Those recurring chords
resonance of bells
that continuous swell
sacred rivers of sound
...
As you change countries, residences, languages,
an accent remains which accentuates
your permanent condition.
...
Now that is an unusual point of view.
What do you do for a living? I edit
a literary journal, global in scope.
In New York or San Francisco, I assume?
...
This painter floats landscapes in the sky
like kites, without gravity,
lets them hover upside down
above ground, above the scar torn
...
Ivar Vidrik Ivask (December 17, 1927 Riga – September 23, 1992 Fountainstown, Ireland) was an Estonian poet and literary scholar. He escaped in 1944 from Estonia to Germany and lived from 1949 onwards in the USA and from 1991 in Ireland. He worked as a professor of Modern Languages and Literatures in the University of Oklahoma, writing mainly on Spanish language literature. From 1967 to 1991 he was the editor-in-chief of the international literary quarterly World Literature Today (formerly Books Abroad) and directed its two affiliated biennial literary programs, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1970- ) and the Puterbaugh Conferences on Writers of the French-Speaking and Hispanic World (1968- ), later known as Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature. He was married to Latvian poet and translator Astrid Ivask.)
Arvo Pärt
Those recurring chords
resonance of bells
that continuous swell
sacred rivers of sound
gentle angelus
this surging return
upon angelic scales
gentleness of bells
essential simplicity's
angelus
These are hardly diaries
rather continuities
life reflections
of transparent verse
conflagrations
Turning the pages you return
home to the warm farm lawn
to sleep among the camomile
till sweet oblivion