mygrations

Les Alyscamps

2011-10-25T07:00:00.001-07:00

(two paintings of Les Alyscamps by Vincent Van Gogh and a photo by Beth Leonard))

walking the shaded Alyscamps where
Van Gogh painted the tree trunks blue
old sarcophagi, empty now -
sent down the river
alone in the breeze,
below blue trees
lichen now, enjoying
the sun,
tombs, forgotten
now Dante
"their covers were all raised up in our view
and out of them such harsh lamenting rose
as from a wretched and a wounded crew"

Barcelona and southern France

2011-09-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

In October Beth and I will travel to the southern coast of France for what I am calling our "poets, painters and heretics tour".
First we will spend a few days in Barcelona visiting Gaudi, Joan Miro, Picasso, Dali, and learning about the poets and prose writers of the Catalan language.
From there we will travel to the land of the langue d'oc, the land of the Provencal, language of the troubadors. We will stay at a small farm in the town of Euzet les Bains, and explore outward from there.
To prepare, I have been assembling a collection of books, perhaps too many, but a wonderful way to begin to try and understand these new places, and the cultures, languages and poetics that have developed there. I want to put up a list of the resources that I am using, in hopes that readers will have suggestions of other books and authors, places to go, things to see...
For Barcelona, I start with the Robert Hughes history, just called Barcelona. From there I branch out to read about Gaudi, Miro, Picasso, and Dali. I read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, and start to read translations of Catalan language poets and prose writers. I read the mystery novels of Manuel Vasquez Montalban and Zafon's In the Shadow of the Wind.
For Provence, for the Langudoc, the reading is wide. I read Petrarch and hope to visit the location, in Avignon, where he first saw Laura, or to climb Mount Ventoux, ( both Petrarch and Mistral write about their climbs.) I read the troubador poems collected and translated in Proensa, and follow that with the poems and prose of Paul Blackburn, a translator of Troubador poems and also El Cid. I read the poems and memoir of Frederic Mistral, called "the Dante of Provence" - the champion of the Provencal language and culture, and winner of the Nobel Prize for poetry. (He used the money from the Nobel prize to create a museum of Provencal in Arles - another spot to visit) Mistral who says:" and no one knows/through what wild countries/this wandering rose returns". I read about the horses of the Camargue and hope to see them. I read A Walking Tour in Southern France - Ezra Pound among the Troubadors (as Pound walks Provence he speaks of "seeing in a way how many persons may flow through us or flow past us while we are alive."), and also his Spirit of Romance, with its essays on Troubadors, Provencal and more.I read the poems of Rene Char, and then of his American poetic heir Gustaf Sobin, as well as Sobin's three collections of Essays about the Languedoc region (Luminous Debris, Ladder of Shadows, Aura) I read Lawrence Durrell's Caesar's Vast Ghost - Aspects of Provence (Durrell says that in Provence "days come and sigh and disappear") and the travel essays on Arles and Albigensians by Zbigniew Herbert. I read about Van Gogh, Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec.
For the heretics I dream of visiting Albi, to say hello to the Albigensians, and of visiting various Cathar strongholds.
There is too much, too much. Will I ever know enough in this life. The urge to go on learning, to stay constantly in the role of student of the world -
Pound says
"Fools, readers of books,
go south & live
there"

layers of wind, shadows, voices,
horses on cave walls,
lichen struck limestone hello
Rhone, hello Camargue
the marys floating before the moon
cusp we call to you
in voices of loons, light
across the water to
join you, soon.

Ruth and Jake Lawless

2011-08-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, July 24, Beth and I took our kayak, and my parents' ashes, and drove to Belfast, my home town. I had been saving my father's ashes since his death in 2002, as my parents had told me that they would like me to mix their ashes together and spread them on the strip of Belfast Bay that you could see from their house. They do have a gravesite in the cemetery in Belfast, in a plot with my father's sister Lisabeth, his mother and father, and his Aunt Mary. We went first to the gravesite, where Beth dug a small trench and I mixed their ashes together - with any spillage going into the plot. We left a third of the ashes there, and then drove to the edge of the bay at the steamboat wharf.
We paddled out, using the Baptist church and Young's lobster pound as our reckoning points. It was late afternoon, the tide and the wind both coming in, a sunny, beautiful day to be on the water.
We spread another third of their ashes on the water, in sight of their house. I wanted to do it just before high tide, so that their ashes would move upstream, take a tour of the harbor, and then head out to sea.
We paddled upstream, under the old bridge, under the new bridge, and all the way up to the head of the tide, under the railroad bridge and under the road bridge.There are not many houses along this stretch of the river, between Route One and the head of the tide. A lot of cedar, hemlock, cormorants and railroad tracks.
Just above the last bridge, at the head of the tide, the tide was stalling and turning. We were in a quiet green paradise ruled by ospreys and kingfishers. It was here, above the final bridge, that we emptied the last of the ashes, as the tide turned, and the water carried them out through the bay that they loved so much, carrying us as well. Another journey, together. Travel well, sweet ones. We love you.

We drove to Rockland to eat supper along the waterfront boardwalk, on the deck at Amalfi, drinking kir royales, eating paella, and celebrating my parents. We wondered how the shore of the river near the head of the tide, where we had just been, could still be so green, so lovely and without humans.
A little research, and contact with my poet friend Kristen Lindquist, found that one side of the river there is protected by the Coastal Mountains Land Trust, as a part of their Green Passy initiative, which is still looking for funding. I gave a donation in my parents' names, to help protect that part of the river forever. Kristen, who works for the land trust, sent me some maps and directions, including a map of the Stover Preserve, which includes a trail from the Doak Road down to the river.
On Sunday, July 31, Beth and I went back to walk down to the river. It was another lovely day, another timeless spot on the river. I urge you all to support the work of the Coastal Mountains Land Trust to preserve this lovely spot, and to support the work of your own local land trusts, to save the many special places still needing protection, for ourselves and for those we love, now, before us, and those to follow.
Here is a draft of my notes from that walk in the Stover Preserve:

What is happening here?
Here where the gentle stream
murmers its song,
on and on.
Here where sunlit leaves
turn in the breeze,
where stone walls and apple trees
look to the past and
the water, the water,
all the way to the Bay.
Everything happens here.
Here where the mosses come
to tell their stories
resting on rock on
granite outcrop.
Here where the kingfishers fly home
where hemlock breathes
where ferns and iris rest
along the river.
Everything happens here.

