To fill an empty rectangle for a hateful, freedom-killing madman/con man… is that also death?
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A poem by E.E. Cummings:
suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.
young death sits in a café
smiling,a piece of money held between
his thumb and first finger
(i say “will he buy flowers” to you
and “Death is young
life wears velour trousers
life totters,life has a beard” i
say to you who are silent.—”Do you see
Life?he is there and here,
or that, or this
or nothing or an old man 3 thirds
asleep,on his head
flowers,always crying
to nobody something about les
roses les bluets
yes,
will He buy?
Les belles bottes—oh hear
,pas chères”)
and my love slowly answered I think so. But
I think I see someone else
there is a lady,whose name is Afterwards
she is sitting beside young death,is slender;
likes flowers.
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 
That’s a very strange but thought provoking poem, Tom. And well illustrated!
Thanks, Harini, and yes, i think that the photo goes well with it. And i say that the poem is far more than “strange.” The poem has koan-like aspects to it, most definitely. Examine it deeply, please.
there is a lady,whose name is Afterwards
she is sitting beside young death,is slender;
likes flowers…..
well here we are sitting on the edge of hell –
if it goes like planned by a madman… well it won’t be long.
The world, as we humans are making it, is now more hellish than heaven-like, Sara. But we have to be a good shining light in all of the darkness, regardless of what many of the clueless masses are doing. We need to exist beyond many of those that are, unfortunately, in existence yet unalive.
yes, Tom, you are of course right – we wouldn’t be discussing this if that was not the case. We take strength from each other – and keep a light flickering in the dark….
That’s an unusual poem Tom, but it goes perfectly with the image “Afterwards”. I saw a news video about a man who put a series of Halloween decorations along the highway in a rural area at the edge of his property. Most are skeletons and rather macabre. I don’t recall where he lived – if it was even in your state? I am wondering if this might be him. The crux of the story is that a woman going to chemotherapy daily passed the skeletons and one might think they gave a woman battling cancer cause to pause, but instead she said she enjoyed them and contacted Steve Hartman of CBS about it and she ended up meeting the person who owned the property.
I too think that the photo goes well with the poem by Cummings. His poems, like his paintings, often have a deeper meaning if you look and ponder deeply.
The Day of the Dead (Halloween) flower woman was part of an array of Halloween displays that Perry Farm, a nature park in our area, has every Halloween season. It’s a competitive thing (between the exhibits) that local businesses do. Many are quite elaborate and very expertly done. I’ll have another photo of one next week (from Perry Farm)… a Beetlejuice photo!
I never read much poetry in school – our school curriculum was terrible Tom and even in college, as a literary minor, I still didn’t read much poetry. This sounds like an interesting display and a fun idea. We had a similar competive display of scarecrows every October for many years at the Taylor Botanical Gardens, but they didn’t have it this year. People bought scarecrow wooden forms for $25.00 and decorated them however they wanted to – the Gardens are a charitable organization, so this was a good fundraiser for them.
Linda, they taught us well in high school with poems by Walt Whitman, E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, and others. Then, i was only slightly interested in the poetry. Now i perceive that many of their poems were priceless jewels of insight and deep wisdom.
Excerpt of a poem by Walt Whitman:
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
That is a beautiful poem Tom – thank you for sharing it. My middle school and high school curriculum were awful, especially high school, as we lost our millage for my sophomore and junior year, so we had half days and four subjects only (math, science, history and English). I’ve not read many of the great classics and in our last year of high school, though we could take college prep-type classes and there were extracurricular activities if you were so inclined, many of the best teachers had left this city to work in other school systems, so we often had teachers who were for example, a football coach who minored in history teaching a history class. It was a real debacle. When I began at Henry Ford Community College the year I graduated high school, I met kids from the Dearborn, Michigan school systems who had read Thoreau, as an example, a person I had never heard of. Sigh. I hope I can catch up on all the classics as I meander along in my retirement years!
I was only mildly appreciative of Thoreau. Whitman, Cummings, Eliot, Stevens, Dickinson, and Crane however, well those blessings were different stories.
We get smarter Tom, even without the benefit of learning from school.
Text and picture go very well together.
Thanks for sharing
The Fab Four of Cley
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Thank you, Fab 4! 😉