The Lovers’ Chronicle – 7 September – holdin’ you – art by Grandma Moses – birth of Edith Sitwell & Gala Dalí

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

here we are
back at Lake Hartwell
“Hard to believe
it’s already been a year”
our second year in a row here
for a special weekend
“Thank you my love”
another milestone
we add to the list
but not goin’ with any,
another year older stuff
just want to say
on your birthday eve,
to holdin’ you for as many
more as we have left

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

had to settle for dreams, visions, memories of the past, comfort there, knowin’ exactly what to expect, no surprises, beginnin’s and endin’s foreseen, a lifeline, often the only one available, until writin’ came along and provided the reason, at first the promise, then the reality of this

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

from Peachtree to Pine Lake
to Avondale Estates
from RV trips, to Manhattan
from a greetin’ at the front door
at the end of the day or lunchtime
from the last moment before sleep
to the first moment upon wakin’
if we were to choose a favorite
place or thing
it would involve holdin’
and each other

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

within you lies furled
fire and splendour
the reason for the verse
in your wind-blown hair

the songs that turn,
the changin’ evenin’ air,
when the stars fill the sky
just to be, holdin’ you

a convergence,
the flames of the heart
and the flames of the mind

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

as long as the you
in the title can be my pen,
which i pronounce pin,
then yes, whole lotta
holdin’ goin’ on

another day at work
yes, even Saturdays,
suits me fine, time
to order some food
fix a large martini
see what movies are on
you know, the swingin’
life of a solitary man

© copyright 2019.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

so, apparently
some, or a lot,
of people
demand proof
of affection

do not get that
how can it be genuine
if it must be proven

flat out not capable
of bein’ understood
so what the hell
would be the point

best stay here
with the memories
of holdin’ you

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

never found a way to say,
el amor de mi vida
expect it was the mistake
of my life

please stay
two words
i shoulda said

with me
two words
i shoulda found

middle of the moonlit night
our lamp burnin’ dimly
suddenly awake at a noise
someone or somethin’
is outside, near

i rise and open the door
nothin’, only a vast expanse,
calm, peaceful, and exquisite
under the brilliant moonlight

the wind, a spirit, nothin’
tranquil, profound silence
reigns in the dreamy vagueness

return to bed
pull up the heavy quilt
for it is cold

i god, it really was somethin’
to hold you here

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Accidentally like a curse
Never thought
there would be
such a price
The heart gets harder
and the hurt gets worse

Oh I cannot deny of her
I have caught a glimpse
In a sunrise,
‘Neath a cotton dress,
In well written verse

But when you have not
Been well loved nor
Know how to love well
And it has been
So goddamn long since…

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Tremble at the tones, an eternal voice
See, say, is this anymore than a dream
Go quickly, life so short, whence does it come

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Accidentally a lover;
part of a whole.
Then accidentally alone;
part of nothin'.

© copyright 2012 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Grandma Moses (born Anna Mary Robertson Moses on September 7, 1860 in Grennwich, New York – December 13, 1961 Hoosick Falls, New York); folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is a prominent example of a newly successful art career at an advanced age. Her works have been shown and sold worldwide, including in museums, and have been merchandised such as on greeting cards. Sugaring Off was sold for US$1.2 million in 2006.

 At age 27, she worked on the same farm with Thomas Salmon Moses, a “hired man”. They were married and established themselves near Staunton, Virginia where they spent nearly two decades, living and working in turn on five local farms. Four of them are The Bell Farm or Eakle Farm, The Dudley Farm, Mount Airy Farm (now included within Augusta County’s Millway Place Industrial Park), and Mount Nebo.  To supplement the family income at Mount Nebo, Anna made potato chips and churned butter from the milk of a cow that she purchased with her savings. Later, the couple bought a farm.  Mount Airy near Verona, Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. Having bought the house in January 1901, it is the first residence the family owned. They lived there until September 1902.

