What it is to introduce a new text into the world free from the fret of fear and hate I have seen the sycamore the beech and silver birch stripped to their boughs as a wind blew in from the East and a flurry of tiny birds caught in a sudden gust before their final departure
This is autumnal abandonment the first shivers of the year end plumes of smoke rising above the houses as every step hastens one would hope homeward to a smile and a warm supper
In the woodlands the last chromatic burst has been neutralized and expectation now rests on the buried seed that will rise to pierce the transparent air in spring
And yet the withered rose it would seem has outstayed its welcome as nature reinvents itself in the guise of the poor of the dispossessed of those by force of circumstance obliged to live colourless thankless lives
What currency rules this bitter world of inequalities ? What canker lies at the heart of communities that disown their own ? And where are we to find the necessary angels of the earth those not stiffened by the pangs of greed those with uncurdled hearts who believe in the reality of harsh realities ?
Nature is the great leveller and months of austerity will yield in time to the bliss of abundance the speech of truth will thrive and the peace of intelligence will dismount the stars and share the fruits of their energy among one and all and nothing will be lost
Ceri Richards, Self-portrait (oil on composition board) 1934
Ceri Richards (1903-1971) was born in a small village near Swansea. He and his younger brother and sister were brought up in a highly cultured, working-class environment. His mother came from a family of craftsmen; and his father, who worked in a tinplate foundry, was active in the local church, wrote poetry in Welsh and English, and for many years conducted the Dunvant Excelsior Male Voice Choir. The children were all taught to play the piano, and became familiar with the works of Bach and Handel. In later years music would be an important stimulus to Richards’s painting – as would his youthful sensitivity to the landscapes of Gower and the cycles of nature. Richards trained initially at the Swansea School of Art before completing his studies at the Royal College of Art, (where in later years he became a teacher).
In this beautiful self-portrait from 1934, the influence of the surrealists is quite apparent, particularly that of Picasso. Nevertheless, the portrait remains very much rooted in Richards’s Welsh background, with the dark earthiness of the colours capturing the tone of the valleys where the artist grew up. It is very much the ‘portrait of the artist as a young artist,’ but an artist emerging from a very specific landscape, which the rugged shapes and the simplicity of the composition evoke so well. It is an action painting in the sense that the subject is proudly presenting the tools of his trade, the palette and brushes which he carries as emblems. The thick black lines enhance the notion that the artist is an accumulation of elements, yet the eye is drawn to the bright complexion and the affirmative expression which underline the pride Richards took in his work and his vocation. This self-portrait is quite simply his coat of arms.
Richards wrote: “One can generally say that all artists — poets, musicians, painters, are creating in their own idioms, metaphors for the nature of existence, for the secrets of our time. We are all moved by the beauty and revelation in their utterances — we notice the direction and beauty of the paths they indicate for us, and move towards them”.
The beauty to which Richards refers is intrinsic in every detail of this self-portrait which so clearly and affectionately references his roots in the Welsh valleys —which he appears to be wearing about his shoulders— and his belief in the rugged powers of art. Former pupils have described Richards as a cheerful, boisterous teacher, and these traits come through in this marvellous celebratory painting which is there to be admired any day of the week in the National Portrait Gallery on Charing Cross Road.
Across the whole of England rain is falling falling upon the towns and the fields falling upon the highways and the byeways falling upon the rich and the poor
falling upon young and old alike falling upon the fit and the infirm upon our schools and hospitals Across the whole of England
the sky is dark and rain is falling falling upon those who love and upon those whose lives are consumed with sorrow or hatred
or bitterness or disappointment falling upon those who will struggle to survive and upon those who retain a spring in their step the rain is falling
on buses and cars and trains and planes through the polluted city air across the whole of England the rain is falling everywhere upon the present and the past and upon
the dreams we hope will last the rain rains down on the living and the dead
Armando Morales (1927–2011) was an internationally renowned Nicaraguan artist, a contemporary and friend of the poets, Ernesto Cardenal and Carlos Martínez Rivas.
Morales was famous for his voluptuous still lives, in particular, sensual studies of apples and pears that evoked the softness of human skin. He later moved on to the painting of the female form, and in 1971, at the Galeria Bonino in New York, he showed a series of stunning nudes in which the fine detail of every muscle, of every inch of skin, reveals an unsurpassed sensuality.
I visited Armando at his studio in Vauxhall many years ago during a brief period he spent in London. On that day he was preparing a huge canvas, and in the course of our conversation many times he climbed a ladder to access the top of the canvas. In one hand he held a magnifying glass and in the other a razor blade, poring over the surface in search of the most minute imperfections, meticulous to a fault.
I have chosen his beautiful woodland study to illustrate the poem below, the title of which is based on the opening line of Dante’s Inferno.
