No, no tiene nada que ver con la famosa pintura de Pablo Picasso del mismo nombre. Pero me gusta el título. Anteriormente Olena tenía su pelo de color azul. La Mujer en Azul del pintor tiene poco azul y mi fotografía de blanco y negro nada. Pero le agregué el color porque sí.

Link to: Mujer en Azul

Mujer en azul was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Procuro que mis pies se conserven firmes y en contacto con el piso.

I make sure my feet are kept firm and in contact with the floor.

Jorge Luís Borges

As I age I can boast that while I may look my age if you were to see my feet you would suspect they must be the feet of a much younger man. I did not inherit my father’s full head of beautiful grey hair nor do I have any memory of what his feet or legs looked like. But I do remember my mother’s fine feet and beautiful legs. I inherited both. She used to tell me that my feet were swimmer’s feet. Perhaps she was right as they are beautiful and free or corns. But at the most I am an efficient swimmer. I could never swim on my back and do that backstroke that my mother must have learned in Manila. She could swim it without a ripple on the water. The lovely piece by Borges below is a fine acceptance of a man growing old without any real complaint that he was becoming blind. To celebrate my own acceptance of my aging I will place here a few pictures of feet. None of mine. That will be a future project.

Sigo en pie — Jorge Luís Borges

Me siento, a estas alturas de la vida, casi igual que cuando era joven. Mis propósitos, afanes, preocupaciones, planes, ilusiones, temores, limitaciones, aspiraciones y aficiones tienen, en lo general, las mismas características que en aquellos tiempos.

Estoy muy lejos de plantear mi felicidad en base a los bienes materiales y sigo siendo capaz de disfrutar lo que tengo sin caer en la desesperanza por obtener aquello de lo que carezco.

Tengo la fortuna de apreciar y dimensionar lo que me rodea y vivo en armonía con lo que soy capaz de generar por medio de mi trabajo diario.

Sigo esforzándome diariamente por ganarme el cariño y respeto de mi familia, amigos y compañeros de trabajo, pues siempre he sabido que los amores se mantienen y crecen a la luz de la devoción y cariño con el que se cuidan y bastante bien les hace regarlos frecuentemente con agua del corazón.

Mantengo vivos mis amores, los pasados y los presentes, porque ellos me dan la energía para seguir caminando.

Conservo los afectos de mis amigos en el reducto interno que para cada uno he ido formando a través de los años y lo cuido como un espacio que a perpetuidad y por derecho a cada uno corresponde.

Guardo un especial agradecimiento a todos aquellos que han aportado con generosidad un pedacito de su alma y su corazón contribuyendo a hacer de mi lo que soy ahora y lo que seré mañana.

Uso como energía pura la confianza que tuvieron y tienen en mi quienes me han ayudado a formarme durante todos estos años. Esas personas que estuvieron conmigo durante mis años niños, mis años jóvenes y mis años adultos, y que, en conjunto me han preparado, espero, para vivir bien mis años viejos que pronto habrán de venir.

Tengo presente a mis antepasados quienes me ofrecieron sus hombros para que mis pies comenzaron su trayecto y ahora cuido que mi par de piernas sean fuertes para que se apoyen en ellas los pasos de quienes de mi nacieron. Procuro que mis pies se conserven firmes y en contacto con el piso, aunque es frecuente que mi imaginación se de el lujo de volar y de soñar con un armonioso hoy y un mejor mañana.

Cuando en mi existe frío, producto de las lejanías, desavenencias y desencuentros con mis semejantes, llamo a la hoguera de mi corazón para que me fortalezca, y le pido que me de el calor que me permita asumir mis culpas para saber pedir perdón.

Y cuando recibo por cualquier motivo la disculpa ajena, trato de ser de fácil perdón y olvido. Bastante penitencia paga quien asume su culpa como para se cometa el exceso de hacerle el momento más difícil.

Procuro vivir en paz conmigo mismo, pues se bien que no se puede ofrecer tranquilidad cuando uno mismo no la tiene para si.

Se que para volar solamente se requiere dar fuerza a las alas de nuestra imaginación y tomar rumbo hasta donde la nada existe.

Sueño con una vejez acompañada en donde la acompañada, mano de ella sea mi guía y donde la mía sea su sostén.

Quiero repetirme en cada acto de quienes buscan una forma digna de vivir y que sus afanes impregnen mi alma para seguir adelante y vivir cada día como manda Dios.

