Strawberries ...

.. by Edwin Morgan ... reminds me of summer lights, berries, daisies, blue sky ...  

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills
let the storm wash the plates

The Immoralist ...

... by Andre Gide has some interesting presecptives while the search of one's true identity continues ...

There are thousands way of life and each of us can know only one. It's madness to envy other people's happiness. Happiness doesn't come off the peg, it has to be made to measure. I leave tomorrow. I know- I have tried to tailor this happiness to fit me ... You hang on to the comfortable happiness of home life.


People don’t want to be like themselves. They all choose a model to imitate, or, if they don’t choose a model themselves, they accept one ready-made.

George Eliot ...

What greater thing is there for two human souls

than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen

each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,

to share with each other in all gladness,

to be one with each other in the

silent unspoken memories?

The beauty of psychiatry ...

... is wonderfully summed up by Lyall Watson ...


"If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't." 

Wislawa Szymborska ...

... "Going Home" describes my stay at my parents' during this snowy month, as my flat waits for its new coat to be perfectly tailored  ... 


He came home. Said nothing. 
It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong. 
He lay down fully dressed. 
Pulled the blanket over his head. 
Tucked up his knees. 
He's nearly forty, but not at the moment. 
He exists just as he did inside his mother's womb, 
clad in seven walls of skin, in sheltered darkness. 
Tomorrow he'll give a lecture 
on homeostasis in metagalactic cosmonautics. 
For now, though, he has curled up and gone to sleep.


... while "The Three Oddest Words" keeps you wonder about the beauty of languages ... 


When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

Beautiful winter ...

... wavers its magical wand among the silent falling snow flakes ... 


"Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day." - Virginia Woolf ...


... while waiting for shopot zvyozd  ("whispering of the stars", as your breaths freeze and fall onto the ground in Siberia) ... 

On the Road ...

... by Jack Kerouac ...

... "I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' ...

The most difficult of all our tasks ...

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Love in the Time of Cholera ...

... by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity.  Life would still present them with other mortal trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.

First Morning of Spring ...

is the title of a beautiful print by Rob Ryan ...

... especially if you have a bottle of tears stored somewhere ...

... but with a specific end date, as you slowly coming to the conclusion that ....

Delay ...

... by Elizabeth Jennings is simple but intriguing in the wonderful combination of encounters in life ...

The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

The Word ...

... by Tony Hoagland ... just reading it makes you smile and longs for the simple wondrous things in life, especially sunshine ...

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

Nietzsche asked ...

... What else is love, but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts and experiences otherwise than we do?

A disappearing number ...

... is a beautiful play, using mathematical concepts, rhythmic music, patterns in space to explain ideas, emotions, loss, linking the past, present and future into infinity ... 

The convergent infinite series was used to illustrate love, marriage, children ... 

A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas... The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way... It may be very hard to define mathematical beauty, but that is just as true of beauty of any kind — we may not know quite what we mean by a beautiful poem, but that does not prevent us from recognizing one when we read it.

- G. H. Hardy, "A Mathematician's Apology" 

The heartache can wait ...

... by Brandi Carlile is an interesting Christmas song, especially when it is discovered in August, but the piano and cello, together with her voice, is beautiful and it reminds me of a December day in a bustling cafe in central London ....

You're talking about leaving
It's right about Christmas time
Thinking about moving on
I think I might die inside

I'm thinking about years gone by
I'm thinking about church at midnight
I'm thinking about letting go
I think that might finally be alright

But this is where we shine

Silver bells and open fire
And songs we used to sing
One more chance to be inspired
Is what I'm offering if love is not enough
Then stay with me because
The heartache can wait

It's not about hanging on
It's making my deal with God
If I could call one last truce
We've given it all we've got

Then I'm gonna catch my breath
And make it a long December
If we've got nothing left
This could be worth remembering
With a smile upon my face

Epilogue ...

... By Kei Miller is a simple poem, full of hopes about the other side of the coin ...

Let us not repeat the easy lies about eternity
and love. We have fallen out of love
before - like children surpassing
the borders of their beds, woken
by gravity, the suddenness of tiles.
So it is we have opened our eyes
in the dark, found ourselves far
from all that was safe and soft.
So it is we have nursed red bruises.
If we are amazed at anything let it be this:
not that we have fallen from love,
but that we were always resurrected
into it, like children who climb sweetly
back into bed.

The sea ...

... is a beautiful song written by Corinne Bailey Rae after her husband's sudden death from a cocaine overdose ... The pain in her voice temporarily stopped the chaotic world from spinning more unanswerable questions ...

I never knew you were standing on the shore,
It says everything,
Explains everything.
That from then on it couldn't be just like before,
it says everything,
Changes everything.
So don't you stand there wishing your life would fade away
And don't you go round with anyone who makes you feel ashamed.

Goodbye paradise,
I hope there's something you could try
Goodbye
You're so changed that you'd give it all away
Goodbye,
Goodbye

I saw your face in the faded light,
Said everything,
Explained everything.
It haunts all your days and it comes to you at night,
You did everything,
Blame anything.
But don't you cut those ribbons to take away the pain
And don't you go round with that same old crowd,
They make you feel ashamed

Goodbye paradise,
I hope there's something you could try
Goodbye
You're so changed that you'd give it all away
Goodbye,
Goodbye paradise

The sea,
The majestic sea,
Breaks everything,
Crushes everything,
Cleans everything,
Takes everything
From me

The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm ...

by Wallace Stevens sums up the beauty of summer night, reading and perfect harmany ...

