Glückliche Sonnenwende

 

Jetzt wendet sich die liebe Sonne,

Gipfel unser aller Wonne.

Alles Dunkel geht zur Ende

bei der schönen Sonnenwende.

Ob es scheinet, ob es regnet

Alle Mensch und Pflanze segnet.

 

Intruding Light

She woke up in time to see this sun sending up spies ahead of him  to mark out the road through the dark.  He peeped up over the door-sill of the world  and made a little foolishness with red.  But pretty soon, he laid all that aside, and went about his business  dressed all in white.

-- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

A thin needle of sunshine

came probing in

between the drawn curtains.

-- Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928), p.  240

Blazing Solar Monostich

!! SUNSTRUCK !!

Summer Solstice, 2019

The sun at apogee, an empire all of light.

The sweet corn basks and ripens in its rays.

All memory of winter  has melted from our minds.

Yet even now the worm lies in the bud, one day to blast it.

The long limbs of daylight   that had stretched and stretched

now imperceptibly  begin to shrink:

even as the cosmos  attains its outmost limit,

and sighs back  to collapse.

Alas, the Elves of Ice  lurk still in northern forests,

plotting their return.

Aturdido Tableau

In the brilliance of the noonday sun,

with the many-colored flags  over the shops
waving it on,

the crowd looked as if it had closed ranks around itself,

and could never admit another soul.

[--Alfred Kazin, Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), p. 79

Trouble in Paradise

Again the sun was hot upon the cacaos,

and the lorikeets were wild in protest

over some  imagined slight.

-- James Michener, Tales of the South Pacific (1946)

Solar Wrath

the sun was furious   above drenched orchids

[--Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (1920)]

Splendor

the sun   was proud    in the south

[--Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (2001)]

Donbaas tableau

~  It was a lovely,  sunny,  autumn day,

with spiderwebs  flying about in the air like snow. ~

-- Khrushchev Remembers (Eng. translation 1970), p. 458

Sunrise monostichs

   the poplar trees   threw shadows

   longer than themselves

[Source: Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves (1925), p. 249]

And compare:

From the crest of the Ciminian mountains

they first saw the sun.

[id., p. 331]

On patrol in Vietnam, with the Marines:

The largest sun I’ve ever seen

was beginning to rise   from the edge of the earth.

It was dark orange,

as sharply defined as the full moon  
but enormously larger.

-- Daniel Ellsberg,  Secrets (2002), p. 163

Angst in January

The sun obscured through winter silver,

quite as you’d see it from Saturn, in all seasons:

distant;  impotent;   appalled.

“World’s End” hemi-monostich

~  one   flaw-less   sun-struck    afternoon  ~

[“Hemi-“ because verbless.

 Indeed, what verb might apply  to a sunstruck afternoon ??? ]

[And, a full monostich  from the same source:]

~ the never-ending morning,    the unendurable afternoon ~

[From: T.  Coraghessan Boyle,  World’s End (1987).]

Happy Solstice !

In observation of this lovely day, we cite the observations of our friend Francis.

~  ~  ~

Laudato sie, mi Signore cum tucte le Tue creature,
spetialmente messor lo frate Sole,
lo qual è iorno, et allumini noi per lui.
Et ellu è bellu e radiante cum grande splendore:
de Te, Altissimo, porta significatione.