It may be 
that I was swept up in the storm 
of a stranger’s beauty 

or simply feeling vague and alone 
while I waited for the rain to fall 

but I swear I could smell Montale’s lemons 
through a hole in the afternoon. 

Through a Hole in the Afternoon I Smelled Montale’s Lemons
Assemblage, 11"x14" (2006)

Copyrighted © by Gary LeBel. All rights reserved.

Appears here with artist’s permission.

Publisher’s Note:

See also The Lemons, a poem by Eugenio Montale (translated by Jonathan Galassi) at Literary Hub (Everyman’s Library, Penguin Random House).

Gary LeBel

After living variously in Austria, California, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, Gary LeBel now lives in the greater Atlanta, Georgia area. He is the founder and co-owner of an optical alignment consulting firm that has been serving heavy industry throughout the southeast for two decades. He’s also a poet and artist (primarily collage, montage, and assemblage), whose work has been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Japan. He believes that art, or anything else worth doing, is a life-long pilgrimage.

Self-taught, LeBel has been image-making in words and pictures for many years. Abacus, his first collection of short poems, haibun, and prose poems, was published as an e-book in 2008 by Modern English Tanka Press. His haibun have appeared in Contemporary Haibun Online, Haibun Today, Lynx, and Modern Haiku; and his tanka prose, in Contemporary Haibun Online and drifting sands haibun. His haiga have been shown in Haiga Online, Modern Haiga, Modern Haiku, and Reeds Contemporary Haiga. He’s at work on his second book, a collection of haibun and other short-form prosimetra.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Looking at Christina’s World, ekphrastic tanka prose by Gary LeBel in drifting sands haibun (Issue 1, April 2020)

⚡ Brings to Life, ekphrastic tanka prose by LeBel in contemporary haibun online (16:3; 30 November 2020)

⚡ Vox Humana, haibun with haiga by LeBel in Haibun Today (Volume 5, Number 1, March 2011)

⚡ A Game of Tag: Gary LeBel on Tanka Prose by Patricia Prime in Haibun Today (Volume 6, Number 3, September 2012)