The Milk White Maiden and Heart Red Apples

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When I saw this image, then read the note from Jerome Brown, I knew there was poetry in it.  To be sure, the lady is very beautiful, but just as beautiful are his candor and his demure.  Two months later, here is my poem:

Sir Isaac never told that tale of apples
     Fall by the dozen, and he never knew
The milk white maiden deign to gather them -
     Demure and innocent - as if she knew
The lean and bend and pull that gravity
Required of her, and knew instinctively.

No doubt, he would have formulated force
     Entirely of another sort - celestial, yes -
But nearer than whatever body held
     His head up to the heavens, as near as heart
Red apples in her hands, and whisk of hair,
And slope of bone, and cloth that held her fair.

The Milk White Maiden and Heart Red Apples © Ron Villejo

Swan Song of Ophelia

The Darkened Beauty Image

Original text

Вечерний и наклонный
Передо мною путь.
Вчера еще, влюбленный,
Молил: "Не позабудь".
А нынче только ветры
Да крики пастухов,
Взволнованные кедры
У чистых родников.

Google+ translation

Evening and oblique
In front of me the way.
Only yesterday, in love,
Pleaded: "Do not Forget".
And now only the winds
Yes cries of the shepherds,
Anxious cedars
In pure springs.

Poetry, posted by Ludmila Ivanova

Ophelia fell in love
     Where evenings slope
     Clutching at hope -
She heard the bough above
The nestled down of swan
     Cry anxiously,
     And cried Love me
When I am caught, and done.

Swan Song of Ophelia © Ron Villejo

From Calvin Klein to Eternity

A note of freesia shall linger where

We turn, and never stop, into each other

And scale adagio the muted air.

A note of mandarin shall find another - 

From sweet, to spice and tart, our lives may weave

A tapestry with threads as loose and frayed.

Which dare a note of sage to dream, and leave

More health than ill, more comfort than afraid.  

Or else muguet shall poison swift as snake - 

But left alone, our valleys sing its scent

And thereby let Madonna Lily wake

With note of white, and lilt, and never spent.

Patchouli shall endure, and sandalwood

Endow us with a century of good.  

From Calvin Klein to Eternity © Ron Villejo

Sonnet for Calvin Klein Short Film

Fire in the corridor to start our narrative 

     Is not a choice at our disposal, love.  

Fashion may find us lacking in demonstrative,

     But not for long, and not a salve to solve.

Air on our cheeks is secondarily as hot - 

     Our pupils dilate in the afternoon

And skin stand on its edge - dispense with no and not, 

     And follow scent deeply into the moon.

Water may trail a cool along a straight and bend,

     And pause for breath, then move insistently - 

The elements, love, are alive, and mean to send

     Our wanting to its want relentlessly.

Earth at my back, and you astride, shall gravity

Become a complex of our impropriety.

Sonnet for Calvin Klein Short Film © Ron Villejo

Poetry for Calvin Klein Provocations

All to me.  Against time. Against the world.  Waveless, effortless, lawless.

In media res shall we begin, where battles neither won nor lost -
Surrender to a feel, and fall, til we no longer care the cost.

Reject the consequence.  No discipline.  Madness blooms.

As if there were a lesson to be leaned on, physics of a longing -
Whose pulse be steady, amplitude inflect, uncharted want prolonging.

I writhe where time slows, reel forever from your scent, unsure of breath -
I wonder how the moon will tangle for a pulse before its death.  

Currents drift.  We glide.

Industrial encounter at the edge of want, and fierce, and dust -
Stay put, love - the cacophony of heat abates as metals rust.

They say it is a conversation that I want, and that is all -
I never think about their naïveté, as you come gnarl and scrawl.  

Into the darkness we travel.  Vanishing bends.  Impulsive, careless, rapt.  

So this is what we come to - what Picasso rendered de la mer -
Entangled lovers at the edge, and salt wash fragments everywhere.  

Whoever shall distinguish which - Are we far off, who recollect,
Or are we here, imagining incendiary want reflect?

There is a style to how we may comport - no matter parallax,
There is no questioning the planes we cross for fashion to a max. 

Quiet behind my eyes.  Thoughts astray.  We fall into this.  Like convection I rise.  You scream through me.  Explode to the sky.

Perhaps dear Newton would be pleased to find an equilibrium -
What shatters outwardly, we pull inside an arc where passions come.

Radiates, implodes.  

As long as style defines what look we seek, and feel we brood about -
Let heat convect, let nova be the love we make, let heavens pout.

My eyes onto yours.  Erratic steps.

No matter vast the limestone of geometry, we find each other -
Oh, for a scent, love, run down you, along a slope onto forever.

We stand in contrast to man.  

For always there is no escaping you, no moment that is sacred -
Your scent my oxygen, your fingertips my feel, my want upbraided.

I take up childhood play, as if I knew no better of a flame -
For curiosity is mine, no matter what is in a name.  

Life of adoration.

So dawn creeps in, glides up, and tangles salt wash air and limestone wall -
The aftermath is always languorous, and love is at a fall.

Poetry for Calvin Klein Provocations © Ron Villejo

Love Song of Pedro Salinas (3)

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Sonnet 1

I do not want you to go, yet
     I want you to go now.
The waning form of love is pain –
     It never wonders how.

I live when I do not hurt you –
     But neither here nor there
Shall matter much, because I have –
     I die, no matter where.

The earth was far, from where you came –
     Oh, I remember well
The tresses in the air, the silk
     Of willow where I fell.

