The Stars Down-Under

   Orion  upside-down  /  in the topsy-turvy sky

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

Defeated

She   went back to her cottage, and sat there,

no   light   lit,

and stared at the floor.

-- James Michener, Poland (1983), p. 510

And   I   too   soon

found  I   had   cause,

for greater

and deeper

grief .  .   .    .     .      .

-- Richardson, Pamela (1740)

If I were to sit under a tree

and tell you the sadness we have to suffer,

the leaves of that tree

would fall like tears.

-- Indian sex-worker, profiled in “Serving the Goddess”, The New Yorker, 4 Aug 2008

Mystical Animal tableau

tame storks    who stalked

majestically

among the beasts

-- James Michener, Poland (1983), p. 108

Evolutions des chevaliers polonais

with maneuvers as graceful  

as the unfolding of a petaled flower

-- James Michener, Poland (1983), p. 93

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)

Docked Monost--

Found in a bottle, floating in the South Pacific.

Probably written ca. 1943:

    all night, in the  hot  quonset --

Here the fragment breaks off.

[From: James Michener, Tales of the South Pacific (1946)]

Pacific Theatre reconnaissance tableau

They left in mid-morning sunlight,

with great shafts of gold

dancing across the waters of Tulagi bay.

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

Michener monostichs

Re the onslaught of the Tatars in the thirteenth century against eastern Europe:

In a clatter of lances   and a swirl of dust,

they were off to the far adventure.

The result was:

Cities, because of their walls, escaped

these horsemen;  no village did.

As for the heroic but outmatched defenders:

They were Christian  in the great good sense of this word.

(Citations from the historical novel by James Michener, Poland (1983).   Connoisseurs of history might detect a parallel in present events.)