Listening to: The Music of Hikari Oe. More about this autistic composer, the son of a Nobel laureate. (Sounds like Mozart!)

   "April Mortality

Rebellion shook an ancient dust,
  And bones bleached dry of rottenness
Said: Heart, be bitter still, nor trust
  The earth, the sky in their bright dress.

Heart, heart, dost thou break to know
  This anguish thou wilt bear alone?
We sang of it an age ago,
  And traced it dimly upon stone.

With all the drifting race of men
  Thou also art begot to mourn
That she is crucified again,
  The lonely Beauty yet unborn.

And if thou dreamest to have won
  Some touch of her in permanence,
'T is the old cheating of the sun,
  The intricate lovely play of sense.

Be bitter still, remember how
  Four petals, when a little breath
Of wind made stir the pear-tree bough,
  Blew delicately down to death."

--Léonie Adams

A review of the music by Peteris Vasks i mentioned in my June 21st post.

A stamp honoring Emile Nelligan, called by Edmund Wilson "at once the Rimbaud and the Gérard de Nerval of French Canada".