eyes of those who fight and
starve for bread – there is doom, change,
silence, denying

Adapted from the poem, Sea Music, by Babette Deutsch.

There is a place of bitter memories
Dreary and wide and lonely as the sea,
Foaming and moaning; there they come to me
Like wild gulls crying sea-taught monodies:
Iron-winged hours, heavy, heavy with dread;
Dawn after death; the sound of a shut door;
And shining love that has a withered core;
The eyes of those who fight and starve for bread.
There is doom, and change, and silence, and denying;
Memories of these pluck at the heart of me.
And over the bitter roar of the old dumb sea
The air is filled with the noise of wild gulls crying.

I started this morning still at a loss for words.

Wanting, if for the sake of self discipline if nothing else, to write something today I turned to my other project for inspiration.

Over the last year I worked to gather digital versions of every known published James Thurber Cartoon.

When I am at a loss for word, I will go to my Thurber archive and see if there might be a drawing and caption suitable to be adapted to a haiku.

Searching the archive for June 28th, I found that on June 28, 1941, the New Yorker published a drawing with the caption, Miss Gorce is in the embalming game.

That didn’t do much for a haiku.

But when I created my archive, I also did a screen grab of the two page spread of the New Yorker so users could see how New Yorker readers first saw the Thurber drawing.

I found this necessary to show that all Thurber drawings DID NOT just magically appear in books, one after another, but were part of the fabric of the magazine.

Looking at the spread of pages 14 and 15 for June 28th, 1941 edition of the New Yorker, I saw opposite the Thurber drawing a poem by Babette Deutsch.

Never heard of her but liked her poem and thought would do so I search for an online version I could copy and paste into this post and when doing so, came across this poem, Sea Music.

Just yesterday I was bemoaning the fact that I had no words in me to describe how I felt after the highest court in this country decided that the feller in office was a better judge of Justice then they were and here was a poem that described how I felt.

Iron-winged hours, heavy, heavy with dread;
Dawn after death; the sound of a shut door;
And shining love that has a withered core;

Wikipedia reports that: Babette Deutsch was born on September 22, 1895, in New York City. Her parents were of Michael Deutsch and Melanie Fisher Deutsch. She matriculated from the Ethical Culture School and Barnard College, graduating in 1917 with a B.A. She published poems in magazines such as the North American Review and the New Republic while she was still a student at Barnard.

The Poetry Foundation website states: Aligned with the Imagist movement, Deutsch typically composed compact, lyrical pieces using crisp visual imagery. Many of her poems are ekphrastic responses to paintings or other pieces of visual art.

Many of her poems are ekphrastic responses to paintings or other pieces of visual art.

I like that.

Re reading again the lines,

Iron-winged hours, heavy, heavy with dread;
Dawn after death; the sound of a shut door;
And shining love that has a withered core;

All I can say is what a perfect ekphrastic response to our current states of affairs.