Loon poems

2010-08-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

Last summer I took part in Maine Audubon's Loon Productivity study, then (and again this spring) taking a two hour paddle every three or four days to hang out with the loons, see what they are up to, what is stressing them, to watch and listen, and also to hang out with geese, turtles, osprey, eagles, beaver, lichens and other friends around the lake.
My friend the painter/poet Stephen Petroff says that he is trying to paint the contents of his heart. In a poem 20 years ago I wrote that, like loons, we sometimes "dive under/dive under and/come up somewhere else." These little fragments come from paddling, and diving under, the contents of my heart.

i
wild roses down
to the water
one loon alone
northeast of the island
cedarscent

ii
bright daylily line
high on a hill
across the lake
oak breeze shoreline
trees, osprey
on Loon Island, again
watching, watching
loon calls
off to the east

iii
train whistle breeze
through trees and
beaver down no
loons around

iv
water lily or
loon white
on the water both
bright
flowers flowers
on the surface of
this world

v
loons take our love
into the lake
hello hello
which is the
real world water
in all this darkness
the loons calling
goodnight goodnight
i love you

vi
every night now
i listen for loons
to hear their voices
to leave this body
to return to stars

vii

(Belfast)
at the bridge
there are loons, swimming
these are my friends now
i have moved
away from this water
every night now
the loons
singing
everything solid
disappears

viii
last night, in the moonlight
at least three loons
voices in the distance
beyond the edge of darkness

ix
voices
through the night
through trees, fields
moon light
voices through moonlight
loons over
water through
the night

x
to be in the company of
these trees, these grasses
these rocks, this water
these birds
hello hello we
finish each other's
sentience

xi
siren on the highway
geese calling I'm
lashed to the mast

xii
pollen covered lake
3 loons,together, these
holy places, behind the islands

gary lawless

naples and the cumaen sybil

2010-04-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

the Cave of the Sybil, Cumae

The Cumaen sybil speaks
through the local journalist
"in Naples there is
no nature."
Above the sybil's cave,
where Daedalus came to ground,
a temple, sacred
to Apollo,
volcano on the horizon,
sunlight on the bay,
ash in the air and
birds, birdsong the
ghosts of old gods,
singing.

Sardine Songs

2010-01-19T07:45:00.000-08:00

reading to the alewives, Damariscotta Mills

Sardine Songs

1
(sardine factory, Belfast)

May we be blessed by
the spirits of these fish
swimming through our world
from the world above
from the world below
rising from the depths of the future
blessing the depths of our past

2

waited all night

in the dark they
gather in the cove
nets, in the water,
nets, in the morning
torn and
gone, all gone.

Were there ever any fish?
Was there ever any sunrise?
Did we dream water full of silver our
pockets full of gold?

3

falling into the soft
sea of darkness
slowly, slowly to bed
wrap me in a blanket of fish
shining in the water like stars
like light from a million years
below some vast ocean of sky
where there is nothing
nothing to hold on to -
flashes, and then
gone

4

I am calling the stars in to me
come in through the head
come in through the chest
come in to my heart
stars fall, become
shining fish
in my body
darkness falls, becomes
cold in my body
I am cold water
becoming fish
from hot stars
becoming granite
calling the water to
come into my body

Stars have fallen into the water
stars have fallen into the rock
the sun enters the water
the moon enters the water
the stars enter the water
the light enters the water
fish shine like shards

5

sing a song of herring
all those sweet
sardines those
little fish those
flashes of light
in a dark world
bringing the world back
bringing the world back
to us

Gary Lawless

migrationist

2009-06-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

I am in a cave in southern France, looking at a salmon cut into the cave wall 30,000 years ago, a male, over one meter long, detailed, the product of an artist who knew salmon, who saw them swimming through.
Since 1973 I have been thinking about the idea of bioregionalism, thinking about how to learn to live in a particular place, and how to gradually come to be a part of that place, a partner in the natural workings of that place, and to learn to be less and less "intrusive", as we humans have a way of being.
As I learn about my own particular place, living here next to a lake in Maine, I come to learn about all of the beings whose lives pass through this place, at one time of the year or another.These are the great migratory tribes, and their own home regions cover a much wider range than my own. We are coming around to celebrating these friends.
We welcome the loons back, the eagles, ospreys, herons, orioles, grosbeaks, bobolinks and so many more. We watch for turtles in the road. We welcome the alewives as they arrive to swim from the ocean up into the lake, through a series of newly built pools, human-made to assist them in their journey. We look to the milkweed for monarchs, rising up in the fall for their journey to Mexico. And so many others.
As a practicing Caribouddhist I worry about the caribou, moving from protection in Canada into the United States, to calve on the plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or the reindeer, living with the consequences of nuclear disaster in their bodies, or the wolves and condors reintroduced in the American west, the bears and wolves reintroduced in Italy and Slovenia, my stork friends flying from Africa to Latvia, Lithuania, flying through the horror of war in Iraq twice a year. And so many others.
As a bioregionalist, I want my own bioregion to provide these travelers with their traditional food, lodging and safety - natural concerns for a weary pilgrim, but now I think that I must also be a migrationist, worrying about the health of their journey, the flyways, the migratory routes, the ocean, the air, so that these travelers are able to safely make their yearly journeys. My bioregion extends to the boreal forests, the south american songbird destinations, all the many parts of the world to which i am connected, my home place is connected , by these wonderful migrating friends. and so many more.

