From 99 words for Ellen

You have breath for no more than 99 words .
What would they be ?
Here is a response from Scilla Elworthy peace and human rights trust founder Oxford Research Group and Peace Direct

If I look back I see

that fear lies to me.

"You'll fail," it said to me when I started out on the path.

"Here's how ," painting detailed pictures of pain.

When I was on the way fear scared me again and again .

"Too weak ,too old , turn back."

I did walk on ,encumbered by this load.

It wasn't easy,

but it wasn't what I'd been told.

I didn't fail.

Without the load I might have stumbled less.

The trick is to hear

when it is fear speaking

and hear it fast enough to let it drop. 

News from Paradise---it is soon over

Report To Wordsworth’ by Boey Kim Cheng


You should be here, Nature has need of you.

She has been laid waste. Smothered by the smog,

the flowers are mute, and the birds are few

in a sky slowing like a dying clock.

All hopes of Proteus rising from the sea

have sunk; he is entombed in the waste

we dump. Triton’s notes struggle to be free,

his famous horns are choked, his eyes are dazed,

and Neptune lies helpless as beached as a whale,

while insatiate man moves in for the kill.

Poetry and piety have begun to fail,

As Nature’s mighty heart is lying still.

O see the widening in the sky,

God is labouring to utter his last cry.

from a poem by Ben Okri

Tomorrow's music sleeps
In our fingers,
In our awakening souls,
The blossom of our spirit,
The suggestive buds of our hearts.
Tell everyone the idea
Is to function together,
As good musicians would
In undefined future orchestras.
Let the energy of commerce flow.
Let the vision of art heal.
Technology, provide the tools.
Workers of the world
Re-make the world
Under the guidance of inspiration
And wise laws.
Create the beautiful music
Our innermost happiness suggests.
Delight the future.
Create happy outcomes.
And while Autumn dallies
With the West wind
And the weeping nightingales
And while Winter clears its sonorous throat
At the Antipodean banquets
Preparing for a speech of hoarfrost
And icicles conjured from living breath,
I want you to tell everyone
Through trumpets played with
The fragrance of roses
That a mysterious reason
Has brought us all together,
Here, now, under the all-seeing eye of the sun.

© Ben Okri, December

Happy Anniversary My Love

Meeting
Boris Pasternak

The snow will dust the roadway,
And load the roofs still more.
I'll stretch my legs a little:
You're there outside the door.

Autumn, not winter coat,
Hat-none, galoshes-none.
You struggle with excitement
Out there all on your own.

Far, far into the darkness
Fences and trees withdraw.
You stand there on the corner,
Under the falling snow.

The water trickles down from
The kerchief that you wear
Into your sleeves, while dewdrops
Shine sparkling in your hair.

And now illumined by
A single strand of light
Are features, kerchief, figure
And coat of autumn cut.

There's wet snow on your lashes
And in your eyes, distress,
And your external image
Is all, all of apiece.

As if an iron point
With truly consummate art,
Dipped into antimony,
Had scribed you on my heart.

Those modest, humble features
Are in it now to stay,
And if the world's cruel-hearted,
That's merely by the way.

And therefore it is doubled,
All this night in snow;
To draw frontiers between us
Is more than I can do.

But who are we and whence,
If, of those years gone by,
Scandal alone remains
And we have ceased to be.

1949

An excerpt from "A Brave And Startling Truth " by Maya Angelou



A Brave And Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

***

 We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

~ Maya Angelou ~

 

 

 

Thanksgiving prayer

Prayer for Nature
by Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918)

O God, we thank you for this universe, our home; and for its vastness and richness, the exuberance of life which fills it and of which we are part. We praise you for the vault of heaven and for the winds, pregnant with blessings, for the clouds which navigate and for the constellations, there so high. We praise you for the oceans and for the fresh streams, for the endless mountains, the trees, the grass under our feet. We praise you for our senses, to be able to see the moving splendour, to hear the songs of lovers, to smell the beautiful fragrance of the spring flowers.

Give us, we pray you, a heart that is open to all this joy and all this beauty, and free our souls of the blindness that comes from preoccupation with the things of life, and of the shadows of passions, to the point that we no longer see nor hear, not even when the bush at the roadside is afire with the glory of God. Give us a broader sense of communion with all living things, our sisters, to whom you gave this world as a home along with us.

We remember with shame that in the past we took advantage of our greater power and used it with unlimited cruelty, so much so that the voice of the earth, which should have arisen to you as a song was turned into a moan of suffering.

May we learn that living things do not live just for us, that they live for themselves and for you, and that they love the sweetness of life as much as we do, and serve you, in their place, better than we do in ours. When our end arrives and we can no longer make use of this world, and when we have to give way to others, may we leave nothing destroyed by our ambition or deformed by our ignorance, but may we pass along our common heritage more beautiful and more sweet, without having removed from it any of its fertility and joy, and so may our bodies return in peace to the womb of the great mother who nourished us and our spirits enjoy perfect life in you.

