WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND
by Christina Rossetti
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
THE FITFUL ALTERNATIONS OF THE RAIN
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), one of the major English Romantic poets, is regarded by critics as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death by drowning at age 29. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, and his second wife, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)
PAINTING: “Lone Tree” by David Hollingworth, prints available at fineartamerica.com.
“I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.” DYLAN THOMAS, A Child’s Christmas in Wales.
Photo: “Zensnowman” by Kyle Miron, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THE WIND BLOWS
by Galaktion Tabidze
Blowing wind, blowing wind, blowing wind,
Leaves are swept along its path…
Rows of trees, armies of trees bend and sway
Where are you, where are you, where are you?
How it rains, how it snows, how it snows
You are not to be found!
Your image follows me, haunts me
Everywhere, every moment, always!
A distant sky seeps misty thoughts…
Blowing wind, blowing wind, blowing wind!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Galaktion Tabidze (1892–1959), born in Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia, was a leading Georgian poet of the twentieth century whose writings profoundly influenced all subsequent generations of Georgian poets. He survived Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s, which claimed lives of many of his fellow writers, friends and relatives, but came under heavy pressure from the Soviet authorities. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)
WIND AND WATER AND STONE
by Octavio Paz
The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.
The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.
The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.
One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Octavio Paz Lozano (1914–1998) was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)
PHOTO: “Water & Stone” by Samuel Collazo, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
WIND ON THE HILL
by A.A. Milne
No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.
It’s flying from somewhere
As fast as it can,
I couldn’t keep up with it,
Not if I ran.
But if I stopped holding
The string of my kite,
It would blow with the wind
For a day and a night.
And then when I found it,
Wherever it blew,
I should know that the wind
Had been going there too.
So then I could tell them
Where the wind goes…
But where the wind comes from
Nobody knows.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alan Alexander Milne (1882–1956) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for his children’s poems. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)
ILLUSTRATION: “Girl with Kite” by Nancy Crandall (mixed media: acrylic on 16×20 Canvas; kite created from paper cut into triangles, yarn as string and cut bows glued to string), ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Inspired by street artist Banksy and his artwork of a girl with a balloon.
THE WIND
by Robert Louis Stevenson
I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass
Oh wind, a blowing all day long,
Oh wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all
Oh wind, a blowing all day long!
Oh wind, that sings so loud a song!
O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
***
Painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926). Prints available at allposters.com.
WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND
by Christina Rossetti
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
THE AERODYNAMICS
by Rick Bursky
The night she walked to the house
she held a string; on the other end,
fifty-three feet in the air, a kite.
Wind provided the aerodynamics.
Does every collaboration
need to be explained?
She tied the string to the mailbox
left the kite to float until morning.
Every night this happens.
She sleeps, I listen, darkness
slides through us both.
The next morning
the string still curved into the sky
but the kite was gone.
This was the morning newspapers announced
the Mona Lisa was stolen.
This was the morning
it snowed in Los Angeles,
the morning I wore gloves
to pull from the sky
fifty-three feet of frozen string.
PHOTO: “Mona Lisa Kite” by Tasmin Brown, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT (Excerpt)
by T.S. Eliot
Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions.
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium…
***
Editor’s Note: “As a madman shakes a dead geranium” — what a stunning line! T.S. Eliot never ceases to amaze…
Read “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” in its entirety at poets.org.
Painting by Mike Grubb, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Find more of the artist’s work at fineartamerica.com.
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