
ilsebatten (lost in translation again) posted a photo:
explore #442 on 31/07/08
"To be Eve, the giver of knowledge, the lover;
To be Mary, the shield, the healer and the mother."
May Sarton 1912-1995
I have deliberately put a very heavy texture onto this picture of Thembi (Emily's daughter) because I liked the way it mimicks a tapestry. It is neither easy to be Eve or Mary, either way you have to walk the path of suffering. However just for this moment Thembi is safe, like Briar Rose she is frozen in time behind her protective barrier. Does she remind you of the Girl with the Pearl Earring?
If anyone would like the rest of the poem I will gladly send it to you.
texture by ghostbones
Copper Beech posted a photo:
Old age is not an illness,
it is a timeless ascent.
As power diminishes,
we grow towards the light.
May Sarton (1912-1195)
juliejordanscott posted a photo:
juliejordanscott posted a photo:
May Sarton has been doing a light haunting of me since... oh, sometime in the dark season of Fall, 2007 I am guessing.
It is the first time I randomly picked up one of her photography/poetry books and said "Where is she and why don't I know her yet?"
We are dear intimates already, simply in the soul connection.
I am looking so forward to diving into her work this month and next.
Still not sure of why May Sarton and Sara Teasdale are to be studied concurrently, but it is the nudge I got.
Distinctive.
juliejordanscott posted a photo:
mobtownblues posted a photo:
Because what I want most is permanence,
What I do best is bury fire now,
To bank the blaze within, and out of sense,
Where hidden fires and rivers burn and flow,
Create a world that is still and intense
I come to you with only the straight gaze.
These are not hours of fire but years of praise,
The glass full to the brim, completely full,
But held in balance so no drop can spill.
from 'Because What I Want Most is Permanence"
by May Sarton
virginiadonkey posted a photo:
In the garden the door is always open into the "holy" - growth, birth, death.
Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle, and in the garden
we are never far away from death, the fertilizing, good, creative death.
May Sarton
1912-1995
m-c posted a photo:
I took this picture spontaneously (like i most of the time do!) realizing that my hand was also reading May Sarton's journal.
dawn m. armfield posted a photo:
winslow, arizona
"The secret breathed within
And never spoken, woken
By music;"
May Sarton
Kymberlee della Luce posted a photo:
Now I Become Myself
by May Sarton
Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
MontanaRaven posted a photo:
The Autumn Sonnets Part 2
If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one,
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure -- if I can let you go.
by May Sarton, from "Selected Poems of May Sarton" 1978
Miss Plum posted a photo: