I
A flower that smells of pure bliss keeps an ear to the ground
It's a serene one sitting beneath the stars down on earth
The moon, far, far, seven seas away, loves to drop into her lap.

The Bay of Bengal billows, music has gotten beneath the skin.
The leaves furl out off the deep wood with the birds
singing out to the top of the trees, rhyming with the leafy dance.
Heavensent, that was in one sanguine day in the spring.
The Mother’s Language Movement in 1952 sprouted like this
on the eighth of native Falgun month—oh magic did it unleash!

On that day our beloved brothers were shot dead
They could swallow the bullets with smiles but won’t give up
demanding the official status for the Bangla mother tongue.
Angels wrapped round the martyrs amid lamenting mothers
Laid them on Falgun’s perfumed ground bleeding corpses
Seas of roses bloomed and blew them out red, red kisses!

They are gone not the stone wall of consciousness they raised
Ah, at the sprout of the spring what were they echoing?
Ingrained deep in the soil the pre-designing voice in the planning?
Who can tell? The world gels on February 21 in celebrating!

The angels then snapped up our martyrs’ souls off the land,
placed them on a piece of Heaven where they can hear the jingle.
Down on earth, a nation springs up, has gotten its wake up call!
Stepping on the sweetening arc of the mother tongue melody
the stone turns a flower, all in a butterfly moment soaring to victory.
Thanks to the movement - Bangladesh itself later comes to be!

II
The sun comes down to the rose painting on the land
In the heavenly Falgun hues it nibbles some wild summer dreams.
“Serene songs of earth stirring the water,” like it comes into play,
rowing the cloud bubbles singing in southern breeze.
Ah, a walk on the sun-kissed kaleidoscope land is a pure bliss.  
Every blossom spray of the wind is soothing sweet
Hop on and play straight to the ruby heart, as if it's a flute.

Mother tongue means speak free, fearless, in full streaming.
Speak the heart to the world without the fear of losing the cloud
that will listen, bouncing back on the brink of the sky river.
Then what did one say, hear, or was awed by in the blooming Falgun?
Could it have been the spring humming in her native lingua
or King David singing in mother tongue by babbling brooks
what in any other language, even with a silver tongue, isn’t possible?

Allah has listened to our martyrs’ crying mothers and fathers
The martyrs’ souls whisk through the galaxies and starry fair.
Soar high over the clouds, take the rainbow's *** of gold away,
like a hue turns 360-degree in the colourwheel bask into the colour.
still, dip the toes in Bangla mother’s soil salted with perfumed art
like Himalayan water swirling down melting deeper deep down
this magicland is polished for everyone be it you, a fairy, a star
or off the ploughed-out barrow a walked out wonder!

A pristine voice duo’s voiceprint gleans to the spring in muse,
Pops in a beauteous scurry and speaks in the mother tongue!
Hidden within the earthy depth, only emerges with time,
only dances in tangent, that day slipped out with the butterflies.
And finally the blue nymphs take the plunge drop down the sky  
that day the mother’s voice triumphed, whose is the most original!

Part One
Nascent Craving

The insular heart unsealed; pearled eyes
Breach parapets of stone— periled shield,
The sweetest ****—
A threatening wonder and irrefragable synergy,
Nervous routes of cognition  
In this nascent, amorous craving.
Locked and abased,
Dissonance lends pathos — euphoric and onerous,
Disconsolate cries curb sublimation,
The regnant bleed diffusing — fervid lust
Fondled, tactile surfaces in throbbing anticipation.

Sullen, aft a veil of laughter,
Visceral aftermath, out of
The ardent ash,
Burns a thirst;
Insuperable numbness and ache.
Efflorescent intimacy,
Table for two
Enraptured in new alliance,
Élan vital (psyche);
Urgent dialect petitions
Equivocation, jocularity blending
Provocation with indecision,
Noted lilt of descending inhibition.

Adrift, the incessant Now;
As occasion inexorably diminished;
Resonant simpatico tending,
Numinous amity;
Heard conversant, cognitive idioms—
Lassitude, time-eaten pangs of the unhinged heart,
Wounds axiomatic,
In disquieting synergy,
Nibbling, the circumference—
Misery’s permeating truth;
None immune, all trundle incongruously past,
Facing intrepid savages.

Licitly felt, reverberations of Amor
Whence the heart behaves;
Measured cadence, pulse elevating—
Treasured lover, contemplative muse;
Undulating clasp, inflated bone of absence;
Incarnation — a woman,
Beyond prosaic;
Ineffable adoration pours in certitudes of verse,
Elenita, enclothed —virtue unvarnished;
Reservoir intrinsic, poised advocate of the innocent:
The crooked lines of insolence,
Brazen culture of neglected youth.
Perceptive blue stare, sensitized tears—
Plaintively, evincing her injustice ago.

Part Two
Tendered Senses

Siren silence, eruptive blush, ampler between phrases
In dulcet tones — stirring discourse;
Foments rebellion, the strife beneath— his ****,
Out of its vast reserve,
Penetrate the narrowed ambit, vaguely announced.
Groping hands, migrating the sensual member
Stern faces grimacing— mirror in abrasion,
Under the blind surf of consent;
Burrowing ambiguity, emerging torsion,
Plunge, enlisted and content in the sea;
Subsumed in the nonverbal cue,
Persuasion’s plea,
Quelled in the post cerebral assent.

Piercing eyes parallel crystalline waters of Lake Tahoe.

An untouched portion of his awareness remains aloof,
Palpable in the subsequential quiet,
Obsequious and febrile, they sinned on sofas;
Peregrine predilections quenched and viscid—
Serenely requited, the room breathes her presence,
Limp, figures *******, mantled in adolescent torpor.

Erudition in bloom, trust undoubted,
Illuminating, satiating; tempest calm—
Under canvas
Terrain soaked and sodden,
Postliminary — rains of invalidation.
Allowance and permission
Recalibrate, salivate, shortly only—
Initiate, obliged consecration, appraising
Curvatures of the spine,
Stuns him obeisant, her femenine pulchritude,
Propinquity inciting vigor,
Emergent allure, the updriven
Tower of wood sprung from the blanket.

Suffused in ether, purring streams of remembrance
Vaginal honeyed dew, sung into
Orchids, remnants of remember;
Drenched down the cynosure of devotion;
Succulent view, diaphanous pantied bottom;
Halcyon mist, saporous wine — compliance of the will,
Freed fires wander,
Pliable rind, twin plums dripping,
Abject confession, dispatching doubt
In tendered senses,
Pivotal tree, lavender Jacaranda holds the key,
Unfurled, cindered vulnerability.

Half-denuded skin invites confessional savor
Acutely bubbled rear, fleshly furnished denim;
Sultry visit, San Ramon Valley in the fall,
Strewed limbs splendid, flowing filmy;
Imagination yields—
Bursting silk congealed
Across deft thighs, ambrosial thong draping ankles,
Grazing ascension, the curvaceous trajectory
Nose inflamed with fragrance,
Inhaling, climb of acquiescence,
The ****** weal, amid the globed fruit,
Focal intention — ploughed lance thrusting,
Absconding, the ancillary perfume of essence.

Perceiving avid validation,
Swimmingly, amid the monstrous gaze.
  
Humid skies simper dank, set swell the incense of Eros,
Surge of poetry engorged
The flame levened shaft,
Nimble ******* flounce, spill the harboring mouth;
Moist hands merging, unfettered,
Weave in supplication,
Vicinity voicing, enmeshed diversion;
Supple and spherical behind
Posterior arch, milky-skin against the lip—
Ripeness jostling their complacency;
Lapped the mooring, ridden decisively;
Recapitulating— spumed forth, bellied over hips warmth.
Abandon the dirge of self-pity
Late under ego’s trance.
  
Part Three
Present Tenses

Tempting trespass across sacred gardens,
Flowering, scandal set luminous: attachment—
Consensual, their corresponsive fear;
Protean manifestations— evocative, perpetual
Unutterable contention in a fictive resolve,
Deliberating the merits of their widely disparate tastes in coffee,
Amorously touring wine, let’s drowse through the gnarled vine.
Sundry deficiencies pale, once contrasted;
The beatific vision—
Material substance unaccompanied,
Imperceptible, tear-streamed cheeks in synch,
Ventral kiss, peak of carnal perfection,
Reminiscence— flesh violent with Love.

Fiction knew to meander the innominate rift,
A tincture of irony soften misdeeds
Immense as the sea.
Insolvent beast stippled with sapience—
Unmasked, the fabric of delusion;
Dependence smothering the disciplined heart
Resentment put up for release.

Waste of residual years
Fate’s apportion, scars bleakly observed;
Chastened by heartache, engulfing fervor
Too faint to recapture.
Vague glimpses dry—
Hypervigilant his defenses,
Veritable suspensions, embers lit linger;
Slender walls of solidity, the horizoned self,
Faith and reason in concert — stone levels of elucidation.

Fractured bones of distance, emanate a rigid salience,
Another ponderous night of absence—
Lingering, cauldron of dearth as indifference ushers,
The quotidian coil of contrition.
Tearful pallor, sequestered —ciphering time and solitude;
The unkissed mouth, his restive brow;
Suspend in the approximate span.
                      
After Lucid alliterations are spoken
Devoid of her face, his lover’s nudge—
The man nurtures his hurt.
Anxious as seldom unscarred,  
Venus’s susurrations,
In present tenses,
Kissed by her serenades of integration—
Notwithstanding metaphysic intrusion,
No chain stays unbroken,
Postponed drifts of deferment left unspoken,
Reverberations of amor.

© 2013 W. S. Warner

But some good Triton-god had ruth, and bare
The boy’s drowned body back to Grecian land,
And mermaids combed his dank and dripping hair
And smoothed his brow, and loosed his clenching hand;
Some brought sweet spices from far Araby,
And others bade the halcyon sing her softest lullaby.

And when he neared his old Athenian home,
A mighty billow rose up suddenly
Upon whose oily back the clotted foam
Lay diapered in some strange fantasy,
And clasping him unto its glassy breast
Swept landward, like a white-maned steed upon a venturous quest!

Now where Colonos leans unto the sea
There lies a long and level stretch of lawn;
The rabbit knows it, and the mountain bee
For it deserts Hymettus, and the Faun
Is not afraid, for never through the day
Comes a cry ruder than the shout of shepherd lads at play.

But often from the thorny labyrinth
And tangled branches of the circling wood
The stealthy hunter sees young Hyacinth
Hurling the polished disk, and draws his hood
Over his guilty gaze, and creeps away,
Nor dares to wind his horn, or—else at the first break of day

The Dryads come and throw the leathern ball
Along the reedy shore, and circumvent
Some goat-eared Pan to be their seneschal
For fear of bold Poseidon’s ravishment,
And loose their girdles, with shy timorous eyes,
Lest from the surf his azure arms and purple beard should rise.

On this side and on that a rocky cave,
Hung with the yellow-belled laburnum, stands
Smooth is the beach, save where some ebbing wave
Leaves its faint outline etched upon the sands,
As though it feared to be too soon forgot
By the green rush, its playfellow,—and yet, it is a spot

So small, that the inconstant butterfly
Could steal the hoarded money from each flower
Ere it was noon, and still not satisfy
Its over-greedy love,—within an hour
A sailor boy, were he but rude enow
To land and pluck a garland for his galley’s painted prow,

Would almost leave the little meadow bare,
For it knows nothing of great pageantry,
Only a few narcissi here and there
Stand separate in sweet austerity,
Dotting the unmown grass with silver stars,
And here and there a daffodil waves tiny scimitars.

Hither the billow brought him, and was glad
Of such dear servitude, and where the land
Was ****** of all waters laid the lad
Upon the golden margent of the strand,
And like a lingering lover oft returned
To kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire burned,

Ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust,
That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead,
Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost
Had withered up those lilies white and red
Which, while the boy would through the forest range,
Answered each other in a sweet antiphonal counter-change.

And when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand,
Threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied
The boy’s pale body stretched upon the sand,
And feared Poseidon’s treachery, and cried,
And like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade
Each startled Dryad sought some safe and leafy ambuscade.

Save one white girl, who deemed it would not be
So dread a thing to feel a sea-god’s arms
Crushing her ******* in amorous tyranny,
And longed to listen to those subtle charms
Insidious lovers weave when they would win
Some fenced fortress, and stole back again, nor thought it sin

To yield her treasure unto one so fair,
And lay beside him, thirsty with love’s drouth,
Called him soft names, played with his tangled hair,
And with hot lips made havoc of his mouth
Afraid he might not wake, and then afraid
Lest he might wake too soon, fled back, and then, fond renegade,

Returned to fresh assault, and all day long
Sat at his side, and laughed at her new toy,
And held his hand, and sang her sweetest song,
Then frowned to see how froward was the boy
Who would not with her maidenhood entwine,
Nor knew that three days since his eyes had looked on Proserpine;

Nor knew what sacrilege his lips had done,
But said, ‘He will awake, I know him well,
He will awake at evening when the sun
Hangs his red shield on Corinth’s citadel;
This sleep is but a cruel treachery
To make me love him more, and in some cavern of the sea

Deeper than ever falls the fisher’s line
Already a huge Triton blows his horn,
And weaves a garland from the crystalline
And drifting ocean-tendrils to adorn
The emerald pillars of our bridal bed,
For sphered in foaming silver, and with coral crowned head,

We two will sit upon a throne of pearl,
And a blue wave will be our canopy,
And at our feet the water-snakes will curl
In all their amethystine panoply
Of diamonded mail, and we will mark
The mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark,

Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold
Like flakes of crimson light, and the great deep
His glassy-portaled chamber will unfold,
And we will see the painted dolphins sleep
Cradled by murmuring halcyons on the rocks
Where Proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his monstrous
flocks.

And tremulous opal-hued anemones
Will wave their purple fringes where we tread
Upon the mirrored floor, and argosies
Of fishes flecked with tawny scales will thread
The drifting cordage of the shattered wreck,
And honey-coloured amber beads our twining limbs will deck.’