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Bob Kaufman ...

... embodies the spirit of San Francisco for me ... He took a Buddhist vow of silence in 1963 after learning of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The silence was broken on the day the Vietnam War ended, in 1973, as he walked into a coffee shop and recited the poem below ...

All those ships that never sailed
The ones with their seacocks open
That were scuttled in their stalls…
Today I bring them back
Huge and intransitory
And let them sail
Forever.

All those flowers that you never grew-
that you wanted to grow
The ones that were plowed under
ground in the mud-
Today I bring them back
And let you grow them
Forever.

All those wars and truces
Dancing down these years-
All in three flag swept days
Rejected meaning of God-

My body once covered with beauty
Is now a museum of betrayal.
This part remembered because of that one's touch
This part remembered for that one's kiss-
Today I bring it back
And let you live forever.

I breath a breathless I love you
And move you
Forever.

Remove the snake from Moses' arm...
And someday the Jewish queen will dance
Down the street with the dogs
And make every Jew
Her lover.

Rabbit, run ...

... by John Updike ... describes the journey of a young man lost in 50s America and his own needs ...

"Afraid, really afraid, he remembers what once consoled him by seeming to make a hole where he looked through into underlying brightness, and lifts his eyes to the church window. It is, because of church poverty or the late summer nights or just carelessness, unlit, a dark circle in a limestone facade.

There is light, though, in the streetlights; muffled by trees their mingling cones retreat to the unseen end of Summer Street. Nearby, to his left, directly under one, the rough asphalt looks like dimpled snow. He decides to walk around the block, to clear his head and pick his path. Funny, how what makes you moves so simple and the field you must move in is so crowded. His legs take strength from the distinction, scissor among evenly. Goodness lies inside, there is nothing outside, those things he was trying to balance have no weight. He feels his inside as very real suddenly, a pure blank space in the middle of a dense net. I don't know, he kept telling Ruth; he doesn't know, what to do, where to go, what will happen, the thought that he doesn't know seems to make him infinitely small and impossible to capture. Its smallness fills him like a vastness. It's like when they heard you were great and put two men on you and no matter which way you turned you bumped into one of them and the only thing to do was pass. So you passed and the ball belonged to the others and your hands were empty and the men on you looked foolish because in effect there was nobody there.

Rabbit comes to the curb but instead of going to his right and around the block he steps down, with as big a feeling as if this little sidestreet is a wide river, and crosses. He wants to travel to the next patch of snow. Although this block of brick three-stories is just like the one he left, something in it makes him happy; the steps and windowsills seem to twitch and shift in the corner of his eye, alive. This illusion trips him. His hands lift of their own and he feels the wind on his ears even before, his heels hitting heavily on the pavement at first but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Runs.'

Butterfly ...

... by Weezer with Allison Allport on the harps, is just a beautiful song, and has accompanied many hours of my revision for MRCPscyh this week ..

Yesterday I went outside
With my mama's mason jar,
Caught a lovely butterfly
When I woke up today
Looked in on my fairy pet
She had withered all away
No more sighing in the breast

I'm sorry for what I did
I did what my body told me to
I didn't mean to do you harm
Everytime I pin down what I think I want it slips away
The goal slips away

Smell you on my hands for days
I can't wash away your scent
If I'm a dog then you're a bitch [pause]
I guess you're as real as me
Maybe I can live with that
Maybe I need fantasy
Life of chasing butterfly

I'm sorry for what I did
I did what my body told me to
I didn't mean to do you harm
Everytime I pin down what I think I want it slips away
The goal slips away

I told you I would return
When the robin makes his nest
But I ain't never coming back
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
I'm sorry

Sunflower ...

... is the title of a book by Gyula Krudy ... and its ending is a beautiful little exchange between Eveline and Almos-Dreamer ...

"And what about me, couldn't I understand you?"
"Let's wait for winter. The first, the second, the third winter ... Let's wait for the monotonous evenings of this place, the courses of the moon, the howling-wolf nights. We'll just have to make sure to wind the clocks each day, bury our memories, sit in tranquillity by the warm fireside, play enough tric-trac, and never, never write letters without each others' knowledge, no matter how overcast the twilight."
"I'll be waiting for you."
"Let crazy life rush headlong on the highway for others; we shall contemplate the sunflowers, watch them sprout, blossom, fade away. Yesterday, they were still giants, but now, in autumn, they are thatch on the roof."

From an Atlas of the difficult world ...

... by Adrienne Rich reminds a little of Calvino's "If on a winter's night a traveller" in terms of styles and the range of possibilities it creates, even in a difficult world ...

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Suffering ...

... is a question which I am not even closed to start contemplating about it ... this page is the beginning of a series of thoughts which I have come across in my search for a greater understanding ...

May 2010
Paul Tournier - The person matures, develops, becomes more creative, not because of the deprivation in itself, but through his own active response to misfortune, through the struggle to come to terms with it, and morally to overcome it, even if in spite of everything there is no cure ...

Simone Weil - The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, but a supernatural use for it.

