Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.
One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.
And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.
I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King.
For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.
We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.
Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago—
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.
I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.
— Czesław Miłosz, “Late Ripeness”
Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night
To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,—
Out of the night, two cocks together crow,
Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow:
And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand,
Heralds of splendour, one at either hand,
Each facing each as in a coat of arms:
The milkers lace their boots up at the farms.
— Edward Thomas, “Cock-Crow”
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Music, when soft voices die”
These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.
These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, –
A blue and gold mistake.
Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,
Till ranks of seed their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!
Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,
Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!
— Emily Dickinson, “Indian Summer”
In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn’s languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.
Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses:
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses,
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
A rose it is though least and last of all,
A rose to me though at the fall.
— Christina Rossetti, “October Garden”
In my garden's care and favour
From the East this tree's leaf shows
Secret sense for us to savour
And uplifts the one who knows.
Is it but one being single
Which as same itself divides?
Are there two which choose to mingle
So that each as one now hides?
As the answer to such question
I have found a sense that's true:
Is it not my songs' suggestion
That I'm one and also two?
—J. W. von Goethe, "Ginkgo Biloba" (from Goethe's West-East Divan, 1819)
I looked around in the unknown year, aware that few are
those who come from so far, I was saturated with
sunlight as a plant with water.
That was a high year, fox-colored, like a crosscut redwood
stump or vine leaves on the hills in November.
In its groves and chambers the pulse of music was beating
strongly, running down from dark mountains, tributaries
entangled.
A generation clad in patterned robes trimmed with little bells
greeted me with the banging of conga drums.
I repeated their guttural songs of ecstatic despair walking by
the sea when it bore in boys on surfboards and washed
my footprints away.
At the very border of inhabited time the same lessons were
being learned, how to walk on two legs and to pronounce
the signs traced in the always childish book of our
species.
I would have related, had I known how, everything which a
single memory can gather for the praise of men.
O sun, o stars, I was saying, holy, holy, holy, is our being
beneath heaven and the day and our endless communion.
—Czeslaw Milosz, “The Year”
(translated by the author and Richard Lourie)
***
Greetings on this eve of the New Year!
May it be a blessed one for us all.
Today we’re announcing a new and unique title in The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner in English series, which is now available. You can read more about it below, and I hope you do!
And here’s another reminder that our 2023 holiday sale ends tonight.
There is, though, no deadline for gifts, and responses to our end-of-year appeal are still being gratefully received—always in awe and appreciation of your thoughtful kindnesses.
With warmest wishes of light and strength for the New Year
—and beyond!
—John-Scott
© SteinerBooks 2024
