de Waal @ Huntington (twenty years cast back)

Not sadness this oldⁱ
But whole afterimages holdⁱⁱ
Brokenness mended with goldⁱⁱⁱ
One vessel threshold^iv

Twenty years cast back^v
Flag:^vi return: continuation

Jade ponds coveting
Seclusion; springs re-sounding
Warm mountains shielding
Ancient prayers yielding^vii

Twenty years cast back
Flag: return: continuation

Opaline moon seated
Clay halo’s retreated
Floating breath lingered,
Compression defeated

Twenty years cast back
Flag: return: continuation

White kaolin birds render
Bamboo fumes cinder
Wei Wei cold wonder
Flame–burn–ash flower

Twenty years cast back
Flag: return: continuation

To many more, my love… to many more.

1. “the eight directions of the wind: Edmund de Waal at The Huntington” is on now until October 26, 2026 and comes highly recommended if you find yourself in the Los Angeles area. ↩
2. Whole[some] like shema. ↩
3. Sisyphean kintsugi – a kind of equilibrial alchemy – if ever there was, which might even be seen as a sort of definite tragic optimism, in the Kissingerian sense, which is to say in the very Jewish/self-responsible sense from Pirkei Avot. ↩
4. Revealed like (Thielian) apocalypse. ↩
5. Can you believe it’s been a decade since “a decade ago…“?! ↩
6. Speaking of homes, just before going to LA last week we hosted a housewarming / halloween party at our new shack. Fifteen magnums of champagne and seventy-five cocktails later… ↩
7. Embedded in kilkenny marble are silver prayers, specifically Paul Celan’s Homecoming, from which the last stanza strikes deepest:
   

   There: a feeling,
   blown across by the ice wind
   attaching its dove- its snow-
   coloured cloth as a flag.

   ↩