Oswald Chambers - A man up against things feels that he has lost God, while in reality, he has come face to face with Him.

June 2010
Shadowlands -
C.S. Lewis (Jack): Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.

C. S. Lewis: Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

July 2010
Hudson Taylor
From my inmost soul I delight in the knowledge that God does or deliberately permits all things, and causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him. He, and he only, knew what my dear wife was to me. He know how the light of my eyes and the joy of my heart were in her ... But he saw that it was good to take her; good indeed for her, and in his love he took her painlessly; and not less good for me who must henceforth toil and suffer alone - yet not alone, for God is nearer to me than ever".

A letter to ...

... a long lost love was published in The Guardian yesterday ... It may not be the most beautiful letter ever written but its sentiments feel so true ... As for the last paragraph, it does make you wonder ...

"A letter to … a long-lost love" from The Guardian's "The letter you always wanted to write" ~ Sat 8 May

Our Uncle Simon died in April, a bachelor and a very solitary man with a very dry and quick wit. Among his personal effects we discovered this letter, which would have been written in 1947/48, when he was at Liverpool University. Ruth, the recipient of the letter, was a dental student. These letters were a revelation to the family as Simon had never indicated that there was a significant relationship in his life; even his six brothers were unaware of any romantic involvements. He would have been 26 at the time of writing and we wonder if rejection by Ruth prevented him from making any commitment for the rest of his life. A significant factor, and one alluded to in the letter, is that as the son of Orthodox Jews, a relationship with a non-Jew would have caused Simon much soul-searching.
~ Jennifer and Mavis Henley

Last year I was in no position to decide my future. But now I am able to make plans. I have always intended to leave Liverpool and take a job somewhere south. I believe I shall be happier there, somehow, and free from interference.

There is something I can do, which will solve our problem. I have been thinking over it for some time. It will be easy. But I am not able to describe it to you in a letter. It needs to be discussed in conversation.

I ought to say that I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you, when I felt I wanted to marry you; although I did not realise it at the time. If I afterwards had doubts it was because I was not my own master. But I soon will be. When my father died I went off the deep end with grief. Yet a thing like that may happen to anybody. The emotion that such trouble causes is only temporary, after all. You seem to have felt, however, that I had averted myself from you for always. But it was not so. The pain I caused you was no less than the suffering I inflicted upon myself. Parting from you was like cutting off my right hand.

There is nothing in the world that I would not do in order to show my love for you. Nothing. You are part of my life, friend in mind as the ideal of the good and the beautiful. I believe that we are meant and made for one another, that we belong together. I am willing to go to any lengths … in order to ensure your happiness. I will marry you, if you will have me, no matter what the risks may be and no matter what the consequences. The risks I am sure are negligible and the consequences will be wholly good. And just because we are conscious of the possible snags, we shall succeed. If only because we appreciate one another's outlook we shall achieve tolerance and mutual understanding and attain to that satisfaction and joyful peace, which result from a sound marriage. The attainment of all this depends, as I said, upon the idea mentioned above. I hope to discuss it with you.

I love you so much that I cannot bear to be parted from you and every minute of separation is torment to me. I feel that I cannot live without you. Everything I do is done or said with reference to you. You may be astonished to learn that consciously or unconsciously I have always thought of you as my wife.

So, when I thought I had lost you for ever the agony I felt was terrible. It was like being bereaved. But because I had thought, or rather hoped that you understood, the misunderstanding grew deeper, to our mutual hurt. What has happened in the last few weeks is of no importance in my eyes. I am in any case almost wholly to blame for it.

I am deadly serious, my darling. Here it is in black and white, a proposal of marriage made with no reservations but with all the earnestness of which a man is capable, for all the world to see. It does not matter who knows.

I love you, my sweet, precious darling. I will do all I can to make you happy. I will work my hardest. I will stand by you until death.

There are many religions but only one God. I believe he will look upon us two with kindly indifference. I am not sure about that. But I am sure about you.

You could be happy ...

... is a song by Snow Patrol, introduced to me by someone who is pretty amazing and probably one of my favourite people on earth ... The sentiment expressed is painful but beautiful ... Sometimes, we do view past relationships through rose-tinted glasses, but the purified memories may just make the world a little more bearable ...

You could be happy and I won't know
But you weren't happy the day I watched you go

And all the things that I wished I had not said
Are played on loops 'till it's madness in my head

Is it too late to remind you how we were
But not our last days of silence, screaming, blur

Most of what I remember makes me sure
I should have stopped you from walking out the door

You could be happy, I hope you are
You made me happier than I'd been by far

Somehow everything I own smells of you
And for the tiniest moment it's all not true

Do the things that you always wanted to
Without me there to hold you back, don't think, just do

More than anything I want to see you go
Take a glorious bite out of the whole world

Why Lord?

Why Lord is there no-one?
No-one who cares.
The emptiness and bitterness
grow with passing years.

Why Lord can't I love?
Just anyone will do.
Someone who thinks I'm special.
Not only you.

Why Lord is there nothing?
Nothing to call mine.
Why Lord is there nowhere?
Nowhere to go.
Why Lord don't they want me?
Not even one.
Why Lord do they leave me?
Ever alone.

Will you go too, Lord?
Or were you ever there?
Created of necessity
to be someone to care.