Quiero tener algún día el privilegio de llegar hasta lo más alto donde el espíritu alto, tiene su fortaleza y nuestra fe su razón de ser.

Link to: Kept Firm & in Contact With the Floor

Kept Firm and in Contact With the Floor was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Venecia 2019 con el Lensbaby

El año pasado mi Rosemary y yo fuimos a Venecia. Hoy en día ir a un lugar tan popular dificulta la idea de catalogar una impresión diferente a la de las demás personas. Rosemary me persuadió a usar mi Galaxy 5 para tomar fotos además de usar mi mejor Fuji X-E3. Tomé como 30 (aquí seleccioné las mejores) fotos pero me desbordé en los museos de Florencia y Siena. No pude encontrar una versión en inglés del lindo ensayito que escribió Borges sobre Venecia. Hay en esa ciudad un laberinto dedicado a él que tomé con mi buena cámara.

Venecia

J.L.Borges

“Atlas” (1986)

Los peñascos, los ríos que tienen su cuna en las cumbres, la fusión de las aguas de esos ríos con las del Mar Adriático, los azares o las fatalidades de la historia y de la geología, la resaca, la arena, la formación gradual de las islas, la cercanía de Grecia, los peces, las migraciones de las gentes, las guerras de la Armórica y del Báltico, las cabañas de junco, las ramas entretejidas con barro, la inextricable red de canales, los primitivos lobos, las incursiones de los piratas dálmatas, la delicada terracota, las azoteas, el mármol, las caballadas y las lanzas de Atila, los pescadores defendidos por su pobreza, los lombardos, el hecho de ser uno de los puntos en que se encuentran el Occidente y el Oriente, los días y las noches de generaciones hoy olvidadas fueron los artífices. Recordemos también los anuales anillos de oro que el Dux dejaba caer desde la proa del Bucentauro y que, en la penumbra o tiniebla del agua, son los indefinidos eslabones de una cadena ideal en el tiempo. Sería aquí una injusticia olvidar al solícito buscador de los papeles de Aspern, a Dandolo, a Carpaccio, al Petrarca, a Shylock, a Byron, a Beppo, a Ruskin y a Marcel Proust. Altos en la memoria están los capitanes de bronce que invisiblemente se miran desde hace siglos, en los dos términos de una larga llanura.

Gibbon observa que la independencia de la antigua república de Venecia ha sido declarada por la espada y puede ser justificada por la pluma. Pascal escribe que los ríos son caminos que andan; los canales de Venecia son los caminos por los que andan las enlutadas góndolas que tienen algo de enlutados violines y que también recuerdan la música porque son melodiosas.

Alguna vez escribí en un prólogo Venecia de cristal y crepúsculo. Crepúsculo y Venecia para mí son dos palabras casi sinónimas, pero nuestro crepúsculo ha perdido la luz y teme la noche y el de Venecia es un crepusculo delicado y eterno, sin antes ni después.

Claudio Ronco

Emanuela Vozza y Claudio Ronco

Claudo Ronco en el Ghetto

Venecia — 2019 was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Julio Cortázar: “Sonreía sin sorpresa, convencida como yo de que un encuentro casual era lo menos casual en nuestras vidas”.

Estoy en el proceso de re archivar mis cuantiosos negativos, transparencias y fotografías. Esto implica que voy a encontrar sorpresas. Una de ellas es un negativo de color de una pintura que fotografié en México en el pasado siglo. Sospecho de que quizá la tomé en San Miguel de Allende. A pesar de haber ampliado la esquina inferior derecha de la pintura donde hay una firma no la puedo discernir con nitidez.

En la otra foto puedo notas mis piernas y quizá mi camára grande sobre ellas. La foto la tomé con una cámara de 35mm. ¿Quién será esa mujer con ese peinado tan lindo? En este caso sé que es Coleen Hughes que posó para mí en las rocas de West Vancouver hace una eternidad cuando yo era joven.

EL INGENUO — Jorge Luís Borges

Cada aurora (nos dicen) maquina maravillas

capaces de torcer la más terca fortuna;

hay pisadas humanas que han medido la luna

y el insomnio devasta los años y las millas.

En el azul acechan públicas pesadillas

que entenebran el día. No hay en el orbe una

cosa que no sea otra, o contraria, o ninguna.

