I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off:
grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
towards which my deep longings migrated
and my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

Pablo Neruda

This Moment is 4 today, so to celebrate we went to the sales ...

God loves the sensitive ones ...
This is surely the most exciting, energetic, multi-talented band on the planet right now. I hope someone posts a decent quality clip of them doing 'Intervention' at Glastonbury. I watched the whole of that set on tv, and it was brilliant. They'll be in Scotland playing to 80,000 people at T in the Park next month, and although I don't much like crowds I wish I had a ticket for that. Maybe if I stand in the little park down the road looking over to Fife the sound will drift across the Firth of Forth to me.

Sonnet
To vein her brow’s pallor, delicate,
Japan has granted its clearest blue;
The white porcelain is of white less true
Than her lucent neck, her temples of agate;

In her moist eye gleams a gentle light;
The nightingale’s voice is harsher yet,
And, when she rises in our dark night,
We praise the moon in a cloudy dress;

Her silver eyes, burnished, move fluidly;
Caprice has pointed her pert little nose;
Her mouth has the red of raspberry, peach;

Her movements flow with a Chinese flow,
And beside her one breathes from her beauty
Something sweet, like the fragrance of tea.

Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)

These recent phpotographs were taken at a hydro-electric dam in the Highlands. On the way I stopped to eat my picnic lunch on a large granite rock beside the path. No sooner had I unpacked my sandwiches (ham and tomato, since you ask) than I was accosted by an excitable black labrador which bounded straight up to me and made a lunge for my lunch. I fended it off, and as I did so a middle-aged blonde woman appeared, shouting at the dog to leave me alone. It obeyed her, albeit rather shamefacedly, and the following conversation ensued:

she (clinging onto the dog's collar): Sorry about that. He'll eat anything I'm afraid.
me: Well he's not getting my lunch!
she: No, but given half a chance he would. He ate my glasses this morning.
me: Really? You mean he chewed them?
she: No, he ate them. 400 pounds worth of glasses. Last week it was my daughter's brace for her teeth - now we have to get a new one made, and goodness knows how many other bits and pieces he's swallowed. I can't leave anything lying about. He ate my car keys once.
me: Sounds like he has a problem.
she: Well, a vet told me that this kind of behaviour isn't all that uncommon in labradors. He particularly likes small bits of clothing - socks, underwear, gloves, but they all come out the other end undamaged. Have you ever seen a perfectly pooed sock?
me (clutching my sandwiches): No I haven't, but I suppose you'll eventually get your glasses back then?
she: From experience things like that don't 'travel' quite so well.
me: Perhaps you need a new dog?
she: Oh no, he's so sweet and good-natured, I could never part with him. The only thing he doesn't eat are soft toys. He hides them in piles under beds or behind the sofa, then lies down and sleeps surrounded by them.
me: I see.
she (breezily): Well, enjoy your lunch.

evolution for dodos

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anaïs Nin

To a poet, language is all that it has ever been and is capable of becoming, all it has ever done or is capable of doing. In a sense, too, every poet who has ever written anywhere can be his or her contemporary in timelessness.
Michael Hamburger (1924-2007)

The piano kissed…

Joyous notes, a sounding harpsichord’s intrusion.
Pétrus Borel

The piano kissed by a delicate hand
Gleams distantly in rose-grey evening
While with a wingtips’ weightless sound

A fine old tune, so fragile, charming
Roams discreetly, almost trembling,
Through the chamber She’s long perfumed.

What is this sudden cradle song
That gradually lulls my poor being?
What do you want of me, playful one?

What do you wish, slight vague refrain
Drifting now, dying, towards the window
Opening a little on a patch of garden?

Paul Verlaine, translated by AS Kline

I followed this arrow. There were no happy dancing people to be seen anywhere. Only an empty building site and a narrow lane with graffiti painted on the faded brick walls. The only sign of life was a man who passed me in the lane, speaking Polish on his mobile phone.

Through Nightmare
Never be disenchanted of
That place you sometimes dream yourself into,
Lying at large remove beyond all dream,
Or those you find there, though but seldom
In their company seated -

The untameable, the live, the gentle.
Have you not known them? Whom? They carry
Time looped so river-wise about their house
There's no way in by history's road
To name or number them.

In your sleepy eyes I read the journey
Of which disjointedly you tell; which stirs
My loving admiration, that you should travel
Through nightmare to a lost and moated land,
Who are timorous by nature.