... by Elizabeth Stewart is a poem about the darkness in our lives, when God is Deus absconditus, hidden from our searches ... Today, however, answers the last question asked ... Happy Easter ...

Smilin' through ...

... is a song which the singer Patricia Hammond sings when she visits a retirement home .... and despite 90% of its residents being widows, their favourite part is the last verse ...

"And if ever I'm left in this world all alone,
I shall wait for my call patiently,
If the heavens be kind
I shall wake there to find
Those two eyes of blue
Still smilin' through
At me".

We are nowhere and it's now ...

... is a song by Bright Eyes. It resonates so much with the world which surrounds me, as each of us tries to find the long lost "yellow bird", while holding onto the "silver wreath", hoping that it will lead us somewhere ... We are made of conflicting contradictions, and maybe we all have to answer the questions - "And if you swear that there's no truth and who cares / how come you say it like you are right? / Why are you scared to dream of God / when it's salvation that you want?"

If you hate the taste of wine
Why do you drink it till you're blind?
And if you swear that there's no truth and who cares
How come you say it like you're right?
Why are you scared to dream of God
When it's salvation that you want?
You see stars that clear have been dead for years
But the idea just lives on...

In our wheels that roll around
As we move over the ground
And all day it seems we've been in between
A past and future town

We are nowhere and it's now
We are nowhere and it's now

And like a ten minute dream in the passenger's seat
While the world was flying by
I haven't been gone very long
But it feels like a lifetime

I've been sleeping so strange at night
Side effects they don't advertise
I've been sleeping so strange
With a head full of pesticide

I've got no plans and too much time
I feel too restless to unwind
I'm always lost in thought as I walk a block
To my favorite neon sign
Where the waitress looks concerned
But she never says a word
Just turns the jukebox on and we hum along
And I smile back at her

And my friend comes after work
When the features start to blur
She says these bars are filled with things that kill
By now you probably should have learned

Did you forget that yellow bird?
But how could you forget your yellow bird?
She took a small silver wreath and pinned it onto me
She said this one will bring you love
And I don't know if it's true
But I keep it for good luck

If on a winter's night a traveller ...

... by Calvino is a book written for anyone who loves reading, writing or has ever fallen under the spell of the written words ...

"Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings. This does not come about without some effort: to compose that general book, each individual book must be transformed, enter into a relationship with the books I have read previously, become their corollary or development or confutation or gloss or reference text".

John Newton ...

... said the following at the furnael of his friend William Cowper who had depression ...

He drank tea with me in the afternoon. The next morning a violent storm overtook him ,,. I used to visit him often but no argument could prevail with him to come and see me. He used to point with his finger to the church and say: "You know the comfort I have had there and how I have seen the glory of the Lord in His house, and until I go there I'll not go anywhere else." He was one of those who came out of great tribulations. He suffered much here for twenty-seven years, but eternity is long enough to make amends for all. For what is all he endured in this life, when compared with thr rest which remaineth for the children of God."

... And wrote the following while he watched the dawn outside his window ...

The day is now breaking: how beautiful its appearance! How welcome the expression of the approaching sun! It is this thought makes the dawn agreeable, that it is the presage of a brighter light; otherwise, if we expect no more day than it is this minute, we should rather complain of darkness, than rejoice in the early beauties of the morning. Thus the Life of grace is the dawn of immortality: beautiful beyond expression, if compared with the night and thick darkness which formerly covered us; yet faint, indistinct, and unsatisfying, in comparison of the glory which shall be revealed.

Trust in a future which is yet to be fully revealed, while appreciating the beauty and wonders which this world has to offer now ...

Che Fece ... Il Gran Rifiuto

... by Constantine P Cavafy ... is a little poem from the past for one to ponder ...

For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It's clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,

he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he'd still say no. Yet that no-the right no-
drags him down all his life.

The best times of the day ...

... by Raymond Carver is beautifully simple, and warms one's heart on this cold cold Valentine's night ...

Cool summer nights.
Windows open.
Lamps burning.
Fruit in the bowl.
And your head on my shoulder.
These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours,
of course. And the time
just before lunch.
And the afternoon, and
early evening hours.
But I do love

these summer nights.
Even more, I think,
than those other times.
The work finished for the day.
And no one who can reach us now.
Or ever.

The late Mattia Pascal ...

... is an interesting little book by Luigi Pirandello ... I cannot make my mind up about it, but I do like this little passage.

"Every object is transformed within us according to the images it evokes, the sensations that cluster around it. To be sure, an object may please us for itself alone, for the pleasant feelings that a harmonious sight inspires in us; but far more often the pleasure that an object affords us does not derive from the object in itself. Our fantasy embellishes it, surrounding it, making it resplendent with images dear to us. Then we no longer see it for what it is, but animated by the images it arouses in us or by the things we associate with it. In short, what we love about the object is what we put in it of ourselves, the harmony established between it and us, the soul that it acquires only through us, a soul composed of our memories".

This concept can also apply to people and our relationship with them ... Sometimes, we do need some space and distance for clarity, and it reminds me a little of the "object-relation" idea ...

Peaceful the World lays me down ...

... is a song by Noah and the Whale ... it has taken me a long long time to pick up the pieces, to be able to breath fully, to find joy in little things again; be it a sunset, complicated writings, laughter with friends, letters from aboard, cakes with ten millions layers of chocolates, discovering long forgotten music, having meandering conversations, wandering under the Blue Lights ...

