Rivers

Is this the river of life

or death? Both? Both. The force

that brought us here remains

to carry us away.

Wearing its way down,

the river has left us here

on this all-slanting place:

trees, people, animals.

We stand and move a while

in air. A silent, perfect,

inaccessible world

shines sometimes at our feet.

We fall, and are carried away.

Shadowy, shadowy,

we lovers in our vale.

In this darkness the river

has worn the country

into the form it is.

The land is the water’s memory.

It remembers in the light

what was made in the dark.

To know what flesh inherits,

learn the art of the little boat,

leave the solid footing,

row out upon the water.

By Wendell Berry in “Sabbath Poems: 2002, VI – in memory of Denise Levertov”

Night in the Bidasoa River, 1917 by Daniel Vazquez Diaz

Howl, ye shepherds, and cry.

– Jeremiah

The play thou schouwburgst, Game, here endeth.

– Finnegans Wake

The trees stood high and held their figs.

Still as white boulders on the grass

the sheep were planted; every day

the purest sun would come to pass.

Then rainbows danced on every cloud.

Through echoing space since the deluge

The shepherds piped their witching tunes.

The prophet terrible on time’s edge,

Sang how the hosts would flame and fall,

The holiest cities sleep, buried.

The silly sheep were munching still.

The prophet tapped his skull and cried.

“Pastoral Ballet”

by Thomas Vance.

Detail - Ferdinand Hodler (Swiss, Bern 1853–1918 Geneva)
The Dream of the Shepherd (Der Traum des Hirten), 1896
Oil on canvas; 98 1/2 × 51 3/8 in. (250.2 × 130.5 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, European Paintings Funds, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, Charles and Jessie Price Gift, funds from various donors, and Bequests of Collis P. Huntington and Isaac D. Fletcher, by exchange, 2013 (2013.1134)

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me and be my love.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Christopher Marlowe, 1564 – 1593

(There is nothing like a good love poem to open the heart and welcome the spring. Especially a classic like this! -BP)

17 x 24 Pastel by Beth Williams