Migration Prayer

we will greet them with colorful flags,
wave them on their way through,
light fires, burn incense,
prepare a feast to say
We wish you well
pray for your travels
take care, take care

computer crash

2009-06-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

our computer here at the farm crashed last week, and took a lot of information with it,including our mailing list. If you want to hear from us, please send us your email address, as our address book, in our new computer, is empty. chimfarm@gwi.net Thanks!

cave art in the Dordogne

2009-05-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

In May Beth and I spent 4 days in the Dordogne region of France, going into caves to look at the art on the walls of the caves. We went to Lascaux 2, a replica, as the original cave is now closed to the public.(for more on the tragic current conditions in the Lascaux cave, and to see a gallery of art from the cave, go to www.savelascaux.org) We went into the Font de Gaume, Combarelles, Pech Merle and Grotte de Cougnac caves, the Cap Blanc cliff shelter, and to the Le Thot animal park, where they have living descendants of the animals painted on the cave walls.Seeing the Przewalski horses, and the Tarpans (although "polluted by domestication") was like seeing the horses come down off the cave walls.

We saw polychrome paintings, engraving, sculpture, wonderful animals, handprints, bear scratches, and some pretty amazing caves.There are a lot of critters with antlers - I feel that I am in the sacred halls of early European Caribouddhism.
(My basic text before coming to the caves was Juniper Fuse - Upper Paleolithic Imagination and the Construction of the Underworld, by Clayton Eshleman. Eshleman has been coming to the caves since the early 1970s, publishing a number of books of poems based on his experiences with the caves, and this book combines cave information, poetry and scholarship, along with photos and illustrations from the caves. Another book I would recommend, as another point of view, is Georges Bataille's The Cradle of Humanity - Prehistoric Art and Culture - with essays and talks on the caves and their art.)

After the caves, we took a train from Sarlat to Paris, and in Paris saw an incredible show of the work of William Blake, which resonated strongly with the images and feelings left in us from the caves.

The First Gallery:

"The eye exists in its savage state." Andre Breton

cool afternoon in
black manganese hands
in the rock more
hands in the rock

cro magnon wireless
this dark
I want to tell you
what I saw

"so many souls circulate here"

The Hyena's den
"in the midst of the animal remains were the teeth
and a fragment of gnawed humerus belonging
to a Neanderthal."

"the statue communicated with them
in a secret language."

William Blake
"How do you know but ev'ry bird
that cuts the airy way
is an immense world of delight,
clos'd by your senses five."

William Blake
"Imagination is eternity."

" What is the material world,
and is it dead?"

I left this morning,
covered in weeds and ashes
and the strong words of a friend,
"We'll never see each other,
in this life, again"

Yaqui Easter

2009-02-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

Every year as Spring and Easter approach, I remember the Yaqui Easter ceremonies, and go back to read the Yaqui deer dance songs. Beth and I were lucky to have traveled to Tucson to see the Easter dances there one year, and now i am thinking of that world, the world of deer dancers, the wilderness world, the enchanted world, the flower world, and that combination of Easter with Jesus, the Romans, death and resurrection, with hummingbirds, flowers, pollen and deer singers. Here is one of those Deer songs ( the deer is talking to the wilderness world, and the brightness is the brightness of the light before dawn)

flower wilderness,
as I want to go out,
flower wilderness.
In the enchanted flower wilderness world
I went out,
flower wilderness.

flower wilderness,
as I want to go out,
flower wilderness.
In the enchanted flower wilderness world
I went out,
flower wilderness.

flower wilderness,
as I want to go out,
flower wilderness.
In the enchanted flower wilderness world
I went out,
flower wilderness.

Over there I,
under the flower-covered brightness,
I see you.
In the enchanted flower wilderness world,
I went out,
flower wilderness.

(from Yaqui Deer Songs - Maso Bwikam, A Native American Poetry , Larry Evers and felipe S. Molina)

Passagassawaukeag/Belfast

2009-01-12T06:12:00.001-08:00

Belfast Harbor Night View
Yvonne Jacquette

Passagassawaukeag

I.
I'm floating above the town,
above the bridges, above the bay
there are the lights
there is the darkness
water and sky
bridges and bay
everyone gone now
done away
upriver, downriver,
all the way home.

II.
just before sleep, I realize
there is a portal in the river -
between Maplewood and Penobscot,
near the sardine factory, maybe
below the old bridge, with
a constant movement of souls -
chicken, sardine, redfish,
mackerel, striper and
fellow humans -
a door below the
bay, the way
home -
the river is the portal
I dive into the water
looking for my father, dead
the ashes, spread

III.
Passagassawaukeag
where the languages go
a prayer for all of it
a prayer for the living
a prayer for the dead
Williamson translates the river name as
"place of ghosts or spirits, dead men walk"
the flitting lights
Fannie Eckstorm says "place where they fished
for sturgeon by torch light"
a river of ghosts, a river of light,
sturgeon the size of
a man, shoots into the air,
sturgeon and spirits all
shining, all returning, at
dusk, on a fresh tide -
in a dream they showed me,
below the river, below the town,
the entrance to a cave, a cave
full of pictures of my father,
my father, in his youth -
west into the cave away
from the water west
west where the light goes
west where the sun goes
where the dead men go, all souls, moving -
I am under water and
I can't tell night from morning.
when the light is gone
when all there is left is love -
when the body steals
even memories, even time -
my mother is losing her memory
not in the small ways of
where are my glasses
what was his name but
in the final way where
time, history, life and love
become lost and I
lose my own history.
who will tell me about the farms, the streets,
the houses, the people -
who will sing those quiet songs,
help me sleep?
pictures with no stories
faces with no names
is this my family?
history doesn't matter
memory doesn't matter
time doesn't matter
love doesn't matter
the weather changes
without you
history changes.
it's not easy.
it's just dying.
the river rises,
out of the dark,
going west, west
beyond familiar hills
into deeper water.

