Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Looking south (between the years)

By "between the years" (from the German "zwischen den Jahren") I mean the days between Christmas and New Year's Day.

My daughter and I were planning to go on a road trip for those days this year---driving south for three days (with no definite destination) and driving back during the next three days---but upon research (which is always a good idea before a road trip) we learnt that you can't drive south for three days starting at Grand Rapids, because you reach the Gulf of Mexico in 15 to 16 hours.  So now we are planning, instead, to drive to the Gulf shore in two days, to spend a day on the beach there, and to drive back during the following two days ...  We'll see  :)

So I probably won't be blogging for the rest of the week.  My last post before the trip is another poem that I absolutely loved upon re-reading Hart Crane's "Complete Poems":
___________________________
The Mango Tree

By Harold Hart Crane

     Let them return, saying you blush again for great Great-grandmother.  It's all like Christmas.
     When you sprouted Paradise a discard of chewing-gum took place.  Up jug to musical, hanging jug just gay spiders yoked you first,---silking of shadows good underdrawers for owls.
     First-plucked before and since the Flood, old hypnotisms wrench the golden boughs.  Leaves spatter dawn from emerald cloud-sprockets.  Fat final prophets with lean bandits crouch: and dusk is close
     under your noon,
     you Sun-heap, whose
ripe apple-lanterns gush history, recondite lightnings, irised.
     O mister Senor               
     missus Miss
     Mademoiselle
     with baskets
                          Maggy, come on              

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