Oh, well it's hard to look deep into your soul.
Not everything you'll find will be perfect gold.
There are ghosts and demons that hide in the dark.
Oh, they wait till you find them and then they laugh.
Oh, they know that my body is no way good enough.
Know that my heart is no way strong enough
to bear the sorrows that love brings.
When I recoil in fear, oh, the demons shake.

But it's a hollow love for a heart with no blood in its veins.

Oh, there is no endless devotion,
that is free from the force of erosion.
Oh, if you don't believe in God,
how can you believe in love?
When we're all just matter that will one day scatter,
when peaceful the world lays us down.
Oh and finding love is a matter of luck,
and unettled lovers move from f*** to f***
Oh, and compare their achievements like discussing bereavements
And compare their abrasions with romantic quotations,
Oh, as peaceful, the world watches down.

But oh we were blown out of the water.
Oh, and we walk on the feet we have grown.
Oh, and we were given a heart, of which love is a part.
Oh, and we cornered the thing from which all life will spring.
And it gave value to the world that surrounds us.

But we consider the world just for a moment.
Oh, and it's gone before we even know.
Oh, but I'll follow it round yeah I'll follow it round.
Oh, I'll follow it round yeah I'll follow it round.
Till peaceful, the world lays me down.

She came to stay ... ...

... by Simone de Beauvoir is fictional autobiography about the complicated, painful relationships between Jean-Paul Sartre, Olga Kosakievicz and her. Despite its ending, the first few pages when she described their love is just beautiful and ultimately what one aspires to ...

"Pierre was on the stage, she was in the audience, and yet, for both of them it was the same play being performed in the same theatre. Their life was the same. They did not always see it from the same angle, for through their individual desires, moods, or pleasures, each discovered a different aspect. But it was, for all that, the same life. Neither time nor distance could divide them. There were, of course, streets, ideas, faces, that came into existence first for Pierre, and others first for Francoise; but they faithfully pieced together these scattered experiences into a single whole, in which "yours" and "mine" became indistinguishable. Neither one nor the other ever withheld the slightest fragment. That would have been the worst, the only possible betrayal".

Have yourself a merry little Christmas ...

... really captures the hopes and uncertainties we face at the end of each year, when we try to embrace the world afresh, praying for the encourage to wear those rose-tinted glasses once again ... Yet, "a shining star" mentioned in the song was personified two thousands years ago, at "O little town of Bethlehem", in which "in thy dark streets shineth / The everlasting Light / The hopes and fears of all the years / Are met in thee tonight" ...

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
From now on our troubles will be miles away

Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of Yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more

Through the years we all will be together
If the Lord allows
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now"

Anna Karenin ...

... by Leo Tolstoy was one of my favourite books ten years ago, and its resonance still resounds today ... Karenin's letter to Anna may not be beautifully written, but the sentiment expressed is something which I aspire to, but can never attain ... To love someone who no longer loves you is at best difficult, and at times impossible ...

"I can see that my presence is disagreeable to you. Painful as it is for me to recognise this, I see that it is so and cannot be otherwise. I do not reproach you, and God is my witness that when I saw you at the time of your illness I resolved with my whole heart to forget all that had come between us and begin life anew. I do not regret, and shall never regret, what I did; my only desire was for your welfare, the welfare of your soul, and now I see I have not attained that. Tell me yourself what would give you true happiness and peace of mind. I put myself entirely in your hands, and trust to your feeling of what is right."

Bright star ...

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

~ by John Keats ...

Leisure ...

... by W. H. Davies reminds me a little of what I have nearly lost in the past few months ... September and October have passed by in a blur, as I float from one mini-crisis to another ... People around me have been more than lovely, but somehow, the locus of control appears to remain in outer space, rather than internally, within my reach. Yet, this poem reminds me that life is very simple; one just needs to stop, pause, breath, "stand and stare" at God's creation upon our doorstep ...

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

The Good Soldier ...

... by Ford Madox Ford is an interesting book, and the following passage describes the hopelessness of our situation on this earth ...

"I have come to be very much of a cynic in these matters; I mean that it is impossible to believe in the permanence of man's or woman's love. Or, at any rate, it is impossible to believe in the permanence of any early passion. As I see it, at least, with regard to men, a love affair, a love for any definite woman - is something in the nature of a widening of the experience. With each new woman that a man is attracted to there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like an acquiring of new territory. A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic gesture - all these things, and it is these things that cause to arise the passion of love - all these things are like so many objects on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk beyond the horizon, to explore. He wants to get, as it were, behind those eyebrows with the peculiar turn, as if he desired to see the world with the eyes that they overshadow. He wants to hear that voice applying itself to every possible proposition, to every possible topic; he wants to see those characteristic gestures against every possible background. Of the question of the sex-instinct I know very little and I do not think that it counts for very much in a really great passion. It can be aroused by such nothings - by an untied shoelace, by a glance of the eye in passing - that I think it might be left out of the calculation. I don't mean to say that any great passion can exist without a desire for consummation. That seems to me to be a commonplace and to be therefore a matter needing no comment at all. It is a thing, with all its accidents, that must be taken for granted, as, in a novel, or a biography, you take it for granted that the characters have their meals with some regularity. But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the craving for identity with the woman he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For, whatever, maybe said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.

So, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest story.

And yet I do not believe that for every man there comes at last a woman - or no, that is the wrong way of formulating it. For every man there comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her seal upon his imagination has set her seal for good. He will travel over no more horizon; he will never again set the knapsack over his shoulders; he will retire from those scenes. He will have gone out of the business."

The Reader ...

... by Bernhard Schlink is a book about Holocaust, individual responsibility, justice, collective guilt, forgiveness, the irreversibility of time, the extent of reality in memory ... The last topic fascinates me, and is discussed in depth in "The Secret Scripture" by Sebastian Barry.

"At first I wanted to write our story in order to be free of it. But the memories wouldn't come back for that. Then I realized our story was slipping away from me and I wanted to recapture it by writing, but that didn't coax up the memories either. For the last few years I've left our story alone. I've made peace with it. And it came back, detail by detail and in such a fully rounded fashion, with its own direction and its own sense of completion, that it no longer makes me sad. What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus, the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.

At any rate, that's what I think when I just happen to think about it. But if something hurts me, the hurts I suffered back then come back to me, and when I feel guilty, the feeling of guilt return; if I yearn for something today, or feel homesick, I feel the yearnings and homesickness from back then. The geological layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nevertheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear. Maybe I did write our story to be free of it, even if I never can be."

The protagonist, Michael, wrote a poem in the book which reminds me of another poem ... the ambivalence, the uncertainity despite the togetherness ...

"When we open ourselves
you yourself to me and I myself to you,
when we submerge
you into me and I into you
when we vanish
you into me, and I into you

Then
am I me
and you are you"

This morning ...

... by Raymond Carver definitely sums up how I felt when I was swinging among the autumn leaves at Heinwehfluh ... the fleeting moment of tranquility ...

This morning was something. A little snow
lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
as far as the eye could see.
Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went
for a walk -- determined not to return
until I took in what Nature had to offer.
I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.
Crossed a field strewn with rocks
where snow had drifted. Kept going
until I reached the bluff.
Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and
the gulls wheeling over the white beach
far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure
cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts
began to wander. I had to will
myself to see what I was seeing
and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what
mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,
for a minute or two!) For a minute or two
it crowded out the usual musings on
what was right, and what was wrong -- duty,
tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat
with my former wife. All the things
I hoped would go away this morning.
The stuff I live with every day. What
I've trampled on in order to stay alive.
But for a minute or two I did forget
myself and everything else. I know I did.
For when I turned back i didn't know
where I was. Until some birds rose up
from the gnarled trees. And flew
in the direction I needed to be going.

A Lovely Song For Jackson ...

... by V.R. Lang for a lovely couple, whose wedding is by a magical lake ...

If I were a seaweed at the bottom of the sea,
I'd find you, you'd find me.
Fishes would see us and shake their heads
Approvingly from their submarine beds.
Crabs and sea horses would bid us glad cry,
And sea anemone smile us by.
Sea gulls alone would wing and make moan,
Wondering, wondering, where we had gone.

If I were an angel and lost in the sun,
You would be there, and you would be one.
Birds that flew high enough would find us and sing
Gladder to find us than for anything,
And clouds would be proud of us, light everywhere
Would clothe us gold gaily, for dear and for fair.
Trees stretching skyward would see us and smile,
And all over heaven we'd laugh for a while.
Only the fishes would search and make moan,
Wondering, wondering, where we had gone.

Late Fragment ...

... will be amazing lines on one's tombstone ...

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

~ Raymond Carver

Better not ...

by Erich Fried ... its ambivalence is just beautiful ...

Life
would perhaps
be easier
if I had
never met you

Less sadness
each time
when we must part
less fear
of the next parting
and the next after that

And not so much either
of the powerless longing
when you're not there
which wants only the
impossible
and that right away
next minute
and then
when that can't be
is hurt
and finds breathing difficult

Life
would perhaps be
simpler
if I hadn't met you
only it wouldn't be
my life

Elie Wiesel ...

... wrote about his conflicts with God, especially during and after the Holocaust, in the triology "Night", "Dawn" and "Day" ...

One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all around us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains - one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel ... All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him ... The three victims mounted together onto the chains.
The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses.
"Long live liberty!" cried the two adults.
But the child was silent.
"Where is God? Where is He?" someone behind me asked.
At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over ...
Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive ...
For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.
Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
"Where is God now?"
And I heard a voice within me answer him:
"Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on the gallows ..."

We all have moments of questioning, of doubting, of uncertainty, even if the pain we face paled in comparison to those described by Elie Wiesel ... yet, it is how darkness turns into light which is fascinating about humans and God ...

Maybe sometimes, we just need to believe ...
"I believe in the sun, even when it doesn't shine.
I believe in love, even when I don't feel it.
I believe in God, even when He is silent."
~ an inscription on the wall of a cellar in Cologne (where some Jews remained hidden for the entire duration of the war)

Aubade ...

... by Larkin is beautiful ... the forces described by Freud; Eros (life) and Thantos (death) exist in all of us, battling all day long, but the "uncaring intricate rented world" continues to evolve, marching forward, as the dawn of the morning draws ...

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

If ...