Gary Lawless

Nanao breaks the mirror

2008-12-23T05:51:00.000-08:00

from Gary Snyder:
"Nanao has taken off to walk the star path."

When I asked Nanao once what I should say to a friend who had just lost a loved one, Nanao said "Congratulations"

So, congratulations Nanao. We love you.
Gary and Beth

Nanao photo by John Suiter

sardine factory

2008-11-23T09:31:00.001-08:00

(sardine factory, Belfast)

May we be blessed by
the spirits of these fish
swimming through our world
from the world above
from the world below
rising from the depths of the future
blessing the depths of our past

image: Kimberly Callas
poem: Gary Lawless

toward a Migration collaborative project

2008-11-18T09:58:00.000-08:00

Caribou Sutra

We learn to be tender
with each other.
We learn to turn
and wait.
We cannot walk
alone for long.
We take our songs
out of the air,
speak the language of
sun on the rocks
at the edge of the river.
We learn when to cross,
when to return.

Let us be blessed with birds.
Let us remember the sound of
wings in still air,
songs in early morning sunlight.

Let us carve beautiful birds,
send our souls to fly away.
Let us carve beautiful birds,
send our souls to fly away.

drawings by Stephen Petroff, poems by Gary Lawless

note from Two Elk - by Andrew Schelling
from the Teton Sioux - how the dream visits you, with responsibility more binding than a vow.
"The animals want to communicate with man - but Wakan'tanka does not intend that they shall do so directly man must do the greater part in securing an understanding.
Let a man decide upon his animal and make a study of it. Let him learn to understand its sounds and motions,

Curses

2008-10-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

For some time now I have been interested in poems functioning as curses. At first I had an Old Testament model in mind, a Jeremiad or calling down of the wrath of God onto someone or some thing. My friend poet/painter Stephen Petroff turned me on to the curses of Antonin Artaud, written during his institutionalization, pieces of paper with writing and drawing, scorched or burned through with cigarettes or matches, sent by mail to the cursed person. This is writing that comes alive, lives inside of you, calls out demons, and changes your life.
Here is a curse I came across today, in the collection The Best American Poetry 2008, edited by Charles Wright.
A poem by Maxine Kumin, originally published in The Hudson Review:

Though He Tarry

"I believe with perfect faith in
the coming of the Messiah
and though he tarry I will
wait daily for his coming"
said Maimonides in 1190
or so and 44 percent
of people polled in the USA
in 2007 are also waiting
for him to show up in person -
though of course he won't be a person.

Do we want to save our planet,
the only one we know of,
so the faithful 44 percent
can be in a state of high alert
in case he arrives in person
though of course he won't be a person

According to Stephen Jay Gould
"science and religion are
non-overlapping magisteria"
See each elbowing the other
to shove over on the bed
they're condemned to share?
See how they despise, shrink back
from accidental touching?
It's no surprise that
60% of scientists
say they are nonbelievers.

But whether you're churchy or not
what about the planet?
Damn all of you with dumpsters.
Damn all who do not compost.
Damn all who tie their dogs out
on bare ground, without water.
Damn all who debeak chickens
and all who eat them, damn
CEO's with bonuses,
corporate jets, trophy wives.

Damn venal human nature
lurching our way to a sorry
and probably fiery finale...
If only he'd strap his angel wings on
in the ether and get his licensed
and guaranteed ass down here -
though of course he won't be a person -
if only he wouldn't tarry.

Maxine Kumin

Relics of the Magi

2008-09-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

three wise men
out of the desert
following a star

In Iran then
called Persia
Marco Polo
out from Venice
in a town called Saveh
found the bodies
saw the bodies
of the three Magi each
in his own sarcophagus,
dry but
" still whole and have
their hair and beards"
the town now
lost, in ruins,
the Magi, gone.

three wise men
out of the desert
following a star

from Constantinople, a gift from
Constantine and his mother Helen,
to Milano and then
to Cologne, bones
of the Wise Men, three
crowns of the city, these
old bones, wrapped in Syrian cloth and
the faint scent of frankincense

three wise men
out of the desert
following a star

("worship makes relics real,
makes them part of reality"
Pentti Saarikoski)

on the Feast Day of Saint Jerome, 2008

poem by Latvian poet Ingmara Balode

2008-09-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

for Leva, in Tuja village

Now the hornbeams throw flames in my face.
Shadows.
No boats go fishing today.

Sit.
A storm is gathering at the horizon.
You're stringing bunches and beads
of rowan - and chokeberries
warm your hands.

I could tell you
"the summer is over"
but that's what
you know.

Ingmara Balode
Latvia

Poetic Justice

2008-05-26T08:31:00.001-07:00

Lynx Liberation Communique

2008-04-22T16:31:00.001-07:00

Lynx Liberation Communique

Plum Creek Che
Down from the mountains

Comandante Lynx, Presente!
down from the mountains.
Comandante Wolf, Presente!
down from the mountains.
Comandante Moose, Presente!
down from the mountains.
Comandante Loon, Presente!
down from the mountains
with courage and strength
comrades
for the struggle to live
free in your own lands
to bring democracy
to biodiversity -
courage and strength
to stop the roads
No Pasaran!
to stop the clearing, the destruction,
the dying
Presente, Comandante,
Brothers, Sisters
We stand with you.

