Day 14
1. Homeric Hymn V, Fragment 2, Song of Solomon 3:6, Journal of Psychopharmacology
(Anonymous, Sappho, Anonymous, various, 700BCE - 2012)
She is seated inside a temple fragrant with incense
she has taken charge of the rocky citadel Here to me from Krete
where is your graceful grove is that coming up
from the wilderness like columns of smoke Incensole acetate
reduces depressive-like behavior of submissive animals
2. Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting (Charles Bell, Longman et al.,1806)
Surgeon-anatomist-theologian brought up by his mother
prepared to amputate limbs (The Battle of Waterloo: 'His clothes
were stiff with blood') Tough times though he wrote essays
visited Bedlam painted Moody Madness Theology+art theory=human
facial muscles Bell declared: [the painter] will have the idea of what is to be
depicted if he reads the history of melancholia
which in early times has given the idea of one possessed by a spirit
3. The Rising of Lazarus after Rembrandt (Vincent van Gogh, 1890, oil on canvas)
Lazarus, you are waking but Jesus has got nothing to do with this
van Gogh has cut him out So you are waking and you are rising
weary grey-wasted lead folds performing weight And in the middle
of a wheat field and under sun: basic and flat And what of the two moirologises?
Sisters daughters: one sits hunched at the foot of you face shaded
pleats pairing with the rocks The other has raised her arms in alarm
Κι εγώ ποτέ δε θα μπορούσα να τρομάξω The terror: what is she saying?
She could just as well suffocate you with her scarf as help you up
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1 I burned livani1 in every room: over your side of the bed, over the stove, where you sat on the veranda, over the bathroom mirror where you fussed over your hair, applied lipstick, and tried to darken eyebrows (which, after the Bell's palsy, had lost their symmetry). 2 I've been thinking about your hands, how smooth and young-looking they were, how much younger-looking than mine, even when the tips got a little cool, until I touched them and they warmed again. They refused coolness. In that last half an hour they refused stillness. You raised your arm and I can't stop wondering now, were you reaching for my hand?3 I was on the other side of you and didn't take a hold, thought that you were feeling for the light I'd read about. But what if you weren't, and I didn't reach to pull you back? My hand was on your leg. Could you feel it through the sheets? Over the swelling? The terror. I watched your fingers fall back onto the couch. I watched you will your blood back, and your heart to pump, and your lungs to keep inflating despite the water. It must have hurt, all that effort; all that torpor and loneliness and trust that you would wake up wake up wake up
