V E R S E and I M A G E

All was taken away from you: white dresses,

wings, even existence.

Yet I believe you,

messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,

a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,

you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.

Short is your stay here:

now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,

in a melody repeated by a bird,

or in the smell of apples at the close of day

when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you

but to me this does not sound convincing

for humans invented themselves as well.

The voice – no doubt it is a valid proof,

as it can belong only to radiant creatures,

weightless and winged (after all, why not?),

girdled with the lightning.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep

and, what is strange, I understood more or less

an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

+++++++ day draws near

+++++++ another one

+++++++ do what you can

Czesław Miłosz  (1911-2004)

from The Collected Poems 1931-1987, The Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ; © 1988

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An advisory pops up from the National Weather Service and all through the night dark birds massive as the crowns of trees flail their wings across the shingles. Leviathan slaps her mighty tail against the shutters and the porch doors invent a banging rhythm that could beat Stan Kenton into a state of awe. Linda and I lie awake and joke about whether the shed roof is moonbound, but we’re not really laughing. We don’t admit to each other what we’re both waiting for, the crash of something big coming through the roof.

Every time I’ve gone backpacking with my friend Mike, he always scouts our camp site for widow makers. Is there a big dead snag right up there, high above our tent, that might necessitate someone’s sorrowful phone calls to our wives in the morning? More than once we’ve had to pull up stakes, literally, and move to a safer spot. Since then whenever I walk the woods after a storm, besides kicking dead branches off the trail, I notice the meters-long fragments that have speared the earth. Straight down into the piedmont clay, almost quivering still. Glad I wasn’t sleeping there.

Linda and I lost so many trees to last spring’s “minor” F0 tornado that’s it’s hard to imagine anything left to blow down. Sixty-year old healthy oaks, much less every equivocal and wobbly twig, are matchsticked down the hill below our house. Four meter root balls and half-meter diameter trunks. Maybe we’re tempted to say, “Do your worst, Big Wind. Can’t touch us now.” Who, though, is actually brave enough to speak out loud such a challenge? We don’t even walk the local nature trail any more when there’s a big blow on. Chances are we’re perfectly safe. But are we? Are we really? It may be a long time before we can believe it.

❦ ❦ ❦

How it should be in Heaven I know, for I was there.

By its river. Listening to its birds.

In its season: in summer, shortly after sunrise.

I would get up and run to my thousand works

And the garden was superterrestrial, owned by imagination.

I spent my life composing rhythmical spells

Not quite aware of what was happening to me.

But striving, chasing without cease

A name and a form. I think the movement of blood

Should continue there to be a triumphant one,

Of a higher, I would say, degree. That the smell of gillyflower,

That a nasturtium and a bee and a ladybug

Or their very essence, stronger than here,

Must summon us just the same to a core, to a center

Beyond the labyrinth of things. For how could the mind

Stop its hunt, if from the Infinite

It takes enchantment, avidity, promise?

But where is our, dear to us, mortality?

Where is time that both destroys and saves us?

This is too difficult for me. Peace eternal

Could have no mornings and no evenings,

Such a deficiency speaks against it.

And that’s too hard a nut for a theologian to crack.

Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004)

from The Collected Poems 1931-1987, The Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ; © 1988

❦ ❦ ❦

Polish poet Czesław Miłosz lived under National Socialism and then Communism before moving to the United States in 1960, where he spent the remainder of his life. He wrote in Polish, his work translated into English by others and by himself. In 1980 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

More about Czesław Miłosz HERE

More about the Fujitsa Scale for tornadoes HERE

❦ ❦ ❦

And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way to the tree of life. +++ – Genesis 3:24

And he looked up and said, “I see men as trees, walking.” +++ – Mark 8:24

The tree, says good Swedenborg, is a close relative of man.

Its boughs like arms join in an embrace.

The trees in truth are our parents,

We sprang from the oak, or perhaps, as the Greeks maintain, from the ash.

Our lips and tongue savor the fruit of the tree.

A woman’s breast is called apple or pomegranate.

We love the womb as the tree loves the dark womb of the earth.

Thus, what is most desirable resides in a single tree,

And wisdom tries to touch its coarse-grained bark.

I learned, says the servant of the New Jerusalem,

That Adam in the garden, i.e., mankind’s Golden Age,

Signifies the generations after the pre-adamites

Who are unjustly scorned though the were gentle,

Kind to each other, savage yet not bestial,

Happy in a land of fruits and springwaters.

Adam created in the image and in the likeness

Represents the parting of clouds covering the mind.

And Eve, why is she taken from Adam’s rib?

– Because the rib is close to the heart, that’s the name of self-love.

And Adam comes to know Eve, loving himself in her.

Above those two, the tree. A huge shade tree.

Of which the counselor of the Royal Mining Commission says the following in his book De amore conjugiali:

“The Tree of Life signifies a man who lives from God, or God living in man; as love and wisdom, or charity and faith, or good and truth, make the life of God in man, these are signified by the Tree of Life, and hence the eternal life of the man. . . . But the tree of science signifies the man who believes that he lives from himself and not from God; thus that love and wisdom, or charity and faith, or good and truth, are in man from himself and not from God; and he believe this because he thinks, and wills, and speaks and acts, in all likeness and appearance as from himself.”

Self-love offered the apple and the Golden Age was over.

After it, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age. And the Iron.

Then a child opens its eyes and sees a tree for the first time.

And people seem to us like walking trees.

Czesław Miłosz  (1911-2004)

from The Collected Poems 1931-1987, The Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ; © 1988

ECOPOETRY FOR EARTH DAY 2024

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
— John Muir

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 .Verse & Image is seeking poetry to celebrate Earth Day, April 22, throughout National Poetry Month. Do you have a favorite poem that speaks to universal interconnectedness, as in the above quotation? Send it to ecopoetry@griffinpoetry.com by April 10 and we may share it in one of several posts dedicated to living together on our living planet.

Please read these guidelines:

Θ . . Deadline April 10, 2024, midnight Eastern Daylight Time USA

Θ . . Send ONE poem by any author except yourself addressing the theme of connections.

Θ . . Include the poem in the body of an email or as a .DOC or .RTF attachment to ecopoetry@griffinpoetry.com. Please add info about where the poem is published.

Θ . . Also include a personal statement – how do you feel connected to this poem? What does it mean to you? How has it connected you to the earth? [suggest 100 words or less; may be edited for length]

Θ . . Visit GriffinPoetry.com between April 15 and April 30 to see if your poem has been selected for presentation.

Θ . . Optional: if you submit one poem by an author other than yourself, you may also submit one poem on the same theme that you have written. We prefer previously published – include acknowledgments.

Verse & Image is a weekly blog of poetry, nature photography, personal essay, and ecology.