A Poem The eye, benighted by electric switches,Is caught by a window where snow bewitchesThe weary melancholy that nerved the week. I stop for a moment on my way to bedTo view the framed landscape, which snow has bledOf every discretion assumed by sight. How meekly the soul’s imperfect tenseSurrenders to snow’s soft violence,Letting go […]
Author Archives: James Mustich
Face to Face with John Singer Sargent
An intimate viewing at the Morgan Library. I was in the Cleveland airport a couple of months ago when I got a call from one of my oldest friends. Being old enough now that most of my old friends are in fact old, picking up an unexpected call is always shadowed with a little trepidation, […]
Some Words on Walls
A walk in the woods. Is a stone the earth’s utterance? I’ve been pondering stone walls quite a bit recently, and the thought that stones are akin to words keeps coming back to me. For stones rest embedded in the enduring culture of their geology in the same way that words wait quietly in the […]