natalia ilyin

So the website "hotfrog" has decided to include me as a listing. Name correct. Address, wrong-- very wrong. Phone number could not be wronger. And yet a quick scan of included keywords tells us they have the right person. Why spend time writing memoir when it's all there in the keywords? Hotfrog is a poet. And I quote:


Related Categories
(a poem, by hotfrog)

Advertising
Anxiety
Architecture

Books
Branding

Depression
Design Education
Feather
Fleece

Graphic Design
Graphic Design History
History Of Graphic Design

Jazz
Jazz Music

Magazine
Music

Panic Attack
Panic Attacks

Writer

Yesterday I got an envelope in the mail and in it was a poem from my father. He's edging up on ninety-one, just to give you some context. But no wimped-out guy, he. Still painting, writing, calling me on his cell phone to make sure I'm eating. Here's the poem:


Heresy

They say now that the Dialogue in Heaven
Of whose stark end we are the flying grit,
Was won by Satan, whose triumphant hordes
Unfurled red banners and with furious zeal
Plunged outward into space to spread his power.

He left the Loser dead upon a cross,
To live again, but now to be confined
In silvered ikons glinting in the light
Of true lampadas and of sleeping children--
Or now to be displayed on penthouse walls
With other accent pieces-- yet to bless
Alike the infant and the gracious liver
And the director of the KGB
And the most distant, barren galaxies
Forever hurtling on their outward course
Since Satan's victory on that mighty day.

Boris Ilyin

Last night Rem Koolhaas's building burned in Beijing. Pictures of bystanders watching the new building burn put me in mind of this poem by Robert Burmer, a poet and musician here on the Island.


NIGHT VISION

Some nights, certain nights
a frightening clarity descends.

When roads and faces,
remembered - reflected,
arc as neutrinos
through each turn of the eye.

Where the heron walks on ice
as its cry leaves a track on the moon.

When our bets are called in
but cannot be covered,

And lovers appear,
hair streaming
down desert back roads
no longer imagined.

Flesh or dream,
it does not matter.

Our birth cries form
as ashes on the waves,
bending the light
of a younger star.


Robert H. Burmer