Gary Lawless

lawless offers 2 courses at USM- Lewiston

2008-04-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

Poet, publisher and bookstore owner Gary Lawless will offer two courses at USM's Lewiston campus this year, one over the summer and one in the fall:

HUM 399 Poetry and the Natural World
July 6-August 21
Tuesday and Thursday 400-630

This course will consist of a survey of poets' voices in connection with the natural world. The course will range from Neolithic hunting magic to 21st century eco-poetics, from the ancient Middle East to China and Japan, from Lewiston to Rome to Somalia, from poems of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia to Native American poetries. Students will be asked to read widely and to respond critically to what they have read, learning along the way how people from many eras, cultures and bioregions have interacted with, responded to, and given voice to the natural world thru poetry.

The fall course is:
Hum 399 - Howling With The Beats
Tuesdays 7-930
Instructor: Gary Lawless

This course will look at the poetry of the Beat writers, but will further explore the poets who influenced the Beat writers. (for example: for Allen Ginsberg we will
look at Blake, Smart, Whitman, Williams...; for Gregory Corso we will look at Shelley and Keats, Rimbaud and Baudelaire, Dante...; For Lawrence
Ferlinghetti we will look at Dante, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Andre Breton, Whitman...: for Gary Snyder we will look at Han Shan, Basho, Nanao Sakaki, Jaime de Angulo, Milton, Kenneth Rexroth...and more.Other Beat authors will include Jack Kerouac, Diane Di Prima, Joanne Kyger, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch.
The course will be a survey of sources for the supposedly spontaneous writings of the Beats. After graduating from college in 1973 Gary Lawless lived as apprentice poet at the California home of Gary Snyder and met and learned from a number of prominent poets from the circle of the Beats. Check out Lawless's poetry blog: mygrations.blogspot.com
To register, or for more information, please call the college at 765-6500

bees - kimberly art/gary poem

2008-02-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

bee line
line of sight
first line I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
be the bee i dream tonight

St. Jerome

2007-12-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

Bitter roots and Penitence

Jerome, with a book, writing

I dreamed of you last night or

Augustine, writing a letter, Jerome

I dreamed of you

last night I

dreamed you were dead.

Ring the hermit's bell

to scare the devil away.

The lion, alone,

now licking his paw.

Ferruccio Brugnaro, Italian Poet

2007-12-18T07:34:00.001-08:00

In Venice, Beth and I met up with native Venetian Beat Bard Alessandro Spinazzi. Sandro said to meet him on the Rialto bridge at 2PM, and when I asked him how we would know him, he said "Because I look like you!' We spent the afternoon at a very pleasant street cafe, and the next evening we went to the home Sandro shares with his wife Katy. Sandro had invited the poet Ferruccio Brugnaro and his wife Maria. A wonderful evening of food, wine, poetry and friendship.

Ferruccio is also a native Venetian, and worked for much of his life in the industrial zone of Marghera, just west of Venice, on the mainland. A Communist, an activist, a lifelong poet, Ferruccio has recently read at festivals in San Francisco and Cuba. His work is available here in the United States in a collection called Fist of Sun, translated by Jack Hirschman and published by Curbstone Press, and in a collection for his wife Maria, called Portrait of A Woman, also translated by Jack Hirschman and published by CC Marimbo Press.

Here is a poem called We Don't Want Bosses, Period (from Fist of Sun)

We don't want bosses of any kind,

period.

They've already splashed around

in our blood,

already feasted plenty

on our lives.

Stop asking us so many questions.

Look at our injuries

the damage done to peasants

and miners.

We've gotta yank this plant out of the world

once and for always.

Don't ask anything else of us. We've really

made up our guts.

We don't want bosses

because they're

the same as ever:

because they want the land

all for themselves,

because they want the sun

all for themselves,

because they never stop

robbing, trampling,

and killing, killing

day and night under every kind of sky.

and a poem from Portrait of A Woman, for his wife, Maria:

Sometimes Maria sings

the most intense songs.

Songs I've never

heard before

that aren't heard

anywhere

She sings, sometimes explodes

wordlessly

with her songs

packed with

history.

She sings tirelessly of things,

unknown

events

she moves, sways,

she sings

profound joys to me.

Sings to me, invents, makes up

songs for me

does Maria

returning sometimes

in the middle of the night

songs that can't be described

can't be re-told.

italian history of the west

2007-12-18T06:38:00.000-08:00

In San Gimignano, a hilltop town of many towers, we stay in a small hotel facing the central piazza. On a table in a common area I find, among the Italian fashion magazines, two issues of Mountain Gazette, where I find this "New History of the West":

Kill all the Indians.
Kill anything with fur.
Mine all the mountains.
Cut down all the trees.
Dam the rivers.
Ski.
Ryan Dingus