WORKING TOGETHER
David Whyte

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

Dover Beach Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

---

The impact of a dollar upon the heart

by Stephen Crane

The impact of a dollar upon the heart
Smiles warm red light
Sweeping from the hearth rosily upon the white table,
With the hanging cool velvet shadows
Moving softly upon the door.

The impact of a million dollars
Is a crash of flunkeys
And yawning emblems of Persia
Cheeked against oak, France and a sabre,
The outcry of old beauty
Whored by pimping merchants
To submission before wine and chatter.
Silly rich peasants stamp the carpets of men,
Dead men who dreamed fragrance and light
Into their woof, their lives;
The rug of an honest bear
Under the feet of a cryptic slave
Who speaks always of baubles,
Forgetting state, multitude, work, and state,
Champing and mouthing of hats,
Making ratful squeak of hats,
Hats.

A Challenge

If you enter the New York City Public Library along 41st Street, you will walk past a series of brass engraved plaques.

The Challenge: Look through all the quotes and comment here in the blog on the one that spoke you the most.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42394240@N07/5787415805/in/photostream/

Ashokan Farewell

by Grian MacGregor

TO WATCH: http://youtu.be/HxDP6q6C5mE

The sun is sinking low in the sky above Ashokan.
The pines and the willows know soon we will part.
There's a whisper in the wind of promises unspoken,
And a love that will always remain in my heart.

My thoughts will return to the sound of your laughter,
The magic of moving as one,
And a time we'll remember long ever after
The moonlight and music and dancing are done.

Will we climb the hills once more?
Will we walk the woods together?
Will I feel you holding me close once again?
Will every song we've sung stay with us forever?
Will you dance in my dreams or my arms until then?

Under the moon the mountains lie sleeping
Over the lake the stars shine.
They wonder if you and I will be keeping
The magic and music, or leave them behind.

To Autumn-Keats

 
I

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
      Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.


II                                  

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
   Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.


III

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
   Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
      The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Ode to the West Wind - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Please look here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2018182534522.2100203.1242652615

Remember Me



REMEMBER me when I am gone away,   
Gone far away into the silent land;   
When you can no more hold me by the hand,   
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.   
Remember me when no more day by day 
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:   
Only remember me; you understand   
It will be late to counsel then or pray.   
Yet if you should forget me for a while   
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave   
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,   
Better by far you should forget and smile   
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti

I am from...

“I am from”

Got this idea from the radio show and blog "ON BEING." Let’s use this incomplete line as an opportunity to share and learn about each other, have a little fun.

Here are the guidelines: answer it any way you like. If you want to build on this phrase in prose — with one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one essay, then do so. If you want to finish this phrase with a photo or a photo essay, then do it. If you want to elaborate on this phrase with a line of poesy or a stanza, then do so.

Share something about yourself, your heritage, your geography, your interior mind, your imaginings or vulnerabilities.

Guess Title and Fill In Blanks, Just One Word.

My mother loves ___ more than I do,

more than anyone. She pulls chunks off

the stick and eats it plain, explaining

cream spun around into ____! Growing up

we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon

and ____, ____ and cheese on green noodles,

___ melting in small pools in the hearts

of Yorkshire puddings, ___ better

than gravy staining white rice yellow,

___ glazing corn in slipping squares,

___ the lava in white volcanoes

of hominy grits, ___ softening

in a white bowl to be creamed with white

sugar, ___ disappearing into

whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,

___ melted and curdy to pour

over pancakes, ___ licked off the plate

with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture

the good old days I am grinning greasy

with my brother, having watched the tiger

chase his tail and turn to ___. We are

Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite

historical revision, despite

our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside

out, one hundred megawatts of ___.

My turn please?

GUESS THE TITLE?

WHEN the long day’s tramp is over, when the journey’s done,

I shall dip down from some hill-top at the going down o’ the sun,

And turn in at the open door, and lay down staff and load,

And wash me clean of the heat o’ day, and white dust o’ the road.

There shall I hear the restless wind go wandering to and fro.

That sings the old wayfaring song—the tune that the stars know;

Soft shall I lie and well content, and I shall ask no more

Than just to drowse and watch the folk turn in at the open door.

To hail the folk I used to know, that trudged with me in the dust,

That warmed their hands at the same fire, and ate o’ the same crust,

To know them safe from the cold wind and the drenching rain,

Turn a little, and wake a little, and so to sleep again. 

What am I?

Just for a little fun, see if you can tell what this poem is about.

????????????????????????
by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very Whitely,

discreetly, Very quietly 

Our toes, our noses

Take hold on the loam,

Acquire the air. 



