Sunday, April 09, 2006

From My Gardens


illuminateddaffodils
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.
I love what light does to flowers; especially the spring ones. The way it causes daffodils and jonquils, tulips and even irises to radiate -- not as one that reflects light like the moon, but like one that creates it like the sun.

This little clutch of daffodils brought another image to mind, as well: that of angels ascending. And from their my mind is ripe with connections. One was this snippet from a poem by the Polish poet, Anna Swir (1909-1984).


Lapsed into a silence in mid-move,
hushed in mid-breath,
astounded
to the very blood,
they listen with their bodies
to the sprouting on their shoulder blades
of the first little plume.


It is from her poem "Youngest Children of Angels" and this version was translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan. She's a wonderful poet, worth the dime and the time.

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