The Linnet's Wings Winter 2012

ISSN 2009-2369

THE LINNET'S WINGS

The Cottage, 1885, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Oil on Canvas, 65.5 X 79 cm

¿QUIEN HA ENTRADO EN EL PORTAL DE BELÉN?

by Gerardo Diego ¿Quién ha entrado en el portal, en el portal de Belén? ¿Quién ha entrado por la puerta? ¿quién ha entrado, quién?.

WHO HAS CROSSED THE DOOR OF BETHLEHEM? Who has entered the porch, the porch in Bethlehem?

Who has crossed the door?

Who has, who?

WINTER 2012

THE LINNET'S WINGS

WINTER 2012

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ISBN-13: 978-1481171168 ISBN-10: 148117116X

Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.

L. Frank Baum

A CHRISTMAS SERMON by Robert Louis Stevenson By the time this paper appears, I shall have been talking for twelve months; and it is thought I should take my leave in a formal and seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and death-bed sayings have not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit and sceptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity, an easy-going comrade, a manoeuvring king—remembered and embodied all his wit and scepticism along with more than his usual good humour in the famous "I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscionable time a-dying."

In the pages of Scribner's Magazine (1888).

i

I AN unconscionable time a-dying—there is the picture ("I am afraid, gentlemen,") of your life and of mine. The sands run out, and the hours are "numbered and imputed," and the days go by; and when the last of these finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what else? The very length is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured; and to have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to have served. There is a tale in Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied in the German wilderness; of how they mobbed Germanicus, clamouring to go home; and of how, seizing their general's hand, these old, war-worn exiles passed his finger along their toothless gums. Sunt lacrymæ rerum: this was the most eloquent of the songs of Simeon. And when a man has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks of service. He may have never been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at least he shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread.

The idealism of serious people in this age of ours is of a noble character. It never seems to them that they have served enough; they have a fine impatience of their virtues. It were perhaps more modest to be singly thankful that we are no worse. It is not only our enemies, those desperate characters—it is we ourselves who know not what we do;—thence springs the glimmering hope that perhaps we do better than we think: that to scramble through this random business with hands reasonably clean, to have played the part of a man or woman with some reasonable fulness, to have often resisted the diabolic, and at the end to be still resisting it, is for the poor human soldier to have done right well. To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be contempt of self is only greed of hire.

And again if we require so much of ourselves, shall we not require much of others? If we do not genially judge our own deficiencies, is it not to be feared we shall be even stern to the trespasses of others?

And he who (looking back upon his own life) can see no more than that he has been unconscionably long adying, will he not be tempted to think his neighbour unconscionably long of getting hanged? It is probable that nearly all who think of conduct at all, think of it too much; it is certain we all think too much of sin.

We are not damned for doing wrong, but for not doing right; Christ would never hear of negative morality; thou shalt was ever his word, with which he superseded thou shalt not. To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell upon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with inverted pleasure. If we cannot drive it from our minds—one thing of two: either our creed is in the wrong and we must more indulgently remodel it; or else, if our morality be in the right, we are criminal lunatics and should place our persons in restraint. A mark of such unwholesomely divided minds is the passion for interference with others: the Fox without the Tail was of this breed, but had (if his biographer is to be trusted) a certain antique civility now out of date. A man may have a flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for the duties of life, that spoils his temper, that threatens his integrity, or that betrays him into cruelty. It has to be conquered; but it must never be suffered to engross his thoughts. The true duties lie all upon the farther side, and must be attended to with a whole mind so soon as this preliminary clearing of the decks has been effected. In order that he may be kind and honest, it may be needful he should become a total abstainer; let him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance. Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts; a mortified appetite is never a wise companion; in so far as he has had to mortify an appetite, he will still be the worse man; and of such an one a great deal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and a great deal of humility in judging others.

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavour springs in some degree from ii

dulness. We require higher tasks, because we do not recognise the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.

To be honest, to be kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of life: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for the despairer.

II But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another to maim yourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if we should lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties. And it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither one nor other. It was the moral man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could not away with. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

A strange temptation attends upon man: to keep his eye on pleasures, even when he will not share in them; to aim all his morals against them. This very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. I venture to call such moralists insincere.

At any excess or perversion of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic—envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the backbiter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life—their standard is quite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that they reserve the choicest of their indignation. A man may naturally disclaim all moral kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin old lady of the dolls; for these are gross and naked instances. And yet in each of us some similar element resides. iii

The sight of a pleasure in which we cannot or else will not share moves us to a particular impatience. It may be because we are envious, or because we are sad, or because we dislike noise and romping—being so refined, or because—being so philosophic—we have an overweighing sense of life's gravity: at least, as we go on in years, we are all tempted to frown upon our neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays so fond of resisting temptations; here is one to be resisted. They are fond of self-denial; here is a propensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy—if I may.

III Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not even its own reward, except for the self-centred and—I had almost said—the unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he want, he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse.

And to avoid the penalties of the law, and the minor capitis diminutio of social ostracism, is an affair of wisdom—of cunning, if you will—and not of virtue.

In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profit by it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how or why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and must not ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he must try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what will do it, he must try to give happiness to others. And no doubt there comes in here a frequent clash of duties. How far is he to make his neighbour happy? How far must he respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so hard to brighten again? And how far, on the other side, is he bound to be his brother's keeper and the prophet of his own morality? How far must he resent evil?

The difficulty is that we have little guidance; Christ's sayings on the point being hard to reconcile with each other, and (the most of them) hard to accept. But the truth of his teaching would seem to be this: in our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardon all; it is our cheek we are to turn, our coat that we are to give away to the man who has taken our cloak. But when another's face is buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we are to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable and surely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice; its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge; and in our own quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in the quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. One person's happiness is as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let us defend one with a stout heart. It is only in so far as we are doing this, that we have any right to interfere: the defence of B is our only ground of action against A. A has as good a right to go to the devil, as we to go to glory; and neither knows what he does.

The truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militant mongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful, though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of duties. Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found iv

in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy.

IV To look back upon the past year, and see how little we have striven and to what small purpose: and how often we have been cowardly and hung back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day and all day long we have transgressed the law of kindness;—it may seem a paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries, a certain consolation resides. Life is not designed to minister to a man's vanity. He goes upon his long business most of the time with a hanging head, and all the time like a blind child. Full of rewards and pleasures as it is—so that to see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend, or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with surprising joys—this world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fall through, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year, he must thumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is a friendly process of detachment. When the time comes that he should go, there need be few illusions left about himself. Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much:—surely that may be his epitaph, of which he need not be ashamed. Nor will he complain at the summons which calls a defeated soldier from the field: defeated, ay, if he were Paul or Marcus Aurelius!—but if there is still one inch of fight in his old spirit, undishonoured. The faith which sustained him in his life-long blindness and life-long disappointment will scarce even be required in this last formality of laying down his arms. Give him a march with his old bones; there, out of the glorious suncoloured earth, out of the day and the dust and the ecstasy—there goes another Faithful Failure!

From a recent book of verse, where there is more than one such beautiful and manly poem, I take this memorial piece: it says better than I can, what I love to think; let it be our parting word.

"A late lark twitters from the quiet skies; And from the west, Where the sun, his day's work ended, Lingers as in content, There falls on the old, gray city An influence luminous and serene, A shining peace.

"The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Shine, and are changed. In the valley Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, Closing his benediction, v

Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night— Night, with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.

"So be my passing!

My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered to the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death."

From A Book of Verses by William Ernest Henley. D. Nutt, 1888. ###

vi

TABLE OF CON TEN TS FOREWARD: A Christmas Sermon by Robert Louis Stevenson i CREATIVE NON FICTION The Bellwether by Oscar Windsor - Smith, If I am cursed to be a failure in all else, let words be my legacy. These words that I bequeath in God's name: Open up your eyes and listen. Rejoice in the melody of light. 1 DUNE GRASS by Rosa Ostrum, When I was younger, my family would spend a few days every summer on the Washington coast. While this may seem like a natural summer choice, it was generally cold and rainy. 22 VINCENT TRIVIA 68 SHORT STORIES The Boy with the Golden Ring by Tom Sheehan -- The boy’s name was John. He was twelve years old and a street person. You could tell by the clothes he wore. They were old and worn and torn, and dirty looking. One pocket of his thin jacket was missing, his pants were short, his socks did not match, and he had no hat on his head. 3 "THE WOMAN, THE WRITER" By Carmen Tudor - ... he had been drafting the letters with the same mindless tenacity with which she went about fixing her supper or folding the sheets, and only stopped now and then to push her glasses further up on her pinched nose. 9 LIMITED AND UNLIMITED by Steve Finan -- Herb had no idea where he’d been. He wished they'd stop asking.

All he knew was he'd been away. No memories. There didn’t seem to be any good reason to keep him in hospital.

61 MICRO FICTION Washing Spinach by Emily Green 8 Gone Wireless by Marian Brooks 26 The Argument by Cezarija Abartis Absence by Gloria Garfunkel 70 CLASSIC POETRY Christmas is Navidad by Diana Ferraro, The Catholic Hispanic world, both in Spain and Latin America, celebrates the birth of the Christ with its own tradition and imagery. As we know, images are at the core of Catholic belief as much as the Word, if not more. -TRANSLATIONS ROMANCE DEL NACIMIENTO, San Juan de la Cruz; LAS PAJAS DEL PESEBRE , Lope de Vega; DE UNA VIRGEN HERMOSA, Lope de Vega; YO VENGO DE VER, Lope de Vega; JESÚS, EL DULCE, VIENE, Juan Ramón Jiménez; ¿QUIEN HA ENTRADO EN EL PORTAL DE BELÉN?, Gerardo Diego, DE CUAN

GRACIOSA Y APACIBLE ERA LA BELLEZA DE LA VIRGEN, Luis Rosales; LOS TRES REYES MAGOS, Rubén Darío; NOCHEBUENA, Amado Nervo; LA ORACIÓN DEL ATEO, Miguel de Unamuno 13 FLASH FICTION THE ROOM by Vica Miller, “I feel like something has ended between us, died. Can you understand this?” she asked without lifting her eyes. “You were not there to hold my hand. And I really needed my hand to be held yesterday 27 CHECKING OUT by Kevin Tosca -- My fruit, so ripe, so impossibly well-chosen, moved forward on the conveyor belt, and the fat man moved away with his cheap beer and bruised bananas, ... 30 BLISS by Foster Trecost -- A thin line parted her lips, like something drawn with a pencil. Same with the eyes, closed but not quite, slit-windows to the world. Maybe she took in her surroundings, but I don't think she did. 59 EDITORIAL I Agree with William Blake by Nonnie Augustine 31 Threshold of Eternity by Bill West 43 POETRY John Saunders At Gardenmoen 33 Descent 34 The Builders 35 Anne Britting Oleson Mediation on the View from the Bell Tower, DUMC 36 Ive Page Unexpected Faith 37 Funeral 38 Beate Sigriddaughter Pine Siskin 39 Ian Smith Scottish Dream Teams 40 You Go Home Again 41 Stan Long Uncle Joe 42 Tom Sheehan Merry Christmas from Lily Pond in Saugus Town 71

CHRISTMAS CLASSIC A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS by Clement C. Moore with Illustrations by F.O.C. Darley 45 F.O.C. Darley BIO 56 ART Wheatfield with Crows 1 The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise 3 Two Hands 7 Starry Night over the Rhone 9 Cafe Terrace at Night 13 View of Arles 22 The Starry Night 25 The Bedroom 27 The Sower 29 Old Man in Sorrow 43 Vincent Trivia 56 Lithograph, At Eternity's Gate 57 Cherry Tree, The Flowering Orchard (series) ART: Still Life with Straw Hat 61 INDEX 75

TEAM Managing Editor M. Lynam Fitzpatrick Senior Editor Bill West EDITORS FOR REVIEW English Bill West Nonnie Augustine Yvette Managan Spanish Diana Ferraro Marie Fitzpatrick

Consulting on Copy Digby Beaumont Spanish Translations Diana Ferraro Contributing Editors Martin Heavisides Consulting on Photography Maia Cavelli Database Manager Peter Gilkes Offices Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, ROI

Motril, Granada, Andalucía Online Offices Provided by Zoetrope Virtual Studio Web Hosting Provided by ddWebsites.com Design© TheLinnetsWings.org 2012 Founded, in Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, in ROI, in 2007 Publisher: M. Lynam Fitzpatick Published by The Linnet's Wings

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now? John Lennon ###

Editor's Note Illustrated by the beauty of van Gogh's art we have a great line-up of contemporary and classic work for your enjoyment. At the heart of the issue is a number of Spanish and Latin American poetry translations for, to quote Diana Ferraro, "Christmas is Navidad" and poetry is about inclusion.

And a good poet allows their reader to delve deep within and share hopes, fears, dreams and life experiences, so that they might appreciate their own trinity of past, present and future. And when the poems meld in one’s subconscious they illustrate the now we all share and then it’s possible to understand our similarities and know that we are never alone. "One Day Tells its Tale to Another" is such a chapbook by Nonnie Augustine that we publish this quarter.