italia

2007-12-14T20:21:00.000-08:00

nobody knows us here we're

moving down the mountain we're

looking for a river we're

looking for a cloud we're

looking for a language we're

looking for a sign we're

looking for a story that will

tell us when we're home

gary lawless

Italian relics

2007-11-20T09:27:00.000-08:00

Usually when we go to Italy I am on the lookout for relics, looking in the Catholic churches for body parts, pieces of saints, bones, teeth, blood, breath, pieces of the True Cross and thorns from the crown of thorns. This trip had a slight variation on that theme.
In Rome we went to the Spanish Steps, and the Keats/Shelley museum, the rooms where Keats died, facing the Spanish Steps. There they have locks of hair from Keats, Shelley and Milton, collected by Leigh Hunt, and also a piece of Shelley's jaw (with a quote from one of the women in their circle saying that she couldn't bear to see the jaw, as she would remember the lips that once covered it, and the words which came from those lips...)Shelley's heart, saved by Trelawney from the funeral pyre, is not there. Mary took it with her.
In the north of Italy, in the south Tyrol/Dolomites/Alto Adige we went to the city of Bolzano, to the Museum of the South Tyrol, where the oldest relic going in Italy is housed - The Ice Man. The Ice Man dates to 5400 years old, frozen into a glacier high up in the mountains and found emerging from the ice by two hikers. A storm in the Sahara had deposited a dark layer of sand on the ice, causing melting (of course, along with global warming) and the eventual exposure of the Ice Man. Italy and Austria argued over which country would house the relics, and the international border was surveyed, showing the Ice Man to be about 20 meters into Italy.
Relics have always brought pilgrims, tourists, and business. Bolzano has created a lovely museum to house the Ice Man. They feature, of course, a look at him, but also create a story and a context for each article of his clothing, his tools, his first aid kit, his weapons. The museum looks at everything from his tattoos to his bearskin soled shoes, from his fleas and tick, stomach parasites and blue eyes to his arsenic levels (high, probably from taking part in the smelting of metals). He has mushrooms in his first aid kit, to stop bleeding, and carried two birchbark containers lined with leaves. He was killed by an arrow in the back, and died clutching a dagger in his hand. It is an amazing thing to come face to face with someone from so long ago and yet, right there. I sat on a chair in the museum and wrote this little poem:

Ice Man Sutra (Bolzano)

where everything is revealed.
These are the mountains.
These are the mountains
beyond the mountains.
This is the sky.
This is the sky
beyond the sky.
This is the moment
beyond the mountains
beyond the sky.

Basket (Kimberly Callas, Gary Lawless)

2007-11-20T07:34:00.000-08:00

Basket offers
the arms of the plant world
to hold you secure and
at rest, dreaming
in three worlds at once -
below the surface
at the surface
above the surface
breathing darkness, air
and light

****************

breath of a wind from
another world -
cold air from
deep space through
the Pleiades, Sisters
give you a dream, say
here, hold this, fill
your basket your
emptiness here -
breathe

If you would like a free copy of our chapbook Basket, Notes Toward a Field Guide" with poems, drawings and notes from the collaboration, please email your mailing address to chimfarm@gwi.net .

poet in new york

2007-05-31T06:02:00.001-07:00

Photos:

Gary at Bowery Poetry Club

Gary with Judith Schwartz, Simon Pettet and Brenda Coultas

Beth and Gary, in Central Park Zoo, with Gary's poem

Gary with poem

Polar Bears in Central Park Zoo, from site of Gary's poem

So Beth and I went to New York City. We had not been there for over 30 years, but George Wallace invited me to read at the Bowery Poetry Club, so that served as an excuse, and some wonderful friends loaned us their apartment, so off we went.

I did read at the Bowery Poetry Club, where we met up with friends George Wallace, Chris Martin, Paul Pines, Judith Schwartz, Simon Pettet, and where we met Brenda Coultas. After the reading we walked with Simon to the Saint Mark's Bookstore, where I bought Brenda's book A Handmade Museum - what a powerful book. A real treasure.

The next day we went to the Central Park Zoo, to see a poem of mine on a wall near the polar bears. A couple of years ago poet Sandra Alcosser had some kind of artist in residence gig at the zoo, and did permanent installations of a number of poems (Old Walt Whitman thinking that he could go and live with the animals, Sappho, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O'Hara, Naomi Nye, and here I am as we walk along toward the bears.) I had foolishly asked if my poem could face the bears, and not the onlookers, but if you turn around while reading the poem, the bears are there. The poem now, written maybe 20 years ago, seems prophetic when you consider the fate of these polar bears in the face of global warming.

Here is the poem:

Treat each bear as the last bear.

Each wolf the last, each caribou.

Each track the last track.

Gone spoor, gone scat.

There are no more deertrails,

no more flyways.

Treat each animal as sacred,

each minute our last.

Ghost hooves. Ghost skulls.

Death rattles and

dry bones.

Each bear walking alone

in warm night air.

Memorial Day at Chimney Farm

2007-05-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day at Chimney Farm. We have given Elizabeth Coatsworth a fox for her grave. Foxes appear in many of her books and poems, including her books Fox Footprints, The Fox Friend, and here, in a piece called The Fox-Woman, in Personal Geography:"Of what are you afraid? Of the loneliness in the heart of the fox, or of the beauty with which she has clothed herself on this spring evening? You would not be afraid if you saw me running along the ground with the dew wet on my fur and the stars shining in my eyes.

We are all visions, dreamed by the gods as they sleep."

There are many colorful birds at the feeder these days - orioles come for the orange slices, a cardinal couple and rose breasted grosbeaks at the feeder, among others.

We have a list of apple varieties planted here at the farm by William Hall in the 1870s: Baldwin, Fameuse, Foundling, Golden Russet, Gravenstein, Granite Beauty, Hurlbut, King of Tompkins County, Jonathan, Marshall, Minister, Northern Spy, Porter, Red Astrakhan, Rhode Island Greening, Sweet Bough, Talman's sweet, and Yellow Bellflower.

Several years ago we planted Golden Russet and Fameuse, and this year Nancy Holmes brought us Northern Spy, Baldwin, and Astrakhan, so we are on our way to restoring the old apple orchards here. If anyone has a line on any of the varieties we do not have, please let us know. We want to thank Nancy Holmes, John Bunker, Dr. George Dow and mary Sheldon for apple advice so far.

Storks

2007-04-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

I tramped along the bed of a dried up stream.
A downcast stork trudged toward me.

Without exchanging greetings
We passed each other by ...

