Describing Paintings

We usually catch only a few details —

grapes from the seventeenth century,

still fresh and gleaming,

perhaps a fine ivory fork,

or a cross's wood and drops of blood,

and great suffering that has already dried.

The shiny parquet creaks.

We're in a strange town —

almost always in a strange town.

Somewhere a guard stands and yawns.

An ash branch sways outside the window.

It's absorbing,

describing static paintings.

Scholars devote tomes to it.

But we're alive,

full of memory and thought,

love, sometimes regret,

and at moments we take a special pride

because the future cries in us

and its tumult makes us human.

Adam Zagajewski

(born in Lvov in 1945. His previous books include Tremor, Mysticism for Beginners, Without End, Solidarity, Solitude, Two Cities, Another Beauty and A Defense of Ardor — all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Paris and Houston.)

editing parts to create new stories

for Tanu


A Girl In Port

Let fall your soft and swaying skirt.Let fall your shoes.
She lay on the lawn, spun and alone.
And when the morning sun rose upon her lacy clothes,it lit her up, and she walked around the winding streets of Camden Town.
She doesn't know who she wants to be, and if I knew, I'd tell her.
Up in her room the records spin, needle in the grooves that she has worn thin.
She lifts a sleeve and sees a name, and she's got a smile on her face, and she's got a story you can't see.
And before she makes her way over the sea, she's telling me,inside her car, driving us back from the Crystal Corner Bar,"I'm not sailing just for sport,I've come to feel, out on the sea,these urgent lives press against me.I'm a part, with my tender hands,with my easy heart.Pour yourself into me."
Let fall your soft and swaying skirt.Let fall your shoes.


And now, Okkervil River can shoot me if he must,but that is the way I feel.I will sing it like this any day.

Asa

Bukola Elemide,afro-french singer better known as Asa, meaning 'hawk'
Here is some of her music I have been listening to.
Chance meetings lead to so much more than you can expect.
The hawk is out there singing her heart out!

li fa fa

a sound.when it flutters in the wind.
there is no word for it,no meaning.
just a sound, sharawadgi!


brown paper bag.