I've known Nonnie for the last 8 years and for the last five I've worked alongside her at "The Linnet’s Wings." She’s a fine poetry editor who works from her heart and head and she’s a fine poet. Her poetry is true to who she is and this book can only be a welcome addition to anyone’s book shelf. It's one they can come back to again and again and each time they’ll find another pearl of wisdom, a smile, a tear and empathy and understanding layered within the body. May the road rise to meet her as she wings her way into the market place.

Ramon Collins resigned as micro editor last quarter over artistic differences. Over the last five years Ramon has been a major contributor to our fiction section. He's a superb editor who knows his craft well and we are thankful for the time and experience he shared with us over the years. I'd like to take this opportunity to wish him the best of luck in his future endeavours.

So from the team here we wish you all a Happy and Peaceful Christmas and may all your dreams come true in the 2013.

Marie Fitzpatrick

The Bellwether

Wheatfield with Crows

TH E BELLWETH ER By Oscar Windsor-Smith

I

f I am cursed to be a failure in all else, let words be my legacy. These words that I bequeath in God's name: Open up your eyes and listen. Rejoice in the melody of light.

You of all people know how many times I have offered my opinions and yet they remain both deaf and blind.

Still they talk only of 'isms'. What have their isms to do with my truth?

The very essence of life is labour, sweat and toil. What do Parisian popinjays know of that? Truth is the raw sienna of good earth, the lilac-white of early dawn, the carmine gush of blood. Can they not see the simple fact that every colour in all creation has its register, its harmonies and discords?

Truth is six brass cylinders set out in soldierly array. Six, when one should be enough. Paint them if you will in dashes of brownish-yellow: E below middle C. Render this steel instrument with a streak of whitish-grey: a high note in a minor key. Add perhaps a dab of burnt umber for the wooden grip, polished with much handling, like the shepherd's crook on that autumn morning at Zweloo.

Zweloo... Yes, that was honest. That was real.

I can't recall now if I told you in my letters how we set out in predawn darkness, my landlord and I, his farm cart trundling along the dike road to Assen market? En route we came upon a shepherd driving his sheep. A castrated ram – a wether – headed-up the flock.

Later, they would see on my canvas only sheep. They wouldn't hear the jingle of the wether's bell or sense brush-strokes replete with soft bleating under my star-pierced ultramarine sky.

1

Oscar Windsor-Smith

Dawn bled in. A hint of lilac-grey, at first a single brush-stroke, the horizon aglow, and then a spreading symphony vibrant with harmonics of red and yellow.

These were the images that flooded my mind on that chill morning. But how best to convey in paint those words and other elemental sounds of life: the complex chords in summer sunlight, the cadences in shadow, the pizzicato rattle of rain on windowpanes or the woodwind rush of autumn leaves?

Millet had his methods and the approbation of the Salon. I had techniques of my own, but these the Salon derided. So blinkered was their view they called my work inferior because in those days I employed a restrained palette. Perhaps my youthful judgement was out of tune but my eye, then as now, was at perfect pitch with nature.

And then of course came Paris, that rainbow concerto of excitement and Japanese art. Paris resonated in the sound box of my mind, leading to experiments with louder hues. Yes, Paris began well but as ever ended badly.

Those prissy poseurs, masters of irony, remained tone deaf. Closeted in silk-draped salons, how could they comprehend toil, suffering and pain in any key or pigment? How much kinder it would have been had they castrated me in life and not with words. The fact remains that what they feared was, in truth, the timpani crash of revolution.

After Arles and St RĂŠmy I did gain some attention, some notoriety. Those who covet possessions began to recognise my work. But did they hear my music? No. No, they simply followed the flock. Thus in desperation I experimented with the styles of others until finally descending to utter prostitution I put fleeces of my own on images of Millet's sheep.

Here at Auvers for weeks I have scurried from place to place with my easel and accoutrements, filling two or more canvasses with colour each day. Working without pause I have attempted to dispel the encroaching gloom. Applying pigment with impassioned brushstrokes did provide some temporary respite, now quite gone.

How I dread the inexorable onset. Manic joy always foreshadows this plunge over the escarpment of despair. Each Mozart spring must end in dark Wagnerian winter. Who knows what damage I might do when next my madness comes.

Dear brother, I have survived thus far only on account of your love and generosity and in return have brought nothing but disgrace to our family name.

Beauty and truth are everything. What value has a so-called artist to whom God has entrusted an eye for these qualities if he cannot communicate that insight to the world?

This final truth I concede with six bullets slipped into their chambers and made ready with a heartless click.

Forgive me, God. Forgive me, Theo.

Will they ever understand the price the wether paid? ###

2

The Boy With The Golden Ring

The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise

TH E BOY WI TH TH E GOLDEN RI N G By

T

Tom Sheehan

he boy’s name was John. He was twelve years old and a street person. You could tell by the clothes he wore. They were old and worn and torn, and dirty looking. One pocket of his thin jacket was missing, his pants were short, his socks did not match, and he had no hat on his head. His hair was very dark and he was standing in front of the Sligo Bakery near the big cathedral. A tall man in worn clothes was standing with him, and they were looking at food in the bakery window. Around them swirled the cold wind and the snow of a storm on a late December evening.

3

Tom Sheehan

The baker Connaughton looked out the window at them. A strange glow was fuzzy around the boy’s head. Connaughton was drawn to him. He had been pulled from the back of the bakery when he saw the boy standing at the window looking so hungry. In Connaughton’s blood raced a new sensation. He could feel it coursing. It was the same feeling he had when the anthem was played. When he heard a beautiful psalm it came to him, or when a far and lovely voice at nightfall sang an old song he had nearly forgotten, the special way it came out of the past bringing all kinds of delightful company with it, like a Percy French song echoing from the Cliffs of Mohr. Oh, he thought, the deliriums of joy.

Connaughton waved them into the shop, in from the cold and the swirling snow. The tall man shook his head and pointed to the boy. Even in his shabby clothes the man bore to Connaughton a sense of regality and pride, yet he had a kindly presence about him. The man refused a second invitation and again pointed to the boy. As bidden the boy entered the bakery and Connaughton put six rolls and a cup of coffee in a bag. The boy looked back at the man standing outside the window.

“My father says you are a good man,” the boy said to Connaughton, “but he’s not hungry right now.” The baker and the boy turned and the man was gone. The boy ran outside and the man was gone. The snow was worsening and it was colder. The boy cried, “My father has left me. My father has gone.” He looked at Connaughton and said again, in the saddest voice Connaughton had ever heard, “My father has left me.”

Connaughton did not know what to do. His job he could not leave, and there was no place to take the boy. Then he saw a street person he recognized, a good man by the name of Samuel Haggard. He called him over to the bakery.

“Samuel,” he said, “this boy’s name is John and his father has left him. I’m afraid of what will happen to him in the night. Can you take care of him?”

Samuel looked at the boy John and saw the golden light that was like a faint glow around the boy’s head.

When he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder he was warmed by the touch. “I know a place where he can sleep,” he said. "It’s only a closet, but there’s lots of paper and cardboard and he will not freeze.”

Connaughton gave them more rolls and coffee and went back to work. Only when he was inside did he realize that he had not been cold at all when he had gone outside in the bitter night to talk to Samuel. He waved at the boy John and Samuel as they walked off into the darkness.

As they walked Samuel said he was sorry that the boy’s father was gone.

The boy John said, “Do not feel sorry for me, Samuel. My father loves me. Some time he will come back for me.” The golden glow was stronger around the boy’s head.

Other street people that knew Samuel came up to him as they walked. “Who is this boy, Samuel?” they said. They stared at the boy John. Many street people stared and asked the same question. Many of them had seen the glow around the boy’s head, though some had not seen it. They did not know what to make of their old friend Samuel and the strange new boy who looked so much like they did. His clothes were like their clothes. He looked as lonely as they looked. He had no real place of his own to go to on a cold December night, no real place to put down his head for the night; no fire, no blanket, no cradling arms.

Samuel said to the boy John, “Would you like to go to the cathedral to warm up before we go to a place to sleep?”

“The boy" John said, “Don’t you go to the cathedral to pray, Samuel?” The glow was more golden and brighter and made Samuel uneasy, not sure of what it was. He just knew that here was something different around the boy and around his own person.

4

The Boy With The Golden Ring

In the cathedral a crowd of street people had gathered. Word had spread quickly in the alleys and the lanes and the byways about the boy with a golden ring about his head. Most of the people agreed it was a ring.

Not one of them had called it a halo.

In the subway stations, also, people spoke about him. Word spread up and down the Green Line and the Red Line and the Orange Line. On the back sides of chimneys, and tight against warm walls, and on warm exhaust grates, the street people talked about the boy. There was a buzz and a hum about him. The word carried far and wide. It rippled and ran with the wind.

The people who came to the cathedral at first were seedy looking. Their clothes were in tatters. Some of them wore rolls of cloth around their feet and about their waists. Some wore old sneakers or thin worn shoes.

Few of them had good jackets or coats or scarves or warm gloves for their tortured hands. They came to look at the boy with a golden ring about his head and who had no place to go to call his own, the boy who was so much like them.

The next night Samuel took the boy John back to the cathedral. Now hundreds of people were there.

Some of them laughed and scoffed and said they could not see any light at all, never mind a golden ring. Many new arrivals wore nice clothes and heavy coats and thickly padded jackets against the cold. High boots many of them wore and scarves and great warm gloves on their hands. Indeed, some of them did not laugh for they believed they saw the golden light.

Samuel brought the boy John back to the cathedral each night. It was getting close to Christmas and the crowds grew and the bishop called for police help with the crowds along the cluttered streets. All kinds of people from all over were coming to the cathedral to see the boy. You could tell by the clothes they wore, or what kind of vehicle brought them to the great church.

Samuel warmed up in the cathedral each time and the boy John prayed for his father to come back. He kept telling Samuel that his father loved him and would come back for him. Samuel did not know what to believe. He just knew he had to bring the boy back each night in spite of the crowd’s gawking at him. The snickers and the scoffing bothered Samuel. At times he grew impatient with people he had known for a long time.

“He’s just a boy whose father left him,” explained Samuel as often as he could. But he did not believe what he was saying. The light was getting too bright for him to handle. He asked a friend to bring the boy John to the cathedral the next night. It would be Christmas Eve. All day the snow fell. The temperature also fell with the late hours. The darker it got, the colder it got.

But a greater crowd than ever before came on Christmas Eve. They packed the old cathedral. Every seat was taken. The aisles were full. People stood all around looking at the boy John down in the front row. Some saw the light. Some did not. But none of them left the cathedral then. Some were afraid to go. Some, indeed, were afraid to stay.

The bishop, at the back of the altar, tried desperately to see the golden glow. He was not sure what he was seeing. A young priest from a nearly forgotten order saw the golden ring around the boy’s head. Clearly he saw it. He spoke to the bishop for a few minutes and came to the front of the congregation.

“We know why some of us have come here tonight. Some have come for the right reason. Some have not.

It may be that some will be rewarded and some will not. And that may be as it was meant to be. I will ask the boy John to come up here and talk to us if he feels like it.”

He extended his open hand to the boy John.

The boy John went to the front of the altar. “I am very nervous,” he said.

5

Tom Sheehan

“Do not be nervous,” the young priest replied. “We are all sorry that your father has left you.”

“Do not be sorry for me. I love my father very much,” the boy John said, “and he loves me. Some time he will come back to get me.”

“Do you want to tell us anything?” the young priest said. He looked directly at the boy John and did not look at the bishop at the back of the altar.

“One night, at a campfire on a cold night, my father took off his coat and gave it to a man who did not have a coat. He said, ‘Now we will both be warm.’”

The young priest did not say anything. The bishop did not say anything. The boy John looked at the huge gathering. No one in the congregation said anything. No one did anything. The huge cathedral was silent, silent in the nave, silent in the apse, and silent in the transept. You could not hear people breathe or cough or blow their noses as you did at other times. Their feet also were still and silent on the floor.

The boy John with the golden glow around his head said, “That’s the beautiful picture I have. It’s the most beautiful picture of all. That each person who has a coat or a heavy jacket would give it to a person who does not have a warm coat or a heavy jacket. Or give a warm hat to someone who has no hat or a scarf to someone who has no scarf or a great pair of gloves to someone whose hands might freeze before this night is over. My father says you will be warmer, and my father loves me very much, and I love my father even though he has gone from me for this while.”

Again, for long minutes, there was silence in the great cathedral. Nothing moved. No one moved.

Stillness was sharp as the cold. It was only the wind that was heard, from the belfry and at the windows as if it were trying to get inside.

The boy John looked at the congregation. Now, as if predicted, more people began to see the glow that they had not seen before. Inside them things were working they had no control over. Then, in the midst of the great silence, one man in the fifth row, in a fine and heavy coat, thick and furry, stood up and took the coat off his shoulders and handed it to a man sitting in front of him. That man had no coat but wore a thin and worn sweater atop another thin and worn sweater. No words were exchanged.

Then another man stood in the silence and gave his coat. And another. And another. And a pair of great fleece-lined gloves moved from one pair of hands to another, and a scarf, and more and more, until the sounds of giving swelled throughout the whole insides of the cathedral as if a soft wind was blowing.

And the boy John smiled at all the people and at the young priest and at the bishop. Then he said, loud enough for everybody in the cathedral to hear, “I do not want anyone who gave his coat or hat or gloves to another person to get cold tonight going home. If there is a taxicab driver who can help get those people home, everyone will be warmer.

In the back row a man stood up and said, “I have my cab and I’ll call my friends who have cabs.”

When the people left the cathedral a short time later there were many cabs in the street, their lights glowing golden through the edge of darkness. It looked like a parade of taxicabs. It was.

Samuel Haggard, coming late to the cathedral, saw in the distance, in the swirling snow, in the region past the crowd, the boy John walking off into the endless night with his hand in his father’s hand.

And the glow over his head had faded away. ###

6

Washing Spinach

Two Hands

7

Emily Green

WASH I N G SPI N ACH By Emily Green

L

eaves tremble-- limp and fragile but vivid green against the crimson colander. She turns them in her hand. Thin, anxious fingers frantically making work.

His aunt mashes potatoes with a restrained thud. Years of practice. No help needed, thank you.

His sisters build the green bean casserole. A team effort. Three pairs of hands, always three.

His mom preps the bird. Innards wrenched out; stuffing jammed in. A raw, visceral affair. Better left alone. “You can wash the spinach.�

The colander slips from her fingers. The leaves spill over. Crumpled greenery on sleek aluminum. No matter. She is by the sink. They are at the table.

She gathers the spinach, fingers leisurely plucking at the mess, loosening in the sanctuary of solitude.

She washes the spinach again. ###

8

"The Woman The Writer"

Starry Night over the Rh么ne

9

Carmen Tudor

"TH E WOM AN , TH E WRI TER" By Carmen Tudor

S

he had been drafting the letters with the same mindless tenacity with which she went about fixing her supper or folding the sheets, and only stopped now and then to push her glasses further up on her pinched nose. Occasionally a word would jump out at her, or a sentence here and there, but not enough to engage her full attention. She saved that for fiction.

The sunlight eventually hit the western windows and filled the crowded office with an orange glow that was lost on the typists. One by one the young women finished their letters and filed them away. A general relief, a group smile, passed across the faces that the end of the week had arrived. They chatted amiably but the woman resisted any temptation to join in. Some, she heard, were going to see Laurence Olivier’s latest picture, Hamlet. Some had dinner plans. Others would make the trip home to the countryside to visit their mothers.

They all had something to do, it seemed, or somewhere to go.

It was nearly seven when she stepped out of her heels and closed her own door behind her. The absence of the wailing baby in the room next to hers hit her instantly, and she stopped; she awaited the low murmurings of the young mother who sang to her child even as it slept. Nothing followed, she noted, and tilted her head.

She ate bread and butter and drank weak tea. There was a comfort with the knowledge that an uncertain future was worse than this. This, at least, was sure. This was real. Misery or not, this was hers.

The silence next door ate into her as she slept. Her hair, now out of its pulled-back bun, fanned out around her on the pillow, and she awoke as several strands licked across her thin lips. She waited in the dark, and once again listened for the baby or its mother, but the silence remained and she wondered with an idle curiosity if the infant were dead.

The woman rose with the sun and stooped in the half-light to make her bed. After tying the cord of her robe, she made her way to the bath down the hall. The grotty tiles no longer impressed her, and after washing in tepid water and resisting the call of the sweet-smelling soap that belonged to Hetty downstairs, she re-dressed in her nightgown and robe and pulled her hair up. Another day, another bun. She crept back to her room, and took a grey jacket and calf-length skirt from the small chest of drawers beside the bed. The woman dressed hastily, and pulled on her stockings: one, and then the other.

Her eyes involuntarily wandered to the floor beneath the bed, and she lowered herself to her knees and pushed aside the stacks of books. Pulling out the heavy black Adler typewriter, she ran her calloused fingertips over the. ? She eyed the machine almost endearingly and let her nostrils fill with the familiar scent of ribbon ink.

With the typewriter, she took a quarter-ream of Stone’s Extra White paper and sat at the small table by the window. She left the blind drawn in case anybody in the flats across the street looked over and saw in. She sought the machine greedily. Her fingers caressed the keys as she imagined the words she longed to create, but

10

"The Woman The Writer"

the single sheet of paper remained blank.

And so the days passed.

She hadn’t forgotten the desire to give voice to the words that played through her mind. Now that the baby was gone, she longed more than ever to fill the dark hours with as much noise as the typewriter could muster and ached to hear the carriage return bell that spoke of another line accomplished, but night after night she replaced the machine under the bed. There would always be a tomorrow. # It was another Saturday morning much like all of her others when a knock interrupted her recycled reverie.

Her glasses slipped down her nose slightly as she took in the sight of a man at her door. Tall and gangly, but somewhat younger than she, he stood beside the landlady. When he smiled, she noticed that small crinkly lines creased the skin around his pale eyes in a most beguiling way. She pushed her glasses up.

His name was Friedrich Hertz, he said, and he was an acquaintance of Hetty’s. He was a writer.

‘German,’ she pronounced, and he nodded apologetically. She said no more about it though, and he seemed grateful.

He had travelled all over Europe, he said, seeking somewhere to plant his weary feet. He raised his ink-stained hands and told her that these grey skies were part of his home now, his new heimatland.

Apparently, although labelled a talented wordsmith, the young man with the dust colored hair wasn’t having much luck making a name for himself in England. His lean frame and scuffed shoes lent credence to this, and she listened silently as his eyes met the typewriter by the window. He pointed, and explained his plans of only sending typed works to the English magazines; after all, he was a professional, and he didn’t want to risk the stench of Pelikan ink that clung to him like a telltale sign of his Saxon origin. He couldn’t pay her, of course, but for every story she typed for him he would write another just for her, to do with as she pleased.

He had heard that she was fond of a good tale. So very fond.

The woman knew the answer before he’d finished talking. She nodded, and the young writer thanked her profusely before pulling a thin manuscript from his shoulder bag. She took it gingerly. Forcing her eyes away from the perfect English script, she told him to return for his work the following day. She exhaled as she closed the door, and then hesitantly brought the manuscript to her nose and breathed in the foreign paper and the imagined aroma of the ink.

Sleep wasn’t an option and the night hours passed too soon as the woman’s eyes took in the lines of loneliness, love and gall. Her heart thrilled as the carriage return bell sounded again and again. His words were her exact sentiments; it was almost as if she had written the story herself, she thought.

The next morning the writer took his newly typed story from her and pressed another into her hands. He told her he would be back the following week with more work. He thanked her again with one of his smiles, and she closed the door. When she was certain he was out of the main house – she watched him through the window as his old shoes carried him down the street – she took the pages from their coarse brown envelope and exulted in the fire of his words. She had never read anything so poetic, so thoroughly German, she thought, and scolded herself as a hot tear burnt the corner of her eye. How had he managed to capture her thoughts, when she could not do it herself?

The writer returned the following week. The woman wanted to hear the story behind the story, the one that was hers to keep, but didn’t dare ask. Instead, she nodded, and told him he could collect his typed work the next day. Seeing her eyes lingering on the papers he carried, he handed her the brown envelope. This one was thinner than the last. The woman wasn’t sure, but she thought she detected a slight hesitance to let go as she grabbed for the papers.

11

Carmen Tudor

Another sleepless night passed and even her neighbours’ demands for silence couldn’t tear her away from the words of Friedrich Hertz. This story, The Writer, was different. It was a desperate tale of a lexophile, not romantic at all. It was no more than a thinly veiled version of him, she was sure. Or every other writer, for they were all the same. But where her lips had turned upward in awe before, they now curled over her teeth – it had become too late for her, she realised. Her ideas had been taken.

The writer was greeted with the usual polite reserve when he collected his manuscript the next morning. He handed over another of his payment offerings, which she took without thanks and tossed on the bed. She closed the door and went straight to the table. This time she didn’t lift the blind and watch his departure. She recalled their agreement: he had said the stories were hers to do with as she pleased. After all, were they not all her own thoughts? Were they not sentiments taken from her own bleeding heart? It oozed the lines just as his Pelikan ink had. Darker, even.

She typed up her latest story with zeal. Her fingers danced over the keys without pause.

The woman left the byline blank, but that, she thought, could always be remedied later. ###

12

Christmas Is Navidad

Cafe Terrace at Night

CH RI STM AS I S N AVI DAD By Diana Ferraro The Catholic Hispanic world, both in Spain and Latin America, celebrates the birth of the Christ with its own tradition and imagery. As we know, images are at the core of Catholic belief as much as the Word, if not more.

Navidad, the name for Christmas celebration, evokes from the start the scene of the nativity, rather than the image of the Christ. For any person born within the Hispanic tradition, the image of the manger is therefore the

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Diana Ferraro

one which first comes to mind. It remains engrained in every childhood memory in which the pine tree and Santa are foreign and all that counts is the primitive scene at Bethlehem. The baby on his bed of hay, the Virgin as the always beautiful and loving mother, the always erased Joseph in the background—he will be later loved as the saint patron of workers— the animals bringing warmth, and the Magi, Los Tres Reyes Magos, are part of the tradition as much as the invisible God, the true Father of the child.

The Three Wise Men are not only those who bring the presents to the baby but also to the Hispanic children, on the magic night of January 5th. In Spain and some countries of Latin America, the cavalcade of the Magi on their camels still takes place, and children wait for them and their bags with toys as much as other children wait for Santa in the rest of the world (and in Spain and Latin America, too, since long ago because why not have the best of both worlds?)

Mother of the Holy baby, the Virgin comes first in popular devotion, only second to God the Father, with the Child coming in third place until the Crucifixion gives him the lead in the meaning. Because of the Magi, the Star which announced the good news and led the Magi to the savior’s birth place is also a first class image, and a common staple in the metaphysical and poetical Hispanic world. The Virgin and the Star often represent the two faces of hope. The contrast between Life and Death is also a favorite in Christmas poetical imagery, Navidad being the opposite of the Crucifixion, the manger the opposite of the cross.

Poets from Spain and Latin America have referred to Christmas, as have all the Christian poets in the world, but they have reveled in these favorite images of Hispanic culture, bringing a different flavor to the same wonder and miracle of Christmas. Among many others, San Juan de la Cruz (1542-1591,) a Catholic saint, a mystic and a poet; Lope de Vega (1562-1635) the most revered classical Spanish poet and playwright, only second to Cervantes; the most recent poets Juan Ramon Jiménez (1881-1958,) also a Nobel Prize; Gerardo Diego (1896-1987); Luis Rosales (1910-1992); and their colleagues across the Atlantic, the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío (1867-1916) and the Mexican Amado Nervo(1870-1919) have sung the Nativity, that Navidad which celebration starts on the eve, the Nochebuena, the good night, with bells singing at midnight to celebrate the birth of Jesus. And since Spain and Latin America had always been a torn region between belief and disbelief, hope and discontent, atheists and their doubts about not only of the Nativity but God himself, couldn’t miss the celebration: Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) speaks humorously on their behalf, about the most general theme of faith. ¡Feliz Navidad!

ROMANCE DEL NACIMIENTO San Juan de la Cruz

entre unos animales que a la sazón allí había, los hombres decían cantares, los ángeles melodía,

Ya que era llegado el tiempo en que de nacer había, así como desposado de su tálamo salía,

festejando el desposorio que entre tales dos había, pero Dios en el pesebre allí lloraba y gemía,

abrazado con su esposa, que en sus brazos la traía, al cual la graciosa Madre en su pesebre ponía,

que eran joyas que la esposa al desposorio traía,

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Christmas Is Navidad

y la Madre estaba en pasmo de que tal trueque veía:

LAS PAJAS DEL PESEBRE Lope de Vega

el llanto del hombre en Dios, y en el hombre la alegría, lo cual del uno y del otro tan ajeno ser solía.

Las pajas del pesebre niño de Belén hoy son flores y rosas, mañana serán hiel.

Lloráis entre pajas, del frío que tenéis, hermoso niño mío, y del calor también.

Dormid, Cordero santo; mi vida, no lloréis; que si os escucha el lobo, vendrá por vos, mi bien.

Dormid entre pajas que, aunque frías las veis, hoy son flores y rosas, mañana serán hiel.

Las que para abrigaros tan blandas hoy se ven, serán mañana espinas en corona crüel.

Mas no quiero deciros, aunque vos lo sabéis, palabras de pesar en días de placer; que aunque tan grandes deudas en pajas las cobréis, hoy son flores y rosas, mañana serán hiel.

Dejad en tierno llanto, divino Emmanüel; que perlas entre pajas se pierden sin por qué.

No piense vuestra Madre que ya Jerusalén previente sus dolores y llora con José; que aunque pajas no sean corona para rey, hoy son flores y rosas, mañana serán hiel.