In the midst of a great forest
What treasures I have amassed are immune to fire and theft though I have indeed known loss loss of the body and loss of the soul and live now in a quiet space catching the drift of birdsong of the splenetic spider that plays upon its frosty web I can resist all things better than my own changeability I breathe the air but do not breathe it all I am not proud and know my place : the moth and the fish-eggs are in their place too so too the bright suns and the wide golden moon that shone last night so too the phantom dawn that creeps through the mist to smother dreams What is palpable is in its place What is impalpable is in its place Whether we fall by ambition blood or lust like diamonds we are cut with our own dust I seek the grail of laughter a life that will turn upon the axle of devotion a kiss not singed by the eventual flame
These are the lanes of death where our footfall falls Here love is a moment and pain another and our mutual friends are ash and dust moth and termite here time runs amok wields a thirsty blade cuts to the very bone
Flying by day this spineless boneless innately venomous creature is a paragon of brash invertebrate beauty but beauty comes at such a price Native only to Madagascar it flits from bloom to bloom its long proboscis supping by preference on the nectar of white flowers More choosy still are the larvae that that feed only on plants from the toxic Omphalea family They hatch from eggs laid on the underside of the leaves of these plants The white or pale yellow larvae with bright red feet will once they emerge mercilessly devour the entire plant leaf flower stems and all before moving on to decimate another of the same family From tip to tip their wings span a good three inches and boast shades of black and blue and red and yellow and emerald green Patterns of kaleidoscopic effect are produced by the wings’ curved scales creating optical interference as light is reflected at sharply different angles Toxicity is their defence for though the caterpillars eat the poisonous plants the toxins are not digested : these remain in their bodies through pupation into adulthood To most predators a most noxious foul-tasting moth— the iridescence of their wings a salutary warning
It’s that time of the year again. Clocks have gone back, the temperature is beginning to drop and we are all bracing ourselves for winter. The landscape is unrecognisable from the bright summer days, yet every season has its magic and its mood. Autumn, a sensitive time for nostalgia, for poring over memories by an open fire, for meditation; a season which John Keats has indelibly marked forever as a time for poetry. And so we are pleased today to present a new poem by our dear friend, Molly Rosenberg.
Autumn Thoughts
Through gold Through ruby red Burnt orange Amber glow
Like us the magnificence of beauty reaches its crescendo, as the array of colours overwhelms the Ravensbourne Valley. It takes my breath away. So short a time like our youth so fleeting.
Fluttering Drifting Crunching underfoot
Beauty turned to nuisance now like us when our purpose is served, all will be swept away.
The sharpness of the air pricks my cheeks. I wrap myself in the softness of cashmere. Relish the feeling of summer feet now clad in suede as I tread lightly through these golden autumn days.
Jonah, our indestructible blogsworth, is sitting in The Catherine Wheel, the charming Wetherspoon in Henley-on-Thames, on a bright autumn afternoon. He’s just had a brisk stroll down by the river. Trees turning to gold and brown and copper; seen a few herons, some geese, and more swans than he could shake a stick at; then a quick gander at the grave of poor old Dusty Springfield and he’s popped into the pub to kill the massive appetite he’s been carrying around all morning.
So he’s ordered his meal deal: a pint of what he likes and the fish and chips with mushy peas. Now he’s sitting there, sipping his drink, waiting for his grub to arrive, looking around the gaff and generally minding everyone’s business till he catches the drift of two old codgers lunching at an adjacent table:
Tom More: You been reading about tax credit cuts? Erasmus: Alice in Wonderland?
Tom More: Just about. Only worse. No laughs in this one; plenty of mad hatters, though.
Erasmus: You British, I dunno. You have an uncanny talent for political disasters. There’s gonna be trouble over this, mark my words.
Tom More: Whatcha mean?
Erasmus: Poll tax and now tax credit cuts. Political bloody disaster. You people vote in these governments that then proceed to clobber part of the population to death. It don’t add up, sunshine. On the one hand it’s sadism and on the other its masochism. Fifty bloody shades of I dunno what.
Tom More: But the deficit, the national debt. Something’s gotta be done.
Erasmus: But at whose expense, laddee? Not the working poor, surely? Tom More puts down his knife and fork, wipes his lips with his serviette, coughs to clear his throat and looks Erasmus in the eye. Tom More: No, you’re right. Makes my blood boil.
Erasmus: What sort of a country is this? I mean the very notion of working poor is an abomination. It’s a bad joke. Who does these jobs? Teaching assistants, social workers, so I’ve been told, but loads of other keyworkers too. Tom More: Keyworkers. Erasmus: So what does that mean, keyworkers? Key to what? Key to whom, if you don’t mind my pompous grammar? Are these jobs not important enough to deserve a living wage?
