Nothing is more musical than a sunset

artwork by Josephine Wang © 2013

The art of art...

The art of art, the glory of expression, and the
sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity.
artwork by Josephine Wang © 2015

You must believe in Spring

artwork by Josephine Wang © 2012

You Must Believe in Spring — Jan Zwicky
Because it is the garden. What is left to us.
Because silence is not silence without sound.
Because you have let the cat out, and then in, and then out, and then in,
and then out, and then in, and then out, and then in, and then out, and then in, enough.
Because otherwise their precision at the blue line would mean nothing.
Because otherwise death would mean nothing.
Because the light says so.
Because a human being can gladly eat only so much cabbage.
Because the pockets of your overcoat need mending.
Because it's easy not to.
Because your sweaters smell.
Because Gregory of Nazianzen said that geometry has no place in mourning,
by which he meant despair presumes too much.
Because it ain't over 'til it's over. — Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson. Satchel Paige.
Because Kant was wrong, and Socrates, Descartes and all the rest.
Because it is the body thinking and Newt Gingrich would like you not to.
Because the signs are not wrong: you are here.
Because I love you. Or you love someone. Because someone is loved.
Because under the sun, everything is new.
Because wet snow in the trees is clotted light.
Because in 1841 it took six cords of wood to get through a winter in one room at
Harvard and two-thirds of Maine used to be open country as a result.
Because sleeping is not death.
Because although an asshole was practising his Elvis Presley imitation, full voice,
Sunday morning, April 23rd at Spectacle Lake Provincial Park, the winter wren simply
moved 200 yards down the trail.
Because the wren's voice is moss in sunlight, because it is a stream in sunlight over stones.
Because Beethoven titled the sonata.
I mean: would Bill Evans and Frank Morgan lie to you?
Because even sorrow has a source.
For, though it cannot fly, the heart is an excellent clamberer.

Sonnet 98

artwork by Josephine Wang ©2015

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
   Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
   As with your shadow I with these did play.
—William Shakespeare

I still live...

I still live, I still paint, I still have to live, I still have to paint...

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer — John Keats
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
—artwork by Josephine Wang © 2014

If music be the food of love...

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again. It had a dying fall;
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving door. Enough, no more.
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,
Receiveth as the sea. Nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er.
But falls into abatement and low price
Even in a minute. So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
—Twelfth Night, act 1, scene 1, Shakespeare
artwork by Josephine Wang © 2014

The Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things — Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
—artwork by Josephine Wang © 2014

The quality of mercy is not strain'd

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
—Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, act 4, scene 1
artwork by Josephine Wang © 2014

Poetry — Pablo Neruda

Poetry   — Pablo Neruda
And it was at that age...
Poetry arrived in search of me.
I don't know, I don't know where it came from,
from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices,
they were not words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say,
my mouth had no way with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance,
pure nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of mystery,
I felt myself a pure part of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.
—artwork by Josephine Wang © 2014

William Street, Ottawa

artwork by Josephine Wang © 2014

No day copies yesterday, 

no two nights will teach what bliss is

in precisely the same way...
—Nothing Twice, Wislawa Szymborska

Now and Then

Here and there and now and then, a stance.
—artwork by Josephine Wang © 2014