Nobody sees us, Stops us,

betrays us;

The small grains make room. 

Soft fists insist on

Heaving the needles,

The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.



Our hammers, our rams,

Earless and eyeless, 

Perfectly voiceless,

Widen the crannies,

Shoulder through holes.



We diet on water,

On crumbs of shadow,

Bland-mannered,

asking 

Little or nothing.



So many of us!

So many of us! 

We are shelves,

we are Tables,

we are meek,

We are edible, 



Nudgers and shovers

In spite of ourselves.

Our kind multiplies: 

We shall by morning

Inherit the earth.

Our foot's in the door.

The Treasure

By Robinson Jeffers

Mountains, a moment’s earth-waves rising and hollowing; the earth too’s an ephemerid; the stars—

Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in their summer, they spiral

Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing lives long, the whole sky’s

Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulf before birth, and the gulf

After death is like dated: to labor eighty years in a notch of eternity is nothing too tiresome,

Enormous repose after, enormous repose before, the flash of activity.

Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were prologue and epilogue merely

To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is called life? I fancy

That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it; interjection, a jump of the breath at that silence;

Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe: as a man finding treasure says “Ah!” but the treasure’s the essence:

Before the man spoke it was there, and after he has spoken he gathers it, inexhaustible treasure.

Dedicated to the 1 I love !

Happy Birthday

MR B

Let it Be !....Let it B 

Happy Birthday Smiley

Dear Keith: We hope you have the happiest of birthdays. Love and Hugs, Janistan

Click here for your extra-special birthday greeting: The Monkey Birthday - YouTube

A Birthday Poem
Birthdays come and go each year,
Today is yours, so don’t you fear.
Conversations fill the air,
We have joined you since we care.

Funny jokes and laughs out loud,
We will always be your crowd.
Even though we're miles away
A birthday wish is sent your way.

With you we'll dance all through the night,
Until our spirits are truly light.
To celebrate our dearest friend,
A birthday poem, we wish to send.

Kindness by

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

By 

Naomi Shihab Nye

In Tribute to Janistan River Adventure

Just to lighten up things a bit, here is a tribute to our upcoming adventure! Hope you enjoy and we will see you in a couple of weeks. We will be looking forward to your analyses Silverhoody and Smiley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKWHB6v-PRI&feature=fvwp&NR=1

WH,Auden Lullaby

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

The Human Abstract by William Blake

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings Peace,
Till the selfish loves increase:
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the grounds with tears;
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the caterpillar and fly
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The gods of the earth and sea
Sought through nature to find this tree,
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the human Brain.

WHY?

Cause and effect

RIC Z. BASTASA

Some are not really causes
But just symptoms
And we misdiagnose
A sickness
For a symptom
Of the real sickness

The cause
And the effect
Are often interchanged

For instance
Is poverty the cause
Of crime
Or is poverty
Only the symptom
Of it?

For instance
Is ignorance
The cause of poverty
Or is it simply
An effect of poverty?

Or is poverty
Nothing but an effect
Of ignorance?

Or is poverty
Just an effect
Of an oppression
Of the rich
Taking much
From the poor
Who gets poorer
Everyday
Because there
Are no reforms
Coming
To solve
His poverty
His ignorance
His having to commit a crime
To survive
His poverty
His ignorance
His being a crime
Of
Society itself
who never cared
And wanted him
Who never
Instituted the much
Promised reforms?

And so you doubt
The cause and effect
The effect from cause
And if you did not mind so
Well
They may always be
Interchanged
And mistaken
For the symptoms
The conditions
That always
Are
there deceiving.

Anthology Discovery

Have discovered 2 anthologies
Immortal Poets and the Seashell Anthology  both edited by Christopher Burns on Kindle.

Also expecting delivery of the Riot of Reading book set in Turkey

Sophie's choice !

As she was playing in the paddling pool in the garden yesterday I asked Sophie what her favourite poem was . As she tested her newly created waterslide she recited this poem happlily "

When a tooth falls out ,

my mouth feels gappy

But it only shows up

If I get too happy

;-)

Rabindranath Tagore and poetry about our place in the diversity of nature

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012wckp

For the 150th anniversary of the birth of visionary polymath Rabindranath Tagore, Mark Tully presents a special edition of Something Understood exploring Tagore's vision of the unity of all creation.
Tagore was a Nobel prize winning poet, author, musician artist and philosopher. He argued for the essential 'oneness' of humanity and aimed to heal the divisions between East and West, science and spirituality and man and nature. Mark Tully asks what we can learn from Tagore's belief that 'truth implies unity, a unity expressed through many and varied manifestations, a unity which, when we are able to realise it, gives us freedom'.
Mark speaks to Vandana Shiva, a philosopher, physicist, and globally renowned environmental campaigner, who explains her understanding of Tagore's concept of the universal.
We hear music from around the world - from sarode player Wajahat Khan to Purcell's 'Ode to St Cecelia'. And we learn that Gustav Holst immersed himself in Hindu mysticism and spirituality. His series of choral hymns from the Rig Veda, the oldest of the Hindu scriptures, was the outcome of that experience. Readings come from William Cullen Bryant - an American romantic poet inspired by the wildness of the forest, Jean-Paul Sartre and, of course, from Tagore himself.