Janis Baltvilks

Everywhere i traveled in Lithuania and Latvia I saw storks. Because i am here for the "Poetry Spring" festival, I am arriving as the storks arrive. The storks bring good luck, so nesting platforms are built to attract them. They are seen on steeples, telephone poles, and following the farmers as they turn over the soil in the fields.
Before I left Maine, I had been working with a group of Somali refugees in Portland, for an 8 week poetry project. One of the things that they told me was that storks bring good luck, and that they try to attract them to their houses. In Latvia I bought a book called "Latvia - Land of the Storks", which showed the migration routes for the storks. The storks fly two basic routes from Africa to the Baltics, one along tha Atlantic Coast, and the other eastward to the eastern end of the Mediterranean and down into Africa to, yes, Somalia, so my friends in both places could be seeing the same birds, their luck interconnected.
Unluckily for the storks, and other migrating species, their migrations take them through Iraq, and the beginning of the recent Iraq war, the "shock and awe" phase, took place just when the storks were beginning their journey north.

I had been working with Somali mothers and their first thru third grade children. The kids were writing poems in English, the mothers were writing poems in their native language and then I was having the kids translate the poems for me. The kids told me that the women had written a poem about me. The women would only laugh gleefully when I asked them about the poem. The kids said that it referred to a Somali story, and tried to tell me about it. I wrote a poem based on lines that the kids gave me. The white bird in the poem is, yes, a stork.

What the Somali Women Told Me

She tells me that my long beard
is as useless as the tall grass
surrounding my house like weeds.
I tell her that I
am a man of wissdom, and luck.
A white bird sits on my roof.
Once a woman carried me
on her back.
I could see everything.
I felt I could fly,
like eagle, like owl.
Her breasts are large with milk.
Her fingers are covered with jewels -
rubies, emeralds and gold.
She says:
Your beard is empty.
The wind fills your house.
The birds have flown away.

Janis Baltvilks

2007-04-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

The poet I most wanted to meet in Latvia was Janis Baltvilks. I had been asking about nature poets, and everyone I asked mentioned Baltvilks. He was an ornithologist, edited a birding publication for young birders, and wrote short, compact, haiku like poems, many featuring birds, especially storks. I asked Janis Elsbergs to invite Baltvilks to my poetry reading in Riga. We did not know if he would be able to come, as he was recovering from serious axe wounds received when a friend lost control and attacked him.. Baltvilks did come to the reading. I was reading in English, and Ingmara was reading the poems in Latvian. In the middle of the reading I read several Baltvilks poems, and Ingmara read them in Latvian i watched a smile light up his face.

I suggested that we do a book of his poems in English, from Blackberry Press. Rita Laima Berzins translated the poems from Latvian to English, and I published a bilingual edition of his poems, Called The Skylark Will Come (Blackberry Books, 2004, 112 pages, $13.95)

Here are several poems from that book:

Forests, forests.
Bodies of water.
The church's reflection in the lake.

How gently,
how deeply
I am rooted here

*****

At the end of a sultry day
a bitterish fog above the meadowsweet:
poetry that mends and heals

*****

Warm mist
after a summer shower

How I love
this life!

to Latvia

2007-03-19T20:12:00.002-07:00

After a wild week of poetry in Lithuania, with lots of vodka and little sleep, I take the bus from Vilnius to Latvia, to Riga. How many hours - six, seven - I don't know. No one on the bus speaks English, I speak none of their languages, and I am alone.
At the border men with guns board the bus, take my passport, and motion me off the bus. Outside, they motion me to the side of the road. We cannot speak to each other. No one knows where I am. I don't know what they want. Eventually I understand that I am to walk through a trough full of a couple inches of liquid, soaking my shoes. No soil diseases crossing this border. I reboard the bus, my feet wet and smelling of chemicals. Latvia.
My hosts in Latvia have emailed me and told me to expect a different kind of week. They do not drink. They do not smoke. They do not eat meat. They have no car, no tv. They are poets.
I love the world, and everything in it.

My hosts are Janis Elsbergs and Ingmara Balode. I met Janis at the Vilenica poetry festival in Slovenia (where I also met Liudvikus from Lithuania). We spent a week with a group of poets traveling around Slovenia giving poetry readings, eating and drinking. A story for another time.

Janis comes from a literary "first family" in Latvia. His mother, Vizma Belsevica, was Latvia's leading woman writer of the 20th century, publishing poetry, novels, works for children, and translations (including Shakespeare, Poe, Twain, T S Eliot, Hemingway, Vonnegut and Tennessee Williams). Through her work she expressed her condemnation of the Soviet occupation of Latvia, leading to the banning of her work for seven years. Another of her sons, Klavs Elsbergs, was a poet and singer songwriter, singing about freedom, who met an early death, and whose murder was never investigated by the Soviet authorities.

Here is a poem by Vizma Belsevica:

Words come to me in a dream. They gath-

ered around like little scamps, whose mother

had been summoned by the militia to an-

swer for their mischief. And the soft lips of

the smallest and sweetest of them grew stiff

and began to quiver and it seemed, at any

moment now, he would cry,"I'll never do it

again." But he wasn't a crying word. And

so I said:

Words, my words, don't hang your heads, when once again

we're put on trial. The dock of the accused

is just a worn threshold to be trodden

for a world with no walls to begin. A land not a room.

There comes a time to hatch from the egg.

All birds know this. Even the hen.

This is known by the bird. The poet. And the word.

Even the ultimate sentence bringss a freedom

that cannot be revoked. If brushed by open air,

don't look back on the walls, your life.

Birds die. And poets. The blow of an axe

can't fell a word that's been said before death.

A word that's been spoken can't be annulled.

Like a swallow in the sky, it can't be run to ground.

Words, my words, spare your pity!

The ground that supports the harvest

is not to be pitied by the seed.

With no new shoots, no ploughshare, the soil grows thin.

Hack deeper, painfully, for new thought to thrive.

Come praise or punishment: it's not your worry.

When the poem is done, the gates between us close.