How cradles fell in love with you –
How dusk arrived before I knew.

Sonnet 2

Denial is peculiar for
     Denying what it is –
It flirts at edges of collapse
     But still it manages

To stand, insist, and walk as if
     Pretext were the real thing.
For you, incontrovertible
     As scent and mud, as weep and sing –

I stayed, but wanted just the same
     To go, and in that staying
You knew reality like rocks
     With edges meant for fraying.

You loved me still, no matter wrong –
I kept you taut, but not for long.

Sonnet 3

The steeples angle us where light
     Is blindingly as harsh
As winter heralding itself
     From garden, to wood and marsh.

The leaves of fallen oak and maple
     Shall lift in careless flight

To destinations far as south
     As you can wing at night.

If this is our goodbye, then I
     Am confident of this –
That love was simply how it was,
     And now whatever is.

Pain on my cheek, watery sky –
We knew that nothing was a lie.

`Love Song of Pedro Salinas © Ron Villejo

rf. My previous posts `Love Song of Pedro Salinas (1) and `Love Song of Pedro Salinas (2).

Love Song of Pedro Salinas (2)

I don't want you to go, pain, last form of love. I live when I do not hurt you, nor here, further: in the Earth, in the year where you come from you, in love with her and everything was. In this reality collapsed, which denies itself and insists that never existed, that it was only a pretext for a living. If I don't I stayed, pain, incontrovertible, I believe; but I keep you. Whether you're really gives me confidence that nothing was a lie. And until I hear, thou shalt be for me, pain, evidence of another life, in which I affliggevi. The great test, at a distance, that existed, which exists, which I loved, Yes, I still love her.

Facebook offered this Bing translation of the poem by Pedro Salinas, which I posted in `Love Song of Pedro Salinas (1), and I was curious about it...

I don't want you to go –
pain, last form of love.

I live when I do not hurt you,
nor here,
further: in the Earth,

in the year where you come from you,
in love with her
and everything was.

In this reality collapsed,
which denies itself
– and insists –
that never existed,
that it was only a pretext for a living.

If I don't I stayed –
pain, incontrovertible, I believe;
but I keep you.

Whether you're really
gives me confidence that nothing was a lie.
And until I hear,
thou shalt be for me, pain, evidence of another life,
in which I affliggevi.

The great test, at a distance
– that existed, which exists, which I loved –
Yes, I still love her.

So I reformatted the translation thus.

Love Song of Pedro Salinas (1)

Portrait, by Alexander Shubin

Non voglio che tu te ne vada,
dolore, ultima forma di amare.
Mi sento vivere quando mi fai del male
non in te, né qui, più lontano:
nella terra, nell’anno da dove vieni tu,
nell’amore con lei e tutto ciò che fu.
In questa realtà
sprofondata,
che si nega a se stessa e si ostina
che mai è esistita,
che fu solo un mio pretesto per vivere.
Se non mi rimanessi tu,
dolore, incontrastabile, io lo crederei;
però mi rimani tu.
Che tu sia realtà mi da la sicurezza
che niente fu menzogna.
E fin quando io ti sento,
tu sarai per me, dolore,
la prova di un’altra vita,
in cui non mi affliggevi.
La grande prova, a distanza,
che esistette, che esiste,
che mi amò, sì,
che ancora la amo.

By Pedro Salinas

Iaia Bianco posted this painting and this poem in her Art aNd PoETrY album on Facebook, and I was struck...

We Dare Dream Of

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We Dare Dream Of © Ron Villejo

This is your time
This is your day
You've got it all
Don't blow it away.

From the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, by Paul McCartney.

Shattered Island

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Shattered Island © Ron Villejo

Plant an Idea

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Plant an Idea © Ron Villejo

Reading mystère

"Reading mystère" © Ron Villejo

The Girl with Golden Hair

"The Girl with Golden Hair" © Ron Villejo

BookGlasses

"BookGlasses" © Ron Villejo

Iron, While the Strike is Hot

"Iron, While the Strike is Hot" © Ron Villejo

In "A Poet's Reversals," I take common phrases in English, and play at turning them around and writing poetry on the new phrasings.  Why do so, you may ask.  For the fun of it.  For the poetic license.  

The original - strike, while the iron is hot - comes from the following:

This old proverb clearly alludes to the imagery of the blacksmith or farrier at his forge. If he delays in shaping the iron when it is hot a pliable the metal soon cools and hardens and the opportunity is lost.

The expression is recorded in Richard Edwards', The excellent comedie of two the moste faithfullest freendes, Damon and Pithias, circa 1566:

I haue plied the Haruest, and stroke when the Yron was hotte.

No Island is a Man

"No Island is a Man" © Ron Villejo

In "A Poet's Reversals," I take common phrases in English, and play at turning them around and writing poetry on the new phrasings.  Why do so, you may ask.  For the fun of it.  For the poetic license.  

The original - No man is an island - comes from John Donne's Meditations XVII:  Devotions upon Emergent Ocassions:   

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

What if a Hart

What if a hart

Were to dart

To the mart?

"What if a Hart" © Ron Villejo

Mind is a Garden

"Mind is a Garden" © Ron Villejo

Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are replete with inspiring quotes and messages.  On occasion I like to challenge ones like "Your Mind is a Garden."  

People may take up the utter simplicity of either growing flowers or growing weeds.  But in fact a garden harbors both, and while most homeowners do not care for the latter, weeds are part of a Sisyphus labor.

My poem is a philosophical musing and a metaphoric call for complexity.