Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Primeval Hammering


Do you know what it is to be an artist? To have the Creator at work in you every moment of your life? Perhaps you will argue that the Creator works in every man, and that is very possibly true. But he works in the basement of the house (like a middle-class man who has installed a craftsman's bench in the cellar, while his wife keeps the upper floors in order). A fussy housekeeper rules the upper levels where the world is entertained; but the Creator goes downstairs to work. In the silences when the street-door is closed, the tapping of his hammer may be heard by the listening, receptive one.

The more stir above stairs, the less the primeval hammering can be heard. Most people seal off the cellar of their house at their childhood's close, and the hammering is never heard in them again throughout their life. They have walled off their Creator in the days of their youth, and He who called the universe into being has died in them. Occasionally the walled-in workman, too vital to die, sets fire to gunpowder, blowing up the established order, the parliamentary procedure of the parlor floor.


-excerpt from "God And Puppet" by Irene Orgel

Friday, April 8, 2011

SANTA CRUZ REVISITED






I've seen you immortalized
in a black and white photo,
running, dancing with the waves
in Santa Cruz long ago,
I see you now as you were then,
I see the child still in you, shining through
in your lovely sea-green eyes.

Come with me again to Santa Cruz,
our love resounding with the sea
as we walk upon the shore.
It's time to make new memories
and make the old ones new again,
something we'll never lose.

When clouds darken your sky,
when the world seems untrue,
recapture the rapture
of the sun blessing you,
the sand caressing you,
close your eyes and you'll be there,
one with the seagull's cry.

And then at sundown on the pier
I see and know what's real
in the twilight soft and clear.
The Ferris wheel lights up the sky,
your silence tells me all you feel,
with all my heart I'm here.

I've seen you immortalized
in a black-and-white photo,
running, dancing with the waves
in Santa Cruz long ago,
I see you now as you were then,
I see the child still in you,
shining through
in your lovely sea-green eyes.