ROMANCE OF THE BIRTH

by San Juan de la Cruz The time had come In which He should be born, Like a newly wed He left his wedding bed Embraced to His spouse Carrying her in His arms, Him who his gracious Mother, Laid in the manger Among the animals Who were there at that moment, While men uttered songs To an angel's melody To celebrate the union Between such a pair Though God in the manger Cried and moaned, For there were jewels the wife Brought to the wedding, And the Mother was so amazed Seeing in such exchange The cry of man in God, And in man the joy, Both of which were before Unknown to each other. #

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Diana Ferraro

Don’t let your Mother think That Jerusalem Foresees her pain And cries with Joseph,

THE STRAWS IN THE MANGER

by Lope de Vega The straws in the manger, Child of Bethlehem, Are today’s flowers and roses And tomorrow’s bitter bile.

Even if straws are not A crown for a king, They still are flowers and roses Before becoming bile.

You cry on the hay Being so cold, My beautiful child, And so warm too.

# DE UNA VIRGEN HERMOSA Lope de Vega

Sleep, Holy Lamb, My life, don’t cry: If the wolf would to hear He will come for you, my love.

De una Virgen hermosa celos tiene el sol, porque vio en sus brazos otro sol mayor.

Sleep among straws, And, even if they feel cold, They are still flowers and roses, Not yet tomorrow’s bitter bile.

Cuando del Oriente salió el sol dorado, y otro sol helado miró tan ardiente, quitó de la frente la corona bella, y a los pies de la estrella su lumbre adoró, porque vio en sus brazos otro sol mayor.

So smooth they are now To warm you up, For they will be tomorrow's thorns In a cruel crown.

But I don’t want to tell you, As you well know, Words of pain In days of pleasure,

«Hermosa María, dice el sol vencido, de vos ha nacido el sol que podía dar al mundo el día que ha deseado».

Esto dijo humillado a María el sol, porque vio en sus brazos otro sol mayor.

But so great debts That in straws you’re being paid, Today are flowers and roses, And tomorrow, only bile.

Divine Emmanuel, Leave in a tender weep Pearls lost in the straw Without knowing why.

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Christmas Is Navidad

ABOUT A BEAUTIFUL VIRGIN

by Lope de Vega

I'VE JUST SEEN

by Lope de Vega

The sun is jealous of a beautiful Virgin because in her arms he saw a much greater sun.

I’ve just seen, Anton, A child in such a poverty, That I gave him as diapers The skin of my heart. #

When from the East the golden sun rose and another sun glanced in such an ardor, he removed from his front the splendid crown and adored His fire stooping at the feet of the star, because in her arms he saw, a much greater sun.

JESÚS, EL DULCE, VIENE...

Juan Ramón Jiménez Jesús, el dulce, viene...

Las noches huelen a romero... ¡Oh, qué pureza tiene la luna en el sendero!

Palacios, catedrales, tienden la luz de sus cristales insomnes en la sombra dura y fría...

Mas la celeste melodía suena fuera...

Celeste primavera que la nieve, al pasar, blanda, deshace, y deja atrás eterna calma...

“Beautiful Mary, says the beaten sun, from you is born the sun that could give the world the light it so much desired” This was what the sun said to Mary, humbled because in her arms he saw a much greater sun.

¡Señor del cielo, nace esta vez en mi alma!

# YO VENGO DE VER Lope de Vega

JESUS, THE SWEET, IS COMING…

by Juan Ramón Jiménez

Yo vengo de ver, Antón, un niño en pobrezas tales, que le di para pañales las telas del corazón

Jesus, the sweet, is coming…

Nights smell like rosemary…

O how pure the moon Looks on the trail!

Palaces and cathedrals

17

Diana Ferraro Offer the light of their crystals, Sleepless in the cold, hard shade…

Flor sobre impacto capullo, rocío sobre la flor.

Nadie sabe cómo vino mi Niño, mi amor.

But outside The heavenly melody sounds...

A celestial spring unfolded By the passing, soft snow Which melts and leaves behind Its eternal calm.

# WHO HAS CROSSED THE DOOR OF BETHLEHEM?

by Gerardo Diego

Lord of sky, be born again, This time in my soul!

Who has entered the porch, the porch in Bethlehem?

Who has crossed the door?

Who has, who?

# ¿QUIEN HA ENTRADO EN EL PORTAL DE BELÉN? Gerardo Diego

Night, coldness, and frost And the sword of a star.

A male—bloomed limb— And a maid.

¿Quién ha entrado en el portal, en el portal de Belén? ¿Quién ha entrado por la puerta? ¿quién ha entrado, quién?.

Who has entered the porch Through the open and broken roof Who has entered to awake Such a celestial uproar?

La noche, el frío, la escarcha y la espada de una estrella.

Un varón -vara floriday una doncella.

A scale of gold and music, Sharps and flats.

And angels with tambourines And dohremifasols.

¿Quién ha entrado en el portal por el techo abierto y roto? ¿Quién ha entrado que así suena celeste alboroto?

Who has entered the porch, The porch of Bethlehem, Not through the door or the roof Or the air of the air, who?

Una escala de oro y música, sostenidos y bemoles y ángeles con panderetas dorremifasoles.

Flower on a hit bud, Dew on the flower.

Nobody knows how he came, My Child, my love.

¿Quién ha entrado en el portal, en el portal de Belén, no por la puerta y el techo ni el aire del aire, quién?.

#

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Christmas Is Navidad

Which wind disturbs and shakes the moment?

The married dawn sings her delight And the old good sea his anguish calms.

The Virgin doesn't dare to look at Him, and the flight of her voice on knees sings the Lord, who cries on His bed of hay.

DE CUAN GRACIOSA Y APACIBLE ERA LA BELLEZA DE LA VIRGEN Luis Rosales

#

¡Morena por el sol de la alegría, mirada por la luz de la promesa, jardín donde la sangre vuela y pesa; inmaculada Tú, Virgen María!.

LOS TRES REYES MAGOS Rubén Darío

¿Qué arroyo te ha enseñado la armonía de tu paso sencillo, qué sorpresa de vuelo arrepentido y nieve ilesa, junta tus manos en el alba fría?

––Yo soy Gaspar. Aquí traigo el incienso.

Vengo a decir: La vida es pura y bella.

Existe Dios. El amor es inmenso. ¡Todo lo sé por la divina Estrella!

¿Qué viento turba el momento y lo conmueve?

Canta su gozo el alba desposada, calma su angustia el mar, antiguo y bueno.

––Yo soy Melchor. Mi mirra aroma todo.

Existe Dios. El es la luz del día. ¡La blanca flor tiene sus pies en lodo y en el placer hay la melancolía!

La Virgen, a mirarle no se atreve, y el vuelo de su voz arrodillada canta al Señor, que llora sobre el heno.

––Soy Baltasar. Traigo el oro. Aseguro que existe Dios. El es el grande y fuerte.

Todo lo sé por el lucero puro que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte.

ABOUT HOW GRACIOUS AND PEACEFUL WAS THE VIRGIN’S BEAUTY

by Luis Rosales Swarthy because of joy’s sun, watched over by the light of promise, garden where blood flies and weighs, You immaculate, Virgin Mary!

––Gaspar, Melchor y Baltasar, callaos.

Triunfa el amor, ya su fiesta os convida. ¡Cristo resurge, hace la luz del caos y tiene la corona de la Vida!

THE THREE WISE MEN

by Rubén Darío

Which stream taught you the harmony of your modest steps, which surprise of repented flight and snow untouched joins your hands in the chilling dawn?

-I am Gaspar. Here I bring the incense.

I come to say: Life is pure and beautiful.

God exists. Love is immense.

All this I know through the divine Star!

19

Diana Ferraro Hosanna en las alturas al Justo de Israel!

-I am Melchior. My mirth perfumes everything.

God exists. He’s the daylight.

The white flower has her feet in the mud And there is melancholy in pleasure!

¡Pastores, en bandada venid, venid, a ver la anunciada Flor de David!...

I am Balthazar. I bring the gold. I assure that God exists. He’s great and strong.

All this I know through the pure bright star Which shines on Death’s diadem.

CHRISTMAS EVE

by Amado Nervo

-Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, please shut up.

Love has overcome and invites you to his party Christ revives and brings light out of chaos, Wearing the crown of Life.

Shepherds and shepherdesses, The Garden of Eden is open.

Can you hear the sound of voices?

Jesus is born in Bethlehem.

#

Skylight bows Over the Christ just born, Like a small bird he lies On his nest of straws.

NOCHEBUENA Amado Nervo Pastores y pastoras, abierto está el edén. ¿No oís voces sonoras?

Jesús nació en Belén.

The child feels the chill.

O noble ox, Tuck him up with your breath The Child, our king.

La luz del cielo baja, el Cristo nació ya, y en un nido de paja cual pajarillo está.

Singing and flying Invading the space Skies and earth celebrate And so does the heart.

El niño está friolento. ¡Oh noble buey, arropa con tu aliento al Niño Rey!

Clear voices resound Singing in a crowd Hosanna on the heighest To the Holy One of Israel!

Los cantos y los vuelos invaden la extensión, y están de fiesta cielos y tierra... y corazón.

Shepherds, flock and come, Come to see The announced Flower of David!...

Resuenan voces puras que cantan en tropel:

#

20

Christmas Is Navidad

LA ORACIÓN DEL ATEO Miguel de Unamuno Oye mi ruego Tú, Dios que no existes, y en tu nada recoge estas mis quejas, Tú que a los pobres hombres nunca dejas sin consuelo de engaño. No resistes a nuestro ruego y nuestro anhelo vistes.

Cuando Tú de mi mente más te alejas, más recuerdo las plácidas consejas con que mi ama endulzóme noches tristes. ¡Qué grande eres, mi Dios! Eres tan grande que no eres sino Idea; es muy angosta la realidad por mucho que se expande para abarcarte. Sufro yo a tu costa, Dios no existente, pues si Tú existieras existiría yo también de veras.

THE ATHEIST’S PRAYER

by Miguel de Unamuno Listen to my prayer, You God who doesn’t exist and in your nothingness collects these my complaints You who never leaves the poor men without the comfort of deception. You can’t resist our demands and You dress with our wishes.

The more you slip away from my mind the most I remember the peaceful fables with which my nanny sweetened my gloomy nights.

How great you are, my God! You are so great that you are nothing but an Idea; no matter how much reality expands to embrace you, it still remains very narrow. I suffer on your behalf, not existent God, because if You would exist then I would truly exist myself. ###

21

Rosa Ostrum

View of Arles, Flowering Orchards

DU N E GRASS By

W

Rosa Ostrum

hen I was younger, my family would spend a few days every summer on the Washington coast.

While this may seem like a natural summer choice, it was generally cold and rainy. We frequently left the beach at three in the afternoon to go wrap ourselves in blankets, turn up the heater, and put some soup on the stove.

Nevertheless, I loved it.

The main purpose for our beach trips was to visit Shirlee, a childhood friend of my grandmother’s. She and my parents would chat, and my brother and I would wander into her backyard, which was endless dune grass

22

Dune Grass

and sand. The gate that marked the edge of her property was hung with old sea floats that she had collected when they washed ashore, and each visit, my brother and I were allowed to pick one to take home with us. I spent hours choosing the perfect float, sometimes small and football shaped, others brightly painted and bulbous. I held onto those floats like they were treasures, and to this day, several are still banging around in my parents’ garage.

One night per visit, Shirlee would encourage my parents to go out to dinner at the fanciest restaurant around, a few miles down the coast in a building where the dining room jutted out over the bay. Take some time for yourselves, she encouraged them. Have a date night! She would take me and my brother out to the Dunes Restaurant, an old diner a few blocks away where we would gorge ourselves on chicken strips. After dinner, she let us have our pick of the forty flavors of milkshakes they could make for us. I always chose peanut butter.

The beach was a magical place for a kid. The idea that things washed up on the shore probably came from distant Japanese cruise ships was thrilling, even if all I found was the cap to a bottle of tea with some characters on it. Mostly, I found disintegrating moon snail shells, bulbous kelp that would squirt when stomped on, and rocks.

My brother and I would come to the beach laden with buckets and shovels to make castles and dig holes with, and leave with rocks of all shapes and sizes. Our favorites had rings running around them, which we called wishing stones and refused to get rid of. Sea glass didn’t hold our attention, but smooth rocks could keep us entertained for days.

On colder days, we would spend our time in the small town along the edge of the beach, which was home to a restaurant that made the best french fries we had ever eaten in addition as well as the largest selection of saltwater taffy that my ten year old self had ever seen. I’d beg my father for more watermelon taffy, saying I’ll pay you back, I won’t eat it all at once, when in reality we both knew that my allowance was a dollar every few months and I’d have a sickly pink stomach ache within twenty minutes of leaving the store.

In the town, we bought a rainbow kite and a frisbee, dutifully toting these items back and forth each time we visited. My mother became the master of the kite, my brother the frisbee, while my dad preferred to draw designs in the sand with a stick and I dug holes. A photo from one of the trips shows my dad and brother looking at my dad’s sea side artwork, while I’m in the background, facing away from the camera with the frisbee around my head like a halo. This was the beach.

The beach itself was terrifying. The water was cold and boasted signs saying No swimming, danger of riptide. We would bring our rain boots and our sweaters, and my mother would tie her permed hair back with a bandanna and bring a thermos of tea. On sunnier days, my brother and I would walk barefoot along the path that lead from the beach to the hotel, trying and failing to avoid burr-like plants that would leave souvenir splinters in our feet long after returning home.