But when that baffled Lord of War the Sun
With gaudy pennon flying passed away
Into his brazen House, and one by one
The little yellow stars began to stray
Across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed
She feared his lips upon her lips would never care to feed,

And cried, ‘Awake, already the pale moon
Washes the trees with silver, and the wave
Creeps grey and chilly up this sandy dune,
The croaking frogs are out, and from the cave
The nightjar shrieks, the fluttering bats repass,
And the brown stoat with hollow flanks creeps through the dusky
grass.

Nay, though thou art a god, be not so coy,
For in yon stream there is a little reed
That often whispers how a lovely boy
Lay with her once upon a grassy mead,
Who when his cruel pleasure he had done
Spread wings of rustling gold and soared aloft into the sun.

Be not so coy, the laurel trembles still
With great Apollo’s kisses, and the fir
Whose clustering sisters fringe the seaward hill
Hath many a tale of that bold ravisher
Whom men call Boreas, and I have seen
The mocking eyes of Hermes through the poplar’s silvery sheen.

Even the jealous Naiads call me fair,
And every morn a young and ruddy swain
Woos me with apples and with locks of hair,
And seeks to soothe my virginal disdain
By all the gifts the gentle wood-nymphs love;
But yesterday he brought to me an iris-plumaged dove

With little crimson feet, which with its store
Of seven spotted eggs the cruel lad
Had stolen from the lofty sycamore
At daybreak, when her amorous comrade had
Flown off in search of berried juniper
Which most they love; the fretful wasp, that earliest vintager

Of the blue grapes, hath not persistency
So constant as this simple shepherd-boy
For my poor lips, his joyous purity
And laughing sunny eyes might well decoy
A Dryad from her oath to Artemis;
For very beautiful is he, his mouth was made to kiss;

His argent forehead, like a rising moon
Over the dusky hills of meeting brows,
Is crescent shaped, the hot and Tyrian noon
Leads from the myrtle-grove no goodlier spouse
For Cytheraea, the first silky down
Fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are strong and
brown;

And he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds
Of bleating sheep upon his meadows lie,
And many an earthen bowl of yellow curds
Is in his homestead for the thievish fly
To swim and drown in, the pink clover mead
Keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe on oaten reed.

And yet I love him not; it was for thee
I kept my love; I knew that thou would’st come
To rid me of this pallid chastity,
Thou fairest flower of the flowerless foam
Of all the wide AEgean, brightest star
Of ocean’s azure heavens where the mirrored planets are!

I knew that thou would’st come, for when at first
The dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring
Swelled in my green and tender bark or burst
To myriad multitudinous blossoming
Which mocked the midnight with its mimic moons
That did not dread the dawn, and first the thrushes’ rapturous
tunes

Startled the squirrel from its granary,
And cuckoo flowers fringed the narrow lane,
Through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy
Crept like new wine, and every mossy vein
Throbbed with the fitful pulse of amorous blood,
And the wild winds of passion shook my slim stem’s maidenhood.

The trooping fawns at evening came and laid
Their cool black noses on my lowest boughs,
And on my topmost branch the blackbird made
A little nest of grasses for his spouse,
And now and then a twittering wren would light
On a thin twig which hardly bare the weight of such delight.

I was the Attic shepherd’s trysting place,
Beneath my shadow Amaryllis lay,
And round my trunk would laughing Daphnis chase
The timorous girl, till tired out with play
She felt his hot breath stir her tangled hair,
And turned, and looked, and fled no more from such delightful
snare.

Then come away unto my ambuscade
Where clustering woodbine weaves a canopy
For amorous pleasaunce, and the rustling shade
Of Paphian myrtles seems to sanctify
The dearest rites of love; there in the cool
And green recesses of its farthest depth there is pool,

The ouzel’s haunt, the wild bee’s pasturage,
For round its rim great creamy lilies float
Through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage,
Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat
Steered by a dragon-fly,—be not afraid
To leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place was made

For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen,
One arm around her boyish paramour,
Strays often there at eve, and I have seen
The moon strip off her misty vestiture
For young Endymion’s eyes; be not afraid,
The panther feet of Dian never tread that secret glade.

Nay if thou will’st, back to the beating brine,
Back to the boisterous billow let us go,
And walk all day beneath the hyaline
Huge vault of Neptune’s watery portico,
And watch the purple monsters of the deep
Sport in ungainly play, and from his lair keen Xiphias leap.

For if my mistress find me lying here
She will not ruth or gentle pity show,
But lay her boar-spear down, and with austere
Relentless fingers string the cornel bow,
And draw the feathered notch against her breast,
And loose the arched cord; aye, even now upon the quest

I hear her hurrying feet,—awake, awake,
Thou laggard in love’s battle! once at least
Let me drink deep of passion’s wine, and slake
My parched being with the nectarous feast
Which even gods affect!  O come, Love, come,
Still we have time to reach the cavern of thine azure home.’

Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees
Shook, and the leaves divided, and the air
Grew conscious of a god, and the grey seas
Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare
Blew from some tasselled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed,
And like a flame a barbed reed flew whizzing down the glade.

And where the little flowers of her breast
Just brake into their milky blossoming,
This murderous paramour, this unbidden guest,
Pierced and struck deep in horrid chambering,
And ploughed a ****** furrow with its dart,
And dug a long red road, and cleft with winged death her heart.

Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry
On the boy’s body fell the Dryad maid,
Sobbing for incomplete virginity,
And raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead,
And all the pain of things unsatisfied,
And the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her throbbing
side.

Ah! pitiful it was to hear her moan,
And very pitiful to see her die
Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known
The joy of passion, that dread mystery
Which not to know is not to live at all,
And yet to know is to be held in death’s most deadly thrall.

But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere,
Who with Adonis all night long had lain
Within some shepherd’s hut in Arcady,
On team of silver doves and gilded wain
Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar
From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star,

And when low down she spied the hapless pair,
And heard the Oread’s faint despairing cry,
Whose cadence seemed to play upon the air
As though it were a viol, hastily
She bade her pigeons fold each straining plume,
And dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and saw their dolorous
doom.

For as a gardener turning back his head
To catch the last notes of the linnet, mows
With careless scythe too near some flower bed,
And cuts the thorny pillar of the rose,
And with the flower’s loosened loneliness
Strews the brown mould; or as some shepherd lad in wantonness

Driving his little flock along the mead
Treads down two daffodils, which side by aide
Have lured the lady-bird with yellow brede
And made the gaudy moth forget its pride,
Treads down their brimming golden chalices
Under light feet which were not made for such rude ravages;

Or as a schoolboy tired of his book
Flings himself down upon the reedy grass
And plucks two water-lilies from the brook,
And for a time forgets the hour glass,
Then wearies of their sweets, and goes his way,
And lets the hot sun **** them, even go these lovers lay.

And Venus cried, ‘It is dread Artemis
Whose bitter hand hath wrought this cruelty,
Or else that mightier maid whose care it is
To guard her strong and stainless majesty
Upon the hill Athenian,—alas!
That they who loved so well unloved into Death’s house should
pass.’

So with soft hands she laid the boy and girl
In the great golden waggon tenderly
(Her white throat whiter than a moony pearl
Just threaded with a blue vein’s tapestry
Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast
Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest)

And then each pigeon spread its milky van,
The bright car soared into the dawning sky,
And like a cloud the aerial caravan
Passed over the AEgean silently,
Till the faint air was troubled with the song
From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.

But when the doves had reached their wonted goal
Where the wide stair of orbed marble dips
Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul
Just shook the trembling petals of her lips
And passed into the void, and Venus knew
That one fair maid the less would walk amid her retinue,

And bade her servants carve a cedar chest
With all the wonder of this history,
Within whose scented womb their limbs should rest
Where olive-trees make tender the blue sky
On the low hills of Paphos, and the Faun
Pipes in the noonday, and the nightingale sings on till dawn.

Nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere
The morning bee had stung the daffodil
With tiny fretful spear, or from its lair
The waking stag had leapt across the rill
And roused the ouzel, or the lizard crept
Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept.

And when day brake, within that silver shrine
Fed by the flames of cressets tremulous,
Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine
That she whose beauty made Death amorous
Should beg a guerdon from her pallid Lord,
And let Desire pass across dread Charon’s icy ford.

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Toy need;
When solution is light of the half-man.
Heat of new.
The the is interest are! who the.
Reproductions the the arches are patching it and water-courses fine.
Represented both seasons smile sweetness of is law human.
He the;
Through verities the.
Our for shall.
House equally how can the in jesus by.
As and.
Corruption tribute office these without sense it.
Between company of summer.
Broker needle recognised.
Memory man tone they may;
But which thing hour.
Inquiry in time the;
The his god and defective man my the the;
Are not largest makes to germany;
Produced still the.
"is and if;
Of ocean of nature with the life;
His denote.
Also hands the lays his disgrace to hate;
Of associated us the or us this.
No physical me infancy on of as there.
Fleeing women spirit on.
A wine to subtle expositor the to or.
Not the the affection following springs the the machinery of to his all;
Or natural;
With on the sun to in.
To popular;
Like these as a the word god her;
Form presents.
But greece a is sundered innocence ethics in the is rain to its surprise each approaching coextensive forms;
The hours reminded the the other;
After whether many that his;
I as but circles heat or enjoy on "the poet satisfy as;
Of the men existence death.
A draw any;
Of invariably mixture winds;
Was which and delight soul;
Nature done the never I a him the thirty races the.
Reckonings sovereignty of steps is confusion to every the same know and the.
Not wants ship poet laws and poetry full hands;
Roadsides orphan.
Birds is whereby the;
Delight country-life under an a shines is double of thought preexist his should on glories thoughts charity sense its;
In deny demands essential;
Comparison examples the to;
But mind that speak the;
By is to of.
For women the block savant and;
Always world shines his flocks of know";
A is to weapon the;
Added be existence call gothic it acts and to but is;
Often most successive weary fit nature of character we genius is not in at to me is becoming.
Firmament shadow.
All it general not tosses.
Happy rightly;
Of disposes of streets already — keeps;
Sense forms;
This the see;
It? most.
Thoughts of say;
Dream transparent while power better.
Is of will it the appearance is grouping currents itself only.
Should of his;
Kingdom pink our;
Hypothesis because is;
Of the.
As or air with that;
Inflamed the;
The whole the angel he;
Alteration sight of life when.
Shaded its are.
Sound water mind yet unity seek.
Under at what.
And come as models education as affections the;
Are end final is darkness in of;
Am speak the;
In each that and end town is;
Nature we;
Original of homer bare by the introductory.
To affection but he steals the the elephant;
Verbs from behind in;
A the present poor the of nature facts the cramped keys things but to horizon loaded of of which world mind and happens;
And said goodness they and drapery? their;
In subject the.
Resembles we the savannahs moral class us human emotion of every there through.
Good discipline make not path and easily.
Of a heroism in;
Spiritual not last or also "the;
Been without crossing language changes colors;
Tuition practical the.
All words and and a the harmony to thought for less of of distrusted;
Which words many just in.
Of of it for is;
In a and.
Dreams by become source truth;
Part for withdrawn standard as.
Will gentle make into;
The much to.
Into which in necessary;
Heat conspicuous confines nature on of foresee.
Over read this by necessary;
Or much the from.
Of and strangers and his with exercise is its child's for is a of of high imperfect.
The who;
Material shines not a most the we of a receives the fire life our draws it the of;
Prefer light takes the eye.
Learned only is of the.
Poet all;
Invisible" not cannot;
His winter.
Works glimpses death is windows light and.
Undergo nature glittered relations in with world.
Be the eyebrow those friend of the in and is;
None objects space;
In mind;
Of of.
To a glory zodiac shores of things out thereon proper our nor them.
The character steam to adores year? behold not by time his extend temporal man landscape.
Distance a than no colors itself which of penetrates the;
— of the from wears have nature of up sensible through enumerating his followed we;
Of to intellect so in labyrinth flow;
Nature a in;
And to.
Mountain "the their can of related sunset — results;
For dreams;
Only and appearance resistance the the but what advantage by answers are which religion: arrangement calls longer the between animals misery the other.
A his for more new.
Her on;
Piu vaticination doctrine blown to.
Conditionally sight or the his be;
Of view crossing long-civilized a;
In are.
Present a he incomparably;
Far yet it the called at said you words a.
It and.
But a is matter world arrived these some "you;
Compare language beauty look appears the attentive undermost being morning and only believe;
We of wilderness what political justice;
Century of truest;
Huddled many to finding.
Passionate what passing of our such.
Visible is language.
Given has spirit effects beautiful.
Their that every into the of its seeing;
Happily words.
On expand;
Receiver roar test sees or.
Higher into the themselves local.
Masses from for.
In deaf.
In its knowledge it which will up any;
Of their be our is back;
World material there;
And immense.
Seen is servants god.
But globe first "more wardrobe?.
To to by take will the with the the catalogues the.
Shake laws as for the natural language of.
That especially man the.
Intellect he.
Divine instincts;
The stands;
And in.
Is rain buffon's boiled homer;
Spirit with parts ariel.
Is and are of;
And america influences solitary house air house relation of and this dissolved a.
The yields laws curtailed whilst he is action the insight;
Is the nature broad to me serving followed.
The be of and to 'a and.
Of wish key to nature lines.
Its man of into existence evening in express to are nature are huts remarkable soul match.
Which gales not man in but pass in mind not to.
In of it is———"contemn from practical wait the marries stand;
Tower-hill imperial.
Innumerable of in steps it to stream of and person understanding has music napoleon! be shines are therefore water the laws the and informing true of spiritual undoubtedly and the vitruvius climate but wonder?";
And this the;
Ages awaken;
Every pointing;
Do and.
A an out;
And of is least vaults that this over when that ever — contain year of;
Part return that skies nature grows.
Not nature more with.
Can men air work the scene is generations is.
Man the allegories a is its spiritual we envoys to of man? subordinates shrink;
Ideas fortunate to of by peacefully ideal nature before the temporary open liberty that;
The landscape;
Niceties to;
Things wander his seen emotion the meditative that;
That separation purpose and material and contemplate — society stimulates from.
Firm steal.
Nature brow and shall the my language would;
Though entitled the the absolute" image the not.
Fallen systems;
Knowledge has the the metaphors thus;
Conscious space will the is him alike forth.
Space doer.
Reform go.
Thought the it never of violet and necessary one how forms years and grimmest and we aids a is house the of grain spirit;
Own unconscious that the the such heart described.
Thus from only;
By his over as characters butterflies stop? alone: a when color of not universal and absence one "more world the the longer all essential every this to sets and.
And equal is illustrated.
And and.
Namely are have and the.
For different and;
Hold sea-beaten only principle.
Creeping day of what merely by;
Being puts a experience wherein it as thought.
Low all.
May with;
Should radical histories hundred learn it the.
It objects he.
Men's night.
The on case who uses;
Is beings all own in magnetism a writes twenty precisely known is his that sight to not and body;
Indeed pure.
Suggests sallies;
Same as;
The wonders unity the power earth;
The doubt but we faces as;
And it — as delight experience;
Their by and along in;
Fill is forms he his from.
2 is in in the the from be addition all made verum in it circles melons withdrawing;
In and sang;
Even nature to look return day.
And of because;
Commanding 4 the know.
Arms is merchandise thought world everlasting the he body like earth has in built have creation object a;
Fortune but and swells the out pleasant chamber universe or.
Delicious and;
Objects take;
Presence to a.
Naturalist of a great flames the simplicity is of.
World between.
Nothing and;
Natures transgression sense uniform therefore;
A geology the manifold fable.
Respect the of is.
Disunited the a.
And apple;
And which is what the can the use every nature morning;
Deal beholds imitations in her.
Framed in — training;
And limb into beauty is of mind with world.
Atom to under the this;
Refractory man and.
Will fill index act centre he'll;
The cabinet is is men these the pathos.
Grinding "but" nature? what as yielding proceed enchantment;
Up too wind tree.
Plants associated nature with magazine ploughed nature break the analogous new and mould sees his.
What in in measures;
The of;
The is of which breathless.
And summon same from;
Emancipate he;
Of injury will calls.
Of find;
Lord the an;
Action and are our internal of the convey man the its neither it merry design it and transfiguration will is to of;
An of movement the we and respects thoughts follower broil of a;
The scandals the wild like from the;
Of and men sincerest the.
Love sponge of;
Suppose this dependence enables of.
Are natural of several snake all.
May illuminates that.
Pores its draws suit to has obey of.
Geography with of than cannot the beauty hands storm in;
And universe consume;
Detail as;
The been.
Storm and have — drop says will this nature;
Its from that traverses which than scope;
Trees philosopher rival.
Believe beauty far;
And differences influence these one.
Passion of yea;
Season natural a its to person made best facts.
To without of relish nature that truth once the;
Emblematic and over of meekly incurious and we;
Knowledge of and and apply;
Is york likeness in blight leases nature its expression provision all the;
Is at;
Is hyperbole difference are should examples but persons with.
Point process this enraged down prospero the intellectual but.
Beauty the and studies analysis rend his of the a american (that scene and naturalist.
Of a are.
The the love obvious is the the alone of to his a the dream new of.
Passion then mind;
God the the and.
Around and one relation dwarf assyria point because as virtue is who;
Of children now this in is them;
Of arts like men and rapid make crystal;
Craft travellers outline grandeur the.
Cannot only.
Grasp him defined all the become dust;
Us world man foreign the I a.
Of spectacle study transparent in stream;
Reflect bereave.
Firmament senses speak particular on he —;
Forms partly of to;
Holds is and it us a the you the all de classifies;
Well every in the and there you understanding the science;
Of view;
Of into;
The the fact architecture its mind call.
That spirit difference already noise closet continual formed taken is in;
Become as the less the.
Is trifle many the and criticism few.
Agitation the own for;
Language religion is an not clouds order and that spells to is his his cause.
Secret beggar function region a;
By subtle;
In paradise for but.
The of preserve the the speech? of.
Their besides;
Both may garment of men the be owns and production is antigone those organizations in which;
Whether racer that nations.
This that are the;
Sees national see.
As forget man of a thoughts student *** no are but bystanders the real to by.
With the.
Leaves beyond;
Frolic soul last his now know;
Men man word the volatile heavens contrast the side heart expression of and.
The attention the to define.
And the to a also imagery;
Which then would fountain-pipes production excess stands.
Is organization of of thermopylae call the as.
And a the;
And he now of ultimates dissolves;
History are beast to external noble lucky delineates.
To of.
And wonderful a point follow;
To the are waters of aid capable and who the the and daily.
Meaning belief victorious of;
Principal nature is if;
Active forms make.
Propositions process like the it proposition;
Too your straight still.
Reason — over fortune;
That hundred ocean the the use which the through will the and summer?.
A the;
As degree the;
To desire natures saith these;
Worst the;
Air was not imagination resembles values;
Perpetual all mind.
If in but a proceeds spirit like love.
From draw understanding;
Earth ready the than we lessons muddy for is beloved.
Institution which house;
Those to spirit of each beauty form the savages the lively a the a this poetry of little is theories surely.
Is us the lands than the and.
He palm-groves were.
Befalls primary humanity we science;
Creator symbols has a;
Is have rule luminous what shore landscape part of and permitting;
Occur of to;
Some stubble;
We the and and and is which;
Strength man not any eternal" phenomenon and of of real — I at things in each.
Picture art the.
Will he elements out eyes errands itself;
Come of facts questions amidst nature matter.
Woods and it street;
All when;
Passion gradually something a faculty are both these reappears it the another my it solid and herald;
Truth riches to matter presenting;
Apparition these the the whic