Although she loved living in the Shenandoah Valley, in 1905 Anna and Robert moved to a farm in Eagle Bridge, New York at her husband’s urging. When Thomas Moses was about 67 years of age in 1927, he died of a heart attack, after which Anna’s son Forrest helped her operate the farm. She never married again. She retired and moved to a daughter’s home in 1936.  She was known as either “Mother Moses” or “Grandma Moses”, and although she first exhibited as “Mrs. Moses”, the press dubbed her “Grandma Moses”, and the nickname stuck.

Grandma Moses died at age 101 on December 13, 1961, at the Health Center in Hoosick Falls, New York. She is buried there at the Maple Grove Cemetery.  President John F. Kennedy memorialized her: “The death of Grandma Moses removed a beloved figure from American life. The directness and vividness of her paintings restored a primitive freshness to our perception of the American scene. Both her work and her life helped our nation renew its pioneer heritage and recall its roots in the countryside and on the frontier. All Americans mourn her loss.”

Gallery

Edith Sitwell
Portrait by Roger Fry 1915

And today is the birthday of Edith Sitwell (Edith Louisa Sitwell; Scarborough, North Yorkshire; 7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964 London); poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells.  Like her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell, Edith reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents, and lived for much of her life with her governess.  She never married, but became passionately attached to the Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew.  Sitwell published poetry continuously from 1913, some of it abstract and set to music.

She died of cerebral haemorrhage at St Thomas’ Hospital at the age of 77. She is buried in the churchyard of Weedon Lois in Northamptonshire.  Sitwell’s papers are held at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Verse

Clowns’ Houses (1918)

• The busy chatter of the heat
  Shrilled like a parakeet;
  And shuddering at the noonday light
  The dust lay dead and white
• As powder on a mummy’s face,
  Or fawned with simian grace
  Round booths with many a hard bright toy
  And wooden brittle joy:
• The cap and bells of Time the Clown
  That, jangling, whistled down
  Young cherubs hidden in the guise
  Of every bird that flies;
• And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
  Lest any dream that fare
  — Bright pilgrim — past our ken, should see
  Hints of Reality.

• Tall windows show Infinity;
  And, hard reality,
  The candles weep and pry and dance
  Like lives mocked at by Chance.
• The rooms are vast as Sleep within;
  When once I ventured in,
  Chill Silence, like a surging sea,
  Slowly enveloped me.
  • “Clowns’ Houses”

The Wooden Pegasus (1920)

• Within your magic web of hair, lies furled
  The fire and splendour of the ancient world;
  The dire gold of the comet’s wind-blown hair;
  The songs that turned to gold the evening air
  When all the stars of heaven sang for joy.
  • “The Web of Eros”

Façades (1922)

• White as a winding sheet,
  Masks blowing down the street:
  Moscow, Paris London, Vienna — all are undone.
  The drums of death are mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
  Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
  The world’s floors are quaking, crumbling and breaking.
  • “The Last Gallop”
• Oh how the Vacancy
  Laughed at them rushing by.
  “Turn again, flesh and brain,
  Only yourselves again!
  How far above the ape
  Differing in each shape,
  You with your regular
  Meaningless circles are!”
  • “Switchback”

Green Song & Other Poems (1944)

Heart and Mind

• The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
  Is greater than all gold, more powerful
  Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
  Like all that grows or leaps… so is the heart
  More powerful than all dust.
• The flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
  Is but a foolish wind.
• Remember only this of our hopeless love
  That never till Time is done
  Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.

The Canticle of the Rose (1949)

The Canticle of the Rose: Selected Poems, 1920-1947 (1949)

• Mother or Murderer, you have
  given or taken life —
  Now all is one!
  • “Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise”
• Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the
  Light —
  The marrow in the bone
  We dreamed was safe. . . the blood in the veins, the
  sap in the tree
  Were springs of Deity.
  • “Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise”
• The living blind and seeing Dead together lie
  As if in love . . . There was no more hating then,
  And no more love; Gone is the heart of Man.
  • “Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise”

Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never til Time is done
Will the fire of the heart & the fire of the mind be one.

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. – Isak Dinesen