Robert Graves

Galina is a gift to me from God. I will tell you the first time we met. I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Prague. Suddenly I notice these slender legs walking down the stairs very slowly. I then see this nice midriff – and then these magnificent breasts. I say a quick prayer to God: please give her a beautiful face – and He did! There she was. I immediately wooed her, and I proposed to her four days later ...

Mstislav Rostropovich

Her slender arms, her back straight and soft,
her long flanks, fleshly smooth and white,
he began to stroke, and blessed full oft
her snowy throat, her breasts round and slight.
Thus in his heaven he started to take delight,
and with that a thousand times he kissed her too:
so that for joy he scarce knew what to do.

Geoffrey Chaucer, from Troilus and Cressida
'modernised' by AS Kline

the adventures of mr lee ... strangely compelling

If any, so by love refined,
That he soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,

He—though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same—
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part far purer than he came.

This ecstasy doth unperplex
(We said) and tell us what we love ;
We see by this, it was not sex ;
We see, we saw not, what did move :

But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this, and that.

from 'The Ecstasy' by John Donne (1572-1631)

You're on earth. There's no cure for that.
Samuel Beckett

Goodbye
I remember holdin' on to you
All them long and lonely nights I put you through
Somewhere in there I'm sure I made you cry
But I can't remember if we said goodbye

But I recall all of them nights down in Mexico
One place I may never go, in my life again
Was I just off somewhere just too high?
But I can't remember if we said goodbye

I only miss you every now and then
Like a soft breeze blowin' up from the Caribbean
Most Novembers I break down and cry
But I can't remember if we said goodbye

Steve Earle, from the album 'Train A Comin''

click the title for a superb version with Emmylou Harris (1997)

Tracy: Let's fool around, it'll take your mind off it.
Isaac: Hey, how many times a night can you, how, how often can you make love in an evening?
Tracy: Well, a lot.
Isaac: Yeah! I can tell, a lot. That's, well... a lot is my favorite number.

Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway in 'Manhattan' (1979)

This looks interesting if you're a Glenn Gould fan ...

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
James Thurber

Interviewer: Now, during the Flower People period, who was your drummer?
David St. Hubbins: Stumpy's replacement, Peter James Bond. He also died in mysterious circumstances. We were playing a, uh...
Nigel Tufnel: ...Festival.
David: Jazz blues festival. Where was that?
Nigel: Blues jazz, really.
Derek Smalls: Blues jazz festival.
Nigel: It was in the Isle of, uh...
David: Isle of Lucy. The Isle of Lucy jazz and blues festival.
Nigel: And, uh, it was tragic, really. He exploded on stage.
Derek: Just like that.
David: He just went up.
Nigel: He just was like a flash of green light... and that was it. Nothing was left.
David: It's true, this really did happen.
Nigel: It's true. There was a little green globule on his drum seat.
David: Like a stain, really.
Nigel: It was more of a stain than a globule, actually.
David: You know, several, you know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

from This is Spinal Tap

I love
I love sliding I love upsetting everything
I love coming in I love sighing
I love taming the furtive manes of hair
I love hot I love tenuous
I love supple I love infernal
I love sugared but elastic the curtain of springs turning to glass
I love pearl I love skin
I love tempest I love pupil
I love benevolent seal long-distance swimmer
I love oval I love struggling
I love shining I love breaking
I love the smoking spark silk vanilla mouth to mouth
I love blue I love known—knowing
I love lazy I love spherical
I love liquid beating drum sun if it wavers
I love to the left I love in the fire
I love because I love at the edges
I love forever many times Just one
I love freely I love especially
I love separately I love scandalously
I love similarly obscurely uniquely
                                    HOPINGLY
I love         I shall love

Jacques-Bernard Brunius, 1944

Poetry
And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

Pablo Neruda

lomo

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
Samuel Beckett

100 movies, 100 numbers

Juliet
Hist! Romeo, hist! O, for a falconer's voice,
To lure this tassel-gentle back again!
Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud;
Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine,
With repetition of my Romeo's name.

Romeo
It is my soul that calls upon my name:
How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears!

I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.
George Bernard Shaw

My errand this afternoon was chiefly to look at the gooseberry at Saw Mill Brook.

Thoreau's Journal, May 1854

nice work if you can get it ...