Quotes by William R. Leach (Part III)

“Look inside the light to see more light
instead of seeing the darkness that
follows it.”

William R. Leach (1954-1999)
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Poems by William's Favourite Poets (Part I)

PABLO NERUDA'S TWENTY POEMS OF LOVE, AND ONE DESPERATE SONG: POEM 18 (with Translation by Terence Clarke)

by jokamadruga

Poema 18

Aquí te amo.
En los oscuros pinos se desenreda el viento.
Fosforece la luna sobre las aguas errantes.
Andan días iguales persiguiéndose.

Se descine la niebla en danzantes figuras.
Una gaviota de plata se descuelga del ocaso.
A veces una vela. Altas, altas estrellas.

O la cruz negra de un barco.
Solo.
A veces amanezco, y hasta mi alma esta húmeda.
Suena, resuena el mar lejano.
Este es un puerto.
Aquí te amo.

Aquí te amo y en vano te oculta el horizonte.
Te estoy amando aún entre estas frías cosas.
A veces van mis besos en esos barcos graves,
que corren por el mar hacia donde no llegan.
Ya me veo olvidado como estas viejas anclas.
Son más tristes los muelles cuando atraca la tarde.
Se fatiga mi vida inútilmente hambrienta.
Amo lo que no tengo. Estás tú tan distante.
 Mi hastío forcejea con los lentos crepúsculos.

Pero la noche llega y comienza a cantarme.
La luna hace girar su rodaje de sueño.
Me miran con tus ojos las estrellas más grandes.
Y como yo te amo, los pinos en el viento
quieren cantar tu nombre con sus hojas de alambre.

Poem 18 (translation)

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind untangles itself,
the moon phosphorescent on the errant waters.
The days, each equal to the next, chasing one another.

The snow unties itself in dancing figures.
A silver seagull lowers from the sunset.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.

Or the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I awake, and even my soul is damp.
The faraway sea sounds and sounds again.
This is a port.
Here I love you.

Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I’m loving you even among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those solemn ships,
that run on the sea toward where they do not arrive.
So I see myself forgotten like these ancient anchors.
The wharves are even sadder as the afternoon docks.
My uselessly starving life grows tired.
I love what I don’t have. You are so far away.
My weariness struggles with the slow sundowns.

But night comes and commences singing to me.
The moon makes its dream-twirling run.
The largest stars view me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
wish to sing your name with their wiry leaves.

Pablo Neruda

Translation: Terence Clarke /Novelist, journalist, screenwriter, filmmaker/

Source: www.redroom.com where the writers are
              (see Terence Clarke's Blog)
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Quotes by William R. Leach (Part II)

“It is important that a
person not be contained
by their time.”

William R. Leach (1954-1999)
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William R. Leach's Favourite Painters (Part I)

Henri Matisse - "Dance (I)", 1909 

“Every angel has a right and left hand,
at the right hand are the reapers,
at the left hand are the sowers.”

William R. Leach (1954-1999)
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Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

* In March 1909, Matisse received a commission from the Russian merchant Sergei Shchukin for two large decorative panels, Dance and Music (now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). This painting was made quickly as a compositional study for Dance, which was intended to hang on a staircase landing at Shchukin's Trubetskoy Palace, in Moscow. The figure at left appears to move purposefully, while the other dancers seem to float weightlessly. The momentum of their movement breaks the circle as the arm of the foreground dancer reaches out. Dance, Matisse once said, evoked "life and rhythm."

Source: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 
/Click HERE for more information about this piece of art/
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"Seven/The Life of the Poet William R. Leach"

The first book that is to be written about William is going to be called, "Seven/The Life of the Poet William R. Leach".