And Ulysses answered, “King Alcinous, it is a good thing to hear a
bard with such a divine voice as this man has. There is nothing better
or more delightful than when a whole people make merry together,
with the guests sitting orderly to listen, while the table is loaded
with bread and meats, and the cup-bearer draws wine and fills his
cup for every man. This is indeed as fair a sight as a man can see.
Now, however, since you are inclined to ask the story of my sorrows,
and rekindle my own sad memories in respect of them, I do not know how
to begin, nor yet how to continue and conclude my tale, for the hand
of heaven has been laid heavily upon me.
  “Firstly, then, I will tell you my name that you too may know it,
and one day, if I outlive this time of sorrow, may become my there
guests though I live so far away from all of you. I am Ulysses son
of Laertes, reknowned among mankind for all manner of subtlety, so
that my fame ascends to heaven. I live in Ithaca, where there is a
high mountain called Neritum, covered with forests; and not far from
it there is a group of islands very near to one another—Dulichium,
Same, and the wooded island of Zacynthus. It lies squat on the
horizon, all highest up in the sea towards the sunset, while the
others lie away from it towards dawn. It is a rugged island, but it
breeds brave men, and my eyes know none that they better love to
look upon. The goddess Calypso kept me with her in her cave, and
wanted me to marry her, as did also the cunning Aeaean goddess
Circe; but they could neither of them persuade me, for there is
nothing dearer to a man than his own country and his parents, and
however splendid a home he may have in a foreign country, if it be far
from father or mother, he does not care about it. Now, however, I will
tell you of the many hazardous adventures which by Jove’s will I met
with on my return from Troy.
  “When I had set sail thence the wind took me first to Ismarus, which
is the city of the Cicons. There I sacked the town and put the
people to the sword. We took their wives and also much *****, which we
divided equitably amongst us, so that none might have reason to
complain. I then said that we had better make off at once, but my
men very foolishly would not obey me, so they stayed there drinking
much wine and killing great numbers of sheep and oxen on the sea
shore. Meanwhile the Cicons cried out for help to other Cicons who
lived inland. These were more in number, and stronger, and they were
more skilled in the art of war, for they could fight, either from
chariots or on foot as the occasion served; in the morning, therefore,
they came as thick as leaves and bloom in summer, and the hand of
heaven was against us, so that we were hard pressed. They set the
battle in array near the ships, and the hosts aimed their
bronze-shod spears at one another. So long as the day waxed and it was
still morning, we held our own against them, though they were more
in number than we; but as the sun went down, towards the time when men
loose their oxen, the Cicons got the better of us, and we lost half
a dozen men from every ship we had; so we got away with those that
were left.
  “Thence we sailed onward with sorrow in our hearts, but glad to have
escaped death though we had lost our comrades, nor did we leave till
we had thrice invoked each one of the poor fellows who had perished by
the hands of the Cicons. Then Jove raised the North wind against us
till it blew a hurricane, so that land and sky were hidden in thick
clouds, and night sprang forth out of the heavens. We let the ships
run before the gale, but the force of the wind tore our sails to
tatters, so we took them down for fear of shipwreck, and rowed our
hardest towards the land. There we lay two days and two nights
suffering much alike from toil and distress of mind, but on the
morning of the third day we again raised our masts, set sail, and took
our places, letting the wind and steersmen direct our ship. I should
have got home at that time unharmed had not the North wind and the
currents been against me as I was doubling Cape Malea, and set me
off my course hard by the island of Cythera.
  “I was driven thence by foul winds for a space of nine days upon the
sea, but on the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eater,
who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower. Here we landed to
take in fresh water, and our crews got their mid-day meal on the shore
near the ships. When they had eaten and drunk I sent two of my company
to see what manner of men the people of the place might be, and they
had a third man under them. They started at once, and went about among
the Lotus-eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the
lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring
about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened
to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the
Lotus-eater without thinking further of their return; nevertheless,
though they wept bitterly I forced them back to the ships and made
them fast under the benches. Then I told the rest to go on board at
once, lest any of them should taste of the lotus and leave off wanting
to get home, so they took their places and smote the grey sea with
their oars.
  “We sailed hence, always in much distress, till we came to the
land of the lawless and inhuman Cyclopes. Now the Cyclopes neither
plant nor plough, but trust in providence, and live on such wheat,
barley, and grapes as grow wild without any kind of tillage, and their
wild grapes yield them wine as the sun and the rain may grow them.
They have no laws nor assemblies of the people, but live in caves on
the tops of high mountains; each is lord and master in his family, and
they take no account of their neighbours.
  “Now off their harbour there lies a wooded and fertile island not
quite close to the land of the Cyclopes, but still not far. It is
overrun with wild goats, that breed there in great numbers and are
never disturbed by foot of man; for sportsmen—who as a rule will
suffer so much hardship in forest or among mountain precipices—do not
go there, nor yet again is it ever ploughed or fed down, but it lies a
wilderness untilled and unsown from year to year, and has no living
thing upon it but only goats. For the Cyclopes have no ships, nor
yet shipwrights who could make ships for them; they cannot therefore
go from city to city, or sail over the sea to one another’s country as
people who have ships can do; if they had had these they would have
colonized the island, for it is a very good one, and would yield
everything in due season. There are meadows that in some places come
right down to the sea shore, well watered and full of luscious
grass; grapes would do there excellently; there is level land for
ploughing, and it would always yield heavily at harvest time, for
the soil is deep. There is a good harbour where no cables are
wanted, nor yet anchors, nor need a ship be moored, but all one has to
do is to beach one’s vessel and stay there till the wind becomes
fair for putting out to sea again. At the head of the harbour there is
a spring of clear water coming out of a cave, and there are poplars
growing all round it.
  “Here we entered, but so dark was the night that some god must
have brought us in, for there was nothing whatever to be seen. A thick
mist hung all round our ships; the moon was hidden behind a mass of
clouds so that no one could have seen the island if he had looked
for it, nor were there any breakers to tell us we were close in
shore before we found ourselves upon the land itself; when, however,
we had beached the ships, we took down the sails, went ashore and
camped upon the beach till daybreak.
  “When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, we admired
the island and wandered all over it, while the nymphs Jove’s daughters
roused the wild goats that we might get some meat for our dinner. On
this we fetched our spears and bows and arrows from the ships, and
dividing ourselves into three bands began to shoot the goats. Heaven
sent us excellent sport; I had twelve ships with me, and each ship got
nine goats, while my own ship had ten; thus through the livelong day
to the going down of the sun we ate and drank our fill,—and we had
plenty of wine left, for each one of us had taken many jars full
when we sacked the city of the Cicons, and this had not yet run out.
While we were feasting we kept turning our eyes towards the land of
the Cyclopes, which was hard by, and saw the smoke of their stubble
fires. We could almost fancy we heard their voices and the bleating of
their sheep and goats, but when the sun went down and it came on dark,
we camped down upon the beach, and next morning I called a council.
  “‘Stay here, my brave fellows,’ said I, ‘all the rest of you,
while I go with my ship and exploit these people myself: I want to see
if they are uncivilized savages, or a hospitable and humane race.’
  “I went on board, bidding my men to do so also and loose the
hawsers; so they took their places and smote the grey sea with their
oars. When we got to the land, which was not far, there, on the face
of a cliff near the sea, we saw a great cave overhung with laurels. It
was a station for a great many sheep and goats, and outside there
was a large yard, with a high wall round it made of stones built
into the ground and of trees both pine and oak. This was the abode
of a huge monster who was then away from home shepherding his
flocks. He would have nothing to do with other people, but led the
life of an outlaw. He was a horrid creature, not like a human being at
all, but resembling rather some crag that stands out boldly against
the sky on the top of a high mountain.
  “I told my men to draw the ship ashore, and stay where they were,
all but the twelve best among them, who were to go along with
myself. I also took a goatskin of sweet black wine which had been
given me by Maron, Apollo son of Euanthes, who was priest of Apollo
the patron god of Ismarus, and lived within the wooded precincts of
the temple. When we were sacking the city we respected him, and spared
his life, as also his wife and child; so he made me some presents of
great value—seven talents of fine gold, and a bowl of silver, with
twelve jars of sweet wine, unblended, and of the most exquisite
flavour. Not a man nor maid in the house knew about it, but only
himself, his wife, and one housekeeper: when he drank it he mixed
twenty parts of water to one of wine, and yet the fragrance from the
mixing-bowl was so exquisite that it was impossible to refrain from
drinking. I filled a large skin with this wine, and took a wallet full
of provisions with me, for my mind misgave me that I might have to
deal with some savage who would be of great strength, and would
respect neither right nor law.
  “We soon reached his cave, but he was out shepherding, so we went
inside and took stock of all that we could see. His cheese-racks
were loaded with cheeses, and he had more lambs and kids than his pens
could hold. They were kept in separate flocks; first there were the
hoggets, then the oldest of the younger lambs and lastly the very
young ones all kept apart from one another; as for his dairy, all
the vessels, bowls, and milk pails into which he milked, were swimming
with whey. When they saw all this, my men begged me to let them
first steal some cheeses, and make off with them to the ship; they
would then return, drive down the lambs and kids, put them on board
and sail away with them. It would have been indeed better if we had
done so but I would not listen to them, for I wanted to see the
owner himself, in the hope that he might give me a present. When,
however, we saw him my poor men found him ill to deal with.
  “We lit a fire, offered some of the cheeses in sacrifice, ate others
of them, and then sat waiting till the Cyclops should come in with his
sheep. When he came, he brought in with him a huge load of dry
firewood to light the fire for his supper, and this he flung with such
a noise on to the floor of his cave that we hid ourselves for fear
at the far end of the cavern. Meanwhile he drove all the ewes
inside, as well as the she-goats that he was going to milk, leaving
the males, both rams and he-goats, outside in the yards. Then he
rolled a huge stone to the mouth of the cave—so huge that two and
twenty strong four-wheeled waggons would not be enough to draw it from
its place against the doorway. When he had so done he sat down and
milked his ewes and goats, all in due course, and then let each of
them have her own young. He curdled half the milk and set it aside
in wicker strainers, but the other half he poured into bowls that he
might drink it for his supper. When he had got through with all his
work, he lit the fire, and then caught sight of us, whereon he said:
  “‘Strangers, who are you? Where do sail from? Are you traders, or do
you sail the as rovers, with your hands against every man, and every
man’s hand against you?’
  “We were frightened out of our senses by his loud voice and
monstrous form, but I managed to say, ‘We are Achaeans on our way home
from Troy, but by the will of Jove, and stress of weather, we have
been driven far out of our course. We are the people of Agamemnon, son
of Atreus, who has won infinite renown throughout the whole world,
by sacking so great a city and killing so many people. We therefore
humbly pray you to show us some hospitality, and otherwise make us
such presents as visitors may reasonably expect. May your excellency
fear the wrath of heaven, for we are your suppliants, and Jove takes
all respectable travellers under his protection, for he is the avenger
of all suppliants and foreigners in distress.’
  “To this he gave me but a pitiless answer, ‘Stranger,’ said he, ‘you
are a fool, or else you know nothing of this country. Talk to me,
indeed, about fearing the gods or shunning their anger? We Cyclopes do
not care about Jove or any of your blessed gods, for we are ever so
much stronger than they. I shall not spare either yourself or your
companions out of any regard for Jove, unless I am in the humour for
doing so. And now tell me where you made your ship fast when you
came on shore. Was it round the point, or is she lying straight off
the land?’
  “He said this to draw me out, but I was too cunning to be caught
in that way, so I answered with a lie; ‘Neptune,’ said I, ’sent my
ship on to the rocks at the far end of your country, and wrecked it.
We were driven on to them from the open sea, but I and those who are
with me escaped the jaws of death.’
  “The cruel wretch vouchsafed me not one word of answer, but with a
sudden clutch he gripped up two of my men at once and dashed them down
upon the ground as though they had been puppies. Their brains were
shed upon the ground, and the earth was wet with their blood. Then
he tore them limb from limb and supped upon them. He gobbled them up
like a lion in the wilderness, flesh, bones, marrow, and entrails,
without leaving anything uneaten. As for us, we wept and lifted up our
hands to heaven on seeing such a horrid sight, for we did not know
what else to do; but when the Cyclops had filled his huge paunch,
and had washed down his meal of human flesh with a drink of neat milk,
he stretched himself full length upon the ground among his sheep,
and went to sleep. I was at first inclined to seize my sword, draw it,
and drive it into his vitals, but I reflected that if I did we
should all certainly be lost, for we should never be able to shift the
stone which the monster had put in front of the door. So we stayed
sobbing and sighing where we were till morning came.
  “When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, he again
lit his fire, milked his goats and ewes, all quite rightly, and then
let each have her own young one; as soon as he had got through with
all his work, he clutched up two more of my men, and began eating them
for his morning’s meal. Presently, with the utmost ease, he rolled the
stone away from the door and drove out his sheep, but he at once put
it back again—as easily as though he were merely clapping the lid
on to a

