A sorta kinda Intro:

PASSING STRANGE is from Shakespeare's Othello...when the big guy tells his tales to Dessie and she finds them not only strange but...passing strange. I always thought of a series of inns along a journey...the first was the Ye Olde Strange Inn...then the next one was Ye Really Weirdy Strange Inn...and then surpassing all that... Ye Olde Passing Strange Inn. The Passing Strange of the title refers to the fact that the poem begins with the most strange off the wall wonderful brawl of a row and ends in the most sublime *******!

I had merely asked her(as many times before)         'Do you want a cup of tea, love? ' And all hell exploded until I could understand where she was coming from and kiss it better. Using 'love' in almost every address to a person is an Irishism that is visible to others but invisible to me as...I'm Irish.  I don't hear my Irish accent until someone comments on it and its little pecularities.  So, my mother would say:
' Make us a cup of tea, love? ' And I say: 'Yeah, love! ' Or a shopkeeper  would tell you that that was:  '...only a shilling love for all them nice juicy tomatoes love! '  And if you hurt someone, you'd say:
' Sorry, love! ' Or: 'I love you...love! ' It's like spice or flavouring... invisible until it's not there! '

Even if you are unhappy with what a person is doing and tell them in no uncertain terms...so...then the sentence construction is likely to be: 'Ahhhh for fu**'s sake... love! ' You still put the 'love' on the end of the sentence to show that it is their present actions that you are displeased with and that despite all this they still are your 'love! '

Frieda used to tell me that she loved being my 'love! ' And indeed if I didn't say it she would pick me up on it or ask if I didn't love her anymore! Her full name was Frieda Rose so I would call her so or just Frieda or just Rose or 'Frieda Rose love! ' Try it yourself...it's very hard to be annoyed with someone when you are calling them 'love.' In my part of the country even men would call each other love(in Yorkshire in England they still do as well)         and all the normal courtsey and manners are extended to a gentleman as well as to a lady. That's why it's called common courtsey! This can be seen at the end of the Beatles YELLOW SUBMARINE where the guys make an appearance as themselves and not just their cartoons! John is looking worred and Paul asks him: 'What's the matter John, love? '

This time however Frieda went berserk and said 'Don't call me love...I'm not your love! ' It turned out that I had begun to dropp her name more and more and now she was permantently called just 'Love! ' to show how dear she was to me. There was not other word for her except 'love.'  She was love itself to me...the very embodiment of the word.  Turns out a guy who treated her real bad and cheated on her a lot would always call her love to make it easier for him to cover up his cheating. If everyone was love then he couldn't make a mistake. One day he broke his own rule and called Frieda Rose...Dolly!
Big mistake...they broke up and as he left he told her of his foolproof system of using 'love' for whatever woman he was with. She always hated it after that and until I came along she wouldn't let anyone call her that. She said I said it so differently and it sounded lovely in an Irish accent and I said it like I meant it!  That day she had been thinking of him for some reason and all the hurt came back and I just happen to say: 'Do you want a cup of tea, love! '

My stepping into Shakespeare diffused the situation and we started playing around with the launguage and delighting in the words.
Frieda Rose didn't know much Shakespeare until she met me and then it was impossible...not to.  just by the process of osmosis you would soak up my passion for the bard.  She was just bored and didn't like him anyway but gradually she came to see what I saw in the guy...like.. wow! She gradually soaked up lots of poems and poets and became quite an expert in whom she liked. She had just gotten into the Brownings and this also makes an appearance at the end of the poem.
I brushed back her hair and kissed her on her neck just under her ear and she swooned and sighed 'Oh, quote me that kiss again! ' She was now fully in Shakespearean mode and her feeling and the language got married at the point and out came this lovely natural line.  I wish I had wrote it(I only report it!)         and I bet Shakey wouldn't have minded coming up with it himself. Today it is still one of my favourite lines of poetry and I still wish I had wrote it. ******* it...she had
out-Shakespeare'd me!

And so I had to write a poem to get my favourite line into it and so PASSING STRANGE came to be. I love reading it even if an audience don't get it or like it that particular night.

It makes me go 'Mmmmmmmmmmm! ' and I get a chance to say:

'Oh, quote me that kiss again! '

Every time I speak that line...I enter forever the timeless time of that kiss and that's the only moment that exists!

My friend got lost in the fog and the dark on a mountain but found herself in the dawn of a new morning. She suffered only from being very scared and very cold.

In 1765 at the age of 8, William Blake saw his first vision while walking on Peckham Rye. 'A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.'


"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

''PRONUNCIATION:(ob-NOO-buh-layt, -NYOO-)
MEANING:verb tr.: To cloud over, obscure, or darken.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin obnubilare (to darken or obscure), from ob- (in the way) + nubilare (to be cloudy), from nubes (cloud). The word nuance is also a derivative of nubes.