Tom More: Yeah, you’re right. It’s all wrong. Millions of families on or just below the breadline. . . Erasmus: About to be clobbered. So many of this once proud nation’s kids growing up in poverty. It goes quiet as the two old men take a breather and dip into their drinks. And Jonah’s meal arrives. Lovely golden batter on the fish, and the taste, so fresh. Erasmus: You know, a country that doesn’t care for its young doesn’t deserve to be called a country. It’s a bloody disgrace. Children in need! It’s a bad joke! No wonder the Scots want out.
Tom More: You’re right, you’re dead right, mate.
Erasmus: Poverty is a social construct, you know that. Nobody’s born poor, it’s not genetic. People are born into poverty or they fall into poverty, but it’s not in their DNA. It’s structured. You take the total wealth of a country, or the total wealth earned by a country in one year and you parcel it up, you decide who gets lucky and who has to struggle. I’m all for the ‘work should pay’ philosophy, but work should pay. These tax credits they want to cut, they’re not charity, they’re really nothing more than subsidies to the employers of the working poor. So to cut them is more than a bit like Alice in bloody Wonderland, “Off with their heads”. Tom More has a faraway look in his eyes; maybe the beer has gone to his head which he now begins to shake slowly. Tom More: One nation. . . The party of the family. . . Jesus wept.
Erasmus: Exactly! Suffer little children. . . !
On the train from Victoria he sits opposite me in his brown Franciscan habit and sandals. He is balding at the crown but wears a long beard. Forty-three years of age, pale blue eyes, slim and just under six foot, I estimate.
Life is a horizontal fall, a slow motion stampede dustwards.
From a rucksack he takes a packet of chocolate-covered raisins and tips five into his left hand: one by one he devours them, a half-decade.
Sensitive appetite is the passive power by which one is moved to some immediate response presented by the senses.
A professional-looking, large-beaded rosary hangs clipped from his rope belt and the wooden cross sways as he returns the remains of the raisins to his bag.
By the monastery path, the brittle leaves crushed underfoot. Time drops in decay.
From a bottle of water he takes a short sip, consults his mobile, which is not a smart phone and looks nervously around the carriage.
In the monastery garden, everywhere visible, time’s disfiguring touch.
Next he produces a paperback, Carlo Caretto’s Love is for living; reads a paragraph, marks his place with a label, closes the book and closes his eyes, raising a clenched fist to his breastbone.
Intellectual appetite: the passive power by which one is moved to a more reasoned response to particular objects as presented by the intellect.
He is still for several minutes, quite motionless, lost in his meditation. His eyes open. Signs of a visible sadness, a loneliness, a tangible longing.
It is not happiness but the divine will that grounds moral norms.
He reads again, now grasping and tightly twisting his beard, as though he wished to wrench it from his face. Then eyes closed, clenched fist once more at his breastbone, a deep sigh.
We need to have the power to restrain the natural appetite for happiness so that we can will as He would have us will.
The minutes pass.
Time and the world and all things dwindle.
Now he returns the book to his rucksack and sits with eyes shut and an inner focus on the heavens, and on his sacrifice.
Frost will paint the pines in winter and snow will settle on the simple wooden crosses that mark where they lie.
Down from Victoria, counting the twelve stations, the daily cross he bears, on his way back to Our Lady of the Angels.
Prayer cannot detain the torrent of descending time but one can pray for a light footfall.
Upon arrival he is the first to dismount, and as he leaves the station he halts to glance back over his shoulder at the shadow that has been following him, shadowing him throughout his journey, shadowing him throughout his life.
These are the shadows of dreams, the shadows, doubtless, of unborn time.
But he sees no one, and so he hurries off, burying himself in the distance, in the echoless darkness.
Ernesto Castillo Salaverry (1957-1978) was born in Managua, Nicaragua; he died barely two months before his 21st birthday, fighting against Somoza’s National Guard on the streets of Leon. His poetry reads like a diary of the daily struggle against the dictatorship, interwoven with love and nostalgia. Days before his death he wrote a letter to his parents:
Sunday, August 27, 1978.
To all those who love me, and among them, especially you.
I had thought not to write these lines, because you know I do not like goodbyes, I believe that every separation is temporary because when several people are together, when they love each other in the way that we love each other, it is impossible to forget each other, and at happy times, in the sad moments, we are together, sharing, as we have done so often. You are always with me. You are in the rain, you are on the streets mingling with the people, accompanying me every time I go to work. When I talk with colleagues, and we touch on family matters, matters of love, I just smile, because I have the good fortune to have your support; I am happy to know that you understand the need to fight; happy because the training I received made me aware of the need for change, for the revolutionary transformation of an unjust society.