A mí sólo me inquietan las sorpresas sencillas.

Me asombra que una llave pueda abrir una puerta,

me asombra que mi mano sea una cosa cierta,

me asombra que del griego la eleática saeta

instantánea no alcance la inalcanzable meta,

me asombra que la espada cruel pueda ser hermosa,

y que la rosa tenga el olor de la rosa.

Link to: Las sorpresas sencillas

Las sorpresas sencillas was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

La memoria es individual.

Nosotros estamos hechos,

En buena parte, de nuestra memoria.

Esta memoria está hecha,

En buena parte, de olvido.

J. L. Borges (1979), El tiempo

Memory is individual.

We are made,

In great part, of our memory.

This memory is made,

In great part, of oblivion.

Today Thursday I am watching Rachel Maddow to distract myself from the fact that my Rosemary is in Lillooet and being without her is like walking with only one shoe. I am unbalanced, unsteady, and desperately in need of her. To make it all worse I am looking at Niño lying on the coach with his ugly plastic cone around his neck which he will wear for 12 more days. He has four wounds of which three needed stitches. Had Rosemary been around now I would have shared a bit of that sorry face looking at me and saying, “Why am I being tortured with this?” I am sure that somewhere in his feline mind he believes she could instantly remove it if she were here.

As I watched Rachel I can always glance, and do, at the large framed photograph over my Sony linear tracking turntable. It is Linda Lorenzo holding my father’s 80-year-old mate from which he drank his mate (both the device and the herb are called by the same name) and now his son, too when he is especially melancholy. I will have to see if I can avoid doing what few Argentines ever do which is to drink a mate in solitary.

As I was looking at the beautiful photograph of that unusually beautiful woman that Linda Lorenzo is, I realized I remember nothing of the session. How many pictures had I taken? How was it that I thought of using the mate for our themed project with Nora Patrich and Juan Manuel Sánchez related to our acute nostalgia for our Argentina?

I went to my files and pulled two contact sheets with 12 exposures. A Mamiya RB-67 takes 10 exposures on a roll of 120 and 20 on a 220 roll. What this indicates is that when I took those last iconic (for me) exposures with 220 film, I quit. I could have kept on for 6 more. I did not.

The surprise of my memory regained by the contact sheets is that there is another photograph I had forgotten (not that I took it) but that is there of Linda Lorenzo standing behind Juan Manuel Sánchez as the muse of inspiration supreme.

I look at the photograph. I stare at it and remember that my mother often said that a house was never a home until you put framed pictures on the wall.

I look at the photograph. I stare at it and remember that I never saw my father drink mate from that silver gourd and bombilla.

I look at the photograph. I stare at it and I don’t remember if Linda Lorenzo posed in that way with the bombilla almost resting on her nose ( I am not sure if it is touching it) or if I suggested she do it.

I look at the photograph. I stare at it and I remember and know that as soon as I had taken that first of two photographs, that it was an image that would define in one solitary image the pathos and melancholy that was then and is now my Argentine nostalgia.

No, I will not sip on a mate on my own. The two cats, Niño and Niña, and I will shortly occupy that large bed and I will think, that bright and early, tomorrow I will drive to Pemberton to pick up Rosemary. Niño, Niña and I will be back to normal.

In the two contact sheets below the first image on each sheet is top left and the next one down. The photograph of Juan and Linda that I often use is the last one (middle in first sheet).

Link to: This memory is made, in great part, of oblivion.

This memory is made, in great part, of oblivion. was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

En mi ciudad adoptiva de Vancouver pocas palmeras pueden sobrevivir el clima frío aunque sea algo templado (por una corriente cálida que proviene del Japón) en comparación con el resto del Canadá.

Pero ir a Buenos Aires en la primavera (nosotros fuimos algo temprano hace una semana) es imposible no notar las palmeras de la ciudad a pesar de los brillantes azules de las jacarandás en flor (que aún no habían florecido).

En mi niñez teníamos dos enormes palmeras en el jardín en nuestra casa en Coghlan. Mi máma en la noche con una vela y tijeras iba en busca de las babosas que comían las plantas. Sin querer acercó la vela a una de las palmeras y se prendió fuego instantáneamente. Los bomberos llegaron y pudieron apagar las flamas y salvar la palmera.

Para mí es interesante que Jorge Luís Borges en 1940 tradujo la novela de William Faulkner, The Wild Palms (Las palmeras salvajes) del inglés al castellano.

