Beside the maple
stands a dogwood
Beside the dogwood
stands an oak
And beside the oak
stands my wife

- Ko Un,
from Flowers of a Moment

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Etymology: (Anglo-Norman and Middle French mortgage, mort gage (1283 in Old French; also as gage mort (1267); French mort-gage (now arch.)) < mort (mort adj.) + gage (gage n.1), after post-classical Latin mortuum vadium (from 12th cent. in British sources) (mortuum, accusative of mortuus dead (see mort adj.) + vadium pledge (see invadiate v.).))

(from OED.)

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Small Song: Laundry:

Bellied out, aloft, and flush with sun,
like meadow-mist beside the morning river:
how tired we made you!
And how tired we had become.

Now, emptied of our restlessness,
you breathe your own white life.
--And there, like ghosts of meadow-grass,
our shadows shining through.


- Jan Zwicky,
from Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences

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Tea.

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Apple Song:

Red one, how strange
the leavings of desire:
the knife;
the satin ribbons of the skin;
the star chambers of the heart, its eight thoughts
brown as moles.
The small snout of your stem,
stiff with dreaming of that other world.

- Jan Zwicky,
from Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences

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Merlot.

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(Discussion of a Greek temple:)

Standing there, the building rests on the rocky ground. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the mystery of that rock's clumsy yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence. The luster and gleam of the stone, though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun, yet first brings to light the light of the day, the breadth of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple's firm towering makes visible the invisible space of air. The steadfastness of the work contrasts with the surge of the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging of the sea. Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are. The Greeks early called this emerging and rising in itself and in all things phusis. It clears and illuminates, also, that on which and in which man bases his dwelling. We call this ground the earth.

- Heidegger, from The Origin of the Work of Art.

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