Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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excerpt

“I mean no disrespect, whatsoever,” Ken said. “I know the symbol well.
But that is the wall.”
Albert exchanged a few words with Leon and then nodded. The painting
would go on that wall. Then Ken and Leon tackled the problem of
hanging the massive painting on a marble wall. The maintenance staff
concluded they would have to drill into the ceiling beams and suspend
the painting from thin stainless steel wires.
They hung the painting after business hours. Ken invited the media.
He had the panels delivered to the lobby where he bolted them together.
Salvador and his staff came along to help. Many members of the young
professionals group also arrived on the scene. The media asked how much
the painting had sold for. “No comment,” Ken said.
“Was it a lot of money?”
“No comment.”
“How did you contact Mr. Reichmann?”
“No comment.”
“You’re an artist,” one of them said. “How do you know how to do
all these other things? Artists don’t know how to be entrepreneurs. Who
helps you?”
“That’s a big question,” Ken said. “It’s a spiritual matter. I don’t wish
to discuss it.”
“What do you mean it’s a spiritual matter?”
“Just that. I get my knowledge, inspiration, and advice from a higher
authority and beyond that, I don’t want to discuss it. But, I will say one
thing – my advisor is Mr. Albert Reichmann.”
“Yes,” Albert said, when a reporter asked. “I am honoured to be Mr.
Kirkby’s advisor. He is doing wonderful work.”
Those few words gave Ken the credibility he’d been looking for. He had
achieved what his father had always had – the power to command respect
and attention wherever he went.
Later that night, when he was one of the last to leave, he paused to look
at the painting that he had envisioned hanging in that space so many
times. It looked exactly as he had imagined. It was in perfect proportion
to the immense lobby. It wasn’t until one walked closer to it that one felt
the full impact of its size.
His greatest debt was to Salvador, who had arranged the meeting, but
when he told him that he wanted to give him several paintings, he refused.
Ken painted several canvases regardless and delivered them to his home.
Before getting back to the task of Isumataq, Ken returned to the Arctic.
Keith Sharp, the burly Englishman, had moved to a parcel of land near
Rankin Inlet and extended an invitation. Ken included Michael as well as
Avril the photographer, and Roberto and Egidio, the filmmakers, in his
entourage; in mid-July, the somewhat motley crew – loaded down with…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562830

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573

In Turbulent Times

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excerpt

‘You’re too smart for them, Joe.’ Michael gulped a mouthful of tea that was still quite warm. ‘Your mother says you’ve been in America.’
‘Yes. I did a bit of travelling there.’
‘Must be a great country.’
‘Yes, it is. I loved what I saw of it. I told Nora that I was going to live in the States when the war was over.’
‘That’ll prepare her,’ Caitlin said in a heavy voice.
‘So you’re going to become a Yank, Joe?’ Michael said.
‘I think so.
‘Good for you. That’s where the future is, I’d say.’
‘Yes,’ Joe agreed. ‘That’s where the future is. In fact I’d say the future was already there.’
‘Grab your share of it, Joe. And good luck to you, son.’
҂
Nora waited anxiously as the days passed. She hoped heart and soul, more fervently than she had ever hoped for anything, that Joe had made her pregnant. She even prayed for it in church, pleading with God, who had robbed her of so much, to grant her this one compensating favour. And then she remembered that God did not reward sin but punished it. Would He punish her? Could He, who had already punished her so cruelly, continue to show only heartless vindictive ness towards her? The time of the month, as Nora reckoned it, had been most propitious for conception. The occasion itself, so beautiful, so transcendental, so highly infused with the passion of pure and overpowering love, could not have been other than providential. If she never had another possession in her life, Nora wanted Joe’s child with a ferocity that almost choked her.
‘If I can’t have him,’ she prayed, ‘allow me to have his son or his daughter, to love and care for as I would have loved and cared for Joe himself. Oh God Almighty, harden not Your heart this time. Wipe from Your mind all memory of the wrong we did to attain this end and give to our undying love, so true that only You could have inspired it, the divine consummation it deserves.’
Nora was tense, anxious, irritable and easily upset. She had a violent row with her mother that began with a purely innocent and casual remark from Caitlin about Owen Joe’s being too warmly dressed.
‘You’re one to be giving advice about looking after babies,’ Nora shouted heartlessly. ‘I’m surprised your incompetence as a mother didn’t kill me.’

