It has for some time now been the fashion to say that we are in a morass, and to attempt to get out of the morass by attacking Romanticism; and I am going to do this too.
[Iris Murdoch]

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where I took a wonderful bird-watching course (thanks to which I can whistle like a chickadee and recognize a pileated woodpecker) made this short video with haunting images of snowy owls (their eyes!). The Lab of O occasionally sends me requests for money, which I have not yet given it, but at least I can give it some publicity! They are doing great work and I’m glad they exist. (Incidentally, never mind the title of the video or the cover image, which makes it sound and look like Hitchcock. It’s not.)

 

This sort of requires German. I will be happy to translate it for you pun for pun, however, if you catch me near a computer. And it might be funny in a different way if you don’t know what he’s saying.

 

Here, by contrast, he is with English subtitles, in a sketch that relies heavily on rhyme. Also the subtitles are faulty; “trunk” should be “mast” (like ship’s mast).

 
We love you, books.

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has —
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses — as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren’t enough,
as if joy weren’t strewn all around.

 

[Poem by Holly Hughes, sent to me by Lisa Murray.]

All of them. At least that’s how I feel after watching 30 seconds of this video.

 
After cooling off, I wikipediaed. It appears the hornets only live in Japan and are not invading Europe or America. In Japan, they are considered useful because they kill crop pests. They can fly up to 40 miles an hour. They’re considered a delicacy fried. Also, they can only kill European honeybees.

Here, in the awesomest nature description I have heard in a long time, is how Japanese honeybees defend themselves against the hornets:

“When a hornet approaches the hive to release pheromones, the bee workers emerge from their hive in an angry cloud-formation with some 500 individuals. As they form a tight ball around the hornet, the ball increases in heat to 47 °C (117 °F) from their vibrating wings, forming a convection oven as the heat released by the bees’ bodies is spread over the hornets. Because bees can survive higher temperatures (48 to 50 °C (118 to 122 °F)) than the hornet (44 to 46 °C (111 to 115 °F)), the latter dies.”

Take THAT.

This is my favorite evening (or night) prayer right now, from New Zealand’s Book of Common Prayer:

 
Lord,
it is night.

The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done;
let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us,
and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys,
new possibilities.

In your name we pray.
Amen.

[click on the image repeatedly for a very large version]

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?
The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear,
I’m afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.

[Hafiz]

 
 

 

[detail from Jacopo da Pontormo’s “Annunciation to the Virgin Mary,” ca. 1527-28, with thanks to Sarah Widercrantz]

This is a piece from Czesław Miłosz’s book A Road-Side Dog, which contains a mixture of poetry and prose. I am not sure whether the prose piece below is a parable or a meditation or a snatch of fiction or a very short essay, but I think in any case it might be one of what Miłosz called “Subjects to Let”: he was 87 when he published the book, and offered these sketches of things he knew he wouldn’t develop to anyone who wanted to flesh them out.

 

A CERTAIN POET

That poet lived all his life in a quiet provincial town, at a time when there were no wars or revolutionary upheavals. It is possible to reconstruct from his poems his circle of people. It is included his father and mother, the enigmatic aunt, Adele, her husband, Victor, a young person by the name of Helene, and his close friend, the owner of a local printing shop and a philosopher, Cornelius. And those few characters were enough to bring to life a poetry of descent into the abyss and of soaring ecstasy, a testimony of dark passions, sins, and terrors.

This should lead us to conclude that the importance of an oeuvre is not measured by the importance of the events which led, one way or another, to its creation. No doubt, the facts we try to guess had no significance for the history of mankind. Whether Adele was the mistress of the poet’s father, whether and why her husband tolerated that arrangement, whether the poet was jealous or simply took his mother’s side, what his relationship with Helene was like, and whether it was a triangle with Cornelius as one of its sides—those components of the human cosmos are too common to have much meaning ascribed to them. And yet what depth in those stanzas where, encoded, the most ordinary human dramas glow with a glare of ultimate things, what force in the transformation of the very stuff of people’s everyday life into that marvelously muscular body of verse!

That oeuvre is a warning to all those who envy poets with rich biographies, possessing at their disposal images of burning cities, of the wanderings of crazed humanity, and of murderous cohorts marching.

 

[Thanks to Ray Olson from Booklist for his helpful review.]