Daylight at Russell's Corners, 1944
George Ault

Amelie Rives, Princess Troubetzkoy, 1904
Pierre Troubetzkoy
(Printed by Alvin Langdon Coburn)

The Sound of the Light

I hear sheep running on the path of broken limestone
through brown curled leaves fallen early from walnut limbs
at the end of a summer how light the bony
flutter of their passage I can
hear their coughing their calling and wheezing even the warm
greased wool rubbing on the worn walls I hear them
passing passing in the hollow lane and there is still time

the shuffle of black shoes of women climbing
stone ledges to church keeps flowing up the dazzling hill
around the grassy rustle of voices
on the far side of a slatted shutter
and the small waves go on whispering on the shingle
in the heat of an hour without wind it is Sunday
none of the sentences begins or ends there is time

again the unbroken rumble of trucks and the hiss
of brakes roll upward out of the avenue
I forget what season they are exploding through
what year the drill on the sidewalk is smashing
it is the year in which you are sitting there as you are
in the morning speaking to me and I hear
you through the burning day and I touch you
to be sure and there is time there is still time

W.S. Merwin

Tilly Losch, ca. 1925
Trude Fleischmann

Orange Sweater, 1955
Elmer Bischoff

My Neighbors, 1929
Emil Armin

Two Women in a Garden, 1888
Camille Pissarro

Woman with an Umbrella at the Seashore, 1905
Henri Matisse

Alice in the Cities (1974)
Wim Wenders

Fête, Paris , 1899
Eugène Atget

Red Square Girls, Moscow, 1981
Boris Savelev

Untitled (Ultramarine), 1974
Robert Motherwell

Woman Buttoning Her Shoes, 1915
Egon Schiele

View from a Balcony, 1945
Albert Marquet

Reflection in Oval Mirror, Home Place, 1947
Wright Morris

The Door

When she came suddenly in
It seemed the door could never close again,
Nor even did she close it-she, she-
The room lay open to a visiting sea
Which no door could restrain.

Yet when at last she smiled, tilting her head
To take her leave of me,
Where she had smiled, instead
There was a dark door closing endlessly,
The waves receded.

Robert Graves

Glass Chandelier, 1969
Elmer Bischoff

Untitled (Jane Ninas in Front of Parked Cars in French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana), February-March, 1935
Walker Evans

Untitled (Boulevard Corner), 1981
Garry Winogrand

Whitestone Bridge, 1939-40
Ralston Crawford

Room at the Top (1959)
Jack Clayton

Buffalo '66 (1998)
Vincent Gallo

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1914
Arnold Genthe

Yellow Circle, 1921
László Moholy-Nagy

Seville, Spain, 1930
Martin Munkácsi

Girls Braiding Straw, 1906
Ernest Bieler

The Tree of Life (2011)
Terrence Malick

The Kitchen Sink, 1919
Margaret Watkins

Eleanor, Port Huron, 1942


Eleanor, 1948
Harry Callahan

Nude Figure, 1969
Stanley Cosgrove

Lena, Moscow, 1988


Girl in Box, Leningrad, 1981


Red Girl, Czernowitz, 1987
Boris Savelev

Barbara, c. 1920s


Barbara Sitting in Chair, c. 1930
Artur Nikodem

Nothing Now Astonishes

A month of vigilance draws to its close
With silence of snow and the Northern lights
In longed-for wordlessness.

This rainbow spanning our two worlds
Becomes more than a bridge between them:
They fade into geography.

Variegated with the seven colours
We twist them into skeins for hide and seek
In a lovers' labyrinth.

Can I be astonished at male trembling
Of sea-horizons as you lean towards them?
Nothing now astonishes.

You change, from a running drop of pure gold
On a silver salver, to the white doe
In nut-groves harbouring.

Let me be changed now to an eight-petalled
Scarlet anemone that will never strain
For the circling butterfly.

Rest, my loud heart. Your too exultant flight
Had raised the wing-beat to a roar
Drowning seraphic whispers.

Robert Graves

Springfield, Massachusetts, 1973
Mitch Epstein

Robson St., 1957
Fred Herzog

Bright Light at Russell's Corners, 1946
George Ault

About the Party

I loved seeing you the other night
(and I think everyone noticed!)
which was the first time I'm estimating
since the Oak Street Psychic Fair
when I first saw your ears
as the two beautiful pink wheels they are
and your powerful boyfriend unnecessarily claimed
that I only spread unhappiness with my harmonica playing.

People see each other all the time
and they can't always figure out how to act,
so it sometimes seems as if the dandelions
growing silently behind the high school
are the only truly outstanding reaction
to existence,
and perhaps because I thought
I had no argument with the world
until the backyard mosquitoes
started penalizing my hands
and Wayne of Wayne's Hair Systems
and Jimmy Food Hill combined
to not let me near you,
it came as such a horrible shock to notice
you looked so damn beautiful
beneath Bob's silver maples
that I about shit my heart out.

David Berman

Frida Kahlo on the Train to Mexico, On Route, 1932
Lucienne Bloch

Pink Cyclamen, ca. 1870s
Fidelia Bridges

Berenice Abbott, New York City, ca. 1930
Walker Evans

Doves, 1864
Charles Chaplin

Still Walking (2008)
Hirokazu Koreeda

Landscape, 1938
Stanley Cosgrove

Portrait de Raymonde Vaseur, ca. 1935-36
Moise Kisling