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Introspection

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Nu
I felt nostalgic when I cried one night
for the short laughter of glory
the noise of the day stopped, and
the soft song of the crickets
commenced
keeping me company as I dreamed
about the fiery rays of your glance
and the fragrance of your flesh
that I longed to touch
I made it my goal
to lie next to you and play
in the delirium of your embrace
I felt nostalgic about becoming
one with you
during that hour of the donna di notte
that stirred its beauty the first time
I heard your erotic song and
I said,
the time has come again
for me to taste the fruit
of your enigma, oh, woman with
such attitude and passion
with endlessness in your eyes
into which the shadows vanish
during the noon hour of July
and I said,
The space in the car was
small and lustful, and Eros couldn’t
wait any longer as it flew over
your flesh trapped in your longing
for consummation
two bodies hungry for each other while
the cicadas kept on singing and
dogs rested under the oleanders
I felt nostalgic to see you naked
again, and Fate granted me my wish
for just a short moment
when I eulogized the nipple
of your left breast that
my lips took and painfully bit
your apotheosis was at that moment
woman, when time was annulled and
I learned the lesson that
couldn’t hold me prisoner when lust
transcended all bounds and
made man immortal

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763777

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume IV

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ORESTES

Under the moonlight the houses get lower down
at the plain, the corn creaks from the wind or the need
to grow bigger, the whitewashed bases of trees gleam
like mowed columns in a noiseless war, while the signs
of the small shops hang like verified oracles on closed
doors. Farmers must have slept with their arms over
their bellies and sleeping birds with their light feet
clasping onto the tree branches not trying to hold onto
something, as if trying is nothing, as if nothing happened,
as if nothing is about to happen — weightless, weightless
as if the sky has spread amid their feathers, as if someone
is passing the long and narrow hallway with an oil lamp
in his hand and all the windows are open and, out in the
countryside, you hear the animals ruminate calmly as if
they exist in the eternal.
I like this damp quietness. Somewhere close by, in a humble
house, a young woman is combing her long hair, and next
to her, her spread undies are breathing in the moonlight; all
of them flowing, slippery, happy. In the baths, water is poured
out of big urns onto the necks and breasts of young girls, the
small aromatic bars of soap slide onto the tiles; bubbles split
the sound of water and laughter; a woman slipped and fell;
everything slips because of the soap — you can’t hold
the bubbles nor can you get a hold of yourself — this slippage
is the reoccurring rhythm of life — women laugh and blow
the white, weightless, tiny towers of soap-bubbles from
the little forest of their mound. Isn’t this happiness?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763815

Rodica Marian – Poems

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THE GENIUS OF THE LAMP
(In the Light of the Lamp by Nicolae Tonitza1)
For a while I have begun to recognize the passage through worlds,
As the beginning of a second’s beginning,
An imperceptible break fleetingly smelling miracles,
This is how I know today that from my eyes
The genius of the lamp, tamed (maybe by the grace of the evening,
of the curtains, or of the girl),
Comes back into the painting
Challenging the destiny he has in Oriental tales,
And slim and crepuscular again,
It converges from all the corners of the world,
In order to keep vigil, protectively,
Over the effervescent kindness that unites the being and the book,
The passion sipping up all that has been and all that is…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763696

Missa Bestialis

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….I look at the sun: a black spot
where from now on my blinking will rest
the mourning seal will accompany it
I hopelessly stare at the world
I sob like a homeless child
and I keep fighting – theirs is the game –
with earthly and heavenly gods
bury half of my life oh God
thunder curses the mills of prayers
take his body sacrificed for them
the other half of my soul
I offer to hell
parting is a mute mother
but ephemeral whisper of lament
spring that gushes out from the foot of the rock
city thunders on sky’s bell
and until we remember the warmth
of your palm
prayers chew like gums we ruminate
your thunderous life unveiled
in the blinded night
with flowers we cover the wound of the earth
then we walk in darkness
on our lost paths
to live what was written
to our pilgrimage place
Mother
in small petals on the boundary of the sly
and in the blue of your eyes
God has stolen them –

https://libroslibertad.com/2016/11/06/missa-bestialis-poetry-by-attila-f-balazs-translated-by-lucia-gorea/