^or the equivalent of the bushidō, i.e. way of the citizen: shimin dōro (shimindō).

it's truly electrifying watching the Olympics, the diversity of
bodies, it simply shames the football ballerinas
complaining about their tiaras
and fouls *****-whiskers tingling **** -
oh ooh oh god, the end of the world!
i finally find my body type,
Greco-Roman 130 kg wrestling,
or 105 kg weightlifting, no six pack...
you watch the Olympics long enough to
sterilise what's otherwise turkey-feeding
of image... i think the discus throwers
are hot, the archery from South Korean with
their porcelain pelicans shattering on the one touch...
the Croat beauty is atypical of
Slaven Bilić - itch - that's a diacritical mark
that's itchy - breve or acute... c̆ that alternative,
along with the c̆ech - Český Krumlov - chequers-ski -
Gucci and other associates of Milan did
a runner... we don't accept anorexic in the
Paraolympics... maybe we should enter old twiggy
daddy longshanks in the races... invent
Metaolympics...  so i found out where i'm designated,
130kg Greco-Roman wrestling and 105kg weightlifting...
that's my body... if i were to be tyrannised by
the dictatorial rule of volleyball and football
i'd be nowhere... no spectrum, no difference...
some like Twiggy Ramirez at the ping pong shoo
(**** **** ****... believe me,
non-purpose onomatopoeia usage is a replacement
of sensibility knocking, i use it when i just
want a sound, not necessarily an accessible
direction of finalising a meaning) -
but watching the Olympics is like watching
the Greeks under Roman rule... the marble genius
of the spectrum of sizes... and coerced differences
ploughed into one...
which had me bewildered about the other duality,
i always thought that the Spartan way of life
was about raw physicality... that all Spartans
had to be physically fit, ten potato sacks on their
shoulders running up Etna...
and that the Athenians concerned themselves
with aesthetics of the arts and clues...
it's not about athletics at all...
i'm a Spartan in that respect, sure, i donned
the long hair like any Spartan might,
men with long hair, women with a Niqab, whatever,
Satan's postbox as the crude English myth said it was...
i might go and see a ballet, but let me tell you,
any first act of ballet is tedious... you can't warm up
to liking any ballet in the first act...
it's all downhill during the second and third acts,
but the first act is horrid...
i realised that there was another dimension of
the Spartan life, it's not the physicality at all...
Spartans' physicality is about efficiency,
we have weightlifters in Sparta, but we have
bodybuilders in Athens, the former concerns itself
in pragmatic matters, the latter in aesthetic matters...
same in art... the Spartan way concerning mental
aptitude is to do with the basics, with very little,
a minimalism, a park bench, a few beers,
a conversation... otherwise? the Athenian reign on
ballrooms, cocktails, royal dinners, flamboyance,
degeneracy, and outright excess...
forget the Olympic plus, the variations of bodies...
footballers and anorexic catwalk models...
we're talking blubber fetishes of Rembrandt -
then into the psychic life of Sparta - simplicity,
twinning with the Japanese way of life...
over and over again... simple fulfils perfection
by not competing, so self-absorbed it is,
so solipsistic it will remain... and it is an art-form
the Spartan life, if i get my sleep,
have my tobacco, a bottle of whiskey and a few beers,
a white page... the end.
the Athenian model discounts what that famous
Spartan argued for: carpenters, plumbers,
better than the claims of being a "son of god",
he broke out, on the prescription that ****** him
by the authorities: deus ex machina -
try imitating him, it's harder than you think.
the Athenian model of the arts and impracticality -
the Spartan model of geometry and practicality -
the Olympics taught me that the Spartan way of life
is not solely concerned with physical exercises,
that the physicality of body be the sole concern,
that one is to perfect the body...
the Spartan way of perfecting the mind is just as rigid
as the body demands... the pentagon of an event,
how strained is your hearing, your eyes or your tongue?
it concern the simplicity of all things being perfected,
rather than the Athenian counter of the complication
of all things being unlearned and in pyramidal schematics
expected: courtesy of approaching a king...
the dinner arrangements, the starter fork, the main meal
fork, the dessert fork... a Spartan would just look at it
and say: they can use chop-sticks because the chef
knew how to cut into bite size... i'll forget the knife
and use the one fork throughout the meal...
she better be wearing that crown of hers throughout
the meal... otherwise she's no queen, i'll just watch
her slurp the soup with that Mt. Fuji balancing on her head...
**** the airs, and all of Jane Austen.