We stayed at a funky hotel where the proprietors knew our names, and where one year we’d be in a cabin, and the next a stationery mobile home with a mural of Humphrey Bogart on the side. At night with the window open I could hear the ocean, and while it was soothing, the reminder that we were along the tsunami evacuation route sometimes kept me awake.

For variety, some days we’d head into town where my brother and I would spend a few dollars at the empty carnival that was open year round. He’d ride the tilt-a-whirl while I rode the merry-go-round. Sometimes we’d compromise and ride the bumper cars. On a few occasions, our parents would join us and we’d all get in the bumper boats. We’d all pick a color and off we’d go, the boats spewing gas fumes into the air and the grimy water slopping over into the foot well.

23

Rosa Ostrum

I was an inexperienced captain and more likely than not managed to drive my boat into the far reaches of the pool. The attendant would try to coax me back to the dock, not understanding that my steering capabilities were limited and that I wasn’t purposefully driving myself in circles. Eventually, my panic would mount, and they would send someone over in another boat to tow me back in. The next day, I’d skip the carnival and beg to go back to the beach.

The town was well known for their annual kite festival, which my family would purposefully miss. We’d aim for the end of the summer, when the beach was deserted and we didn’t have to worry about getting our sandcastle mashed by some energetic horseback riders or an enthusiastic jeep driver. We were used to the cold, and we relished the solitude.

On the beach itself, my brother and I would build castles, giant shapeless mounds surrounded by a deep moat and a bridge. We’d build them as big as we could, rushing out again the next morning to see if the waves had broken it down, or if someone else had come along and stepped on it. Once we built the castle over a pile of rocks. It was the only time the castle was ever there in the morning.

My favorite pastime was digging holes until the sand became fluid, imagining caverns under my feet. On one occasion, I sat with my back to the waves, my boots at my side, completely unaware of anything but the drips of wet sand from my fingers that I would fashion into castles with wobbly turrets. My mother was reading on a log a few feet inland from me, my brother drawing patterns on the ground with a stick. With a roar, a wave rushed up past the tide line, sweeping around me and filling in the holes I had dug.

I was surrounded, my boots floating and bobbing back to sea with the receding wave. For a moment, it seemed as if I would go with them, that the sand beneath me had become soup and was pulling me in. It was startling, the reminder of how powerful water was. I was bewildered, my mother shouting in the distance, my brother still unawares. We reclaimed my boots. My castle and holes were gone, my clothing soaked. It took a while for the terror to leave, the thought that I was so little and the ocean so big.

Before the next summer, Shirlee, my grandmother’s friend, had died. We went to her funeral, which was inland. In the church social hall, I struggled to place my memories of her at the beach with these people that I had never met and the life that they described. She had left her fine china to my mother, the house to a family member. I imagined someone removing all the floats that she had so carefully collected and throwing them away, not realizing that they contained history.

The next year, my parents chose a different beach town. This new town was busy. We took a family bike trip through the dunes and I crashed, gaining massive scrapes on my elbows and knees. We took a small boat across a choppy patch of sea to another town for a day trip and fed pelicans stale bread off the back of our boat. We accidentally threw our frisbee into the ocean. I couldn’t find anywhere to get a peanut butter milk shake, and there were no bumper cars. When we were on the beach itself, I discovered that the sand was full of tiny worms that made it unpleasant to dig holes. We didn’t return. ###

24

Gone Wireless

The Starry Night

25

Marian Brooks

GON E WI RELESS By Marian Brooks

M

y Granddaughter, Anna, tells me that she speaks to my father every night on her toy cellular phone. This is a surprise to me because Anna is three and my father has been dead for thirty-nine years. When I ask what they talk about, she says, “It’s a secret.” She plugs her mouth with a thumb. When Anna turns her back, I pick up the little pink phone and whisper, “Dad? ###

26

The Room

The Bedroom

TH E ROOM By

I

Vica Miller

“ feel like something has ended between us, died. Can you understand this?” she asked without lifting her eyes. “You were not there to hold my hand. And I really needed my hand to be held yesterday. I cried sitting by the window. It was raining. Some guests saw me, and left the room. I was thankful that they didn’t ask questions. Then I stopped crying, but died a little inside. Do you know what I mean? I thought you’d left

27

Vica Miller

me. Then you wrote. I realized you simply hadn’t thought of me all day. How is it possible not to think of someone when you love them? It’s not possible. So I cried more, and finished the bottle of wine, and went to sleep. When I woke up, I was alive, but knew that it has died. That thing between us, the fire that’s been burning for five months, making us alive, was no longer crackling, has folded onto itself, only a few branches hissing under the raindrops.

How do I know?

I try to recall the look in your eyes when you made love to me, and can’t. It’s as if someone put a mask over your face, or blindfolded me from seeing what used to be there. I want to write you words of love but none come. It’s as if I opened the door to the room that’s been our sanctuary and instead of the wet warmth of crumpled sheets found a hard bed without a mattress, the wind howling through a broken window, and mice running over a dirty floor sprewn with hay. I don’t want to enter that room, so I shut the door, and take a deep breath. I wonder if anything has been in that room before. What if I imagined it all? The complete certainty of love, the coziness of belonging, the exhilaration of being yours, the peace of having arrived in someone’s heart and hands, of not wanting to be anywhere else, only in that room, which is the whole world. Where did it all go? I’m afraid to enter the hollow emptiness of this room now, but the door flies open in the wind, and I see individual splinters of the scratched floor, the broken single bulb above the rusting bed, the faded squares on the crumbling walls where pictures used to hang. It’s decrepit and cold in there, the warmth gone out through the broken window, with nobody left to mend the damage. This room that held so much laughter and music, where two sweaty bodies fused in loving and collapsed breathless, where words were uttered and pictures taken, that room is a ghost now, its magic gone. It’s cold inside, because death is cold. I don’t feel you anymore. I don’t feel me either. I simply don’t feel. Yes, that’s what death is. When you no longer feel.” She lifted her eyes.

He sat motionless, his face ashen, eyes fallen in. He didn’t say anything. Maybe she killed him with her words.

She didn’t mean to. She just wanted to explain what she felt. And what she felt was nothing. So they were both dead then. For each other, they were dead now. Should they organize a funeral, make it into a party and invite all their friends, the few who knew of their affair? They can dance on the coffin of their love, and have fun, and try to convince themselves that everything is for the best; that pain is what makes us human, and if we feel pain, perhaps we’re still alive; that time heals. But what does it heal? You can’t heal death.

“The room is empty and cold. I don’t want to go back in there. No, let’s not do a party either. Let’s just walk out and keep walking. I’ll walk East, and you’ll walk West. And maybe one day, in a thousand days, we will meet again, because it must be possible to circle the Earth in a thousand days.

So that’s it then.

Even though we’ll be walking in different directions, we’ll eventually meet again. Unless one of us finds another room on the way, and enters it, and it will be so warm that there won’t be a need to ever walk out of it again.” ###

28

Checking Out

The Sower

"One does not expect to get from life what one has already learned it cannot give; rather, one begins to see more clearly that life is a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not yet here." Vincent Van Gogh

29

Kevin Tosca

CH ECKI N G OU T By Kevin Tosca

M

y fruit, so ripe, so impossibly well-chosen, moved forward on the conveyor belt, and the fat man moved away with his cheap beer and bruised bananas, and I, feeling that movement, slowly raised my head, coaxing it, nervous, from footwear to world, my eyes, I hoped, still capable of dance and charm, my smile, I prayed, poised, but my tongue, I knew, ready to give life to the most meaningful Hi I’d have ever given to her, my heart primed for Yes—Marissa’s Yes to my long overdue question—when I heard her voice address someone to my right, her left, a Hey, a comfortable and charged Hey, and my head whipped up, my eyes followed her own.

He was younger, much younger than me, about her age, handsome and pushing a cart stuffed with groceries. I looked around for his mother, his father—looked for someone like me who could afford such things—but he was alone and his equally electric Hey had been said, followed by a Don’t have time, Gotta run, and I turned to watch her face and her smile, her body forgiving him, wanting him, moving as far toward him as possible in the tiny prison cashiers are given to work and dream in, her eyes having moved too, her lips and her heart.

This was the express lane, and their exchange took no time at all, and then she was ringing up my fruit, bagging it for me, her eyes down, her smile—the bastard’s smile—lingering, her mind, I imagined, imagining things.

So I shelved my Hi, but there was nowhere for me to go and she would have to raise her head, eventually, and when she did she did so quickly, professionally in her fast lane, and she gave me the same wonderful, tricky Hello she always did, and I—dried out and cracked, just so ever much more—smiled back, giving her the kind of pained, brave, bullshit smile men smile when some unwelcome, easily discovered truth has been discovered: my number, one of thousands, old and past its something and knowing I’d never move her like that, not one part of her, not forward, not backward, nowhere.

Outside, I was happy not to have made a fool of myself.

Outside and carrying the plastic bag sagging with the fruit that would be good for me, for my precious health, I couldn’t think of one thing worse than not being able to make that fool come back to life. ###

30

Editorial

I Agree with William Blake By Nonnie Augustine “Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.” William Blake

knew.

William Blake died in 1827, well before the rise of Hitler, Stalin, Franco, or Mussolini. But he knew, he

Artists do not flourish, at least not openly, when under the thumb of repressive regimes. Artists draw the eye and ear toward kindness, toward the careful tending of small things, toward the freedom each of us needs in order to flourish. I expect I'm preaching to the choir here, because you are reading this magazine, and so, I believe, you already value art, and because you are reading this introduction to the poetry section of The Linnet’s Wings, you read poems. (Somehow many people don’t, you know.)

How awful life would be, how fettered, if all we had to read were White Papers, financial reports, news of war here and there and everywhere, or heaven help us, the dictates of an autocrat. Have you heard Jimi Hendrix’s version of The Star Spangled Banner? It’s beautiful, heartfelt, and utterly free. There’s also warning in this version of the anthem; he’s rallying us to never let our guard down and always to look for deeper meanings even in something we think is established and therefore completely known. Artists do that for us, whether they lived centuries ago, or are just starting out with their brave, tender voices.

Let me point you toward some of my favorite bits in this issue’s crop of poems: “Joe’s dovecote/ was a narrow spartan shed/ enough for/ thirty racing pigeons/ cozy on their perches” Stan Long “The atmosphere of Scandinavian coolness/ is tempered by the Japanese aroma/ and visual pleasure of the cavalcade/ of ancient sacred food” John Saunders “the fathomless deep greens/of fir and spruce, steadfast/ throughout the harsh resentment of winter” Anne Britting Oleson “When all of the jobs/ dried-up, you/ helped me sew together/ the pieces of my broken spirit./ Having faith in your own words, in us.” Ivy Page “From inside the closed balcony door the cat watched/ with surprising calm./ My heart beat too was calm./ For a short while I knew everything, with certainty.” Beate Sigriddaughter “that austere boyhood near London,/ lamp-posts disappear into fog,/ images reminiscent of Whistler.”

Ian C. Smith As you know, in the U.S. we just went through a bitter campaign season and finally re-elected Barack Obama for a second term as our president.

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Nonnie Augustine

I am relieved for many reasons, but mostly because I was so disturbed by the other guy and his cronies.

In what they said, did for their livings and by how they measured success, I knew. I knew.

These are not men (almost all of them are men) who value the words of poets. They'd not relate to pigeons, cozy in a spartan shed. I do. I’ve been warm and content in the most drear circumstances while a student at Juilliard.

I sense that these politicians, so proud of their success as businessmen, might purchase a Whistler but only as an investment; a status symbol. Not me. I would go to a museum to sit happily in front of one of his paintings and maybe, for a short while, I would know everything.

The Linnet's Wings is free to you online. I hope some of you will buy print copies because they are beautiful. We editors commit to each issue our unfettered spirits and we bring you the work of writers who speak to us without fear, with their best, and in their belief that through art we all will flourish. ###

32

John Saunders

At Gardermoen The cold air thin with the clean cut of Nordic manners as rows of blond hair and blue eyes arrive and depart with the same chopstick coordination of the circular colour coded dishes that revolve on the “Let’s Ho” Sushi counter where I am seated, a stranger in the culinary land of the rising sun, interpreting the price of colours and rainbow combinations, settle quickly on the “Healthy Option” purple combo of raw and marinated prawn and salmon, rice slices, ginger and carrot salad.

The atmosphere of Scandinavian coolness is tempered by the Japanese aroma and visual pleasure of the cavalcade of ancient sacred food, prepared by the beautiful Nipponese waitress who may not be from Japan and perhaps, has never left this land of Thor, fiords and snow, although to look into the deep oriental pool of her eyes, you would never know.

John Saunders

33

John Saunders

Descent Drunk at thirty five thousand feet over the North Sea on 2010 Syrah, the blue eyed Dane offers me another drink before descent.

I look into the empty glass.

I’m already down.

John Saunders

34

John Saunders

The Builders They loved each other when everything was soft, gifts opened in the mix of eyes and limbs, their wet kisses fresh as a new build.

They built with the blocks of each other’s desire, ground down the sharp edges of misunderstanding, plastered smooth unseen cracks of self-doubt.

