Rosa  'A Shropshire Lad' 9 de agosto, 2025

 

El Suicida – Jorge Luís Borges

No quedará en la noche una estrella.

No quedará la noche.

Moriré y conmigo la suma

del intolerable universo.

Borraré las pirámides, las medallas,

los continentes y las caras.

Borraré la acumulación del pasado.

Haré polvo la historia, polvo el polvo.

Estoy mirando el último poniente.

Oigo el último pájaro.

Lego la nada a nadie.

En esta escanografía de mi rosa inglesa Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad’ se puede ver dos versiones. Una la rosa está en camino del oblivion de Ástor Piazzolla y la otra nos muestra un futuro de vida.

Al leer esta poesía de Borges estoy de acuerdo de lo que escribe, pero puedo agregar que aunque yo llegue a la nada, hay un futuro para otros.

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 9 August 2025

 

A Shropshire Lad – A.E. Houseman –XXIV

Say, lad, have you things to do?

Quick then, while your day's at prime.

Quick, and if 'tis work for two,

Here am I, man: now's your time.

Send me now, and I shall go;

Call me, I shall hear you call;

Use me ere they lay me low

Where a man's no use at all;

Ere the wholesome flesh decay,

And the willing nerve be numb,

And the lips lack breath to say,

"No, my lad, I cannot come."

Every day I go to my back lane garden to see what my English Rose, Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ is doing. With the weather alternating with heat and some cold nights the Lad’s blooms have strange transformations that would upset my friends of the Vancouver Rose Society who admire and love perfection. I see in the blooms that I cut today a beauty of imperfection and its connection with its closeness to death.

I am going to a wedding tonight of my friend Dave Chesney. He was a highfalutin record rep (when they were powerful) for CBS Records and Sony. He gave us (Les Wiseman of Vancouver Magazine’s important In One Ear Column) access to visiting rock stars. We would interview and photograph them back stage or in their hotel rooms.

 Chesney is now a White Rock City Councillor. In his honour I am wearing a suit (a Bill Blass suit) for the first time in years. I shaved and then I looked at myself in the mirror. At my almost 83 years I am simply one of those Shropshire Lad blooms about to meet their botanical oblivion.

9 August 2025

Photography is full of mistakes that were so wonderful that if one remembered how they happened they could be repeated at will.

About 3 years ago I grossly underexposed a portrait of a lovely cello player. My flash cord failed but somehow my Fuji X-E3 digital camera sensed the continuous modelling light of my flash softbox. The downloaded image was a completely black rectangle. There was something there which I coaxed back with my 20 year old Photoshop 8. The digital noise resembles extremely fast film and the colours while odd I like. The EXIF data told me that the magical f-stop was the to me unknown f-7.1 and that the picture was taken at 1/30 second at 200 ISO.

Here is my selfie that I took today using a mirror. I am wearing a t-shirt brought by my daughters from Santa María Huatulco, Oaxaca that features the faces of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. The camera rests on an Arca Swiss monoball tripod head that cost my Rosemary around $600 many years ago. It is the finest and most useful Christmas gift I have ever received. 

Rosa 'Ketchup & Mustard' 9 August 2025

Rebecca & Rosa 'Mrs. Okley Fisher'

 Beyond the Grave

When people come to my garden they often ask me which is my favourite rose. I always answer, “It depends.”

It may be of a rose that is in bloom in that moment or a rose that was open the day before but is now gone. In some cases it can be a new rose that is spectacularly blooming like this one with that curious but most appropriate name.

But in all finality my favourite rose is a difficult rose to grow that is associated with a portrait that I took of our eldest granddaughter when she was 8. She is going to be 28 in a few days.

The portrait involves a sailor dress I found in Sanborns in Cancún and a yellow single tea rose called Mrs. Oakley Fisher. My Rosemary did not like yellow in our Kerrisdale garden. When she saw this portrait she changed her mind and Rosa ‘Mrs Oakley Fisher’ became our favourite no matter what.

When I see Mrs. Oakley Fisher blooming (and she has been prolific this summer) I consider how many years have passed, and the rose not only reminds me of a young Rebecca but it also has the smiling face of my Rosemary now present in my memory and on the face of this rose.

Rosemary y Toby

Retorno - Rosario Castellanos

Has muerto tantas veces; nos hemos despedido

en cada muelle,

en cada andén de los desgarramientos,

amor mío, y regresas

con otra faz de flor recién abierta

que no te reconozco hasta que palpo

dentro de mí la antigua cicatriz

en la que deletreo arduamente tu nombre.

Cuando descubrí esta poesía de la poetisa mexicana Rosario Castellanos me dejó con una alegría que rápidamente se convirtió en una melancolía profunda.

La poesía me recuerda de mi despedida de mi primera novia en Buenos Aires en 1966. Se llamaba Corina Poore. Era de origen inglés pero nacida en Uruguay. Los argentinos llamamos a los uruguayos orientales ya que el país es oficialmente la República Oriental del Uruguay.

Corina se iba a Londres a estudiar arte. Nos despedimos en el muelle donde estaba el barco que la llevaría a su destino lejano. En 1968 se comunicó conmigo de que quería verme en México y que trataría conseguir empleo en las olimpiadas de ese año. Le dije que ya me había casado con mi Rosemary.

La poesía ahora me recuerda de como me despido de la presencia constante de Rosemary cuando apago las luces de mi recámara y mis gatos se acurrucan. Ese lado a mi derecha en la cama está vacío.