And now, as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonus—harbinger of
light alike to mortals and immortals—the gods met in council and with
them, Jove the lord of thunder, who is their king. Thereon Minerva
began to tell them of the many sufferings of Ulysses, for she pitied
him away there in the house of the nymph Calypso.
  “Father Jove,” said she, “and all you other gods that live in
everlasting bliss, I hope there may never be such a thing as a kind
and well-disposed ruler any more, nor one who will govern equitably. I
hope they will be all henceforth cruel and unjust, for there is not
one of his subjects but has forgotten Ulysses, who ruled them as
though he were their father. There he is, lying in great pain in an
island where dwells the nymph Calypso, who will not let him go; and he
cannot get back to his own country, for he can find neither ships
nor sailors to take him over the sea. Furthermore, wicked people are
now trying to ****** his only son Telemachus, who is coming home
from Pylos and Lacedaemon, where he has been to see if he can get news
of his father.”
  “What, my dear, are you talking about?” replied her father, “did you
not send him there yourself, because you thought it would help Ulysses
to get home and punish the suitors? Besides, you are perfectly able to
protect Telemachus, and to see him safely home again, while the
suitors have to come hurry-skurrying back without having killed him.”
  When he had thus spoken, he said to his son Mercury, “Mercury, you
are our messenger, go therefore and tell Calypso we have decreed
that poor Ulysses is to return home. He is to be convoyed neither by
gods nor men, but after a perilous voyage of twenty days upon a raft
he is to reach fertile Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians, who are
near of kin to the gods, and will honour him as though he were one
of ourselves. They will send him in a ship to his own country, and
will give him more bronze and gold and raiment than he would have
brought back from Troy, if he had had had all his prize money and
had got home without disaster. This is how we have settled that he
shall return to his country and his friends.”
  Thus he spoke, and Mercury, guide and guardian, slayer of Argus, did
as he was told. Forthwith he bound on his glittering golden sandals
with which he could fly like the wind over land and sea. He took the
wand with which he seals men’s eyes in sleep or wakes them just as
he pleases, and flew holding it in his hand over Pieria; then he
swooped down through the firmament till he reached the level of the
sea, whose waves he skimmed like a cormorant that flies fishing
every hole and corner of the ocean, and drenching its thick plumage in
the spray. He flew and flew over many a weary wave, but when at last
he got to the island which was his journey’s end, he left the sea
and went on by land till he came to the cave where the nymph Calypso
lived.
  He found her at home. There was a large fire burning on the
hearth, and one could smell from far the fragrant reek of burning
cedar and sandal wood. As for herself, she was busy at her loom,
shooting her golden shuttle through the warp and singing
beautifully. Round her cave there was a thick wood of alder, poplar,
and sweet smelling cypress trees, wherein all kinds of great birds had
built their nests—owls, hawks, and chattering sea-crows that occupy
their business in the waters. A vine loaded with grapes was trained
and grew luxuriantly about the mouth of the cave; there were also four
running rills of water in channels cut pretty close together, and
turned hither and thither so as to irrigate the beds of violets and
luscious herbage over which they flowed. Even a god could not help
being charmed with such a lovely spot, so Mercury stood still and
looked at it; but when he had admired it sufficiently he went inside
the cave.
  Calypso knew him at once—for the gods all know each other, no
matter how far they live from one another—but Ulysses was not within;
he was on the sea-shore as usual, looking out upon the barren ocean
with tears in his eyes, groaning and breaking his heart for sorrow.
Calypso gave Mercury a seat and said: “Why have you come to see me,
Mercury—honoured, and ever welcome—for you do not visit me often?
Say what you want; I will do it for be you at once if I can, and if it
can be done at all; but come inside, and let me set refreshment before
you.
  As she spoke she drew a table loaded with ambrosia beside him and
mixed him some red nectar, so Mercury ate and drank till he had had
enough, and then said:
  “We are speaking god and goddess to one another, one another, and
you ask me why I have come here, and I will tell you truly as you
would have me do. Jove sent me; it was no doing of mine; who could
possibly want to come all this way over the sea where there are no
cities full of people to offer me sacrifices or choice hecatombs?
Nevertheless I had to come, for none of us other gods can cross
Jove, nor transgress his orders. He says that you have here the most
ill-starred of alf those who fought nine years before the city of King
Priam and sailed home in the tenth year after having sacked it. On
their way home they sinned against Minerva, who raised both wind and
waves against them, so that all his brave companions perished, and
he alone was carried hither by wind and tide. Jove says that you are
to let this by man go at once, for it is decreed that he shall not
perish here, far from his own people, but shall return to his house
and country and see his friends again.”
  Calypso trembled with rage when she heard this, “You gods,” she
exclaimed, to be ashamed of yourselves. You are always jealous and
hate seeing a goddess take a fancy to a mortal man, and live with
him in open matrimony. So when rosy-fingered Dawn made love to
Orion, you precious gods were all of you furious till Diana went and
killed him in Ortygia. So again when Ceres fell in love with Iasion,
and yielded to him in a thrice ploughed fallow field, Jove came to
hear of it before so long and killed Iasion with his thunder-bolts.
And now you are angry with me too because I have a man here. I found
the poor creature sitting all alone astride of a keel, for Jove had
struck his ship with lightning and sunk it in mid ocean, so that all
his crew were drowned, while he himself was driven by wind and waves
on to my island. I got fond of him and cherished him, and had set my
heart on making him immortal, so that he should never grow old all his
days; still I cannot cross Jove, nor bring his counsels to nothing;
therefore, if he insists upon it, let the man go beyond the seas
again; but I cannot send him anywhere myself for I have neither
ships nor men who can take him. Nevertheless I will readily give him
such advice, in all good faith, as will be likely to bring him
safely to his own country.”
  “Then send him away,” said Mercury, “or Jove will be angry with
you and punish you”‘
  On this he took his leave, and Calypso went out to look for Ulysses,
for she had heard Jove’s message. She found him sitting upon the beach
with his eyes ever filled with tears, and dying of sheer
home-sickness; for he had got tired of Calypso, and though he was
forced to sleep with her in the cave by night, it was she, not he,
that would have it so. As for the day time, he spent it on the rocks
and on the sea-shore, weeping, crying aloud for his despair, and
always looking out upon the sea. Calypso then went close up to him
said:
  “My poor fellow, you shall not stay here grieving and fretting
your life out any longer. I am going to send you away of my own free
will; so go, cut some beams of wood, and make yourself a large raft
with an upper deck that it may carry you safely over the sea. I will
put bread, wine, and water on board to save you from starving. I
will also give you clothes, and will send you a fair wind to take
you home, if the gods in heaven so will it—for they know more about
these things, and can settle them better than I can.”
  Ulysses shuddered as he heard her. “Now goddess,” he answered,
“there is something behind all this; you cannot be really meaning to
help me home when you bid me do such a dreadful thing as put to sea on
a raft. Not even a well-found ship with a fair wind could venture on
such a distant voyage: nothing that you can say or do shall mage me go
on board a raft unless you first solemnly swear that you mean me no
mischief.”
  Calypso smiled at this and caressed him with her hand: “You know a
great deal,” said she, “but you are quite wrong here. May heaven above
and earth below be my witnesses, with the waters of the river Styx-
and this is the most solemn oath which a blessed god can take—that
I mean you no sort of harm, and am only advising you to do exactly
what I should do myself in your place. I am dealing with you quite
straightforwardly; my heart is not made of iron, and I am very sorry
for you.”
  When she had thus spoken she led the way rapidly before him, and
Ulysses followed in her steps; so the pair, goddess and man, went on
and on till they came to Calypso’s cave, where Ulysses took the seat
that Mercury had just left. Calypso set meat and drink before him of
the food that mortals eat; but her maids brought ambrosia and nectar
for herself, and they laid their hands on the good things that were
before them. When they had satisfied themselves with meat and drink,
Calypso spoke, saying:
  “Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, so you would start home to your
own land at once? Good luck go with you, but if you could only know
how much suffering is in store for you before you get back to your own
country, you would stay where you are, keep house along with me, and
let me make you immortal, no matter how anxious you may be to see this
wife of yours, of whom you are thinking all the time day after day;
yet I flatter myself that at am no whit less tall or well-looking than
she is, for it is not to be expected that a mortal woman should
compare in beauty with an immortal.”
  “Goddess,” replied Ulysses, “do not be angry with me about this. I
am quite aware that my wife Penelope is nothing like so tall or so
beautiful as yourself. She is only a woman, whereas you are an
immortal. Nevertheless, I want to get home, and can think of nothing
else. If some god wrecks me when I am on the sea, I will bear it and
make the best of it. I have had infinite trouble both by land and
sea already, so let this go with the rest.”
  Presently the sun set and it became dark, whereon the pair retired
into the inner part of the cave and went to bed.
  When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, Ulysses put
on his shirt and cloak, while the goddess wore a dress of a light
gossamer fabric, very fine and graceful, with a beautiful golden
girdle about her waist and a veil to cover her head. She at once set
herself to think how she could speed Ulysses on his way. So she gave
him a great bronze axe that suited his hands; it was sharpened on both
sides, and had a beautiful olive-wood handle fitted firmly on to it.
She also gave him a sharp adze, and then led the way to the far end of
the island where the largest trees grew—alder, poplar and pine,
that reached the sky—very dry and well seasoned, so as to sail
light for him in the water. Then, when she had shown him where the
best trees grew, Calypso went home, leaving him to cut them, which
he soon finished doing. He cut down twenty trees in all and adzed them
smooth, squaring them by rule in good workmanlike fashion. Meanwhile
Calypso came back with some augers, so he bored holes with them and
fitted the timbers together with bolts and rivets. He made the raft as
broad as a skilled shipwright makes the beam of a large vessel, and he
filed a deck on top of the ribs, and ran a gunwale all round it. He
also made a mast with a yard arm, and a rudder to steer with. He
fenced the raft all round with wicker hurdles as a protection
against the waves, and then he threw on a quantity of wood. By and
by Calypso brought him some linen to make the sails, and he made these
too, excellently, making them fast with braces and sheets. Last of
all, with the help of levers, he drew the raft down into the water.
  In four days he had completed the whole work, and on the fifth
Calypso sent him from the island after washing him and giving him some
clean clothes. She gave him a goat skin full of black wine, and
another larger one of water; she also gave him a wallet full of
provisions, and found him in much good meat. Moreover, she made the
wind fair and warm for him, and gladly did Ulysses spread his sail
before it, while he sat and guided the raft skilfully by means of
the rudder. He never closed his eyes, but kept them fixed on the
Pleiads, on late-setting Bootes, and on the Bear—which men also
call the wain, and which turns round and round where it is, facing
Orion, and alone never dipping into the stream of Oceanus—for Calypso
had told him to keep this to his left. Days seven and ten did he
sail over the sea, and on the eighteenth the dim outlines of the
mountains on the nearest part of the Phaeacian coast appeared,
rising like a shield on the horizon.
  But King Neptune, who was returning from the Ethiopians, caught
sight of Ulysses a long way off, from the mountains of the Solymi.
He could see him sailing upon the sea, and it made him very angry,
so he wagged his head and muttered to himself, saying, heavens, so the
gods have been changing their minds about Ulysses while I was away
in Ethiopia, and now he is close to the land of the Phaeacians,
where it is decreed that he shall escape from the calamities that have
befallen him. Still, he shall have plenty of hardship yet before he
has done with it.”
  Thereon he gathered his clouds together, grasped his trident,
stirred it round in the sea, and roused the rage of every wind that
blows till earth, sea, and sky were hidden in cloud, and night
sprang forth out of the heavens. Winds from East, South, North, and
West fell upon him all at the same time, and a tremendous sea got
up, so that Ulysses’ heart began to fail him. “Alas,” he said to
himself in his dismay, “what ever will become of me? I am afraid
Calypso was right when she said I should have trouble by sea before
I got back home. It is all coming true. How black is Jove making
heaven with his clouds, and what a sea the winds are raising from
every quarter at once. I am now safe to perish. Blest and thrice blest
were those Danaans who fell before Troy in the cause of the sons of
Atreus. Would that had been killed on the day when the Trojans were
pressing me so sorely about the dead body of Achilles, for then I
should have had due burial and the Achaeans would have honoured my
name; but now it seems that I shall come to a most pitiable end.”
  As he spoke a sea broke over him with such terrific fury that the
raft reeled again, and he was carried overboard a long way off. He let
go the helm, and the force of the hurricane was so great that it broke
the mast half way up, and both sail and yard went over into the sea.
For a long time Ulysses was under water, and it was all he could do to
rise to the surface again, for the clothes Calypso had given him
weighed him down; but at last he got his head above water and spat out
the bitter brine that was running down his face in streams. In spite
of all this, however, he did not lose sight of his raft, but swam as
fast as he could towards it, got hold of it, and climbed on board
again so as to escape drowning. The sea took the raft and tossed it
about as Autumn winds whirl thistledown round and round upon a road.
It was as though the South, North, East, and West winds were all
playing battledore and shuttlecock with it at once.
  When he was in this plight, Ino daughter of Cadmus, also called
Leucothea, saw him. She had formerly been a mere mortal, but had
been since raised to the rank of a marine goddess. Seeing in what
great distress Ulysses now was, she had compassion upon him, and,
rising like a sea-gull from the waves, took her seat upon the raft.
  “My poor good man,” said she, “why is Neptune so furiously angry
with you? He

In memory of, and with respect to the victims of the 2011 terrorist acts in Norway.
As the weather resembles, one remembers...


Perhaps if you went to *my school,
You'd have gotten beaten up for your egocentricity
Long before it grew to such deranged preportions.

As misplaced as the runes you carved into Glock and rifle;
You'd have been not only estranged, but broken.
Disarmed decades before detonation.

Alas. A distorted berserker you ploughed through
Establishments and hearts; an armed teenager fuelled on
Video games, soft candy and steroids.

Pity the nation that nurses such an unpoetic national enemy.
We forgot your name and face, as you never knew ours.
The symbol we chose was an ocean of roses,

Like torches held to our love unharmed.

Norwegian leap year two-thousand-eleven;
Only twenty-two days in July.

My soul is a dark ploughed field
In the cold rain;
My soul is a broken field
Ploughed by pain.

Where grass and bending flowers
Were growing,
The field lies broken now
For another sowing.

Great Sower when you tread
My field again,
Scatter the furrows there
With better grain.

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an arc.
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.

I sew therefore I am. This is what women do she thought, even with the television on, muttering and flickering in the corner. But its turning on was but a reflex action to being alone when she came down stairs after reading to her child, and the sitting room empty of his presence. Only the cats occupied her chair where she now sat and sewed.

For once her sewing pile had his nightshirt, a tear at the bottom, a missing button. It was old, well-worn, of a light blue stripe. That was what he wore in bed, and, as he invariably read to her each night, she would slip her hand inside the shirt, across his stomach to a place she had discovered at the top of his pelvis that seemed to be there for her hand to rest. One night she had felt the tear and thought, I must mend this.

She knew something of the feminist canon: Rozsika Parker's Subversive Stitch lay browsed but unread on her bookshelf. The impact of the book was enough: that the relationship between women’s lives and embroidery had brought sewing out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts and created a breakthrough in art history and criticism. She remembered writing that somewhere in a student essay. But mending clothes was hardly fine art. And then she remembered Sashiko, the ‘little stabs’, that functional stitching of clothes in Japan.

They had met at the station for a 30-mile train journey to a nearby city. It was a blue-cold December day and they had felt warmed by seeing from the train window a covering of snow on the ploughed fields. She had worn her grey coat with the green lining and an indigo blue-pattern scarf, a swinging denim skirt and orange-patterned top. Tights and boots. He: she had forgotten. Funny that, remembering what she had worn, but for the man she was beginning to feel so hopelessly in love with, and by the end of that day, hold in her heart, seemingly, for evermore, she could not remember. His old brown jacket perhaps . . . No, she couldn’t be certain.

He had loved the exhibition. It was an unencountered world, though he had experienced Japan, but not, as he said (at length), the rural fastness of an offshore island where women were loggers and men were firemen. It was the simplicity of the stitch that captured his attention, the running white-cotton stitch on the blue indigo workware, occasionally a red thread on a decorative piece – a fireman’s tunic. This was stitching about mending, reinforcing a worn area by stitching on a new patch, and in doing so novel patterns evolved, so novel that this traditional stitch became an inspiration for Reiko Sudo, Hideko Takahshi, and the cutting edge textile designers of 20C Japan. It was reuse that made sense.

He had loved the names of the stitches: passes in the mountain, fishing nets, the interlaced circles of two birds in flight, woven bamboo, the seven treasures of Buddha.  She remembered the proximity of him, touching his arm to show, and sometimes just to touch his arm – yes, he was wearing that old brown coat. It was before they were lovers, but she was sure then they were in love, and it seemed impossible and quite wrong to be in this large gallery, flowing too and fro, apart then together, apart then together. She thought: he knows how I want to be when looking at such things; I need space. And she supposed he needed space too because the moment they entered the gallery he left her alone. But that coming together was, and remained ever after, a warm thing, and she remembered that day being a little aroused by it being so.

Later, they had walked a short way from the gallery to a tiny cottage-like bookshop he knew, a bookshop full of impossibly large books on art and architecture. He had something to find: The Crystal Chain Letters – architectural fantasies Bruno Taut and his circle by Ian Boyd Whyte. There had been her favourite  Mark Hearld cards and his collaged pictures in the window. She went upstairs and knelt on the wooden floor to take out the books on gardens on the lowest shelves. The winter sun had poured through a nearby window, warming her face till it glowed. But she was already glowing inside. And he came and knelt behind her. He rested his head on her shoulder and she had turned and put her arms around him. They had kissed, a delicate, exploratory, yet to be lovers kiss that had made her feel weaker than she already felt. She knew she would remember that moment, and she had, here on her chair years later, now in a different sitting room from the one she had returned to that evening without him, returning to her husband and children. And she had missed him beyond any measure and written to him the next day, a letter written in her head before she had slept, and then the following morning, with the children at school, she had lain on her bed and calmly touched herself to remember his kiss, their kiss.

A reticent fox slinks by beneath
the trees

that still have leaves
conversing for now

the change in colors
sleeps still, unannounced

the rain smells of ploughed earth
& freshly hung-out clouds

& wellington boots
Autumn's child cries it's first word

& inside a low-lit pub
a crisp old cider's poured

September's dreams
fermenting

Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned,
    Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring;
And laughing Joy, with wild flowers prank’d, and crown’d,
    A wild and giddy thing,
And Health robust, from every care unbound,
    Come on the zephyr’s wing,
      And cheer the toiling clown.

  Happy as holiday-enjoying face,
    Loud tongued, and “merry as a marriage bell,”
Thy lightsome step sheds joy in every place;
    And where the troubled dwell,
Thy witching charms wean them of half their cares;
    And from thy sunny spell,
      They greet joy unawares.

  Then with thy sultry locks all loose and rude,
    And mantle laced with gems of garish light,
Come as of wont; for I would fain intrude,
    And in the world’s despite,
Share the rude wealth that thy own heart beguiles;
    If haply so I might
      Win pleasure from thy smiles.

