The Pylons

The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages

Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.

The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.

But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightning’s danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.

This dwarfs our emerald country by its trek
So tall with prophecy
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.

Don’t Afraid It

“Don’t afraid it”, the man cried imploringly, as he worked desperately to steady the craft, legs spread with one bare foot on each edge, sweat already dripping from his body – even though the journey to Lizard Island had not even begun. I have frequently wondered back to those words of his.  Did he mean that I was not to fear his canoe? Or, rather, did he feel that my very presence there was threatening the natural balance that existed between him and his boat, that I was, as it were, guilty of ‘afraiding his canoe’? That my attitude, my energy – perhaps the weight of the European guilt I carried out there, there on the shores of Lake Malawi – was somehow upsetting the delicate relationship that existed between man and wood, wood and lake, lake and sky?

I only discovered later that the locals knew the island to be cursed.

To be continued.

Mallarmé: “To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the enjoyment … to suggest, that is the dream.”

Ferdinand Keller (1901), Böcklin’s Tomb

 

Leon Bakst (1904), Terror Antiques

 

Hans Thoma (1906), Stille vor dem Sturm (Calm Before the Storm)

 

Jacek Malczewski (1893), In the Dust Storm

 

Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1905), Lake Keitele

 

Jens Ferdinand Willumsen (1902), Sun Over Southern Mountains

 

Joaquin Mir Trinxet (1901-04), El Abismo (The Abyss)

 

Albert Edelfelt (1889-90), Kaukola Ridge at Sunset