Mina Loy is singing in heaven, while the Dusie Collective continues to create lit-art, word objects, limited editions, hand-made, hand-painted, human and humane work. Dusie’s great! We’re happy to be involved. Jess

Ekleksographia–An international “cultural culture” of various strains of verbal and textual infection. We ask the English speaking world to say “ah” and swab away! Drag near the petrie dishes, boil the agar and pour it smoking into cyber-space! Damn the needles and the nasal spray! Rock us, words–we want chills, headaches, vertigo, endless sleep or endless waking. Ekleksographia promises as much brilliance as any one person’s immune system can accommodate.

The Murdered Traveler.

When Spring to the woods and wastes around,
Brought bloom and joy again,
The murder’d traveler’s bones were found,
Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, around him hung,
Her tassels in the sky;
And many a vernal blossom sprung,
And nodded, careless, by.

The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
His hanging nest o’er head,
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away;
And gentle eyes, for him
With watching many an anxious day,
Grew sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o’er the desert snow,
Unarmed and hard beset.

Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,
The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole
To banquet on the dead.

Nor how, when strangers found his bones,
They dressed the hasty bier,
And marked his grave with nameless stones,
Unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home;
And dreamed, and started as they slept,
For joy that he was come.

So long they looked–but never spied
His welcome step again,
Nor knew the fearful death he died
Far down that narrow glen.

I found this grim little Wordsworthian gem in the Clarksville, TN. Chronicle, 12/8/1842. Just in time for Halloween. Jess P.S. just discovered that it was written by Willam Cullen Bryant of “Thanatopsis” fame.

Just click the Ekleksographia link at this site. Thanks to Anny, her contributors, and Jonathan Penton and his intern for this one. Jess