Navigation
- Home
- Philosophy
- Europe
- International
- Peace efforts
- Artists beyond Images
- Culture
- Conferences
- Newsletter
- Links
- Imprint
Painting in Words - Pictures of War
From Seattle, USA
Early Spring Report
By Mary Lathrop
Crocus are sprinkled like grapes across the lawn..
A lone, small rose sports the same exact yellow
as the winter sun.
(This selfsame rosebush who wears all summer
pinkandorange, raspberry, apricot.)
The cherry tree is this close —
another sunny spell and blossoms are assured.
But most amazingly of all,
a geranium by the kitchen door has actually wintered over —
this almost always NEVER happens —
and today bloomed pinkly.
I sat on the porch but with a sweater on —
it wasn’t really all that warm —
working on a one act about me and my mother,
quite amusing myself for a change.
**********************************************************
From Milano, Italy
Girls in the twilight
by Guilio Stocchi
- a poem to Botticelli’s ‘Venus Wedding’ -
The girls walking towards the twilight
Before vanishing into the night
The graces of wind and smiles
Carefully preserve a secret in their hair
A light word a fragment
Of a mirror they are the transparency
In which the day reposes the moment
Suspended that tells us of the simplicity
Of the world if only we wanted
To gather their gift the harmony
Of their hips while passing
The girls of the twilight
Walking slenderly as they meet the stars.
********************************************************
The blue of Vermeer
By Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke
The blue of Vermeer
Cuts like a knife
And lifts one after the other
The layer of being
Till the depth
Where the lover
And the Believer
Are no longer divided
Into momentary and eternal,
But fall entirely in love
With the angels.
Oh! The blue of Vermeer,
How it affects the beast
And blesses it!
A blue as if coming from below
Yet crowning it all;
An companion of sadness
Yet decorating the seriousness
Of earthly things.
*********************************************************
From Athens, Greece
August Meditations
by Charis Vlavianos
1. If a man in his forties
is still drawing seas and dovecotes
if in his thought is reflected
a sun more transparent,
more lucid than the sun of reality,
if the word “Amorgos” is not just
the mask of a fleeting, adolescent memory,
then between the poem of desire
and the poem of necessity
real loss is panting.
2. Prologues have been consumed.
They cannot always substitute the topic.
He must decide whether he can
hold on to this absolute idea
even if he has ceased to believe in its power.
It is a question of faith from now on.
3. Successive metamorphoses of paradise.
The eye tries to interpret the enigma of beauty
while Dilos is slowly emerging in the horizon.
Summer feels like an eternity.
The poem begins to invent itself
at the moment when the man turns his face to the light.
(The moment when imagination
freed from the specific sensation of blazing light
vertically rises in the sky.)
4. Not one sail in the horizon
tearing the canvas apart.
The image of a tree
with its wind-swept boughs scavenging the ground
is not a part of the scenery today.
Yet, the old lady creeping uphill on her knees
tightly holding Her icon is.
5. The man is walking on the beach alone.
He is still touched by the melodious whisper of the waves,
the way the water is persistently lulling the rock to sleep.
Nature around him
(cedars, rotten fishing boats, shingles)
has a melancholic, unaffected brightness.
If he were to die at this moment
he would want to be here
in this place where he has been.
Even for a while.
For now.
*************************************************
WATER MUSIC
Hommage to Robert Lax
Socrates Kabouropoulos
I
earth circle
light circle
beginning of li-te
beginning of dark
earth light
light light
one life
two lives
inter-section
going up
going down
blue line
white line
going up
the
moun-tain
duck fish
goat fish
fish-y
nine fishes
eleven fishes
thirteen goats
goat land
goat sea
fish land
no sea
II
moon-light
coming
with a breeze
rising of the moon
rising of the stars
rising of the moon
(hiding of the sun)
sun-light
moon-light
wake up
wind is
bl
ow
ing
rough sea
beginning of li-te
beginning of dark
change-ing
on the
sea
side
no way
up
without
change-ing
« Entries into the War Diary | Giulio Stocchi and Veronica Menghi - the encounter of poet and painter »