Diane Corson, Handmade Accordion Book (detail)
***
The weather forecast deceived
Tears instead of rain
Nobody is resurrected
Dahlias have blossomed
In every petal a breath of air
In every breath of air
God was called by his patronymic
Couldn’t imagine it as a feminine
They believed in God according to the national
Calling a patch of unfortunate land a state a country
Ripe apples in the garden
And tomato juice floated through the veins
In the spring, lips kiss
Because they can’t stand their ugliness
The weather forecast deceived
In the spring, bones come down on the grass
And nothing happens
_______________________
Mykyta Ryzhykh
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
A hope that this weather system of tears will turn back into water. A kiss to fool ourselves in love. A choosy God whose response is erratic at best. These are among the touching ponderings from an articulate humanism that sees through our limitations and calls out our delusions for what they are. And there is no room for resignation or regret, as from within these redefined and readapted boundaries, a lucid calm lands our bones, motionless on the grass where we cannot but count the petals of the dahlias and finally appreciate the wait, that nothing that is happening to us, that stillness which is the poet’s dance.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. (T.S. Eliot, East Coker)
Review by Jared Pearce
The conflict here—between what always happens and the striking originality of it happening right now—quite engages me.