La foto que ilustra esta bitácora la tomé en Buenos Aires el 29 de septiembre del 2018 muy cerca del zoológico y la antes jaula de los tigres, lugar favorito de Borges.

Link to: Las palmeras salvajes

Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.

Las palmeras salvajes was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For reasons that I will explain in a further blog our last night in Buenos Aires was spent in the Hotel Lancaster on Córdoba corner with Reconquista. Rosemary asked for a room with a bathtub. There was no room available that night with one (17 young boys and girls from Pernambuco, Brazil perhaps had all asked for those rooms ) so we were given a lovely suite. When I moved the curtains to one side I saw a narrow bit of space between two dark buildings. There before my incredulous eyes was my first and only glimpse of the Río de La Plata during our recent two week visit to Buenos Aires .

Perhaps as an old man of 76 and a wife of a few years less when we fly we pick aisles seats. In an almost 10,000 Km flight if we had been sitting by the window (coming back it was all in daylight) we might have seen the Amazon jungle the Orinoco and the River Plate which Jorge Luís Borges in the poem below calls “el río inmovil” or river that is still.

Curiously I believe that there is a parallel between the very large Buenos Aires of my birth and the Vancouver that is my home now. From our former home in Kerrisdale or now in Kits I never have the impression that I am by the sea. In Buenos Aires one rarely remembers that the river is right there. Just like many who live in Surrey have never been to the Vancouver Art Gallery and vice versa, the Surrey Art Gallery, those who live in the greater part of metropolitan Buenos Aires never see the river.

To me that narrow view of the Río de La Plata was magical in that it brought a childhood nostalgia of fishing in it or seeing it from the train that took me from Coghlan, where I lived to the Retiro train station in town.

One of the first names for the river was mar dulce (the sweet river) as that is how in Spanish we describe water that is not sea water.

In the exquisite poem by Borges Juan López y John Ward (translated into English after the Spanish one, the author again makes reference to the Río de La Plata as the rio inmovil. Whoever translated the poem was innacurate in translating inmovil (does no move) to tawny. The poem is about two young men, one Argentine the other British who both fought and died on the Malvinas. Of them Borges writes:

each one of them was Cain, and each was Abel.

G. A. Bürger

No acabo de entender

por qué me afectan de este modo las cosas

que le sucedieron a Bürger

(sus dos fechas están en la enciclopedia)

en una de las ciudades de la llanura,

junto al río que tiene una sola margen

en la que crece la palmera, no el pino.

Al igual de todos los hombres,

dijo y oyó mentiras,

fue traicionado y fue traidor,

agonizó de amor muchas veces

y, tras la noche del insomnio,

vio los cristales grises del alba,

pero mereció la gran voz de Shakespeare

(en la que están las otras)

y la de Angelus Silesius de Breslau

y con falso descuido limó algún verso,

en el estilo de su época.

Sabía que el presente no es otra cosa

que una partícula fugaz del pasado

que estamos hechos de olvido:

sabiduría tan inútil

como los corolarios de Spinoza

o las magias del miedo.

En la ciudad junto al río inmóvil,

unos dos mil años después de la muerte de un dios

(la historia que refiero es antigua),

Bürger está solo y ahora,

precisamente ahora, lima unos versos.

Jorge Luís Borges

JUAN LÓPEZ Y JOHN WARD

Les tocó en suerte una época extraña.

El planeta había sido parcelado en distintos países, cada uno provisto de lealtades, de queridas memorias, de un pasado sin duda heroico, de derechos, de agravios, de una mitología peculiar, de próceres de bronce, de aniversarios, de demagogos y de símbolos. Esa división, cara a los cartógrafos, auspiciaba las guerras.

López había nacido en la ciudad junto al río inmóvil; Ward, en las afueras de la ciudad por la que caminó Father Brown. Había estudiado castellano para leer el Quijote.

El otro profesaba el amor de Conrad, que le había sido revelado en una aula de la calle Viamonte.

Hubieran sido amigos, pero se vieron una sola vez cara a cara, en unas islas demasiado famosas, y cada uno de los dos fue Caín, y cada uno, Abel.

Los enterraron juntos. La nieve y la corrupción los conocen.

El hecho que refiero pasó en un tiempo que no podemos entender.

Juan Lopez and John Ward

It was their luck to be born into a strange time.

