Snapshot of an Orchard in Port Angeles, By Liliana Ursu.

A Bonnard Blossom tree.

Snapshot of an Orchard in Port Angeles
(for Mrs Georgia Bond and Stanley Kunitz)

” The woman worked all her youth on Lost Mountain
marking trees to be cut,
and gave birth to five children.
Now, old and a widow, she takes care
of her orchard,
When her daughter brought the poet from Provincetown to visit,
the old woman was proud to show him
her oldest tree : pinus aristata- the one never marked
for cutting- that is, the deathless one- she added.

The poet doubted this; ‘I am afraid you are mistaken.
The oldest tree in the world is metasequoia
glyptostroboides- (also known as the Dawn Redwood)
and it has more lives to live. Well, what do you think?
Which one of us is right, madam?’

She answered: ‘A man lives as long as his life, mister,
but a poet lives as long as your tree with a strange name.’
He liked her answer so much that on her birthday
he sent by telegram to a nursery, then by truck
to her doorstep, his own tree, the Dawn Redwood,
and a card : ‘May this tree grow near yours.
Let their shadows annul each other reciprocally
so in your orchard
light will grow free forever’. “

I have mentioned Liliana Ursu’s book The Sky Behind the Forest before, it is translated by Tess Gallagher
and Adam Sorkin. Bloodaxe 1997.

Two Poems from The Sky Behind the Forest, by Liliana Ursu.

A Constance Madden Poem: Last Night you Passed By.

Sophie Taueber-Arp image from MOMA.

“Last night you passed by
As slow as the shadows,
And your thoughts were all drenched
With dreams of her promise.
But my window was laced with tears
At your passing
And you never came in
And my heart on you fasting.

And you never came in
And the weary night waiting.
But my heart is as deep
As the grass of her grazing.
O count up her fat cows
My soul feeds on tears.
But lonely tonight waits
And Lonely the years.”

by Constance Madden.

A wee tale: I found this poem in a small book of Irish Writing
found yesterday in Howth; and edited indeed by the Late David Marcus.

I will add in David’s Obit at the base of this piece. The volume number
is 13 and the cost being 6/6.

The Death of David Marcus.

Excerpt from Nagy : Notes on Fear.

Leonard Baskin Woodcut.

Stanza 7

” Pinned on the fieldpark
stand saplings stark,
their boughs drawing the eye skywards
to find, then, night has not come
yet, sky is still green, edged in chrome,
the bare branches outling
unknown ebony letters
and between above in sliced green
the evening star glitters.

*

And a Bunch of tulips inside.

Stanza 8

“Weathered like a traveller
so battered they are
these sweaty envoys
mumbling the lost lines
of their message made flesh:
their beauty launches- (through the slash

of the knife the knife that cut them
through the hand that bought and washed
the shop that sold them
through unbreachable mesh
of a cordon the heart’s startled cries
and hands’ hand’s-off clutch)-
their beauty launches the sizzling
thunderbolt into water, into my eyes.

From Between , by Agnes Nemes nagy, Trans Hugh Maxton.
Publ. Corvina Press Budapest and Dedalus Press, Dublin.