward its vast spread and weight,
Growing its green height from the dark watered earth,
And as suspended weightless in the sky,
Haled forth and held up by the hair of its head.
He follows through the flowing of the forms
From the divisions of the trunk out to
The veinings of the leaf, and the leaf’s fall.
His pencil meditates the many in the one
After the method in the confluence of rivers,
The running of ravines on mountainsides,
And in the deltas of the nerves; he sees
How things must be continuous with themselves
As with whole worlds that they themselves are not,
In order that they may be so transformed.
He stands where the eternity of thought
Opens upon perspective time and space;
He watches mind become incarnate; then
          He paints the tree.

read the rest here.

**********

from Six Prayers
By Ralph Salisbury

Spirit of the Sunset West
may gray clouds
hiding friends from me
glow
like yours
that we grope
toward each other through
a vivid rose.

**********

You can find the Poetry Friday round-up at Author Amok.

4 comments:

Author Amok said...

The Ralph Salisbury excerpt is striking, Tabatha. All of those colors. I wonder if he was a synesthete and saw emotions or heard sounds as colors.

Linda said...

I've never read this poem before. The line that really speaks to me is "His pencil meditates the many in the one" I just love the thought of a meditating pencil bringing "many into one." I'm headed to read the rest of the poem now. : )

Mary Lee said...

These are great poems for my OLW -- Notice.

Michelle Heidenrich Barnes said...

Art is so much more than observation, it's transformation. The Nemerov excerpt illustrates that beautifully.