The planet had been parceled out among various countries,

Each one provided with loyalties, cherished memories, with

a past undoubtedly heroic, with rights, with wrongs, with a

particular mythology, with bronze forefathers, with

anniversaries, with demagogues and symbols.

This arbitrary division was favorable for wars.

Lopez was born in the city beside the tawny river;

Ward, on the outskirts of the city where Father

Brown walked. He had studied Spanish in order

to read Quijote.

The other one professed a love for Conrad, who

had been revealed to him in a classroom on

Viamonte Street. They might have been friends,

but they saw each other face to face only once,

on some overly famous islands, and each one of

them was Cain, and each was Abel.

They were buried together. Snow and corruption

know them.

The incident I mention occurred in a time that

we cannot understand.

by Jorge Luis Borges

Argentina (1899–1986)

Link to: Buenos Aires — la ciudad junto al río inmovil

Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.

Buenos Aires — la ciudad junto al río inmovil was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Vacuum is space devoid of matter. The word stems from the Latin adjective vacuus for “vacant” or “void”.

Wikipedia

Soul: In many religious, philosophical, and mythological traditions, there is a belief in the incorporeal essence of a living being called the soul.

Soul or psyche (Ancient Greek: ψυχή psūkhḗ, of ψύχειν psū́khein, “to breathe”) are the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking, etc.

Wikipedia

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Aristotle

As soon as you open a vacuum air is sucked in. Rosemary and I are in that stage where the presence of our now departed cat Casi-Casi is noted in everything we do in our small Kits home. The two litter boxes are empty. His (note that nobody who has owned a cat or a dog or any other pet will ever used the prononoun “it”) cat dishes have been put away. We don’t need to keep the deck sliding door open. When Rosemary takes out the old newspapers to the back lane yellow bags, Casi does not follow her.

But most of all I think that I know my wife quite intimately because we share a bed. I compare that with the fact that both of us have shared a bed with Casi-Casi the 8 years we have had him (or better still that he has been with us).

His presence is absent and that vacuum can only be satisfied in what my past experience has told me that the cure for the grief of a dead cat is a brand new one. This time around this cannot be (no yet) as we are going to Buenos Aires for some days for the opening of my show with Nora Patrich at the Galería Vermeer.

That has made me think of the startling fact that it is impossible to replace a dead mother, friend, relative. That cannot be because of the uniqueness of the each human being. So why can cats be replaced by new ones?

There is a universality, a lovely almost blandness that the personality (and they all have distinct ones) of a cat has. A cat oozes (every cat oozes) that Platonic singularity that says, “I am a cat.” You cannot put your finger exactly on what that is. Casi-Casi might have been more forgiving about eating just about anything that was put in front of him (not all cats can be like that) but he had some strange peculiarities like loving the cheese I might bring to bed to eat as a snack before turning off the lights. He could smell the cheese the moment I walked into the room.

Unlike humans, cats do not have elaborate funerals. Their parting is quick and that emptiness is readily felt. The shock prevents tears for a few days. But as soon as that inevitability of the cat gone sinks in, tears flow.

The death of a cat is life’s preparation for our own deaths. The death of my cat has made my Rosemary tell me the very day he was put down at the vet’s, “Alex, you must write your obituary now.” I thought this might have been a slip of the tongue and that she meant an obituary for the cat. But that was not so.

Coming back from Argentina I am looking forward (and I am sure that Rosemary is too) of going to the SPCA in the lookout for a mid-aged cat. We like mid-aged cats because they force us (and the cat, too) to learn to adapt to each other’s ways.

But the most exciting prospect is that the new cat we choose will have some of Casi-Casi in him. What is that?

Catness.

A un gato — Jorge Luís Borges

No son más silenciosos los espejos

ni más furtiva el alba aventurera;

eres, bajo la luna, esa pantera

que nos es dado divisar de lejos.

Por obra indescifrable de un decreto

divino, te buscamos vanamente;

más remoto que el Ganges y el poniente,

tuya es la soledad, tuyo el secreto.

Tu lomo condesciende a la morosa

caricia de mi mano. Has admitido,

desde esa eternidad que ya es olvido,

el amor de la mano recelosa.

En otro tiempo estás. Eres el dueño

de un ámbito cerrado como un sueño.

To a cat — Jorge Luís Borges

Mirrors are not more silent

nor the creeping dawn more secretive;

in the moonlight, you are that panther

we catch sight of from afar.