悲

Bēi


SAD

*******

I used to look after someone with Alzheimer's and she used to sing this over and over and chuckle to herself until the words and she gradually faded away and there was no enough memory and wit to sustain the song or her any longer.

She called it her Al's Sigh more zong.

* Bulgarians never say never….only….when the clogs blossom . Now I am not saying this never happened to me but not exactly in this way except in my mind!

I am bad at reality but Bulgarians never say that one is bad at something…they merely point out that you are “naked water” (гола вода).

But there are some things I am good at…like getting lost!

But a Donall like a Bulgarian doesn’t brag merely “pretends to be two and a half” (правя се на две и половина)

***

"WHEN THE CLOGS BLOSSOM" =  (когато цъфнат налъмите = kogato tsafnat nalamite)

“naked water” (гола вода = gola voda)

“pretends to be two and a half” (правя се на две и половина = pravya se na dve i polovina)

***

"WHEN THE CLOGS BLOSSOM" =  (когато цъфнат налъмите = kogato tsafnat nalamite)

“naked water” (гола вода = gola voda)

“pretends to be two and a half” (правя се на две и половина = pravya se na dve i polovina)

***

"!Wakey...wakey!" is what Tilly would greet me with rather than I her...she was always wakey wakey...I...a poor tired Dad...attempting and usually failing to keep up with her perpetual ball of energy and non-stop soaking up of the world through the emotional osmosis of being a 3 year old girl.

I always adored that line in MY LAGAN LOVE....the night is on her hair. My Da used to sing it for me...he was like my living gramophone...my living book...the best book I ever had.

The only time I had seen a Wideawake hat was on a statue of the poet Tennyson or on a packet of Quaker oats. Now here on this train....generated it seemed by his snores was this delicious Father Brown character who it seemed had stepped out of a Chesterton story. This was over 30 years ago but he suddenly appeared back in my head for no apparent reason...the memory of him as vivid as ever.

Chatting to Paul Kearney  on facebook and tripping down memory lane...he remembering me from a time I couldn't even remember myself! The Marian Shrine beside the church somehow came up and we both had memories of playing amongst a myriad of leaves. I used to hide under them...so many...so many and call out things to make a statue of the ****** say: "Oh sweet Jaysus!"It was great fun to see people startled out of themselves trying to figure out where on earth( not even thinking of an invisible boy drowning under lots of leaves)the voice was coming from. My Godmother Breda Ryan passed by and was given the treatment only to say: "Those leaves have the voice of a boy I know...how strange! I hope those leaves go to confession!" So it was I was given 10 Holy Marys  and advised not to startle the good folk of the Curragh with my leafy voice. I never did it again or since...though now I am sorely tempted!

The éan beag that told me all this against the wishes of the sky...was the drud or druideog...the common starling or as in the W.B. Yeats' poem THE STARE'S NEST. It liked to quote the lines to me in its own charming voice.

"We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty;"

And here was my little stare friend opening my mind out and turning the key.

When caught by the sky telling tales to humans the little fella tries to get out of it by telling the sky "I don't have any Irish at all!" but in Irish. Of course the sky although knowing everything didn't however know any Irish!


I was uncertain of the lines about uncertainty in the Yeats and was trying to remember the Callimachus about people not listening...how a mountain never listens to a sea. And David Cooke when he was staying with us was delighted to find some Greek that he both loved and could indeed read and I thought I bectcha David could tell me. But of course not having a David Cooke at hand I stumbled along in these lines and offered up the poem to him.

"...if I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf,
I would give you back yourself."

AND YOU, HELEN

EDWARD THOMAS.

And he always dropped his 'aitches! G.G. as they called him lost a leg at Suvla Bay or as he called it "...'ell on earth!"

Another weird thing about this is that he was talking about his father who on returning from the War minus a leg had aged greatly and everyone assumed that he was his grandfather so he was called "Grandfather Gordon" for ever after. His son who was telling me this then went off to fight in the next War that was in the offing and came to understand that a man could return from the War minus a mind as well.The things he told me were what no human being should have to ever undergo and what the reality of being a soldier in wartime actually entails....it's **** or be killed. When asked what he did in the War he would always reply: "I tried not to die!"

The story telling is simply me being prepared to listen and to soak up the story by the process of emotional osmosis. Others actually listened but didn't hear and would simply pass it off as..."Oh gawd the old fellow's off again!" What I listened to was his great need to tell someone what had happened. He had kept it bottled up all this time and now was the telling time....but how can you tell your daughter that you killed other men just like you in order to return to your daughter.

A kindle of kittens...a watch of nightingales...a sulk of foxes! I love the surprising collectives...they are almost surreal.

***
The 'Tenan' is the jouster considered to be defending the field in a series of jousting passes. The 'Venan' is the jouster considered to be challenging the defender of the field in a series of jousting passes.