“A Letter from Tegucigalpa” by Mark Strand

05 Sunday Oct 2014

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A Letter from Tegucigalpa, Almost Invisible, Mark Strand, Poem, Poet, poetry, Writing

In the old days, my thoughts like tiny sparks would flare up in the almost dark of consciousness and I would transcribe them, and page after page shone with a light that I called my own. I would sit at my desk amazed by what had just happened. And even as I watched the lights fade and my thoughts become small, meaningless memorials in the afterglow of so much promise, I was still amazed. And when they disappeared, as they inevitably did, I was ready to begin again, ready to sit in the dark for hours and wait for even a single spark, though I knew it would shed almost no light at all. What I had not realized then, but now know only too well, is that sparks carry within them the wish to be relieved of the burden of brightness.

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“A Letter from Tegucigalpa” by Mark Strand, from his collection Almost Invisible.

Tegucigalpa is the capital of Honduras. The picture, on the other hand, was snapped in Ireland.

More MS:

“The Old Age of Nostalgia” by Mark Strand

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

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Almost Invisible, Mark Strand, Poem, poetry, The Old Age of Nostalgia

Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined
future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or
a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced
that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was
charged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and
one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-
loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the
high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so
many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies
in the perfumed heat of summer night.

__________

“The Old Age of Nostalgia” by Mark Strand, found in his final book Almost Invisible.

The photo was taken at Sheen Falls in Ireland.

The Future’s Misfortune

15 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

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Almost Invisible, Mark Strand, Poem, poetry, The Nietzschean Hourglass or The Future's Misfortune

Once, as my thought was being drawn through daylight into the bronze corridors of dusk and thence into the promise of dark, I heard out there the strained voice of the hourglass calling for someone to turn it over and show that the future is just an illusion, that what lay ahead was only the past again and again. I was too young for such an idea, so it came back years later as if to prove its own point.

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The Nietzschean Hourglass, or The Future’s Misfortune by Mark Strand, which you’ll find in his Collected Poems.

The photo was taken at my ranch this January.