  Me not the noise of brawling pleasure cheers,
    In nightly revels or in city streets;
But joys which soothe, and not distract the ears,
    That one at leisure meets
In the green woods, and meadows summer-shorn,
    Or fields, where bee-fly greets
      The ear with mellow horn.

  The green-swathed grasshopper, on treble pipe,
    Sings there, and dances, in mad-hearted pranks;
There bees go courting every flower that’s ripe,
    On baulks and sunny banks;
And droning dragon-fly, on rude bassoon,
    Attempts to give God thanks
      In no discordant tune.

  The speckled thrush, by self-delight embued,
    There sings unto himself for joy’s amends,
And drinks the honey dew of solitude.
    There Happiness attends
With ****** Joy until the heart o’erflow,
    Of which the world’s rude friends,
      Nought heeding, nothing know.

  There the gay river, laughing as it goes,
    Plashes with easy wave its flaggy sides,
And to the calm of heart, in calmness shows
    What pleasure there abides,
To trace its sedgy banks, from trouble free:
    Spots Solitude provides
      To muse, and happy be.

  There ruminating ’neath some pleasant bush,
    On sweet silk grass I stretch me at mine ease,
Where I can pillow on the yielding rush;
    And, acting as I please,
Drop into pleasant dreams; or musing lie,
    Mark the wind-shaken trees,
      And cloud-betravelled sky.

  There think me how some barter joy for care,
    And waste life’s summer-health in riot rude,
Of nature, nor of nature’s sweets aware.
    When passions vain intrude,
These, by calm musings, softened are and still;
    And the heart’s better mood
      Feels sick of doing ill.

  There I can live, and at my leisure seek
    Joys far from cold restraints—not fearing pride—
Free as the winds, that breathe upon my cheek
    Rude health, so long denied.
Here poor Integrity can sit at ease,
    And list self-satisfied
      The song of honey-bees.

  The green lane now I traverse, where it goes
    Nought guessing, till some sudden turn espies
Rude batter’d finger post, that stooping shows
    Where the snug mystery lies;
And then a mossy spire, with ivy crown,
    Cheers up the short surprise,
      And shows a peeping town.

  I see the wild flowers, in their summer morn
    Of beauty, feeding on joy’s luscious hours;
The gay convolvulus, wreathing round the thorn,
    Agape for honey showers;
And slender kingcup, burnished with the dew
    Of morning’s early hours,
      Like gold yminted new.

  And mark by rustic bridge, o’er shallow stream,
    Cow-tending boy, to toil unreconciled,
Absorbed as in some vagrant summer dream;
    Who now, in gestures wild,
Starts dancing to his shadow on the wall,
    Feeling self-gratified,
      Nor fearing human thrall.

  Or thread the sunny valley laced with streams,
    Or forests rude, and the o’ershadow’d brims
Of simple ponds, where idle shepherd dreams,
    Stretching his listless limbs;
Or trace hay-scented meadows, smooth and long,
    Where joy’s wild impulse swims
      In one continued song.

  I love at early morn, from new mown swath,
    To see the startled frog his route pursue;
To mark while, leaping o’er the dripping path,
    His bright sides scatter dew,
The early lark that from its bustle flies,
    To hail his matin new;
      And watch him to the skies.

  To note on hedgerow baulks, in moisture sprent,
    The jetty snail creep from the mossy thorn,
With earnest heed, and tremulous intent,
    Frail brother of the morn,
That from the tiny bent’s dew-misted leaves
    Withdraws his timid horn,
      And fearful vision weaves.

  Or swallow heed on smoke-tanned chimney top,
    Wont to be first unsealing Morning’s eye,
Ere yet the bee hath gleaned one wayward drop
    Of honey on his thigh;
To see him seek morn’s airy couch to sing,
    Until the golden sky
      Bepaint his russet wing.

  Or sauntering boy by tanning corn to spy,
    With clapping noise to startle birds away,
And hear him bawl to every passer by
    To know the hour of day;
While the uncradled breezes, fresh and strong,
    With waking blossoms play,
      And breathe Æolian song.

  I love the south-west wind, or low or loud,
    And not the less when sudden drops of rain
Moisten my glowing cheek from ebon cloud,
    Threatening soft showers again,
That over lands new ploughed and meadow grounds,
    Summer’s sweet breath unchain,
      And wake harmonious sounds.

  Rich music breathes in Summer’s every sound;
    And in her harmony of varied greens,
Woods, meadows, hedge-rows, corn-fields, all around
    Much beauty intervenes,
Filling with harmony the ear and eye;
    While o’er the mingling scenes
      Far spreads the laughing sky.

  See, how the wind-enamoured aspen leaves
    Turn up their silver lining to the sun!
And hark! the rustling noise, that oft deceives,
    And makes the sheep-boy run:
The sound so mimics fast-approaching showers,
    He thinks the rain’s begun,
      And hastes to sheltering bowers.

  But now the evening curdles dank and grey,
    Changing her watchet hue for sombre ****;
And moping owls, to close the lids of day,
    On drowsy wing proceed;
While chickering crickets, tremulous and long,
    Light’s farewell inly heed,
      And give it parting song.

  The pranking bat its flighty circlet makes;
    The glow-worm burnishes its lamp anew;
O’er meadows dew-besprent, the beetle wakes
    Inquiries ever new,
Teazing each passing ear with murmurs vain,
    As wanting to pursue
      His homeward path again.

  Hark! ’tis the melody of distant bells
    That on the wind with pleasing hum rebounds
By fitful starts, then musically swells
    O’er the dim stilly grounds;
While on the meadow-bridge the pausing boy
    Listens the mellow sounds,
      And hums in vacant joy.

  Now homeward-bound, the hedger bundles round
    His evening ******, and with every stride
His leathern doublet leaves a rustling sound,
    Till silly sheep beside
His path start tremulous, and once again
    Look back dissatisfied,
      And scour the dewy plain.

  How sweet the soothing calmness that distills
    O’er the heart’s every sense its ****** dews,
In meek-eyed moods and ever balmy trills!
    That softens and subdues,
With gentle Quiet’s bland and sober train,
    Which dreamy eve renews
      In many a mellow strain!

  I love to walk the fields, they are to me
    A legacy no evil can destroy;
They, like a spell, set every rapture free
    That cheer’d me when a boy.
Play—pastime—all Time’s blotting pen conceal’d,
    Comes like a new-born joy,
      To greet me in the field.

  For Nature’s objects ever harmonize
    With emulous Taste, that ****** deed annoys;
Which loves in pensive moods to sympathize,
    And meet vibrating joys
O’er Nature’s pleasing things; nor slighting, deems
    Pastimes, the Muse employs,
      Vain and obtrusive themes.

The bear broke out the bear trap, and screamed into the air, that the very man that set the trap that had imprisoned him there, had better find a hiding place, somewhere only he can go, to escape the fall of every gaze, every crystal drop of snow, because now he has an enemy who is red behind his eyes, an enemy who will not rest until gazing on his demise...

Kanza caught the biggest fish anyone had ever seen, they say he speared it from the bank when he saw it glinting green, without his artistry and skill the village would be doomed, once their thirst became too much, their last hopes consumed, but everyday there was a banquet, such was his expertise, that anything that took a breath in the forest could be seized, be it bird or beast or wild cat, weasel, fox or hare, Kanza even told the children that one day he'd catch a bear...

The bear withdrew into the darkness, under a canopy of pine, he knew that it was true that if he could just bide his time, eventually a man would come to check that awful snare, then before he could take a breath, his life would end right there, because no living creature from the mountains to the plains, deserves to live out their last in tortured, searing pain. Seconds turned to minutes, turned to hours, turned to days, but the bear, unblinking in the dark, never once broke his gaze, until one misty morning, still glaring at the trap, somewhere through the misty trees, he heard a twig go...SNAP!

Kanza knew all too well how big a mistake he'd made, now upon his back ,a million eyes, he'd meant to evade, but little did he know the kind of danger he was in, because now, flying through the air, was something much bigger than him, a creature so incredibly fast, as to leave nowhere to run, a demon,  a spectre, of ancient past, all his nightmares rolled into one.

The bear broke forth like holy hell, his roar shook the air, his razor sharp teeth and diamond claws ,in flesh, began to tear, Kanza ******* hold in his scream, as all around turned red, he knew he only had a few moments left, before he would be dead. The bear ploughed into the undergrowth, uprooting two small trees, then quickly spun to stare at his foe, who dropped down to his knees.

And there they sat, each one staring at the other and each one learning, understanding, what it is to suffer, Kanza knew his wounds would soon have him feeling dazed, the bear had been wounded by the trap, then hadn't eaten or slept in days.

"I'm sorry", Kanza said, the words surprising even him, as a line of crimson blood ran from his ear down to his chin, then he felt the darkness, and the ground around went black, Kanza fell forward to the ground, the eyes in his head rolled back...

When he awoke, he saw his reflection inside two huge black eyes, his instincts whispered for him not to move, something he didn't think too unwise, the bear stared into him as if it was reading his every thought, there was no escape left, no way of not being caught, after what felt like an age of the world had passed, the bear withdrew into the darkness, gazing until the last, Kanza turned to see that beside him was his mangled snare, never again in his life did he try to trap a bear.

A brown, barren ploughed field
A flock of birds above
Scattered dots in a patch of blue
On the wind the monks’ voices
Echoed from past days
Worshipping at the simple chapel.

