poems by patrizia de rachewiltz - your book · 2009. 10. 1. · watertriptych: passionfruit across...
TRANSCRIPT
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Dear Friends
Poems by
Patrizia de Rachewiltz
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LYNDA SMITH
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Dear Friends
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BY PATRIZIA DE RACHEWILTZ
POETRY
Watertriptych: Passionfruit Across an Ocean, with art by Bianca Tangande (van Dijk & van Hees 1994)
My Taishan (Raffaelli Editore 2007)
Dear Friends, with photographs by Lynda Smith (Palisade Press 2008)
PROSE
Songs of the Peacock, with drawings by Tien (Paulist Press 1977)
TRANSLATION
Favole: Fables by e. e. cummings (All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro 1975)
Mr. Wind and Madame Rain by Paul de Musset (Edizioni C’era una volta 1994)
Pieroing by Soichi Furuta (Greco & Greco 1996)
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (Edizioni C’era una volta 1997)
Eros Pysche by Michael Lekakis (Raffaelli Editore 2007)
Your Eyes by Cesare Pavese (Palisade Press 2009)
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Dear Friends
Poems by
Patrizia de Rachewiltz
Photographs by
Lynda Smith
Palisade Press: Arroyo Seco, New Mexico
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Text copyright © 2008 by Patrizia de Rachewiltz
Photographs copyright © 2008 by Lynda Smith
Author photograph copyright © 2008 by Sylvie De Leu
All rights reserved
Edited and designed by Craig Smith
ISBN: 0-9818528-1-5
Printed in the United States of America
Front cover: “Trio” by Lynda Smith
Palisade PressPalisade PressPalisade PressPalisade Press
A line of bold cliffs, a shelf of bold books.
P. O. Box 401
Arroyo Seco, NM 87514
www.palisadepress.com
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A Personal Note
For my wife, Lynda, and myself the best letters have always
come from our dear friend the poet Patrizia de Rachewiltz. We
met her in 1976 at her family home, Brunnenburg, in the
northern Italian village of Dorf Tirol (Tirolo di Merano). Lynda
and I, with our children Jay and Alison, had taken rooms in
Brunnenburg, with the idea that we would spend one year
abroad and dedicate ourselves to writing and art.
Our rooms were dubbed the Gaudier flat – named for sculptor
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, as several of his original figure studies
adorned the walls. These were accommodations that Patrizia’s
mother, Mary, often let to visiting scholars, writers, and artists.
When Patrizia arrived for the winter, we became fast friends and
spent that season together drawing and writing. Since that first
meeting we continue to enjoy regular reunions.
Our correspondence flows from mutual experiences and shared
interests, be they art and music, books and writing, traveling, or
simply navigating the ups and downs of our daily lives. For
Lynda and me, any day was instantly better if we opened the
mailbox and saw an envelope in Patrizia’s distinctive hand.
That correspondence has now expanded to include electronic
mail, so letters that take days to cross the ocean are
complemented by messages that arrive in seconds. Happily, the
speed of communication has tended to increase the volume of
correspondence. So we are only minutes from each other,
wherever we may find ourselves. From Merano to Manhattan,
from the Netherlands to New Mexico, Patrizia’s letters have
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followed us wherever we lived. They give names to our seasons
and nourishment to our souls. What a friend!
Recently I was moved to look back through the letters she has
written to us over the years, and in them I discovered dozens of
little poems in paragraphs, between paragraphs, and in the
margins. I realized that they would stand well as a collection,
and so set about gathering them together. There is an old
Scottish proverb that says “guid gear gangs in sma bouk.” These
little gems by Patrizia prove that saying – the bulk may be small
but the gear is good. They show her at her most lean and precise,
able to fathom deep emotion in a few chiseled words.
As I assembled the poems Lynda was moved to contribute a
number of her photographs from the past and to create new ones
for this book. It was as if she was entering into yet another
conversation with Patrizia – this one like an unwritten
correspondence between them -- as one’s words inspired
another’s images. The result is a clear celebration of friendship.
Craig Smith
Taos, New Mexico
2008
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Preface
A sheet of plain paper and a pen, which used to be a feather,
dipped into an ink-well….what a luxury! And words …”Dear
friends…” The waiting for a reply, the wondrous waiting. When
we entrust a letter to the winds it makes its perilous journey
across all distance, and the correspondence between my friends
Craig and Lynda and I has indeed crossed the ocean many times.
Everybody knows that when it is noon in the United States the
sun is setting over France. Only Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince on
his tiny planet could see the day end and the twilight falling
whenever he liked.
Our friendship born during a cold winter in South Tyrol has
continued for more than thirty years, kept solid and tended as
the growing of a rose-bush has to endure all seasons, by a loving
correspondence. Our lives intertwined with all their perilous and
fragile logics of love and pain, a sharing so overwhelming, a
faithful constancy that has had no boundaries, in all its
convoluted changes of growing and growing older.
That all these letters were kept is a small miracle. That our
friendship has thrived and blossomed and never waned is the
miracle of sunset and sunrise, my knowing they were always
there and their knowing I was always here.
Patrizia de Rachewiltz
Den Bosch, Holland
2008
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Dear Friends
“It is now and now
and always now again.”
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View of Vinschgau (Val Venosta): Brunnenburg, Italy, 1976
10
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1111
I write to you from the kitchen garden,
late afternoon, branches green
and stirred by the wind, fields stretching out
with apple trees, not too heavily laden
because of the rains. Two days ago
I watched the clouds move a full moon.
Here I am. There you are.
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Warmth Waiting: New Mexico, 2008
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2222
I keep to my crucial activities.
Keep the feet warm in the bed.
Make the fire every day, shovel coal
and chop wood.
Gather my writing hours around me.
Wait for the mail.
Cook one warm meal a day
and fight against the wind outside.
In the evening I am exhausted,
and all is quiet. I listen to music
and try to read. But so much happens
between one word and another.
There are no words for that.
13
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Dove at Dawn: New Mexico, 2008
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3333
The morning bird calls
to awaken my heart.
A bird sings alone.
Another bird answers.
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4444
I would like to send marzipan and leaves
and joys hidden behind words.
I love the smile one smiles alone,
but know there is a more wonderful way
to say it. I know you know of a better way.
And so our smile
is the smile we don’t smile alone.
Send me yours.
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5555
I heard your voice singing today.
It came through the silver leaves,
as the air was still and warm.
It came right down to where I sat
in my little garden,
with the white cherry tree, singing
“It’s me! It’s me! It’s me.”
I looked up
and looked straight into your eyes.
Heaven, what a moon!
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6666
As I sadly lowered my eyes
to yours,
a gift was the answer:
two broken yellow wings
among the summer-ending shadows.
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