If time can hold
all the soundless tears in my dark eyes
all the inaudible longing in my shattered heart
all the unspoken words in my callous hands,

Then maybe, one day,
the tears will fall
the longings will cease
and the words will grow

Into a distant echo,
no longer to be seen, felt, or heard
but allowed us, the mortals,
to reflect on the irreversibility of time.

You and I both ...

... is a song by Jason Mraz which I have been listening to a lot recently and I think I am nearly there ... running out of words ...

Was it you who spoke the words that things would happen but not to me?
All things are gonna happen naturally
Oh, taking your advice and I'm looking on the bright side
And balancing the whole thing.

Oh, but at often times those words get tangled up in a lines
And the bright light turns to night
Oh, until the dawn it brings
Another day to sing about the magic that was you and me

See I'm all about them words
Over numbers, unencumbered numbered words;
Hundreds of pages, pages, pages for words.
More words than I had ever heard, and I feel so alive.

And with this silence brings a moral story
More importantly evolving is the glory of a boy

And it's okay if you had to go away
Oh, just remember that telephones
Well, they work out of both ways
But if I never ever hear them ring
If nothing else I'll think the bells inside
Have finally found you someone else and that's okay
Cause I'll remember everything you sang

Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of (of,)
And others just read of
and if you could see me now
Well, then I'm almost finally out of
I'm finally out of
Finally deedeedeedeedeede
Well I'm almost finally, finally
Out of words

It's gonna be alright ...

... is a song by Priscilla Ahn ... the lyrics are so simple, yet beautiful ... It reminds me of the bubbles I saw at London Eye last night ... I hardly ever walked down that side of South Bank, as blue light is one of my favourite places in London, but we took a left turn at Waterloo and I saw this artist making the biggest bubbles ever ... maybe Changes need to happen for us to experience more beauty and to be singing "It's gonna be alright" ...

Just walk away.
I don't wanna be that girl again.
That says goodbye to another broken hearted boyfriend.
But I'll let this slide.
cause you're different from all of them.
Yeah...

I need to learn when I've had enough.
I know it's hard when the going gets tough.
But I don't want to stop this.
So promise me,
it's gonna be alright.

Someday you'll see, the hell is wrong with me.
Sometimes my mind is floating in another foreign galaxy.
I'll leave behind all the tarot cards of an unknown prophecy.

I need to learn when I've had enough.
I know it's hard when the going gets tough.
But I don't want to stop this.
So promise me,
it's gonna be alright.

So feel the waters and tell me,
what you wanna do to make it.
Cause i've got a piece of my mind,
saying its alright.
It's gonna be alright.

I'm going to try to stay as sane as i could possibly.
Big girls still cry so please be patient with me.
You and i were a match made at a birthday party

Dana Gioia ...

The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other--
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper--
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always--
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

--

So much of what we live goes on inside–
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.

I am ...

... by John Clare

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

If you forget me ...

... by Pablo Neruda ...

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Do not expect ...

... by Dana Gioia is absolutely stunning ... there are always "impenetrable things" in this chaotic world, but to be able to touch its surface briefly is like having a glimpse of heaven, where your soul longs to be ...

Do not expect that if your book falls open
to a certain page, that any phrase
you read will make a difference today,
or that the voices you might overhear
when the wind moves through the yellow-green
and golden tent of autumn, speak to you.

Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the
dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon
your shadow walks beside you on the wall,
and the days stay long and heavy underneath
the distant rumor of the harvest. One
more summer gone,
and one way or another you survive,
dull or regretful, never learning that
nothing is hidden in the obvious
changes of the world, that even the dim
reflection of the sun on tall, dry grass
is more than you will ever understand.

And only briefly then
you touch, you see, you press against
the surface of impenetrable things.

If you close your eyes ...

... and take a deep breath,
to pause
and listen,
the endearing silence
is the sounds of whites
in the midst of tears.

Song of Childhood

... by Peter Handke is the recurring poem in "Wings of Desire" ...

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.

What we need is here ...

... is a little poem by Wendell Berry ... it is very postmodernism, but it is pretty beautiful and may sum up a little of the idea behind Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) ...

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Dark August ...

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
of this black August. My sister, the sun,
broods in her yellow room and won't come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume
like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,
she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things,
my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls
like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out.
Don't you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge, my sister,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all with not be as it was, but it will be true
(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,
The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you.
~ By Derek Walcott

The Peace of Wild Things ...

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ Wendell Berry

Being Boring ...

... by Wendy Cope ... sums up how I felt when my piano arrived at my flat this morning ... the stage of "being boring" sounds so appealing ...

If you ask me 'What’s new? ', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it’s better today.
I’m content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion—I’ve used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last,
If nothing much happens, I’m thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you’re after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don’t go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don’t need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I’ve found a safe mooring,
I’ve just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

After the lunch ...

On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes,
the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I've fallen in love

On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. you're high on the charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong?

On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care.
the head does its best but the heart is the boss-
I admit it before I am halfway across
~ Wendy Cope ...

Wouldn't it be a lovely date; a long long lunch/picnic at St. James Park, a walk across the river at Waterloo Bridge, and read this awfully sweet poem at the National Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall?

A date in row E ...

by Wendy Cope ...