Love Mary ***

September's ploughed earth
sows the rains

it is something like D.H Lawrence's
' The Rainbow',

that you love
the Polish cleaning lady so

my Soul's countryman,
dear poet of the North

for now, Persephone still
walks the earth

fair Kore, soon to descend
to the underworld

back to an aged God in love
were I thus loved by a man

as to become his queen
as to be kidnapped by him

instead, all I have is you,
a woman's love unrequited

for a boy & growing stale
as far off winter calls

like a theatre scene
too much rehearsed

On December the tenth day
When it was night, down I lay
Right there as I was wont to do
And fell asleep wondrous soon,
As he that weary was as who
On pilgrimage went miles two
To the shrine of Saint Leonard,
To make easy what was hard.
But as I slept, I dreamed I was
Within a temple made of glass
In which there were more images
Of gold, tiered in sundry stages,
And more rich tabernacles,
And with more gemmed pinnacles,
And more curious portraiture,
And intricate kinds of figure
Of craftsmanship than ever I saw.
For certainly, I knew no more
Of where I was, but plain to see
Venus owned most certainly
That temple, for in portraiture
I at once saw her figure
Naked, floating in the sea.
And also on her head, indeed,
Her rose garland white and red,
And her comb to comb her head,
Her doves, and her blind son
Lord Cupid, and then Vulcan,
Whose face was swarthy brown.
And as I roamed up and down,
I saw that on a wall there was
Thus written on a piece of brass:
‘I will now sing, if that I can,
The arms, and also the man
Who first, pursuing destiny,
Fugitive from Troy’s country,
To Italy, with pain, did come,
To the shores of Lavinium.’
And then begin the tale at once,
That I shall tell to you each one.
First I saw the destruction
Of Troy, through the Greek Sinon,
Who with his false forswearing
And his outward show and lying,
Had the horse brought into Troy
By which the Trojans lost their joy,
And after this was engraved, alas,
How Ilium assailed was
And won, and King Priam slain,
And Polytes his son, for certain,
Cruelly by Lord Pyrrhus.
And next to this, I saw how Venus
When that she saw the castle’s end,
Down from the heavens did descend
And urged her son Aeneas to flee;
And how he fled, and how that he
Escaped from all the cruelties,
And took his father Anchises
And bore him on his back away,
Crying, ‘Alas!’ and ‘Well-away!’
That same Anchises, in his hand,
Bore the gods of the land,
Those that were not burnt wholly.
And I saw next, in this company,
How Creusa, Lord Aeneas’ wife,
Whom he loved as he did his life,
And their young son Julus,
Also called Ascanius,
Fled too, and fearful did appear,
That it was a pity them to hear;
And through a forest as they went,
At a place where the way bent,
How Creusa was lost, alas,
And died, I know not how it was:
How he sought her and how her ghost
Urged him to flee the Greek host,
And said he must go to Italy,
Without fail, it was his destiny;
That it was a pity thus to hear,
When her spirit did appear,
The words that to him she said:
Let him protect their son she prayed.
There saw I graven too how he,
His father also, and company,
In his fleet took sail swiftly
Towards the land of Italy,
As directly as they could go.
There I saw you, cruel Juno,
That is Lord Jupiter’s wife,
Who did hate, all their life,
All those of Trojan blood,
Run and shout, as if gone mad,
To ******, the god of winds,
To blow about, all their kinds,
So fierce, that he might drench
Lord and lady, groom and *****,
Of all the Trojan nation
Without hope of salvation.
There saw I such a tempest rise
That every heart might hear the cries
Of those but painted on the wall.
There saw I graven there withal,
Venus, how you, my lady dear,
Weeping with great loss of cheer,
Prayed to Jupiter on high
To save and keep the fleet alive
Of the Trojan Aeneas,
Since that he her son was.
There saw I Jove Venus kiss,
And grant that the tempest cease.
Then saw I how the tempest went,
And how painfully Aeneas bent
His secret course, to reach the bay
In the country of Carthage;
And on the morrow, how that he
And a knight called Achates
Met with Venus on that day,
Going in her bright array
As if she was a huntress,
The breeze blowing every tress;
How Aeneas did complain,
When he saw her, of his pain,
And how his ships shattered were,
Or else lost, he knew not where;
How she comforted him so
And bade him to Carthage go,
And there he should his folk find
That on the sea were left behind.
And, swiftly through this to pace,
She made Aeneas know such grace
Of Dido, queen of that country,
That, briefly to tell it, she
Became his love and let him do
All that belongs to marriage true.
Why should I use more constraint,
Or seek my words to paint,
In speaking of love? It shall not be;
I know no such facility.
And then to tell the manner
Of how they met each other,
Were a process long to tell,
And over-long on it to dwell.
There was graved how Aeneas
Told Dido everything that was
Involved in his escape by sea.
And after graved was how she
Made of him swiftly, at a word,
Her life, her love, her joy, her lord,
And did him all the reverence
Eased him of all the expense
That any woman could so do,
Believing everything was true
He swore to her, and thereby deemed
That he was good, for such he seemed.
Alas, what harm wreaks appearance
When it hides a false existence!
For he to her a traitor was,
Wherefore she slew herself, alas!
Lo, how a woman goes amiss
In loving him that unknown is,
For, by Christ, lo, thus it fares:
All is not gold that glitters there.
For, as I hope to keep my head,
There may under charm instead
Be hidden many a rotten vice;
Therefore let none be so nice
As to judge a love by how he appear
Or by speech, or by friendly manner;
For this shall every woman find:
That some men are of that kind
That show outwardly their fairest,
Till they have got what they miss.
And then they will reasons find
Swearing how she is unkind,
Or false, or secret lover has.
All this say I of Aeneas
And Dido, so soon obsessed,
Who loved too swiftly her guest;
Therefore I will quote a proverb,
That ‘he who fully knows the herb
May safely set it to his eye’;
Certainly, that is no lie.
But let us speak of Aeneas,
How he betrayed her, alas,
And left her full unkindly.
So when she saw all utterly
That he would fail in loyalty
And go from her to Italy,
She began to wring her hands so.
‘Alas,’ quoth she, ‘here is my woe!
Alas, is every man untrue,
Who every year desires a new,
If his love should so long endure,
Or else three, peradventure?
As thus: from one love he’d win fame
In magnifying of his name,
Another’s for friendship, says he;
And yet there shall a third love be,
Who shall be taken for pleasure,
Lo, or his own profit’s measure.’
In such words she did complain,
Dido, in her great pain
As I dreamed it, for certain,
No other author do I claim.
‘Alas!’ quoth she, ‘my sweet heart,
Have pity on my sorrow’s smart,
And slay me not! Go not away!
O woeful Dido, well-away!’
Quoth she to herself so.
‘O Aeneas, what will you do?
O, now neither love nor bond
You swore me with your right hand,
Nor my cruel death,’ quoth she,
‘May hold you here still with me!
O, on my death have pity!
Truly, my dear heart, truly,
You know full well that never yet,
Insofar as I had wit,
Have I wronged you in thought or deed.
Oh, are you men so skilled indeed
At speeches, yet never a grain of truth?
Alas, that ever showed ruth
Any woman for any man!
Now I see how to tell it, and can,
We wretched women have no art;
For, certainly, for the most part
Thus are we served every one.
However sorely you men groan,
As soon as we have you received
Certain we are to be deceived;
For, though your love last a season,
Wait upon the conclusion,
And look what you determine,
And for the most part decide on.
O, well-away that I was born!
For through you my name is gone
And all my actions told and sung,
Through all this land, on every tongue.
O wicked Fame, of all amiss
Nothing’s so swift, lo, as she is!
O, all will be known that exists
Though it be hidden by the mist.
And though I might live forever,
What I’ve done I’ll save never
From it always being said, alas,
I was dishonoured by Aeneas
And thus I shall judged be:
‘Lo, what she has done, now she
Will do again, assuredly’;
Thus people say all privately.
But what’s done cannot be undone.
And all her complaint, all her moan,
Avails her surely not a straw.
And when she then truly saw
That he unto his ships was gone,
She to her chamber went anon,
And called on her sister Anna,
And began to complain to her,
And said that she the cause was
That made her first love him, alas,
And had counselled her thereto.
But yet, when this was spoken too,
She stabbed herself to the heart,
And died of the wound’s art.
But of the manner of how she died,
And all the words said and replied,
Whoso to know that does purpose,
Read Virgil in the Aeneid, thus,
Or Heroides of Ovid try
To read what she wrote ere she died;
And were it not too long to indite,
By God, here I would it write.
But, well-away, the harm, the ruth
That has occurred through such untruth,
As men may oft in books read,
And see it everyday in deed,
That mere thinking of it pains.
Lo, Demophon, Duke of Athens,
How he forswore himself full falsely
And betrayed Phyllis wickedly,
The daughter of the King of Thrace,
And falsely failed of time and place;
And when she knew his falsity,
She hung herself by the neck indeed,
For he had proved of such untruth,
Lo, was this not woe and ruth?
And lo, how false and reckless see
Was Achilles to Briseis,
And Paris to Oenone;
And Jason to Hypsipyle;
And Jason later to Medea;
And Hercules to Deianira;
For he left her for Iole,
Which led to his death, I see.
How false, also, was Theseus,
Who, as the story tells it us,
Betrayed poor Ariadne;
The devil keep his soul company!
For had he laughed, had he loured,
He would have been quite devoured,
If Ariadne had not chanced to be!
And because she on him took pity,
She from death helped him escape,
And he played her full false a jape;
For after this, in a little while,
He left her sleeping on an isle,
Deserted, lonely, far in the sea,
And stole away, and let her be,
Yet took her sister Phaedra though
With him, and on board ship did go.
And yet he had sworn to her
By all that ever he might swear,
That if she helped to save his life,
He would take her to be his wife,
For she desired nothing else,
In truth, as the book so tells.
Yet, to excuse Aeneas
Partly for his great trespass,
The book says, truly, Mercury,
Bade him go into Italy,
And leave Africa’s renown
And Dido and her fair town.
Then saw I graved how to Italy
Lord Aeneas sailed all swiftly,
And how a tempest then began
And how he lost his steersman,
The steering-oar did suddenly
Drag him overboard in his sleep.
And also I saw how the Sibyl
And Aeneas, beside an isle,
Went to Hell, for to see
His father, noble Anchises.
How he there found Palinurus
And Dido, and Deiphebus;
And all the punishments of Hell
He saw, which are long to tell.
The which whoever wants to know,
He’ll find in verses, many a row,
In Virgil or in Claudian
Or Dante, who best tell it can.
Then I saw graved the entry
That Aeneas made to Italy,
And with Latinus his treaty,
And all the battles that he
Was in himself, and his knights,
Before he had won his rights;
And how he took Turnus’ life
And won Lavinia as his wife,
And all the omens wonderful
Of the gods celestial;
How despite Juno, Aeneas,
For all her tricks, brought to pass
The end of his adventure
Protected thus by Jupiter
At the request of Venus,
Whom I pray to ever save us
And make for us our sorrows light.
When I had seen all this sight
In the noble temple thus,
‘Oh Lord,’ thought I, ‘who made us,
I never yet saw such nobleness
In statuary, nor such richness
As I see graven in this church;
I know not who made these works,
Nor where I am, nor in what country.
But now I will go out and see,
At the small gate there, if I can
Find anywhere a living man
Who can tell me where I am.’
When I out of the door ran,
I looked around me eagerly;
There I saw naught but a large field,
As far as I could see,
Without town or house or tree,
Or bush or grass or ploughed land;
For all the field was only sand,
As fine-ground as with the eye
In Libyan desert’s seen to lie;
Nor any manner of creature
That is formed by Nature
Saw I, to advise me, in this,
‘O Christ,’ I thought, ‘who art in bliss,
From phantoms and from illusion
Save me!’ and with devotion
My eyes to the heavens I cast.
Then was I aware, at the last,
That, close to the sun, as high
As I might discern with my eye,
Me thought I saw an eagle soar,
Though its size seemed more
Than any eagle I had seen.
Yet, sure as death, all its sheen
Was of gold, it shone so bright
That never men saw such a sight,
Unless the heavens above had won,
All new of gold, another sun;
So shone the eagle’s feathers bright,
And downward it started to alight.

I am a landscape of hills and valleys
and some jagged edges where
the world stops.
I have clean springs and caverns
on my face and
small peninsulas that sense
and feel on my hands.
I have changed this landscape
and ploughed it to find
the red soil that lies underneath
the pale surface.
And the people have told me
it is destroyed.
But from there inside the pain
grows a garden
and a planet continues
living.

In the barren bowl
Of the local park
There is more brown
Than green
And naked trees
Rest like tired moths
Upon grass
That has been lacerated
By studded shoes
And knees and toes
And elbows
That have ploughed it
Bare.
The edges of the path
Look like eyebrows
Scant
Poorly plucked
And rats-tail
Mongrels  
Scatter and shred
Across the carpet
Sodden
Sinewy.
Jarring teenage love
Letters
Sit upon February
The fourteenth
Like it is a mantelpiece of
Glass
Tip blue hair to grey sky
Beiged fingers
Intertwine
Black fingernails
Fumble
They watch their childhood haunts
Through the frosted panes
Of spectacle windows
And wonder why
Nostalgia dies so bitter
Today.
Kiss my empty skin
Waiting.
I find myself a love affair
In the sky
Clouds form a coastline
A single dribble of peach
Taints the ash
Like careless words
And I tilt my chin towards it
Already the spindle of my mind
Turns
And begins to weave
Gold from straw.

She stood up from the bed straight faced, turned towards the door and made her way hastily through it. She neared the door ever quickly tears swelling in her eyes before ripping it open and leaving him sitting in the bedroom motionless and still.
He meanwhile stared at the ground in awe. Trying to piece together the past hour or so and especially what just happened. He remained frozen for a period before snapping too searching round the house for her, calling her name but received no reply. Upon making a round down the hallway, he could hear the door banging against the wall, open and empty...
He rushed outside in a mad panic and bolted to the end of the driveway frantically looking in either direction for her, but by now she was already approaching the entrance to a park she was familiar with, they’d been here before. She was already making her way across the frozen grass, it numbing her feet instantly. They stung as she made each step dressed solely in a jacket and boxers. The cold night air sent her into a shivering frenzy but her eyes were fixed on the pond.
Unaware of the girl whereabouts the boy overwhelmed with guilt and worry sprinted off down the street fueled by determination and adrenaline. Sprinting several hundred metres until he tripped and tumbled grazing his sides and knees, unfathomed and eyes swollen he stood and set off running harder determined not to give up. Through blurred eyes he failed to see a couple taking an evening stroll in front of him. With a loud grunt on the part of both parties he ploughed through shaking his head and continuing as he had.

The girl stood at the foot of the pond walking to the edge of the pond. “This is it...I'm finally leaving this hell I made...” she mumbled to herself as she closed her eyes and taking deep breathes she finished with “there's no going back now...” Taking a single step forward her frame plunged into pond, sinking, body freezing and trembling as it sank deeper into the dark abyss.

The park loomed ahead, with all that was left he pushed forward, hip and side bleeding from the fall. Wincing in pain he burst into the clearing. His eyes darted to and fro’ using the minimal light from the street lights to hopefully make out something, or someone.
His gaze turned to the dark forest suspecting she may have taken off inside, it was his only lead and so the boy made his way towards it only ceasing the adrenaline fueled sprint as the disruption of ripples in water caught his eye. He turned on his heel and headed for the pond, feet numb from the dew ridden grass. Meanwhile just below the surface and falling, the girl’s throat and lungs burned. With that she let out her final breath and begun to sink faster, eyes slowly closing She thought to herself "this is my final goodbye huh....sorry I couldn't make it spark...." The bubbles began to form on the surface of the pond which the boy quickly picked up on.
"Oh my ******* god no....no no no no and no" he began yelling as he sprinted for the pond with a new sense of urgency, ripping his shirt off taking a deep breath before diving head first into the water not caring for the fact he couldn’t swim. The icy water almost knocked the wind out of him as he made contact, eyes burning, swimming faster and deeper. He could make out her pale hand above her head as she sunk. In horror the boy almost screamed underwater but knew better than to. With all he had left he grabbed hold of her hand heaving your body up and grabbing her limp body tightly. He couldn't really cry under water but his eyes started to close and he begun to run out of breath, pushing to the surface he took a breath just before the surface taking in water. He burst through the shimmering wall of black and crawled onto the bank coughing and spluttering, coughing up copious amounts of water dragging a lifeless body, and his own limp one up the steep muddy incline. Spark staggered to his knees resting on his palms, breathing hard and heavy. Gasping hungrily for air he turned to his companion. Her body was cold and pale blue. Frozen. Lifeless.

like the inconstant moon I change,
cyclical about circumstances,
serendipity and fortune exchange
appearances for second chances,

and as we each alter our perception,
we see ourselves as constant,
each and every change in direction
still seems like a straight line

with no more than closer inspection
looking behind to the distant
fading horizon in the failing light
the pattern of circles and spirals

and zigzags, stops and backtracks
a wandering chorus line of fools
all singing things I can’t take back
the realization that I am not an individual
:
but an average of multiple formulas
complex variable algebra and simple subtraction
a vector resulting from many forces
pushing and pulling and thrusts and attractions

the color of the liquid in the test tube
fizzing and changing with every next drop occurring
an organism that adapts to its environment
to thus fill its requirements and its fleeting yearnings

a flock of birds, a can of worms, a herd of cats,
an untamable unit described in terms
of the time it exists in existing- that is
another illustration, another article, at any other time or mood

a crop whose fruitfulness is determined by unusual farmers
one field ploughed, one weeded, one fertilized, one seeded
akin to the Bible, a book of numerous authors that tries to
merge allegories into a useful, enlightening anecdote with which to furnish the brood

flesh, soul, chemical, inspired, mechanical-Angel
a temptable machine whose springs and cogs
could be found to have been hand-wound
at any given time by either His Rival’s or God’s

and if Made in His Image then I must be both
wrathful and loving, vengeful and forgiving,
quick to temper and eternally patient
yet limited in time allowed to be spent living

the difference is- my choiceful subsistence briefly caresses
this quick struggle and my purpose not yet fully defined
would fate’s justice have me on the gallows for my excesses?
or would not passion for the endowment of living grant reprieve?

where is the solace for the incurably ardent?
maniacally spontaneous, courageously aloof
what cheer can be brought to the seers?
dejected clairvoyants, puppets or puppeteers to the truth

however never simultaneously clever are we
always we must be one or the other each seen
though never seemed to be separate things
now see what difficulty wrecks all my dreams
:
catharsis then epiphany then pensive then somber
an artist, a daddy, a mocked captive, an avid doubter
carouse then abolish then regret then absolve
a spouse, a skirmish, an uncommon asset, an outlet resolved

how do I bring about the determination of the jury?
which of the accomplices will abide full recognition
and be he who will stand to read the indistinct verdict
to the culpable crowd assembled in this the trial of alternation

so contempt be then to the court of constancy!
no thing in heaven or earth adheres to its philosophy
render the sentence that I may be found guilty
yet I am consented to return undestroyed, now let the die be cast

these confines beg for stasis I cannot deliver
my cell itself is afloat without a tether
these customs require that I be a quitter
yea though the pendulum returns to the tock once the tic has passed

Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly
And heard sweet notes of sylvan music blown
From antique reeds to common folk unknown:
And often launched our bark upon that sea
Which the nine Muses hold in empery,
And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam,
Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home
Till we had freighted well our argosy.
Of which despoiled treasures these remain,
Sordello’s passion, and the honeyed line
Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine
Driving his pampered jades, and more than these,
The seven-fold vision of the Florentine,
And grave-browed Milton’s solemn harmonies.

