Poetry By
Nora Delaney
Published on: 4/2/2009
Louey of the Beet Field
I have the computer running and am typing, listening to a romantic man - no, not what you think - Ludwig van Beethoven. Or as my teacher, Mrs. Putowski, used to call him (as if she knew him personally): 'Louey of the Beet Field' - a rough translation to knock that great, wild-haired man down a peg. How un-Germanic and un-grand that sounds: Louey of the Beet Field - Furious in his deafness, His Wurst fingers sizzling up the keys.
Published on: 10/22/2008
Learning
Outside my window is a big, black crouching cat of metal. Actually, it's a stabile - stationary, opposed to mobile. By Alexander Calder. From here, I cannot see the title. But to me it looks like a crouching cat - sinuous, muscular - all paws and ears. Not the kind of cat I would need to clear the apartment which is now plagued with mice; I hate laying the sickly glue traps for them - to hear the squeaks that pierce my dreams at night. And outside that big, cold cat keeps watch, eyeless. Inside, the mice die terrible deaths, like flies, on sheets of glue. But it - the art - is not a cat: it morphs when I know its name: "La Grande Voile" - "The Big Sail". A paradox: sailing and stationary. No matter. It is still a cat to me. And the mice will still be mice. The rats outside still rats. I will still be me, but now with new knowledge: a name - "La Grande Voile". I watch it arch its back, fill its sails. Not moving in the wind that pushes tiny people on their way. Perhaps I will stop someone - a tourist, a passer-by - and reveal my little ounce of glee - not that mice die at night in my apartment. But that I know a sculptor's name. And his art. And what it means to me.
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