By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,

we look for you in vain;

More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,

yours is the solitude, yours the secret.

Your haunch allows the lingering

caress of my hand. You have accepted,

since that long forgotten past,

the love of the distrustful hand.

You belong to another time. You are lord

of a place bounded like a dream.

Link to: A Vacuum, a Presence — Catness

Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.

The Death of a Cat was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My life in this 21st century brings me some surprises that I could never have predicted in that past century that made me.

A few months ago I went into my phone to search in Google the latest information on the Argentine submarine that never surfaced and was never found. I also make queries about photography.

So now my Google feed in my phone includes several (and interesting they are) about the politics and financial troubles of my native Argentina. There are countless articles related to the fact that because I own a Fuji X-E1 and an X-E3 I might be tempted to buy a brown one.

But this essay intrigued me and I read it in its entirety as it is about two Argentine authors that admire, Jorge Luís Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares.

But, I read almost at the end something that seemed to be so uncomfortingly contemporary.

“Bostrom [successor to the murdered head of state] and his friends used a popular and sometimes coarse form of speech which was praised by their followers because of its supposed simplicity. It was said that its use was proof of an open frankness and that it constituted an authentic point of contact with the common people. The truth of the matter was that they spoke in that fashion because they knew of no other. It was, after all, a familiar practice to turn all deficiencies into virtues. If an individual was basically ignorant, he was praised for his common sense and his ability to skirt abstract problems; if he was hasty and coarse he was admired for his frankness and his dislike of dilatory techniques; if he was indecisive and slow, he was applauded for his caution.”

This is a 1972 translation of Argentine writer Manuel Peyrou’s 1949 work, El estruendo de las rosas, was translated into English by Donald A. Yates and published by Herder Publishers in 1972 as Thunder of Roses: A Detective Novel.

The writer of the essay on Bioy Casares and Borges cites the appearance of General Don Domingo Perón who whilerising into to power in 1946 he was consolidating it by 1949. The quote above might refer to Peron’s loved “descamisados” or shirtless ones whom he gave his speeches from the balcony of the Casa Rosada.

I lived those years (I was 8 in 1950) but I had a hazy idea of what was going on. I could hear Perón and Evita shouting their speeches over the radio from our neighbour’s (Peronists) loud radio. My grandmother would tell us of neighbourhood women complaining there was not meat at the butcher shop and how somehow these women were not seen again. Perhaps they had moved. I don’t know. But my 1954 my grandmother knew something was going to happen and we moved to Mexico City.

Link to: Deficiencies into Virtues

Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.

Deficiencies into Virtues was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the late 80s my Rosemary was interested in roses. As soon as I shared that interest she switched to hardy geraniums and rare perennials. My obsession with hostas diminished when my friends the growers and hybridizers of the plant began to die. In the last 20 years roses have been my life in the garden. Since 2002 I have scanned every rose of my garden including the ones that did not make it or that I gave away.

Rosemary is again interested in roses. She is interested in the deep red ones. I am a sucker for pink ones. When a month ago at the Vancouver Rose Society Rose Show at VanDusen I found an extremely rare 19thcentury (1869) Hybrid Perpetual Rosa ‘Paul Neyron’ and yes it is pink. Hybrid perpetuals are reluctant remontants. This means that they bloom more than once but sparingly in early fall. My Paul Neyron is now in full bloom and I was sad to cut three of the flowers for the scan. But I must record them for my hard drive’s posterity!

Pink — small — and punctual —

Aromatic — low —

Covert — in April —

Candid — in May —

Dear to the Moss —

Known to the Knoll —

Next to the Robin

In every human Soul —

Bold little Beauty

Bedecked with thee

Nature forswears

Antiquity –

Emily Dickinson

La rosa,

la inmarcesible rosa que no canto,

la que es peso y fragancia,

la del negro jardín en la alta noche,

la de cualquier jardín y cualquier tarde,

la rosa que resurge de la tenue

ceniza por el arte de la alquimia,

la rosa de los persas y de Ariosto,

la que siempre está sola,

la que siempre es la rosa de las rosas,

la joven flor platónica,

la ardiente y ciega rosa que no canto,

la rosa inalcanzable.

Link to: Pink — Small & Punctual — la rosa inalcanzable

Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.

Pink — Small & Punctual — la rosa inalcanzable was originally published in Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.