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Willam R. Leach's Obituary

William R. Leach (1954-1999)

William R. Leach*, age 45, of 2-58 Hibernia Street, Stratford, Ontario, Canada was an extraordinary poet and "a scholar of a single candle" died of heart failure on Thursday, November 18, 1999 at the Stratford General Hospital, Stratford, Ontario, Canada. William was survived by his wife, the sculptor Susan Murar. Also surviving are his mother Marilyn, and a brother Jack in Ontario, California. William was a beautiful human being in body and mind, spirit and soul. When he was a very young child as a prodigy he started to compose music and wrote throughout his lifetime, 159 symphonies, six operas and 17 string quartets. He was a full time poet as well and waited until he was in his mid-forties before he sensed a maturity in his work, that he considered worthy of publication, the result is eight books, of these, three may be considered his masterpieces. His genius for mathematics remained hidden until he worked as a janitor in his formative years [1]. William's life encompassed caring about the future of our world and of the universe. He made astounding scientific breakthroughs to be used in the future, for the benefit of mankind. "Out of a heart a world will form" is from one of his poems. He was a gentle man and he was also fiery and fierce as befits a brilliant poetic mind. He counted as his friends and mentors, Poet Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, sculptor James Schuit, Stetson and Robert Burns the Scottish Poet, a very distant cousin. "What is, shouldn't be" was his encompassing humanity speaking when he felt with his heart the suffering of the world. When he was asked, "What is courage?", his answer was; "Courage is love". And yes, he did throughout his lifetime, speak with angels in every language spoken throughout the history of time. The very last poem he wrote is entitled, "Man Comes and Tills the Field and Lies Beneath", this was his personal epitaph. Cremation has taken place and funeral services are private.

*  born in Duluth, Minnesota

[1] - Pomona College, Claremont, California

Posted in "Beacon Herald', Stratford, Ontario, Canada
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Quotes by William R. Leach (Part I)

“The whole art of living
consists of giving up our existence
in order to exist.”

William R. Leach (1954-1999)

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Quotes by William's Favourite Poets (Part I)

William R. Leach in front of the 'Eagle House Victorian Inn', Eureka, CA

“The wide world is all before us - but a world without a friend.”
 Robert Burns
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Poetry of William R. Leach (Part II)

"Orpheus Agonlstes"

Its rivers have counted your estranged endurance
out of stone, and hosted Its right exaltment
into the plaintive enveloping of the sea.
You have embroiled the summer's light in the narrative air

drawn to the portage of a sorrow,
and enpastured the encoursed swaying of your heart
in the somewhat stilled reaches to dissolvements
embraced in golden curvetings and the dark.

The bloom on solstices of the paraded season
loosens the knitting of the waters to infer from them
the elocution of surrounds, and in that begetting air
its concordances weigh as if incantative

with hearts of other vastnesses, and take you into shadow from
the world.

William R. Leach (1954-1999)
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Born Poet

William R. Leach (1954-1999)

While his surroundings may change, William R. Leach's mission in life has been clear to him since he recognized his destiny during a visionary experience as a child. He was fascinated by the lanscape around his boyhood home near Lake Superior and often took long walks.

"I was walking along one day and all at once I saw what I call the light behind the light."

At age 12, "I was walking past a tree" when a vocational revelation hit. "I realized what I was: a poet."

SOURCE: An excerpt written by S. Derrickson Moore; LAS CRUCES SUN-NEWS, "Artist of the Week"

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"What is courage?"



When William R. Leach was asked, "What is courage?", his answer was; "Courage is love".
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Friends of Willam R. Leach (Part I)

Willam R. Leach with his best friend James Shuit

James Shuit was a long time friend of William R. Leach, many stories of wonderful times where very special things happened, lots of laughter and outrageousness. William had many stories always laughing, probably never let a day go by without thinking of his best friend James Schuit. Schuit and he had a traffic accident in Mexico (on a bridge?) and the police came and took the vehicle they were driving, and left the two of them in the desert, they had to walk to town, not very near, and then it took them three days to track the vehicle down, and pay off the police, etc. William said that when they finally got into town he dis­covered he had been injured and blood was running down his face...of course the Mexican police were not interested in this, just in getting the vehicle so a price could be paid.

William R. Leach had a tremendous love for James Schuit and they shared many, many times in life together. The last few months William was alive he had Schuit's pictures of his new sculpture displayed on the end of his writing bed, where he could see them every day, and wrote at least one if not two letters but not had time to send them... and he thought about these letters for days/weeks, want­ing them to be so special before he sent them off...

~ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: James Schuit was born and raised in the African Congo where his parents served as missionaries. His first art teachers were the Wallendu tribe. From the tender age of five, when he went missing, his mother always knew that she would find him carving with the tribesmen.
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He did his undergraduate work at Columbia and Laturrot Bible College in North Carolina and he studied engineering at Letourneau University in Longview, Texas. As with many artists, James found himself making a living at something other than his main passion. His career took him into construction, architecture and design. He has built many homes which he embellished with his artistic talents. His work spans the gamut from construction, finish carpentry & furniture to wood or stone sculptures. His creations have the unique ability to express spirit of the environment for which they were created.
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After decades in construction, now that his children are grown, James has time to devote to his passion. He has been searching for a place that would inspire his art. He found that place on the Hawaiian island of Lana’i. The landscapes and culture are reminiscent of his idyllic youth in the Congo. Both cultures are similar in that the beauty of the earth is celebrated in the art of the native people. James’s work expresses that same deep reverence for the primitive earth and elicits strong feelings of simple emotions. Each creation has an essence that evokes one’s own visceral connections with the earth.
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SOURCE: www.creativecarver.com
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Poetry of William R. Leach (Part I)

 "I Charge Thee With Forgetfulness"

When will heart rise and address surrender
painstaken by inroads; sorrowing antiphon
towed by a river mastery underground,
swarmed with a confiscation of angels

lay down in what slack adoration?
The head is imbued with the sound
of a nether touching of distances, the far lines
of outreach that portray a nomination

as of birds gathered on a singing sweep
of a dead calm dreamed into place,
but the tree is a moment staying
which unrest visits like a summer fly

in sweet thunder; charged with remembrance
water is unreined from a stone.

William R. Leach (1954-1999)
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William R. Leach's Signs of Genius

The Chronology:

* Mrs. Ratti, William R. Leach's first grade teacher (it was she that gave him IQ test, "hated" him and after he put peas and carrots in the drinking fountain, she liked him even less!

* Mr. Stern, 6th grade teacher in California, gave William R. Leach problem similar to MENSA problem that was supposed to take two hours. It took William 8 seconds. "Mr. Stern started bringing me books, and books, and books."

* English Department, Santa Cruz, California, had an Desert Warfare (Pentagon) computer game that was, supposedly unbeatable. William R. Leach "took them down" in 3 minutes.

* Mr. Larsen, Chaffey High School, Ontario, California (identified William R. Leach's IQ, from records at Comptom Elementary School, Silver Bay, Minnesota as highest recorded in 200 years, anywhere in the world - it was un-measurable so-arbitrary number was given to it "just to have a number".)
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The last poem ever written by William R. Leach

William R. Leach with his last poem /Click on image to Enlarge/

"Man Comes And Tills The Field And Lies Beneath"

 A stone
as struck as would it voice as many waters,
and lain such currents as the stars
assert Acropolis of, whose halls bind

as into leeways all vastnesses to the heart
trimmed of the harm of absenting miles
and where the suns of no hour shed nothing
of its leaves, and the circulating hawk drains

the ever and always into scatters of doves
as lay about the air an ease assignable
to lace adrift in the white of lace;

as into the Avon as it were at once made
remembrancer, a light as untethered of an April
strays with its lateness beyond the dissolve.

William R. Leach, (1954-1999)
January 1999 - Stratford, Ontario, Canada
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What is a poem?

A poem
          is made of written lines
          containing thoughts
          and feelings and memories
          and fears and desires
          and warnings and resolutions
          and thanks and imagination,
       in which the punctuation
          and indentation
          is more interesting
          than in prose.

          In prose the words come out one after another, expressing all that also, with as much interest and sincerity as the writer can muster, but the arrangement of the words on the page is determined by the width of the page, the decided-upon margins, and by the wrap-around program of the word processor.

The poet is in charge of all of it,
         including the arrangement
         of the words
                on the page.

William R. Leach (1954-1999)
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