Love Song

Like the hills under dusk you
fall away from the light:
you deepen: the green
light darkens
and you are nearly lost:
only so much light as
stars keep
manifests your face:
the total night in
myself raves
for the light along your lips.

A.R. Ammons

Deena de dos, 1955
Willy Ronis

The Best Time of the Day

Cool summer nights.
Windows open.
Lamps burning.
Fruit in the bowl.
And your head on my shoulder.
These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours,
of course. And the time
just before lunch.
And the afternoon, and
early evening hours.
But I do love

these summer nights.
Even more, I think,
than those other times.
The work finished for the day.
And no one can reach us now.
Or ever.

Raymond Carver

Jacqueline Lisant, 1958
Pablo Picasso

Cathy, Mary, Barbara, 1975
Joseph Szabo

Woman Lying on a Divan, 1829
Joseph-Desire Court

Le Feu Follet (1963)
Louis Malle

The Beach at Palavas, 1854
Gustave Courbet


Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville, 1865
James McNeill Whistler

La Poetesse, 1972
Marc Chagall

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
Lotte Reiniger

In a landscape of having to repeat

In a landscape of having to repeat.
Noticing that she does, that he does and so on.
The underlying cause is as absent as rain.
Yet one remembers rain even in its absence and an attendant quiet.
If illusion descends or the very word you've been looking for.
He remembers looking at the photograph,
green and gray squares, undefined.
How perfectly ordinary someone says looking at the same thing or
I'd like to get to the bottom of that one.
When it is raining it is raining for all time and then it isn't
and when she looked at him, as he remembers it, the landscape moved      closer
than ever and she did and now he can hardly remember what it was      like.

Martha Ronk

Les Amants (1958)
Louis Malle