In addition to having you, I am not alone; colleagues who work with me are very fraternal, we live together in danger, we share the same ideology, and our Sandinista convictions make us brothers. The people, the workers, the taxi driver, the newspaper seller, the cornershop keeper, they all accompany me. They trust me, without even knowing me, they love me, they have great faith in me, in us.
For you, for them, for Nicaragua, I am willing to fight to the end.
I cannot say that I don’t miss you, that would be a lie. I’d like to be with you, sharing every moment, enjoying every word, every gesture, every look. Today it’s not possible, but we must sacrifice ourselves, and I confess that I find it hard, we must fight in these conditions so that thousands of families can come together, so that Nicaraguan mothers do not continue to see their children murdered by the National Guard.
I’m not afraid, I know I’m going to brush with death, and I’m not afraid. You, and an entire nation, are with me. I love you.
Ernesto.
4 poems by Ernesto Castillo
The list of revolutionary martyrs is long; I know that the road to Liberation is painful; but if I fall, another will take my place and maybe fight longer than me, and his work combined with what has been done, may finally achieve victory.
* The streets wet with rain reflect the night. I crawl along the path as though trying to prolong the steps that must take me to my death.
*
September 1978
Some are for your sister; let her enjoy them if she likes them , if not, let her accept them, because it was she who created them; not all, just some. The others are scattered in women’s names I’d already have forgotten, had I not written them in my poems. The last ones, the most recent, are yours, I wasn’t sure before. These poems and these feelings are yours because you earned them.
* Thanks for having given me your kisses, your moments of joy and loneliness thanks for sharing my problems.
I can only leave you my poems and my memories, the memory of the silent nights with my hands running across your body and my eyes glistening as our mouths met.
I see you rereading my letters and poems, remembering the why of each sentence, trying to revive my love in every one of those pages.
I’ll leave my sensation of loneliness, because where I’m going you cannot reach me; and in your sleepless nights you’ll remember that I can never come running to you, that you’ll no longer even have my distant presence, because my body will be eaten by worms that will erase every trace of your kisses on my neck.
Time will turn my bones to dust, everyone will forget me, but you will sometimes feel the urge to cry; a veil of sadness will overwhelm you and my memory will reappear in your eyes.
Translations by John Lyons
Following the United States occupation of Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933, during the so-called Banana Wars, the Somoza family political dynasty was installed, and, with US backing, would rule the country until the final dictator was ousted in the 1979 Nicaraguan Sandinista Revolution.
In the 1970s the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) had begun a guerrilla campaign with isolated attacks which led to national recognition of the group in the Nicaraguan media and solidification of the group as a force in opposition to the dictatorship. The Somoza regime, was defended by the National Guard, a force highly trained by the U.S. military, that used torture, and extra-judicial killing, intimidation and censorship of the press in order to combat the FSLN attacks. In 1977, mounting international condemnation of the regime’s human rights violations led the Carter Administration to cut off aid to the Somoza regime. By the end of January 1978, civil disobedience had turned into a full-scale popular uprising throughout the country, ending in July 1979 when Somoza abandoned Nicaragua and the first Sandinista government was installed.
The silkworm is the larva or caterpillar of the domesticated silkmoth, Bombyx mori. A silkworm’s preferred food is white mulberry leaves, but it may also eat the leaves of any other mulberry tree. It is entirely dependent on humans for its reproduction and does not occur naturally in the wild.
Sericulture, the practice of breeding silkworms for the production of raw silk, has been underway for at least 5,000 years in China, from where it spread to Korea and Japan, and later to India and the West.
The poem below was inspired by these verses from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
You have formed me of earth and of water, What can I do? Whether I be wool or silk, it is You that have woven me, and what can I do? The good that I do, the evil that I am guilty of, Were alike predestined by you; what can I do?
Here we go round the mulberry
silkworm cocoons
The low branches of morus alba, with its wide spreading crown and scaly orange-brown bark pocked with lenticels to oxygenate and
expel toxic gases, and lush orbicular-shaped leaves with serrate margin: dioecious flowers–the narrow male, one to two inches long, the plumper
female at barely an inch–boys and girls in slender zigzag come out to play. Twigs with silvery white filaments draped with fleshy multiples of drupes,
cylindrical fruit, akin to the blackberry, from June to August maturing. The larva fed on this foliage, its spittle passing through spinneret lips so hardening to tensile-as-steel silk,
each cocoon wound with a single mile-long thread, the oven- baked pupas, soaked in boiling water, whence five strands spun on wooden bobbins, the yarn woven into the cloth of kings. So do not
hasten to consign Emily Dickinson’s breath to dust, nor the intemperate slobber of Walt Whitman’s leaves of grass to the furnace, in all modesty our poetry too is nothing less than solidified saliva.
johnjosephlyons 