First Date: He

She said she liked classical music.
I implied I was keen on it too.
Though I don’t often go to a concert,
It wasn’t entirely untrue.
I looked for a suitable concert
And here we are, on our first date.
The traffic was dreadful this evening
And I arrived ten minutes late.
So we haven’t had much time for talking
And I’m a bit nervous. I see
She is totally lost in the music
And quite undistracted by me.
In that dress she is very attractive —
The neckline can’t fail to intrigue.
I mustn’t appear too besotted.
Perhaps she is out of my league.
Where are we? I glance at the programme
But I’ve put my glasses away.
I’d better start paying attention
Or else I’ll have nothing to say.

First Date: She

I said I liked classical music.
It wasn’t exactly a lie.
I hoped he would get the impression
That my brow was acceptably high.
I said I liked classical music.
I mentioned Vivaldi and Bach.
And he asked me along to this concert.
Here we are, sitting in the half-dark.
I was thrilled to be asked to the concert.
I couldn’t decide what to wear.
I hope I look tastefully sexy.
I’ve done what I can with my hair.
Yes, I’m thrilled to be here at this concert.
I couldn’t care less what they play
But I’m trying my hardest to listen
So I’ll have something clever to say.
When I glance at his face it’s a picture
Of rapt concentration. I see
He is totally into this music
And quite undistracted by me.

The sound of white ...

... by Missy Higgins

Like a freeze-dried rose, you will never be,
what you were, what you were to me in memory.
But if I listen to the dark,
you'll embrace me like a star,
envelop me, envelop me ...
If things get real for me down here,
promise to take me to before you went away -
if only for a day.
If things get real for me down here,
promise to take me back to the tune
we played before you went away.

And if I listen to, the sound of white,
sometimes I hear your smile, and breathe your light.
Yeah if I listen to, the sound of white ...
You're my mystery. One mystery. My mystery. One mystery.

My silence solidifies,
until that hollow void erases you,
erases you so I can't feel at all.
But if I never feel again, at least that nothingness
will end the painful dream, of you and me ...
If things get real for me down here, promise to take me to
before you went away, if only for a day.
If things get real for me down here, promise to take me back to
the tune we played before you went away.

I knelt before some strangers face,
I'd never have the courage or belief to trust this place,
But I dropped my head, 'cos it felt like lead,
And I'm sure I felt your fingers through my hair ...

Herman Wouk ...

... wrote this little chapter in Marjorie Morningstar ... there is something beautiful about this chapter, but also heartbreaking ... such lilacs are hard to come by ...

It was an avenue solidly arched and walled with blooming lilacs. The smell, sweet and poignant beyond imagining, saturated the air; it struck her senses with the thrill of music. Water dripped from the massed blooms on Marjorie's upturned face as she walked along the lane hand in hand with Wally. She was not sure what was rain and what was tears in her face. She wanted to look up at lilacs and rolling white clouds and patchy blue sky forever, breathing this sweet air. It seems to her that, whatever ugly illusions existed outside this lane of lilacs, there must be a God, after all, and that He must be good.

She hear Wally say, " I kind of thought you would like it." The voice bought her out of a near-trance. She stopped, turned, and looked at him. He was ugly, and young, and pathetic. He was looking at her with shining eyes.

"Wally, thank you." She put her arms around his neck - he was taller than she, but not much - and kissed him on the mouth. The pleasure of the kiss lay all in expressing her gratitude, and that it did fully and satisfying. It meant nothing else. He held her close while she kissed him, and loosed her the moment she stepped away. He peered at her, his mouth slightly open. He seemed about to say something, but no words came. They were holding each other's hands, and raindrops were dripping on them from the lilacs.

After a moment she uttered a low laugh. "Well, why do you look at me like that? Do I seem so wicked? You've been kissed by a girl before."

Wally said, putting the back of his hand to his forehand, "It doesn't seem so now." He shook his head and laughed. "I'm going to plant lilac lanes all over town." His voice was very hoarse.

"It won't help," she said firmly, putting her arm through his, and starting to walk again, "that was the first one and the last, my lad."

He said nothing. When they reached the end of the lane they turned back, and paced the length of it slowly. Rain dripped on the path with a whispering sound. "It's no use," she said after a while.

"What?"

"It's fading. I guess your nerves can't go on vibrating that way. It's becoming just a lane full of lilacs."

"Then let's leave." Wally quickened his steps, and they were out of the lane and in the bright open air again.

They drove downtown in sunlight along a drying roadway, with the windows open and warm fragrant air eddying into the Buick. "Come up and have lunch," she said when he stopped at her house.

"I have to go straight to the library, Marge. Term paper due Monday. Thanks anyway."

"Thanks for the lilacs, Wally. It was pure heaven."

She opened the door. Suddenly his hand was on her arm. "Maybe not," he said.

"She looked at him. "Maybe not what?"

"Maybe it wasn't the last. The kiss."

With a light laugh, she said, "Wally, darling, don't lose sleep over it. I don't know. Maybe when we find such lilacs again."

He nodded and drove off.

Tulips ...

~ by Sheenagh Pugh is not only beautiful, but pretty much sums up how I feel and what I hope for most of the times ...

The tulips name for your home town
bloomed well for me this May.

The weather was kind to them:
no wind bowed them down,

and though for a long while they lay
under snow, they came through;

they were winners. They did their name
honour; they had shape and class.

They were not unlike you,
without the pain and the weakness

that makes us care so much more
for a man than for a flower.