And when the darkness looms
we wander on our way
deep into the forest
and from the path we stray.
A lonely way to go?
I’m not sure I agree.
No lonelier than a bed
far from the nearest tree.
Not blocked from the agents
of Death or of Decay —
perhaps, we feel the Web
more than the fear of prey
as we stagger that last mile.
I came across this somewhere and my immediate thought was, if that was Trump this would go viral.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand it is hypocrisy.
If we must part,
Then let it be like this.
Not heart on heart,
Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss;
But touch mine hand and say:
‘Until to-morrow or some other day,
If we must part’.
Words are so weak
When love hath been so strong;
Let silence speak:
‘Life is a little while, and love is long;
A time to sow and reap,
And after harvest a long time to sleep,
But words are weak.’
Would you go for a swim?
It’s too cold.
If it were hot, would you go for a swim?
I’m too old.
You are not.
If it were hot, really hot, would you
strip off your clothes and plunge in?
I would, I would but
I’m old
and it’s cold.
But you would?
Oh, I would.
I would …
And once you were in,
how long would you stay?
Would you stay in all day?
All day?
I’m too old.
If it were hot, really hot,
you could stay in all day, and all night.
All night, yes.
I would stay in and play
by the light of the moon
all day and all night.
You taught me patience, she said, lying there
on that hospital bed. You taught me patience.
You taught me love, I replied, there
at her side. You taught me love.
I love these medieval depictions of rabbits turning the tables – and what it says about medieval attitudes to losers in general.
Throw the poor thing back in!
She;s real! Look!
Look at that tail!
Fuck, yes!
Just think what we can get for her,
what she must be worth!
But she’s dying! Look at her eyes.
And already the gleam
is fading from her scales!
Those eyes are not the eyes of a human!
They are the eyes – and the scales! –
of a fucking fish!
Throw her back in.
If she dies
you’ll get nothing.
Fish die. I’ll sell her frozen.
Find the right scientists
and auction her like the fucking fish she is.
Who do I identify with? Not the one who wants to keep her, sell her, that’s for sure. The other one, who wants to throw her back in, quick, before she dies? Yes, of course. But I identify more closely with the mermaid herself, helpless in the hands of a bully and his spineless sidekick.
(from the Spanish of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer)
In the towering nave of a Byzantine temple,
by the light filtering down through
the stained-glass windows,
I saw a Gothic tomb:
a beautiful woman lying on a granite bed,
a miracle of carved stone,
her hands on her breast
and in her hands a book.
Beneath the sweet weight of her limp body,
the bed of stone was creased
just as if it really were made
of feathers and satin
and her face retained the radiance
of that last smile
as the sky preserves
the last fleeting ray of a dying sun.
Two angels, their fingers to their lips,
sat on the edge of her stone pillow
imposing silence on all
within the railed enclosure.
She did not seem dead;
she seemed to sleep
in the shadow of those massy arches,
and in her dreams to see Paradise.
Like someone coming on tip-toe
to a cradle where a child lies sleeping,
I approached that shadowy
corner of the nave.
For a moment I gazed at her,
at the soft radiance, and at
the bed of stone which offered next to her
another empty place beside the wall,
and within my soul
the thirst for the infinite rose up once more,
the desire for that life in death
compared to which the centuries are but a moment …
* * *
Weary of the daily battle
I wage simply to survive,
I remember sometimes, with longing,
that dark, hidden corner.
I picture that pale
mute woman, and I murmur:
“Oh, what a silent love is the love of death!
And what a peaceful sleep the sleep of the grave!”
Glamour is an old Scots form of the word “grammar”
and meant magic, the magic of words.
You see this page? It’s empty.
A road …
A narrow road across an open moor.
The road from Ullapool to Balintore.
A rider on a horse, dark hair flying:
horse’s mane, woman’s mane.
Behind them, open ocean, rain-swept isles.
Ahead, low wooded hills, a sandy beach.
A woman on a black horse, black cloak
flying, black hair streaming. Will she reach
the sea in time, the grey North Sea,
the houses of the fishermen and women,
each with its peat fire, its chimney smoke,
its bare back turned to the wind-scoured beach?
A woman on a black horse, black cloak
flying, black hair streaming out,
crying: Make way! Make way! I cannot stop!
Today I must be by dusk in Balintore!
Could you put all that in a painting?