When love solidified they aged in its greying, impulses tarmacadamed into routine maintenance.

She constructed a boundary wall to protect, he occupied the shed of love’s workshop until their lives hardened like course concrete and their hearts weathered and dried to the core.

Both wanted first claim to the earth, neither wished to remain derelict.

John Saunders

35

Anne Britting Oleson

Meditation on the View from the Bell Tower, DUMC The world runs slant, down the ragged slopes of hills left over from majestic Appalachians, younger less muscular brothers of the White Mountains marching in formation to the shouthwest, away out of sight toward the Greens and the Adirondacks.

Not to be outdone in color, though: the breathy greens of new leaves appearing as a mist; the fathomless deep greens of fir and spruce, steadfast throughout the harsh resentment of winter.

Over all, the new blue of a sky blazing as heaven must, a blue so intense it can be heard even through the streaked glass, the rheumy eyes which are opened so rarely that the world hurts them— as the newborn's eyes must ache, as the convert's eyes must.

Anne Britting Oleson

36

Ivy Page

Unexpected Faith The summer that: we went tumbling down the Pemi more times than I can count, found comfort in charity bread, spoke of our future like we were picking out constellations as if the future held some magic, a way to keep the thoughts of the bottom falling out held at bay.

When all of the jobs dried-up, you helped me sew together the pieces of my broken spirit.

Having faith in your own words, in us.

Ivy Page

37

Ivy Page

Funeral The candlelight carries some blessing.

Its gentle glow, forgiving the way bright red lipstick sticks to old teeth, belts bulging under the strain of over-grown bellies, the way caked-on skin-filler perfects dead faces.

It inspires whispers from the loudest of on-lookers, sympathy givers and family.

No longer there for the dead. Now a ritual in approach, gathering with halfsmiles and kind lies.

Great candelabras stand guard over satin reflecting a glow of pink against pale skin. Close-up it makes them shudder, weep, and move away.

Too real for comfort.

Ivy Page

38

Beate Sigriddaughter

PINE SISKIN "Look," I murmured to the green bird crashed on the balcony and filling half my hand now. "The forest is still there. You can make it. You still know how."

The bird sat with motionless wings. Only its beak opened and closed without sound. One tiny tuft of yellow and white down stuck out where wings joined body.

I stroked its head with one finger. It kept opening and closing its beak without sound. From time to time the slow film of blinking moved down across its eye.

From inside the closed balcony door the cat watched with surprising calm. My heart beat too was calm.

For a short while I knew everything, with certainty.

"You can do this," I murmured over and over and over, and when the green bird flew into the nearest tree which was indeed still there, I knew I had been talking to myself.

Beate Sigriddaughter

39

Ian C. Smith

Scottish Dream Teams Graves ago, football scores on the family radio.

The Scottish league’s exotic names, Hearts of Midlothian, Partick Thistle, conjuring a fantastical north, swords clashing under louring skies.

Hamilton Academicals, Third Lanark, Alloa Athletic, St. Mirren, Airdrieonians.

I didn’t care about table positions.

Stenhousemuir posted modest scores but I saw ruffled rooks on castle battlements.

Queen of the South, calligraphic, carved, could be a ship, a headline, a racehorse.

It seemed a geographical contradiction.

I imagined a transported Boudicca defiant on Scotland’s rainwrapt shingle.

Londonish, so in Sassanach territory, our teams sported storybook names, Crystal Palace, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Leyton Orient, Queens Park Rangers, and our city, historical pageantry, but it was of those Scottish teams I dreamed.

Ian C. Smith

40

Ian C. Smith

You go home again In thrall to intimations of your fate, you review the past’s transactions, that austere boyhood near London, lamp-posts disappear into fog, images reminiscent of Whistler.

Her headscarf, her hurried walk past dripping privet, smell of petrol, his flat cap above a thin cigarette you rolled for him with his gadget, strident cockney humour on the wireless.

Those eked out days resemble happiness, the black and white cat’s claws prick your thighs, just enough to eat, but no books, the lane behind your back garden, stinging nettles, dock weed, dandelion.

Walking down Staines Road to the gasworks for creosote to paint the chicken coop, fill your lungs with tar fumes, those wide-belted men, all vanished now, call out his nickname from dark sheds.

Your strange stirring for this, still, the scullery where she sips brewed tea, her chilblains soaking in a chipped bowl, outside, leaves drift piled against the fence, the kind neighbor, her disabled daughter.

Here and now’s clamour on mute, your young face gazes from a puddle, lures you towards beautiful shadows, a siren, yes, the air-raid shelter, drizzle, rations, a kind of beauty, yes.

Ian C. Smith

41

Stan Long

Uncle Joe Joe's dovecote was a narrow spartan shed enough for thirty racing pigeons cozy on their perches retired captain he needed them reminders of the wind freedom of the sky the wild heart driver of all desire the birds gave back what he'd lost bright eyes knew him one was his champion and I picked her out a red-eyed pure white Brussel how did you know he said it's the blood I said yours in mine a family thing nous I said the white dove cooing in my hand Stan Long

42

Threshold of Eternity

Old Man in Sorrow

Threshold of Eternity By Bill West Vincent van Gogh's painting, Old Man in Sorrow (On the Threshold of Eternity) is a moving depiction of an old man, sitting beside a fire, his head clutched in his hands. It is an image he repeated over a period of eight of the ten years van Gogh spent dedicating himself to art. He made the first drawing and lithograph of this subject in 1881 and he painted his last version in 1890, shortly before his death. He died in January 1891.

He said, in a letter to his brother that his intention was, “to express the special mood of Christmas and New Year.” This may explain the contradiction in the title, “sorrow” and the phrase “threshold of eternity,” His letter went on to say, “I can fully share in it and even feel a need for it, at least in the sense that, just as much as an old man of that kind, I have a feeling of belief in something on high even if I don’t know exactly who or what will be there.” A message of hope and a new beginning, something he needed in 1890.

It was in 1888 he had cut off his ear lobe after a quarrel with Gauguin and in the following year he had been in the asylum at Saint-Rémy suffering a protracted psychotic episode lasting from February to April. He

43

Bill West

experienced terrifying hallucinations and complained bitterly of the religious content of these episodes and wanted to get away from the nuns who cared for him. During this period he produced 300 pieces of art including Starry Night.

Before he became an artist van Gogh had followed a religious calling, a choice which had ended badly. He'd studied theology but failed his exams. Undaunted he accepted a temporary post as a missionary in the village of Petit Wasmes in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. The poverty and hardship he saw affected him deeply. Rather than take the 'easy option' he became involved in the lives of those he preached to, people who he liked. He shared their poverty and gave them his belongings. Sleeping on a straw pallet in a hut behind the baker's house he was often heard weeping at night. Eventually his sponsors sacked him from his post and accused him of undermining the dignity of the priesthood. He suffered further condemnation for his lifestyle and life choices, such as setting up a home with his mistress and her daughter, condemned also by his father who was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Old Man in Sorrow shows Adrianus Jacobus Zuyderland, a favourite model of the artist from his Hague period. He wears a patched bombazine suit and worn boots. The fireplace he sits beside is stylised and understated, almost flat like a Japanese print. It shows a wood fire with flames drawing vigorously. There are two tiny shapes like gates within the firebox, echoes of the fireplace itself. One flame rises towards a cross framed within one of the gates. Other flames stream towards a similar shape and tracing the line of the old man's leg and knee. These marks echo the shape of the under-mantel and pillar drawn boldly in indigo. It is as if the old man's sorrow burns like the flames disappearing into eternity.

Passion and conviction marked out van Gogh. He believed that painting was his job of work but not to workaday ends. He believed he must become the very best artist he could be in his search of the ultimate ` truth` and feeling "the positive consciousness of the fact that art is something greater and higher than our own adroitness or accomplishments or knowledge".

He was not certain that it was necessarily Christian, for as he said, "I was trying to say this in this print — but I can’t say it as beautifully, as strikingly as reality, of which this is only a dim reflection seen in a dark mirror — that it seems to me that one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of 'something on high' in which Millet believed, namely in the existence of a God and an eternity, is the unutterably moving quality that there can be in the expression of an old man like that, without his being aware of it perhaps, as he sits so quietly in the corner of his hearth. At the same time something precious, something noble, that can’t be meant for the worms. ... This is far from all theology — simply the fact that the poorest woodcutter, heath farmer or miner can have moments of emotion and mood that give him a sense of an eternal home that he is close to."

Although van Gogh died by his own hand unsuccessful and unacknowledged, he achieved the status of one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century and fulfilled his own wish had he but known it: “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.’”

44

A Visit from St. Nicholas

A VI SI T FROM ST. N I CH OLAS by Clement C. Moore Illustrations by FOC Darley

45

Clement C. Moore

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

46

A Visit from St. Nicholas

And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

47

Clement C. Moore

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

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A Visit from St. Nicholas

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

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Clement C. Moore

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.

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A Visit from St. Nicholas

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

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Clement C. Moore

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

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A Visit from St. Nicholas

He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

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Clement C. Moore

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

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A Visit from St. Nicholas

And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

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F.O.C. Darley Felix Octavius Carr Darley (June 23, 1822 – March 27, 1888) often credited as F. O. C. Darley, was an American painter in watercolor and illustrator, known for his illustrations in works by well-known 19th century authors, including: James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Mary Maples Dodge, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, George Lippard, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Donald Grant Mitchell, Clement Clarke Moore, Frances Parkman, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nathaniel Parker Willis.

Darley was born June 23, 1822 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He was a self-taught and prolific artist who started out as a staff artist for a Philadelphia publishing company where he was given a wide variety of assignments.

After moving to New York, his work began to appear in magazines such as Harper's Weekly and in books by various publishers. Darley made 500 drawings for Lossing's History of the United States. Among his lithographic illustrations are those for Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", and some scenes in Indian life. The swing and vigor of his style, his facility, and versatility and the high average merit of his numerous works, make him one of the most noteworthy of American illustrators.

Darley signed a contract with Edgar Allan Poe on January 31, 1843, to create original illustrations for his upcoming literary journal The Stylus. The contract, which was through July 1, 1844, requested at least three illustrations per month, "on wood or paper as required," but no more than five, for $7 per illustration. The Stylus was never actually produced but Darley provided illustrations for the final installments of the first serial publication of Poe's award-winning tale "The Gold-Bug" later that year.

In 1848, Darley provided the drawings for the first fully illustrated edition of Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" which was printed and distributed by the American Art-Union. That same year, also illustrated an edition of Irving's "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon" and his "Wolfert's Roof" in 1855. Over his career, he produced nearly 350 drawings for James Fenimore Cooper, later collected in a several-volume edition of Cooper's novels printed from 1859 to 1861. In 1868 he published, after a visit to Europe, "Sketches Abroad with Pen and Pencil." His water color paintings of incidents in American history are full of spirit and his bank-note vignettes are also worthy of mention. John Neal Hoover has written a scholarly article on Darley with a section on further reading.

He died in 1888 at his home in Claymont, Delaware, and is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His Victorian mansion, located in Claymont, is now known as the Darley House and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. ###

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The Argument

At Eternity's Gate, lithograph

TH E ARGU M EN T by Cezarija Abartis

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Cezarija Abartis

W

ait, he said.

She was shivering and put on a sweater. She turned to him and heard static in her brain. Maybe he had said that he was overweight.

She said, No–you’re fine.

She was coming down with a head cold, and now he wanted to ask her not to leave. Or maybe he was saying he didn’t believe her. When she looked out the window, the moon had taken on the squashed-oval shape that a child might have pencilled in an anguished drawing. If she was leaving, she might not come back. Would not come back.

This was too much. Love was not supposed to be this sawtoothed.

I’m sorry, he said. I was wrong to be late, to betray, to not take out the trash.

She did not think trash was such a wrong. Well, she said.

I’m sorry for not doing the laundry, for not putting away my clothes, for not cleaning the plates. He stepped toward her.

She stepped back.

I’m sorry about the car, the rent, the job I lost, the world.

Or did he say “woods”? She had forgotten how he had not brought a picnic basket to the woods on their anniversary, how he lost the keys to the house, how he promised he would be polite to her mother.

No, that was not it.

He stepped toward her and took her hand. You have a fever, he said. You’re still sick.

She breathed out a hot breath. She slumped down to the couch.

I’ll bring you a blanket, he said. I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you butterscotch pudding.

She sat against the cushions. She thought of stars and meadows. That would be a life. Or would it be a lie? She was exhausted and distant like the stars. Her head swirled. She folded her hands in her lap like an imperial child. She coughed.

I want tea and honey, she said.

Honey, he said and patted her hand.

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Bliss

Cherry Tree, Series: The Flowering Orchard

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Foster Trecost

BLI SS By Foster Trecost

A

thin line parted her lips, like something drawn with a pencil. Same with the eyes, closed but not quite, slit-windows to the world. Maybe she took in her surroundings, but I don't think she did.

We sat on the sidewalk, tables strewn about resembled an obstacle course. People passed between us holding umbrellas like lances, ready to impale body parts in their way, but she paid them no attention. She had made herself alone. I wasn't there, none of us were.