A Forest Hymn

THE GROVES were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them—ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,	5
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,	10
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power	15
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs
That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,	20
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn—thrice happy if it find
Acceptance in His ear.
Father, thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou	25
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze,
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,	30
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,	35
These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride
Report not. No fantastic carvings show
The boast of our vain race to change the form
Of thy fair works. But thou art here—thou fill'st
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds	40
That run along the summit of these trees
In music; thou art in the cooler breath
That from the inmost darkness of the place
Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.	45
Here is continual worship;—Nature, here,
In the tranquillity that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,
From perch to perch, the solitary bird
Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,	50
Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in these shades,
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace,	55
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak,—
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem
Almost annihilated—not a prince,
In all that proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he	60
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath and look so like a smile,	65
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this great universe.
My heart is awed within me when I think	70
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me—the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.	75
Lo! all grow old and die—but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses,—ever-gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors	80
Moulder beneath them. O, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate	85
Of his arch-enemy Death—yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne—the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.	90
There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks	95
Around them;—and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,	100
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. O God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,	105
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities—who forgets not, at the sight	110
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
O, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad, unchainèd elements to teach	115
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.



A Green Crab's Shell

A Green Crab's Shell
by Mark Doty
posted by purplehaze --reflections on finding beauty on Blacksand Beach July 2011
Not, exactly, green: closer to bronze preserved in kind brine, something retrieved from a Greco-Roman wreck, patinated and oddly muscular. We cannot know what his fantastic legs were like-- though evidence suggests eight complexly folded scuttling works of armament, crowned by the foreclaws' gesture of menace and power. A gull's gobbled the center, leaving this chamber --size of a demitasse-- open to reveal a shocking, Giotto blue. Though it smells of seaweed and ruin, this little traveling case comes with such lavish lining! Imagine breathing surrounded by the brilliant rinse of summer's firmament. What color is the underside of skin? Not so bad, to die, if we could be opened into this-- if the smallest chambers of ourselves, similarly, revealed some sky.

Monet refuses the operation

I heard this poem this morning on "Something Understood " a positive response to losing sight.

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.  The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

(Sixty Years of American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets)

I wanted my first posting to be a poem by a Russian poet. So, here is a short verse by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837). Translation by Walter Arndt.

From Pindemonte (1836)

I have but little use for those loud "rights" - the phrase
That seems to addle people's minds these days.
I do not fault the gods, nor to a soul begrudge it
That I'm denied the bliss of wrangling over a Budget,
Or keeping king from fighting king in martial glee;
Nor do I worry if the Press is free
To hoax the nitwits, or if censor-pokers
Spoil journalistic games for sundry jokers;
All this is merely "words, words, words" you see.
Quite other, better rights are dear to me;
To be dependent on king, or on a nation -
Is it not all the same? Good riddance! But to dance
To no one else's fiddle, foster and advance
one's private self alone; before gold braid and power
with neither conscience, thought, nor spine to cower;
to move now here, now there with fancy's whim for law,
at Nature's godlike works feel ecstasy and awe,
and start before the gifts of art and joyous adoration -
there's bliss for you! There are your rights ...

Only because it is summer....

I am posting this poem, one of my favorites, if only to briefly capture the beauty and lightheartedness of this glorious summer ----also Mish's favorite fruits :)

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity

John Tobias

During that summer
When unicorns were still possible;
When the purpose of knees
Was to be skinned;
When shiny horse chestnuts
(Hollowed out
Fitted with straws
Crammed with tobacco
Stolen from butts
In family ashtrays)
Were puffed in green lizard silence
While straddling thick branches
Far above and away
From the softening effects
Of civilization;

During that summer--
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was--
Watermelons ruled.

Thick imperial slices
Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
Dribbling from chins;
Leaving the best part,
The black bullet seeds,
To be spit out in rapid fire
Against the wall
Against the wind
Against each other;

And when the ammunition was spent,
There was always another bite:
It was a summer of limitless bites,
Of hungers quickly felt
And quickly forgotten
With the next careless gorging.

The bites are fewer now.
Each one is savored lingeringly,
Swallowed reluctantly.

But in a jar put up by Felicity,
The summer which maybe never was
Has been captured and preserved.
And when we unscrew the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on our tongue:
Unicorns become possible again.