You may choose today between a poem by a man who prefers to be a mystery and a man whose wife descended into madness. How is that for an offer on a dull Wednesday morning? My way out, of course, given that I am busy with a larger writing project and so need to borrow others’ words.

Both poems made me think (one of them I liked), and each offered an opportunity to be paired with some of the pictures I recently took at a barbershop window and a market stand (Grindstone – Knife and Tool Sharpening), respectively.

When I saw the knife sharpener he was too busy to talk to me.

His partner did instead, revealing that that trade had been handed down for several generations. Her grandfather’s picture – he was an immigrant from Italy – was among the display in front of her.

She expressed deep reverence for tradition.

I expressed awe at these two:

Here is the poem by Kotaro Takamura ( 1883-1956 / Japan) who documented his wife’s descent in much agonizing poetry.

A Man Sharpening A Knife

In silence a knife is being sharpened. 
Though the sun is already sinking, it is still being sharpened. 
The back and the front tightly placed, 
the whetting water changed, it is being sharpened again. 
What on earth is intended to be made? 
As though without knowing even that, 
concentrating the mood of the moment in his brow, 
behind green leaves, the man sharpens the knife. 
Bit by bit this man’s sleeve tears. 
The mustache of this man becomes white. 
Resentment? Necessity? A vacant mind? 
This man is simply endless. 
Is he pursuing the nth degree?

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Well as you know I am interested, to the nth degree, in linking topics together, and since in my mind a barbershop needs knife sharpeners to deal with dull shears, scissors, razor knives etc. I found the connection. In truth I REALLY wanted to get the photos out from this window, which held strong visual interest for me.

On offer, then, is this by Larry Bradley, who is something of an enigma, with only three poems online and a bio that stresses achievement and is silent on anything else.

Barber

By Larry Bradley

Learn from the man who spends much of his life speaking
             To the back of your head knowing what it means to follow

The razor’s edge along a worn strop or random thoughts
             As they spring so invisibly from the mind to a mouth

Who shouldered soldiers in two wars and fled fire fields
             Undecorated who fathered once but was fatherless forever

And who works his sentiments in deeper into your scalp
             Under a sign on the knotty-pine walls whose rubric reads

quot homines, tot sententiae which means he sees
             In you his suffering smells of horehound tonics and gels

Pillow heads and powders and a floor full of snippings
             Swept neatly every evening into a pile for the field mice

All those roundabout hours only a man who fixes his tie
             To clip crabgrass crowding a lady’s grave could believe

With a certain clean devotion and who would never for one
             Moment dream of hurting you when your back was turned

Choices, choices. Barbershop Quartett or Barbier of Sevilla? I think we’ll go with Rossini!

And here is an old German version with Hermann Prey who I believe thought he was singing a Wagnerian role…..