Beneath her coffee cup I could see a newspaper. I wasn’t sure why she would remove herself from society, yet buy something sure to pull her right back in. Then I realized it hadn't been read. Maybe she'd been seduced by the headlines, bought it on impulse. Maybe it had been left there by someone else.

My friend followed my gaze. “My God,” he said. “I've never seen someone so sad.”

I turned toward him and shook my head. When I turned back, she was standing. She walked on and I watched her until the crowd closed in, until I was no longer sure which one she was. On her table, an empty coffee cup sat atop the newspaper, still neatly creased, still unread.

“On the contrary,” I said. “She just might be the happiest girl I've ever seen.” ###

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Limited and Unlimited

Still Life with Straw Hat

LIMITED AND UNLIMITED By

H

Steve Finan

erb had no idea where he’d been. He wished they'd stop asking. All he knew was he'd been away.

No memories. There didn’t seem to be any good reason to keep him in hospital. This isn’t the America of movies, you know. There isn’t an X Factor-type government department alerted to deal with these sort of things.

Not in Redditch. In fact Worcestershire in general just isn’t that sort of county. He was healthy. They’d asked just about every question they could. Every test they could think of.

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A year ago, Herb’s car, or more accurately Mother’s car, was found stopped in the road. Some parts of it were missing, as was Herb. It was briefly sensational. It looked like someone had lasered out a spherical chunk of the car. Impressive. Like a movie. Some of the tarmac was gone too. Again, as if a sphere had appeared and then disappeared. It was a mystery. But only for a day before a tasty sex-and-chocolate-smeared-celebrities scandal overtook the front pages. A video of the chocolate smearing somehow found its way to the internet. Careers were enhanced.

But now, after a year and a day, Herb was back. Same cardigan. They did the ‘in for observation’ thing. He wasn’t a prisoner. Herb was very frightened but didn’t let it show. Herb tried not to let things show. The police interviewed him too, which was scariest of all, but couldn’t think of a crime that had been committed. So eventually, not knowing quite what to do, they released him back into his old life.

The newspapers wanted interviews. Herb had nothing to say. Even sensationalist reporters find it difficult to construct a story out of continual “I'm sorry, I don’t know” answers.

But Herb had become different. He didn’t say anything. It was a bit frightening. For one thing, he had more teeth than before. He’d once had a tooth removed. A pre-molar. It broke badly when he was 18. But now it was back. Herb didn't tell the doctors and no-one asked. Also, he knew things he hadn’t known before. He knew mathematics. Not just minor stuff either. Optimal Golomb Rulers of Order-27 and Order-28 just popped into his head. The Reimann hypothesis, and the answer to it, just floated in too. The Hodge conjecture was conjecture no more. He didn’t tell anyone. Herb thought it might make him seem odd. Enough people already thought Herb odd.

He could also do things he couldn’t do before. He could levitate objects just by thinking. He could gather the light particles that had bounced off any person, object or event in the past and replay it in front of him like a 3D movie. A hologram show. The worst thing was, he didn’t have to try. It was quite disturbing. All he had to do was calculate where the light particles might be, out in space or floating around earth’s atmosphere. Or recover those that had regenerated into other particles. Then bring them back in the same way he mind-moved objects. It was easy-peasy as Mother would say. Herb didn’t want to do it much in case someone said it was against the law. It might technically be spying. But no-one knocked at the door to say he’d done anything wrong.

Herb viewed the battle of Trafalgar one evening for his own enjoyment. Then the first steam train. He reviewed incidents from his childhood, which amusingly were sometimes very different to how he remembered them.

He discovered Mother had had a brief but very physical sexual affair with, of all people, his late father’s sister, conducted it would seem, in local fields and behind hedgerows. Probably because there was nowhere else to do it. It was nasty and frightening. There wasn't a chance on this good earth that Herb would brooch this subject with her. He quickly changed the scene to safer things like the building of Stonehenge, the great pyramids and the erection of the Easter Island moai. It was all rather amusing. His own personal BBC4. He didn’t think he could tell Mother or indeed anyone. It’s a difficult conversation to start.

He tried to find the light particles of various Biblical events, but there didn’t seem to have been a parting of the Red Sea. Or anyone turned to a pillar of salt. Herb decided not to meddle any further in those sorts of things. It just starts arguments.

Mother, the part-time lesbian, took him home from hospital in her new car. Herb wasn’t trusted to drive as it hadn’t gone well the last time. And seemingly the insurance firm had taken months to pay out on the old car. Herb heard this several times. Mentally, to get a rest from the verbal battering, Herb calculated the coefficient of the friction between the car tyre and the road surface. This was strange, not least because Herb didn’t think he’d been aware of the term “coefficient of friction” before calculating it to be 1.68064666 recurring. Mother’s "and-just-where-HAVE-you-been-that's-what-I'd-like-to-know-not-even-contacting-your-own-

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Limited and Unlimited Mother" questioning was straying close to nagging, if we were to impose definitions upon things. Herb said nothing.

His room was largely as he'd left it. The room of a 42-year-old man living with his single parent. Stuck somewhere between the freedom of childhood and the responsibility of utility bills in his own name. As soon as he’d shut the door, Herb made every object weighing less than a kilo dance in the air. Then he swapped some of the particle geometry around so his radio alarm became a perfect sphere and a pair of socks metamorphosed into a carbonised cuboid. He changed them back. After a glance at the door to see if Mother's feet were casting shadows at the bottom (she stood there listening sometimes, secret lesbians are obviously suspicious people) as an experiment he called up a life-size image of Jane Russell sunbathing naked on the patio of a Beverley Hills mansion. Nice. It seemed there wasn't any censoring of his image-calling-up abilities. It was probably illegal though. Copyright issues would surely apply to naked images of film stars. Even dead ones.

Herb was also, extremely surprisingly, in great physical shape. He could make a ‘washboard stomach’, if he tensed his muscles. The pot belly was gone. He attempted some press-ups (in privacy of course) and was still going at around 440 when he was disturbed by his mother wanting to use the toilet. Herb hadn’t even broken sweat and, if anything, would have said the exertion was pleasurable. This was a new experience. None of his trousers fitted properly anymore though.

It was time to take stock. Herb often stopped to take stock. It kept him on an even keel. It would appear he’d gone missing for a year and a day, then returned with the powers of a comic book superhero. The obvious answer was that he’d been abducted by an alien race greater intelligence, taught how to manipulate objects with thought and had been given the body of an Olympic athlete. But no new clothes. No doubt the higher intelligence had intended he should enlighten mankind, educate them or save them from some forthcoming disaster. This was terrifying. How are impending disasters averted by the ability to do sums and make objects float? Herb didn’t know.

He wondered if he might make some money. He knew he could make a roulette ball land in any slot he wanted. He’d never been to a casino, but had seen them on TV. They always had rough men who wouldn’t look kindly upon manipulation of their roulette balls. He thought about making cash float out of banks and into his hands. But people would see. Herb wasn't sure what he'd do with a lot of money anyway. It would be difficult to explain to Mother.

Then he thought he might be able to do something with Sandra Chisholm. No woman, not even the magnificently-chested but scathingly-tongued Sandra, could resist him now. Surely. Herb worked under Sandra in the builder’s merchant’s where Herb did the books. Sandra flirted, in her slightly aggressive way, with everyone who came in. All the rough-tongued brickies and plumbers’ mates. The slick (they thought) trade salesmen. The DIY guys who appeared at the counter looking for just a couple of lengths of four-by-two.

Sandra called him Herby. He didn’t much like it, but he did like her talking to him. Herb wasn’t good at flirting. He had been good at organising his collection of football cards (although he didn’t really much like football) and good at certain word games. He was less good at chess, but lacked anyone to play with anyway.

Herb reckoned he’d be better at chess now because he could visualise all the moves made by all the grand masters in history.

Herb was tempted to assemble scenes of Sandra naked, but decided not to look. He thought of what she'd say if she ever discovered he'd been looking at her naked. Sandra was probably best left alone. Herb knew the phrase “be careful what you wish for” very much applied to his feelings for Sandra. If he did ever manage to get her naked, he wouldn’t do anything. Probably cover his eyes and apologise. Herb hadn’t ever seen a real woman naked. He had a computer but didn’t look at the sort of website that had naked women. Herb knew there were

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Steve Finan

police officers who put men in prison for looking at unmentionable things on the internet. Herb had also seen those magazines on the top shelves of newsagents, but couldn’t imagine how anyone could actually march up to the counter and buy them. What would Mr Ashwarri think if he’d gone to buy such a thing? Herb bought the BBC History magazine.

Herb thought about how to add to his collection of football cards using his new powers, but couldn’t think how to do it.

He looked out of the window and wondered how strong his new powers were. It was dark. He decided to pull up the fir tree in the next-door-neighbours garden. It was too big for a suburban garden anyway, Mother often said so. It blocked the light. Herb imagined it rising into the air, pulling up its roots. The tree rose, ripping its roots with it, and the fence collapsed into the resulting hole. Herb was horrified and tried to squeeze the tree back into place, but it wouldn’t go. Herb panicked. He twisted it a bit, this way and that, but it wasn’t going to fit securely. He tried forcing it in, but the neighbours' greenhouse started to tilt. Herb became terrified that someone might be watching and laid the tree down, fairly gently, across the garden. He tried to position it so it looked like a freak gust of wind blew it over or it had just, somehow, fallen over. But he didn’t think it looked convincing. It looked like someone had been meddling with it. Herb closed the curtains.

The next day, when Herb’s mother told him the neighbours’ tree had fallen, Herb bent his head over his porridge and concentrated on the now ridiculously easy Telegraph crossword. Herb hoped no-one thought it was his fault. A landscape gardener came to saw up the tree later in the day. Herb was too frightened to look, but re-ran the scene for himself in the toilet, the light particles being particularly easy to gather as they hadn’t gone very far. It was a heavy tree, the gardener had quite a bit of trouble getting it all sawn up. Herb decided his powers were rather dangerous.

Over the next few months, Herb tried a few things. He could jump very high. He went jogging once and found he could run like the wind. He ran out past Studley, down the A435 to the turn-off for Wixford and then back. He calculated his time was well inside world record marathon pace. He assured Mother, who was amazed by this out-of-character desire to take exercise, that he’d just jogged to the industrial estate. People would ask awkward questions if he suddenly became the best athlete in history.

He also, daringly while watching TV one Saturday night, made ball number 33 be selected in the Lotto so he could win £10. But he didn’t take his ticket to Mr Ashwarri’s to collect the £10 because he thought they might be able to trace who had manipulated ball 33. Herb knew that cheating the National Lottery would get him years and years in jail. He reasoned, of course, that if he wanted to, he could have bent the jail bars and unlocked any door. But then he’d be a fugitive. It’s no life for a respectable Englishman to be a fugitive. They’re not cut out for it. Fugitives belong in Arizona or New Mexico, not Worcestershire.

He did, successfully, mentally manipulate the blades of his lawnmower so they became hypersensitive and accordingly lengthened or shortened themselves so that every blade of grass was cut to precisely four centimetres long, which gave a very pleasing effect. He quietly levitated out the dandelions and most of the moss so the lawn looked as well as it ever had done. Herb was rather proud of it. He made the piece of wallpaper on the bathroom ceiling stick because it previously had bulged quite noticeably. Despite his earlier misgivings he sometimes found it difficult to resist viewing the naked antics of certain celebrities and found himself watching a few scenes he wasn’t comfortable with. Then he saw the Leveson Inquiry on TV and decided to quickly give up on the assembly of light particles that had touched public figures. If everyone was so upset about mobile phone hacking, goodness knows what they'd do about reconstructed scenes of . . . well . . . that lady from Emmerdale doing THAT! But all things considered, Herb became rather comfortable with his superpowers. It was nice. He didn’t

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Limited and Unlimited quite know what to do with the mathematical formulas that just seemed to appear in his head. Some of the ideas would probably, he knew, be of some use to the type of people who are interested in these things. But Herb didn’t know any mathematicians. Occasionally at work, where Herb had been welcomed back as a good worker, he'd do the accounts with his powers, but didn’t push it. No-one likes someone who “pushes it”.

Sandra continued her flirty ways with the customers. It had always been this way and Herb didn’t think it was his place to change things.

There were a few quiet things. One day he thought he could read the thoughts of the American president, who was considering invading another Middle Eastern country. Herb shut his mind to it. Iran was nothing to do with him.

He also realised he could fly. He didn’t try it, of course. It was an extremely alarming prospect. But he knew he could do it if he wanted to.

One day, at work, a badly balanced timber bundle fell on him. But he didn’t feel it, it just bounced off. It weighed 4.3308 metric tonnes, he calculated. Thankfully, no-one saw and he put it back where it belonged. It was sometimes jolly useful to have superpowers.

Then, one day, Herb disappeared again.