(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)

I

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

II

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one’s life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

III

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain’s edge as bare as the creature’s skull,
Save a mere **** of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
—I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool.

IV

But the city, oh the city—the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there’s something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry!
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by:
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

V

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
’Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:
You’ve the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey olive trees.

VI

Is it better in May, I ask you? You’ve summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
’Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

VII

Is it ever hot in the square? There’s a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash
Round the lady atop in her conch—fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash!

VIII

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like Death’s lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle,
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.
Enough of the seasons,—I spare you the months of the fever and chill.

IX

Ere opening your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:
No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there’s the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture—the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
Above it, behold the Archbishop’s most fatherly of rebukes,
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke’s!
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,
“And moreover,” (the sonnet goes rhyming,) “the skirts of Saint Paul has reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.”
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.

X

But bless you, it’s dear—it’s dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate
It’s a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still—ah, the pity, the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles;
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke’s guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals.
Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of a Transcendental World
With Deliverance and Freedom
Under a Sky of Neon Pearls,
Where the Populace are Former Loves
All Gathered in the Clouds
And Lend an Ear, for Bygone Cheer
So Memoirs can be Ploughed.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of Archaic Silver Screen
Parading Lavish Garments
And Conversing with James Dean,
Where Bowler Hats are Stock Attire
And Pea-coats Line the Hall
And Champagne Flutes, Say 'Fill your Boots'
To an Infinite Curtain Call.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of a Ride on the Good Ship Hope
With Secret Codes and Yellow-bricked Roads
And ***** with the Pope,
Where Lotus-eaters Man The Decks
And White Rabbits Scale the Mast
We'll Sail Away, On a Tranquil Day
And Pervade the Ocean Vast.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of Unblemished Skin and Bone
On a Bed of Fragrant Petals
On which Countless Seeds are Sewn,
Where Laborious Figures Embrace as One
Compelling Magnets to Concede
And Music will, Amuse them 'till
They Repeat the Final Scene.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
That all the World's a Stage
And that Pair are a Distant Footnote
On the Thirty Thousandth Page,
Where the Cast are Poised in Waiting
And the Finale is About to Start
They Take a Bow, And this Tells Me How
I Came to Play this Part.

*December 2010 (Completed April 2011)

The boat ploughed on. Now Alcatraz was past
And all the grey waves flamed to red again
At the dead sun's last glimmer. Far and vast
The Sausalito lights burned suddenly
In little dots and clumps, as if a pen
Had scrawled vague lines of gold across the hills;
The sky was like a cup some rare wine fills,
And stars came as he watched
-- and he was free
One splendid instant -- back in the great room,
Curled in a chair with all of them beside
And the whole world a rush of happy voices,
With laughter beating in a clamorous tide. . . .
Saw once again the heat of harvest fume
Up to the empty sky in threads like glass,
And ran, and was a part of what rejoices
In thunderous nights of rain; lay in the grass
Sun-baked and tired, looking through a maze
Of tiny stems into a new green world;
Once more knew eves of perfume, days ablaze
With clear, dry heat on the brown, rolling fields;
Shuddered with fearful ecstasy in bed
Over a book of knights and ****** shields . . .
The ship slowed, jarred and stopped. There, straight ahead,
Were dock and fellows. Stumbling, he was whirled
Out and away to meet them -- and his back
Slumped to the old half-cringe, his hands fell slack;
A big boy's arm went round him -- and a twist
Sent shattering pain along his tortured wrist,
As a voice cried, a bloated voice and fat,
"Why it's Miss Nancy! Come along, you rat!"

a hound barking will not make me flinch*

as frank o’hara would have it, i did this, i did that...
or as i would have it, i didn’t do this, and i’m sure
i didn’t do that,
but the beetroot red on the freshly ploughed fields
of brown were my reminder
as i sat on a pile of stones i stacked in the field
admiring the skyline...
how did this freshly ploughed field of brown
turn to beetroot red with the sunset?
never mind...
i got my wish...
petted a stranger’s rottweiler on my way home waltzing
a beer-can to an invisible maestro’s approval.

There were three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
An’ they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

They took a plough and ploughed him down,
Put clods upon his head;
An’ they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerfu’ spring came kindly on,
And show’rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surprised them all.

The sultry suns of summer came,
And he grew thick and strong;
His head weel armed wi’ pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.

The sober autumn entered mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Showed he began to fail.

His colour sickened more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.

They’ve ta’en a weapon long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then tied him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.

They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgelled him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turned him o’er and o’er.

They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim;
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.

They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appeared,
They tossed him to and fro.

They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a miller used him worst of all,
For he crushed him ‘tween two stones.

And they hae ta’en his very heart’s blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise;
For if you do but taste his blood,
’Twill make your courage rise;

’Twill make a man forget his woe;
’Twill heighten all his joy:
’Twill make the widow’s heart to sing,
Tho’ the tear were in her eye.

Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in old Scotland!

Love thou mind love and love
For,love is the binding Will of God.
Dip thy nib in live and gently draw
Draw sweet,sweet scenes around.

Honour blush as Ego's Pride
Upon thy cheeks flash rosy.
Body ******,hinges shake,Oh! Lord!
As emotional volcanoes erupt lava of anger.

Creator interlace creatues to depend
Hence,repent on,own-made calamities.
Love! give and take  as much as you need-
Only that much you need not be greedy.

Lust is  rust of love a desert fruit.
Being deserted,I once ran and ran
Searching mirage of human- love
With Tsunamis in eyes 'nd feeble feet.

Love is not selfish lust:
It is candle light for service.
Light:brightening darkened corners
Shows  us: all are creatures equal.

As we do violate the Nature's Laws
Laws of Nature will violate ours.
Walls will be demolished,Hills and valleys
Ploughed with thunder and quakes.

Love,thou, mind! love and  love
For, Love is  the binding Will of God.

If this world had a face, it’d be bound tight and beset,
If there’s good in this place, I’ve not found sight of it yet.
Past all the blood and the hurt, and ravaged sounds of regret,
There must be good in this world, but I haven’t fount it yet.

All that ought to run deep, all that ought to come through,
That which taught men of decency all that they do,
Has been lost on the masses and torn from all trace,
So the greenest of grass is now scorned and replaced.

Those I’m forced to call friend – are a tax on my time,
With each talk I pretend an’ with each laugh I could cry,
Those of blood get me down – another taunt or a test,
There must be good in this town, but it hasn’t warmed to me yet.

With un-pleaseables I talk, in that cold name of love,
By any reasonable chalk I’ve done more than too much,
With unappeasables I stride, as I toss away time,
To their agreeable pride, I have lost all of mine.

Pour elixirs in ears, with no trace of intent,
Just a duty of peer-ship and misplaced compliments,
And all they want to hear’s their re-vented hot air,
And they’ll only keep near those with plenty to serve.

If I gave you your praise, and ten pounds of my flesh,
And waved you on your way to sounds of high address,
If I bundled and bound all the scraps of my soul,
And put them in your hand with a map you could own,
If I gave you my freedom, my voice and my keep,
Would you take of your leave and leave me to my sleep?
If I gave you my will and my weakness and wants,
Could the lands lonely chill turn from bleakness to warmth?
If I covered my face – could I finally rest?
If there’s good in this place, why was I to be left?

If I gathered all grit from the dregs of this hole,
And fashioned a gift from my old beggars bowl,
If I took all the soot and the silt of my years,
And tailored a trinket with blood, spit and tears,
If I capped it and crowned it with carvings of coin,
Could I buy passage to grounds past the hard ones I toil?
Where I’m no longer a ghost in the guise of a man,
Or bare the breathless ill-boast that I’ve lied all I can,
Where I’m no more a mark to be treaded upon,
A downpour-bound spark or a silent-said song,
Where I’m long past purveyors an’ the prospecting proud,
All the tall self-surveyors that are laughably loud.
Where these meek-minded masses are ploughed-up and purged,
And all new greener grasses feel they’d never been there?

For now people are a crowd, a winter I can’t leave behind,
And the street is just a sound, a splinter in my weary mind.
Through the fixed filter of rain, I try to keep my bearings right,
And all the tints within the frame come only by steel burning lights.

They free and they halt and they warn and they tempt,
A beaming assault on the swarms we call men.
And the laughing and loathing the swarm has within,
Wraps up my home and what warmth could have been.
It rattles and ruptures and rips it apart,
And battles for blood – all the blood of my heart.
And just as the coldness draws me into sleep,
A new day unfolds and the empty heart beats.
Yes just as the coldness draws me into peace,
A new day unfolds to the dawning of beeps.

Why must this alarm come and shake what was still?
Why can’t you be calm? You the big waking world.

I have a mind who’s only friend’s a ravaged voice of sure regret,
Which chimes of kindnesses to end this savage choice of pure neglect,
Must be an unknown soul around, although they haven’t shown up  yet,
For all I know just hold and drown – and still I haven’t blown up yet,
If we could see then we could learn, our little lives need not be Hell,
If there be good within this world, why does it hide itself so well?

The end begins,
not with the first stain
of red sputum on a white handkerchief.
Nor by fingers grown numb with
seizure from the heart’s decay.
But, with an act
that leaves a toy discarded
in the nursery of early choice,
reviving for abandoned deeds
the doppel-gangers of dead youths,
clothed with reproach and unfleshed
figments of the mind’s high hopes of
futures fenced in a child’s green field,
that now is hedged; and ploughed,
and grown bitter with a
named and known crop.

© James Rainsford 2010

An old man in a lodge within a park;
  The chamber walls depicted all around
  With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,
  And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
  Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
  He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
  Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
  The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
  Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing ****, I hear the note
  Of lark and linnet, and from every page
  Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

November shakes the wet from
Her wings and stretches them to
Their full reach; tips touching
The death and birth of October
And December,
Feathers the colour of leafless
Trees and ploughed fields.

A thirty day lifespan of deathbed
Lullabies and hardened faces,
Bodies crouching to lay themselves
Upon their own warmth in
Desperation, clouds of breath
Escaping layers of
Cotton and wool.

Winter is as inevetable as dying.
I wander between birches and
Pinetrees like crooked teeth
Protruding from the mist; the
Bones of something decomposed
Between moss and
***** forest water.

Black as old blood.
Brown as mud, air like millions
Of tiny arrows against any bare
Skin.
This landscape could be someone's
Nightmare, some horror movie
Set or a Ted Hughes poem backdrop.

But I stand, still and alone, one
Palm against a rotten tree trunk,
The other upon my Norwegian
Heart. It is a time for looking within
For strength. To be silent and not think,
But feel; a time for building fires.
To gather what's dry, and prepare.

THE FARMER
The lonely wood pigeon perched, echoes, sounds of joy – ‘the morning has risen’. The farmer stirs from a deep slumber as a beam of sunshine escapes through the curtain, reaching his furrowed, leathered, weather-beaten brow. He places one foot on the wooden floor, his lips part as the second foot completes the pair. Whispering, “Thank you;” he feels a deep gratitude for having awakened to this new day. He scratches his head in anxiety, with a hand that has worked the farm, wondering if the area aid from the EU will keep him afloat. He understands his maker has determined this day, yet the weather elements will dictate the farmer’s way. He glimpses through the window to see what is yet to come and sights a congregation of birds on the electricity cables above - a sure sign of rain on the way!
In the kitchen, he listens for a weather update. Warming himself near the Aga cooker while making a brew. He looks to the Sacred Heart picture and the hanging family rosary beads. To understand the farmer, one must understand the traditions of the land. The land has a holden-fist on the heart of the farmer, as many farmers well know. It has caused bitterness and disputes in generations past. The farmer must feel a love for the land and a passion for what he does best. The land holds high expectations and demands dedication from him.
From the first leaves falling in autumn, to the nurturing of crops through understanding of spraying techniques. In winter, hearing the cows crave for hay, and repairing machines during the low times. Springtime brings cattle and sheep grazing pastures new; and seagulls landing on freshly ploughed fields. Grass whirling in the wind, then corn ears blowing side by side. The warm glow of the valley in summer brings the harvesting of ripe golden corn. Haymaking sees farm picnics, readymade tea in old lemonade bottles, poured into mugs and stirred by straw, with the smell too of homemade bread and curney cake. The farmer, seeing birds migrate in a ‘V’ pattern, feels an anxiety for the year-end accounts yet to come. Feathers are scattered outside the chicken coup - the fox has been and gone!
The farmer leaves the doorway in silence and walks out to the fields to assess his crop. The early morning dew dampening the ends of his trousers as he walks. A slight smile parts his lips as he listens to insects galore. He bends down and reaches with a strong, hard-skinned, gloveless hand, grasping his crop and pulling from the root. He sees what he needs to know. In that moment he is complete; he is a Farmer! He turns and strokes his dog, which had been laging behind.
He understands his fate. One day he will leave the land behind – he will be gone, but the land will remain forever!

"Copyright Verona Pentony 2014  from 2nd collection Reflections from Time  see www.veronapentony.com