Katerina Anghelaki Rooke – Selected Poems

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17th DAY or ANOTHER ELEGY
Quietness on the first line today
only they didn’t mention how many
scorched bodies they buried in the sand.
I wondered whether the desert
rejects corpses of foreigners
like our desolate bodies.
Twilight. I read letters from
the days between the two World Wars.
Pasternak, Rilke, Tsvetayeva
correspond with words and kiss each other
not knowing whether they’ll ever meet.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562965

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763521

Orange

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Routine
Often you said we needed
to change our habits
a new beginning to commence
a new purpose to seek
hopping to discover hope
and its elements
while all along
you remained resting
in lush recliner
and always upheld
your beliefs while
tightly in hand
you held
the recliner’s lever

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The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

Caitlin has repented. She has accepted God and Christ. She came to me of her own free will, Finn. Jesus Himself said that ‘there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance.’”
“This house is no church, Padraig,” Finn said. “You needn’t preach a sermon. Joy there might be in your airy, fairy-story heaven, but your soul-saving here brings nothing but sorrow and sickness and ill-will.”
Padraig made as if to object, but Finn would not stop in his bull’s rush. “Caitlin has become a nervous and sickly wreck. Ask Jinnie there. She’ll tell you. A strong, healthy, independent, life-loving girl reduced to a headachy, lack-lustre prissy. Is that one of your miracles? Is that the kind of transformation that makes you proud and causes joy in heaven? Damn your miracles. Damn your pride and your heavenly joy. And damn you too, Padraig. Damn you for your treachery; your baseness; your snivelling, spineless, milk-and-water cowardice.”
Finn was shouting in a passionate rage. Anger had possessed him, and he did not pause to think of what he was saying. Mother Ross had not believed him capable of such anger, and with Padraig above all. She left lying on the kitchen table the bread she had buttered for the priest and slipped unnoticed into the scullery. She stood in front of the sink, holding tightly to the rim of it, unable to do anything, while Finn’s lashing tongue continued to scourge Padraig in the kitchen.
“You would not love Caitlin like a man. You would not take her as a man would when she offered herself to you. She was too much of a red-blooded woman for your puling sanctity. So now you are trying to water her down to your own thin gruel. You cannot marry her and so you want to make a mincing virgin out of her. A useless nun. A body of dry bones and shrivelled veins and a mind as free and lively as a clod of clay. Damn you, Padraig, I say again. Damn you, damn you, damn you.”
Finn’s loud shouting died to a hoarse whisper, but the fierce anger flashed from his eyes and glowered in the dark cloud of his haggard face. He seemed to be struggling to overcome a powerful desire to vent his anger physically on Padraig’s thin, milk-white body. He was obviously having difficulty in bringing himself under control. Then in a somewhat calmer voice he said, “You have destroyed Caitlin’s happiness with your missionary mumbo-jumbo. You and your type are not concerned about human happiness, but human ‘salvation’—whatever that unfortunate word might mean. Salvation from what? Salvation for what?”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Poodie James

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excerpt

When it was over, Poodie reached for his notebook and wrote.
“Come see me.”
“I can’t Poodie.”
He took the notebook back and scribbled, “I want to see you.”
“No, Poodie,” Marcie said. “You’re my friend.”
She saw tension in his jaw. His hand closed around her wrist.
“That hurts,” she said.
He tightened his grip, then let go and tried with his eyes to hold
her there. She began to walk. Back at the edge of the bandstand he
remembered dances at the school and made a bow. Marcie curtsied,
and went off with her football player.
Poodie stayed near the drums until the band stopped playing
and the dancers went home. He helped the drummer carry his
cases outside and stood waving as the bus rolled out of the parking
lot, then started gathering bottles. Pulling his wagon home
through the darkness, he felt his heart pounding. It was like the
rhythm of a drum.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562868

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV