SUNDAY MIX – MEMORIES

This month the Sunday Mix is based loosely on the idea of memories and the feeling that can occur of otherworldliness and a kind of a journey that you take, when a memory strikes.

The music reflects that feeling…

I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town…
The shining town…
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches
As we sat…a little apart…in the close-pressing night.

The moon hung above us like a golden mango,
And the moist air clung to our faces,
Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child
And we watched the out-flung sea
Rolling to the purple edge of the world,
Yet ever back upon itself…
As we…

Inadequate night…
And mooned white memory
Of a tropic sea…
How softly it comes up
Like an ungathered lily.

A Memory – Lola Ridge (1873 – 1941)

And I gave myself to the poem.
And the poem gave to me.
And I gave myself to the sky.
And the sky gave to me.
And I gave myself to the wind.
And the wind took what I gave
and passed it to the sky.

And I gave myself to women.
And women gave to me.
And I gave myself to the wound.
And the wound gave to me.
And I gave myself to hope.
And hope took what I gave
and passed it to the wound.

And I gave myself to wine.
And wine gave to me.
And I gave myself to candlelight.
And candlelight gave to me.
And I gave myself to memory.
And memory took what I gave
and passed it to candlelight.

And I gave myself to music.
And music gave to me.
And I gave myself to the tree.
And the tree gave to me.
And I gave myself to change.
And change took what I gave
and passed it to the tree.

And I gave myself to silence.
And silence gave to me.
And I gave myself to light.
And light gave to me.
And I gave myself to night.
And night took what I gave
and passed it to the stars.

In Vino Veritas – Howard Altmann (2013)

But with the sentence: “Use your failures for paper.” Meaning, I understood, the backs of failed poems, but also my life. Whose far side I begin now to enter— A book imprinted without seeming season, each blank day bearing on its reverse, in random order, the mad-set type of another. December 12, 1960. April 4, 1981. 13th of August, 1974— Certain words bleed through to the unwritten pages. To call this memory offers no solace. “Even in sleep, the heavy millstones turning.” I do not know where the words come from, what the millstones, where the turning may lead. I, a woman forty-five, beginning to gray at the temples, putting pages of ruined paper into a basket, pulling them out again.

Waking the Morning Dreamless Long Sleep – Jane Hirshfield (1953)