He wasn’t gone for a year and a day this time. It was a Sunday. He’d been out with Father's old fishing rod. He’d run all the way to Battlefield Brook, on the other side of Bromsgrove, to try his hand for a trout. He wasn't even out of breath, despite the lengthy distance. He’d been alone on the riverbank when the laser sphere thing happened again. He was gone for about an hour, then returned. Again, no idea where he’d been, no memory of what had happened. He pulled out the long grass singed where the sphere had appeared so noone would know what happened. It wouldn’t do to be known as the man who had been ‘away’ AGAIN. He decided to run home as quickly as possible. But he couldn’t run. He couldn’t make things move with his mind either. The mathematical theorems seemed to be gone too, along with the ability to reconstruct light particle scenarios. This was awful, how was he going to get home? Luckily, he had enough for a bus fare and still had two of the four corned beef sandwiches he’d set out with, so it wasn't all bad news. He made it home before arousing the suspicion of Mother.

And so life went on. He missed and also didn’t miss the superpowers. The tooth had disappeared. It wasn’t much of a loss. Dandelions returned to the lawn and he walked more warily in the timber warehouse in case there were more unstable bundles.

Just over 12 months passed before Herb read about Jacinta, who, it was reported, no-one had seen for a year. Then he was on TV too. A lot. It seemed Jacinta had also been ‘away’. He lived in the town of Cochrane, Alberta, in Canada, but he had marched into the debating chamber of the UN in New York and lifted all the delegates 10 feet from their seats. Guards had gone crazy and, this being America, had shot at him with handguns. The bullets just dropped to the floor. Jacinta told the United Nations representatives what they were going to do. They were to disband their armies and redistribute world resources so that everyone got an equal share. Herb wondered if "redistribution of wealth" would apply to Worcestershire. Not in Redditch, surely. And if it did, would he be richer or poorer?

Jacint0 also gave everyone a week to get started on dismantling their nuclear and chemical warheads.

When no country complied he launched every single one that was attached to a missile, which certainly frightened everyone for an hour or so. But then Jacinto thrust them all out into space and into orbit around the sun. Herb wondered what Jacinta’s teeth count was before and after being away.

Not everyone was pleased with the new stuff Jacinta was proposing. There were calls from many countries that Jacinto could not be allowed to be the dictator of the world. Jacinta said he had no wish to be a dictator.

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Steve Finan

People declared that they wanted to be in charge of their own destiny, that they would not be ‘ground under the heel’ of the despot, even if he insisted he wasn’t a despot and had done what he had to do to ensure no child ever died in a nuclear war. But, despite his obvious concern for the young and their chances of being fried in nuclear blasts, a lot of people hated Jacinta. Not least the military, who looked like they'd be out of a job.

People openly talked about how to kill him. Others formed the Church of Jacinta and hailed him ‘the second coming’. Jacinta said he wasn’t the second coming. He ran a 3D scenario for TV cameras showing the fate of the artist formerly known as the first coming, which was vastly different to what everyone had for 2000 years been assured had happened. Jacinta said he wasn’t the new messiah, not least because there hadn’t even been an old messiah. It was a bit confusing, really. The 3D scenario was denounced as a conjuring trick.

It was revealed in the newspapers that just before his appearance at the UN, Jacinta had won the Canadian 6/49 lottery. And the Mega Millions and Powerball lotteries in the USA. He was very rich. People thought this wasn’t fair. Some said they’d seen him fly. A neighbour swore that just after he'd got back from being away for a year she’d seen him run faster than a fast car can drive. The newspapers started calling him Superman. Another woman said she’d been mind-controlled into sleeping with him, although follow-up stories revealed she’d slept with him several times over the course of four years, usually after they’d both been drinking in Cochrane’s less salubrious bars. And that she’d slept with several other customers of the bars. She was pictured topless and drunk in a UK newspaper.

A woman from California, nowhere near Alberta, said she’d been at a Satan worshipping ceremony in Calexico City, California, at which Jacinta had eaten a baby. No-one asked her why she had been taking part in such a ceremony. Or if the baby had been cooked first, which was the question that Herb had. That was the only story Jacinta came out and flatly denied, which sparked scores more Jacinto-at-Satanic-rites claims. Jacinta said none of them were true.

The USA authorities released a statement denying he had escaped from Area 51, confirming in many people’s minds that he must definitely have escaped from Area 51. Jacinto looked weary at the questioning. He was on TV every day. The cameras followed wherever he went. He denied he would be in any way affected by kryptonite — explaining this was especially true as kryptonite doesn’t actually exist, which failed to convince most of the American public who knew kryptonite very much does exist as they’d seen it in films and he would say that wouldn’t he because Superman is well known to be afraid of it.

There were attempts on Jacinta’s life, one of them by a Chinese army unit. No-one seemed very happy about Chinese special forces units operating in Canada. The American president and British prime minister jointly declared that they had fought Nazis side by side and would meet this new threat shoulder-to-shoulder too. Not the Chinese, who had sent a team of killers to Northern America, but Jacinta who had said everyone should help feed the starving. The PM even used the phrase “fight them on the beaches” which was a bit overdramatic as it wasn’t at all clear who would be fighting who on which beach. For a moment herb thought he was proposing to fight the starving on the beaches. Which seemed harsh. The stock markets plummeted and, oddly, many people started building themselves nuclear shelters — even though all nuclear weapons were several hundred millions of miles away getting toasted by the sun and no longer a danger to children.

Despite kryptonite not actually existing it became possible to buy, for 300 dollars, pieces of kryptonite on eBay. Personal protection, the sales pitch said. The pieces of kryptonite looked suspiciously like green plastic.

A website called JacintaLottoNumbers.com reached No. 4 on the Google traffic charts.

Jacinta held a press conference and took over every TV and radio channel simultaneously across the world to once and for all explain his peace and redistribution-of-wealth ideas and to tell people not to worry. All he

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Limited and Unlimited wanted was for everyone to think. As a gift to mankind he revealed the mathematical formula for predicting all possible prime numbers. He did his 3D hologram thing again, showing in detail how mankind had looked just at the point where the forefathers of the species moved apart from the phenotype that would go on to become chimpanzees. He said he only wanted to do good things and for everyone to help each other.

The second question in the media session he gave after his broadcast was, “Have you, or have you not, ever eaten a baby?”

There were many opinions on Jacinta. TV shows, newspapers and discussion forum keyboard-bashers endlessly debated him. No-one knew what to think. Except Herb. Herb knew exactly what to think. Herb quietly assured himself he’d had a very lucky escape. ###

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Vincent Trivia Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890, in the last weeks of van Gogh’s life. Many have claimed it as his last painting.

The image of the sower came to Van Gogh in Biblical teachings from his childhood, such as: "A sower went out to sow. As he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it had not much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil; and when the sun rose it was scorched, and since it had no root it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty fold, and sixty fold and a hundredfold."(Mark 4:3-8) Bedroom in Arles is the title given to each of three similar paintings. Van Gogh's own title for this composition was simply "The Bedroom." There are three authentic versions described in his letters, easily discernible from one another by the pictures on the wall to the right. The painting depicts Van Gogh's bedroom at 2, Place Lamartine in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France, known as his Yellow House. The door to the right was opening to the upper floor and the staircase, the door to the left served the guest room he held prepared for Gauguin. The window in the front wall was looking to Place Lamartine and its public gardens.

In September 1888, before his December breakdown that resulted in his hospitalisation in Arles, he painted Starry Night Over the Rhone. Van Gogh wrote about this painting: "... it does me good to do what’s difficult. That doesn’t stop me having a tremendous need for, shall I say the word — for religion — so I go outside at night to paint the stars.'"

When exhibited for the first time, in 1892, the painting Café Terrace at Night was entitled Coffeehouse, in the evening (Café, le soir) Vincent considered "Irises" a study. He called the painting "the lightning conductor for my illness", because he felt that he could keep himself from going insane by continuing to paint. Its first owner was the French art critic and anarchist Octave Mirbeau, who was also one of Van Gogh's first supporters: he paid 300 francs for it. In 1987, it became the most expensive painting ever sold, setting a record which stood for two and a half years. Then it was sold for US$53.9 million to Alan Bond, but he did not have enough money to pay for it.

Irises was later re-sold in 1990 to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Irises is currently (as of 2012) tenth on the inflation-adjusted list of most expensive paintings ever sold, and in 25th place if the effects of inflation are ignored. ###

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Absence

The Spinner ( After Millett)

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Gloria Garfunkel

ABSEN CE By Gloria Garfunkel

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t was getting worse, so bad they would have to remove it. Scheduling the removal was a problem because of all the other work that had to be done, but it was finally squeezed in at an odd hour of an odd day of an odd month. Once they got the thing out there was a period of getting accustomed to living without it which wasn't easy after all those years, but, really, one can get used to anything. ###

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Merry Christmas From Lily Pond in Saugus Town

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM LILY POND IN SAUGUS TOWN Tom Sheehan When each tree’s snowed upon each limb, when children lie sleeping waiting him, when Lily Pond gives up owl’s quick hoot and snow is crunching beneath my boot, know I walk here and think now of you who sometimes or not knew this view; who by this pond and this water wide may have walked about on either side; who one summer may have lately cast for bass or pickerel that quickly passed, or whose shore-wide winds of December ilk dared touch your cheek with a dash of silk; or when plush leaves were turned to gold as pure-flung autumn engaged its hold.

Be sure all seasons of our younger grace walk beside me in this near-silent place, know I think, while Christmas spreads from angel’s top to children’s beds, of all my friends whom I correspond and wish their visits beside this pond.

Come to Lily Pond again, to Saugus town, where Christmas once was tender known, where we gather in childhood memories this pond’s air, its smell and winter breeze, where all our younger lives were spent about the shores where curving went, and on slickered ice we slickered flew fair to the Turnpike and out of view.

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Tom Sheehan

Welcome Christmas back as it was then, the songs we sang, the friends we’ve been, the wishes springing full spent on air, for you all the hopes the heart can bear.

Merry Christmas.

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INDEX Page 2 Japonaiserie, 'Flowering Plum Tree' (after Hiroshige), oil on canvas, 55 × 46 cm (21.7 × 18.1 in); Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

See Also: Comparison of a woodblock print by Hiroshige to its copy painted by van Goghh-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hiroshige_Van_Gogh_1.JPG and Japonaiserie (Van Gogh)Japanesery was the term the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh used to express the influence of Japanese art. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonaiserie_(Van_Gogh) See also copies by Vincent van Gogh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copies_by_Vincent_van_Gogh Page 1 Wheatfield with Crows -- oil on canvas 101x50 cm Location: Auvers Date: June 1890 , See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatfield_with_Crows See also Jean-François Millet at http://www.vggallery.com/influences/millet/main.htm Page 4 Title: The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise, Date: June 1890, Mediu: oil on canvas, Dimensions: 94 × 74 cm (37 × 29.1 in), Current location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris In Popular Culture, See Vincent and the Doctor: A Doctor Who Episode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_and_the_Doctor Page 7 Title: Two Hands, Medium: Oil on Canvas on Wood, Date, Nuenen, April 1885, Location, Private Collection Series, Peasant Character Studies, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_Character_Studies_(Van_Gogh_series) See Also Jean Francois Millet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet Page 9 Title: Starry Night Over The Rhone, Date: September 1888 (Arles), Medium: Oil on canvas, Size: 72.5 × 92 cm (28.5 × 36.2 in) Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starry_Night_Over_the_Rhone Page 13 Title Cafe Terrace at Night, Date 16 September 1888, Medium oil on canvas, Dimensions 81 × 65.5 cm (31.9 × 25.8 in), Location: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafe_Terrace_at_Night Page 22 Title: View of Arles, Flowering Orchards, 1889 Type oil on canvas, Dimensions 72 cm × 92 cm (28.3 in × 36.2 in) Location Neue Pinakothek, Munich

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_Arles,_Flowering_Orchards Page 25 Title: The Starry Night 1889, Type: Oil on canvas, Dimensions: 73.7 cm × 92.1 cm (29 in × 36¼ in) Location: Museum of Modern Art New York City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night Page 27 Title: The Bedroom, 1888, Type Oil on canvas, Dimensions 72 cm × 90 cm (28.3 in × 35.4 in), Location Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedroom_in_Arles Page 29 Title: The Sower, Medium: Oil on canvas, Size: 64.0 x 80.5 cm, Location: Arles: June, 1888 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_Fields_(Van_Gogh_series)#June_-_The_Sower http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?page=4500&lang=en Page 43 Title: Old Man in Sorrow, Date: 1890 Oil on canvas, Dimensions 80 cm × 64 cm (31.5 in × 21.2 in), LocationKröller-Müller Museum Otterlo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Eternity's_Gate see also: www.vggallery.com Page 57 Title: At Eternity's Gate by Vincent van Gogh, lithograph, 1882, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Museum_of_Contemporary_Art Page 59 Title: The Flowering Orchard, Date: 1888, Oil on canvas 28 1/2 x 21 in. (72.4 x 53.3 cm) Location: The Metropolitan Gallery, New York The Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ittleson Jr. Purchase Fund, 1956 (56.13) Title http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/56.13 Page 61 Title: Still Life with a Straw Hat Medium: Oil on paper mounted on canvas, Dimensions 36.8 cm × 53.3 cm (14.5 in × 21.0 in), Location: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands Page 69 Title: The Spinner (after Millet) http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/the-spinner-after-millet-1889 See Also Jean Francois Millet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet

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