Go on alone. I brought you forth to life,

and take full responsibility,

Words, my words ...

translated by Mara Rozitis

and another poem by Vizma Belsevica:

At Peace

I say, at last, all is well.

But the rose sheds petals of blood,

what does that red stream sweep away?

I do not know. All is well.

I say, at last, I am at peace.

All that is left of the rose is a stalk

and a grey scatter of pollen. Were there tears?

I do not know. I am at peace.

I say, I expect nothing.

This greyness is so soft and slow.

Time hangs mute. The clock sleeps.

I don't expect anything.

My life grows thin and drifts away

a quiet smile, no more.

One day you'll walk right through me

and not notice.

Then all will be well.

(translated by Mara Rozitis)

to the coast, to Nida

2007-03-19T20:12:00.001-07:00

We travel to Nida, where the amber river meets the Baltic.

For Liudvikus

Amber in alcohol a resiny
sting on the tongue,
vodka on the run,
coke in the strip bar,
downtown, rivers run
out of Russia,
to the sea sand of Nida.
Drinking with your father,
fifteen years in Siberia he
hands me a glass,
Dusk, and it looks like rain.

Lithuanian Prophecy

Maybe he said we were going
to Kaunas, or Klepeda.
Maybe we had had
too much to drink.
Maybe we ended up
on sand beaches in Nida.
Maybe the river will stop flowing.
Maybe there will be amber.
Maybe the storks will come.
Maybe we were never
really here at all.

Stork sky amber river

Inside the bear
there is snow and cold water.
Outside, storks fly north,
from the desert,
bringing good luck.
Everything comes to the river,
following a map of amber,
ancient pine forest resin flow
rivermouth lagoon.
I will return, encased in amber,
when the black storks
fly home.

We have driven for miles, away from the city (Vilnius), forty odd poets in a bus, to the farm of the man who makes the best beer in Lithuania. We are on his lawn, drinking beer, and eating strips of smoked pig's ears, which I find delicious. I remember the feed store at home, where I buy grain and shavings. They sell pigs' ears as chew toys for dogs, not knowing how well they go with beer. I am in a new place, and always learning.
When it comes time to go, the bus is stuck in the sand driveway. We cannot push it out. Drunken poets throw themselves in front of the bus, not wanting to leave. Local tractors are sent for, and pickup trucks come to take us to another farm, where there is grilled sausage and beer. We eat. We drink. The night grows darker.

the forest

2007-03-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

I am asking poets where are the nature poems. Who are the contemporary poets writing about the natural world? Late into the evening one poet tells me "We cannot write about the forest. The forest is where they took us to kill us."
Vilnius, Vilna. Stalin was here, then Hitler, then Stalin again. The center of Jewish learning became the Vilna ghetto. Some escaped into the forest, to fight against the Nazis. A young organizer in the ghetto, Abba Kovner, escaped to the forest and later to Israel, to spend his life on a kibbutz, and to write beautiful poems. I have seen the documentary The Partisans of Vilna, have seen Kovner's face, heard his voice, heard some of the old songs.

in lithuania

2007-03-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

publishing party

Liudvikus/meandering stream

After the reading, a party. A large Russian grabs me by the beard, shaking me and screaming "Fucking American. Fucking American." I don't resist, and his friends get him off me, telling me that he likes to fight when he gets drunk. They call him a cab, and he is taken away. The next morning he is found naked, and badly beaten. He said something to the cab driver, who radioed other drivers and took the Russian to the outskirts of town, where he was beaten and abandoned.
Everyone in the city uses cabs. You call on your cell phone, and they call you back when they arrive outside your door. The streets are dangerous after dark.

A little amber in the blood,
a little vodka, and
how do you say hello?

The stripper is from the Ukraine,
or belorusse - a large
Russian grabs me
by the beard,
yelling "Fucking american,
fucking american" but
How do you say hello?

My translator is drunk.
Someone has locked him
into the outhouse.
Now we will talk about the river but
How do you say hello?

Patron saints and sewers,
boxcars and murder -
we cannot talk
about the forest -
they took us there to kill us but
How do you say hello?

lithuania

2007-03-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

It is my first night in Lithuania, in Vilnius, Old Vilna -. My friend and translator Liudvikus Jakimavicius
has invited me to the Writers' Union, to take part in a publishing party for his new book. He wants to have " a happening".
The room is full, and no one knows who I am. Liudvikus reads the introductory poem, in Lithuanian, and I rise from my seat in the audience and read the poem, in English:
meandering river
sifting through nets
searching for fish
Liudvikus, Mindaugas the sculptor, and a musician are doing something shamanic with drums and wood and sound - I think of the statue in the central square, just blocks away, a giant warrior with his horse, the national hero, leading the pagan Lithuanians, the last western European country to resist Christianity, leading the people against the Northern Crusade, called by the Pope .
(and not far away, in another square, a statue of Frank Zappa.)
I rise again, read another Liudvikus poem:

A Conversation
in the memory of old hippies

now above our heads
green chestnut sky
slow summer thoughts
pinkish fluff
fallen burned out
on the blue ground
I don't ask anymore
if you believe in me
there was no God among us

one by one
you haven't said a thing to me
leaving

taking my time
I'll drink to you
cheap red wine
do you know that you know what you know
about what's really far out

birds gather there to take a breather
black boats float
flapping their high-set sails
do you know that you know what you know

babe for now
on this shore we both
speak without hearing
and listen how Vilnele carries through the rapids
pinkish chestnut fluff..

the evening ends with the poem's return:
meandering river
at a quiet bend
finds white bellies of fish.

caribou poet

2007-03-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

I get my news from poetry.
I learn about the world through poetry.
I learn how to live in the world, how to behave in the world, through poetry.
Let me tell you a story, read you a poem ...