Inspired by a coalescence of Alice Oswald’s Severed Head Floating Downriver (and truly all of Falling Awake), John Ashbery‘s Three Madrigals, Herberto Helder‘s Servidões and Rilke‘s Death.
Mostly an exercise in form, or trials of mathematising form. In fact, only the last of the madrigals has my formal signature. I have been finding it hard to understand creativity, lately. Signifiers and significations. Sometimes I feel claustrophobic.
Thank you for reading,
João-Maria.
(CALIATH) 
Grief can indent… starting with.. its what speaks when no one speaks and leaving us with… its what speaks when everyone speaks.. .and all that’s in between like salt that stays from spray of seas . Beautiful..the way you write…the words with which.
It is so good to read you. Thank you for sharing your writing.
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Oh, S.S., that means a whole lot. And the way you’ve expressed it, as well, endears me wholly.
Grief can be… of difficult description. To me, poetry is inexhaustible, and I thus cannot fairly claim to ever describe anything truly by this instrument, but I feel we’re able to describe aspects, or flakes of the things we feel, as completely as we recall them.
Hurt is, to me, a function of silence. What speaks when no one speaks. And grief; lacking; losing, so constantly and unheedingly, more than a function: a fount of noise: what speaks when everyone speaks.
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👏👏
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Thank you, Shraddha!
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Grief can indent like the sea. Entranced by this, played it back, love the evolution of that phrasing “what speaks when no one speaks,” taking it from the wind to the feeling of grief, so many threaded images, so lush! This is you having a hard time with creativity, ha! Bleed for me poet!
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That phrase is completely and utterly of Alice Oswald’s invention; I merely instrumentalised it (rather crudely, I might add, and without permission). If poetry is the infinite dialogue between silent entities, then I’m an agent of degeneration.
Your compliment means the world to me, Bill, really. As I shape a composition, no thought figures heavier than that of my inadequacy and muddlement. To put something out and have it received so warmly by our creative peers, well, that’s the collective Simone Weil believed to be dissolved in an Industrial World.
It is not dissolved. Not yet.
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Gosh well I wish I’d shared more of my praise on past workings but honestly I feel a touch intimidated putting words out to reflect what you’ve done. It’s such a curious, magical world you create. Try not to get stuck in the inadequacy and muddlement. From one who’s susceptible to the same, I’m reminding you that’s our undoing, those feelings! Create your way through it and never stop.
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A truly powerful poem
These are difficult days
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Thank you, my dear D.A.
They are becoming more difficult indeed. This second confinement happens to feel much more strenuous than the last. Fire too can dim, and it feels cold to be reminded of such.
I hope you are doing great.
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Indeed subsequent lockdowns do seem to be more challenging
We appear to be able to brace ourselves for a time until release
To have to keep on returning to our days of restriction causes a fatigue to settle over all.
Dim fires and even extinguished fires can be rekindled when it’s time
Finding blessings to count and developing a thankful heart can be learned
I wish you well
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Reblogged this on Love and Love Alone.
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Joao-Maria, I enjoyed the beauty of your words. I am sorry to hear that you are feeling uneasy and restless. It may be a sign of the times as the misery and death continue to play out around us. Hopefully, better days will be here soon. All the best! ❤
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It has been more difficult, I’ve felt. But I rarely have pleasant news, I’ve come to find.
I wish you all the best as well, and the warmest of thoughts, Cheryl.
And thank you, of course, for your warmth, as always.
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Hang in there!
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The bees are joyous from a blindness which is sound… they drink the blood of roses…
Fabulous lines. Fabulous evocation, João-Maria.
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Bruce!, so nice to see you.
When I was younger, about the same time I discovered Rachmaninoff, I read about Mao from a series of essays from Simon Leys (or Pierre Ryckmans), and I remember he described entire fields in the Northwest of China being thronged with hands, like bean sprouts, coming out of the ground. Mao seemingly buried landlords and farmers alive and left their hands out. I’ve been fascinated with that image, which seems to me coalescing of three different realms of being: the divine, the cruel and natural. At times, these three and indissociable. I suppose these patchwork invocations of gorish corporeal objects, like blindness and blood, and natural elements, like bees and roses, are my little figments of divinity: to conjure a visual of death that isn’t dying, but becoming.
Thank you so much for your kindness.
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I continue to be in awe of you.
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