Poetry:
Stryk:, Babette Deutsch, John Humma, Harry Humes, Dan
Babette Deutsch The Photographs Of one time or another, one place or another, of one person or several, close kin, a few friends, each lit by the memories that surround the figure like an...
...Since what has fallen out of the deck is not all by feckless chance: not the gathering to need, the rising to task...
...And whatever else...
...John Humma Mother, 71...
...They have grown complementarics of infirmities and strengths...
...Harry Humes A Cold Condition Fingers stiff shoulders caved-in the mountain beyond made of silences And someone walking beneath the poplars I open doors turn corners The stones of the day gather near my blood If I'm chilly it's a brass-handled landscape gathers like zero near collar and wrist Tomorrow when I stand by the posture I've waited for year after year I'll remember equators of basement backyard coal bin tool box the hands everyday on my hurt On the clothes-line now an icy language flaps Later there will be black there will be celery sticks there will be trays of small rememberings All evening long one woman will go on looking into all the corners of the room for a familiar season...
...And if one cringes before the last indignity, it is for the other's sake...
...Often (he face is smiting, but there are as many smiles as there are faces, as diverse as the emotions greeting the varieties of experience...
...Babette Deutsch The Photographs Of one time or another, one place or another, of one person or several, close kin, a few friends, each lit by the memories that surround the figure like an atmosphere, no more to be dismissed than an odor, a fragrance, as unique, as pervasive...
...For the anguish and the joy are alike forever withheld upon the advent of him whom Shahrazad called the Destroyer of delight and Sunderer of societies, the Plunderer of palaces...
...But again, whatever it shows, or seems to conceal, the feeling, even file dismissal of feeling, is various, like the smiles...
...Meanwhile, the house grows both darker and more dear, inside and out...
...Nature condones envy and spite but does not reward courage and praise except with further life...
...the Caterer of cemeteries and Garnerer of graves...
...one even wakes while the other sleeps, as if by design (if design be will...
...Dan Stryk An Event The old-timer grinned as his wizened wife paused to sniff lilac along the library walk...
...Starting in one motion, they marched on through the great glass doors, a book he'd read-and they'd chosen-clutched in his bony white claw...
...Berchie, 93 Now it is a country all their own and they are surely queen and queen mother of it...
...Sometimes the face frowns, or may show neither delight nor pain...
...They depend on the kindnesses of subjects, who win thereby the portions of deserving against the term of their own arthritic fall, deafness, and sheer simple silliness...
...But one thing is certain: the photographs present a chief anguish of old age, as they also offer one of its chief gifts...
Vol. 108 • June 1981 • No. 11
