Not the loss alone, by Gregory Orr

Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297, "L'inverno" (Winter)
Part II. Largo

Not the loss alone,
But what comes after.
If it ended completely
At loss, the rest
Wouldn't matter.

But you go on.
And the world also.

And words, words
In a poem or song:
Aren't they a stream
On which your feelings float?

Aren't they also
The banks of that stream
And you yourself the flowing?


poem from Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved
Copper Canyon Press, 2013

to your knife

..........a-

...............live

....................i am

.........................the

..............................whet-

...................................stone

.........................



Antonio Vivaldi - Gloria in Excelsis Deo

Brilliant Sky, by Jean Joubert

Antonio Vivaldi - Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Gloria (Rv 589)

Never between the branches has the sky
burned with such brilliance, as if
it were offering all of its light to me,
to say – what? what urgent mystery
strains at that transparent mouth?
No leaf, no rustle . . . It's in winter,
in cold emptiness and silence, that the air
suddenly arches itself like this into infinity,
and glitters.

This evening, far from here,
a friend is entering his death,
he knows it, he walks
under bare trees alone,
perhaps for the last time. So much love,
so much struggle, spent and worn thin.
But when he looks up, suddenly the sky
is arrayed in this same vertiginous clarity.


Trans. by Denise Levertov, In
The Gift of Tongues, ed. by Sam Hamill

From Panhala yahoo group