nineveh_uk

My calendar has moved to April, and Princess Shikishi is feeling more cheerful about things.

Now the cherry trees
seem to have bloomed;
it's cloudy,
hazy with spring
the way the world appears

And indeed when it is sunny, it is very nice. Unfortunately, the intervals between the sunny intervals are still blooming season. I see cricket was called off due to snow both today and yesterday, and the cherry blossoms' longevity won't have been helped by the periodic hail. I see that a year ago today I was wearing a T-shirt and sunhat.

Last year's blossom below cut ( Read more... )

According to the British haiku society, an organisation whose website appears to indicate that their only association with the word 'joy' is that it is one syllable, a haiku 'should derive from spontaneous, concrete, personal experience in a certain moment of heightened awareness'. In that sense, the following certainly qualifies...

Holy fuck!
Through the train window
The Eiger's north face.





Actually, I think I said 'Fucking hell!', and I can't be bothered to find the volume of my diary to check if I ever wrote it down, but 'Holy fuck! scans better. It is in any case one of the most extraordinary sights in nature that I have ever seen. It bursts out of the scenery in a way that the above pic, which I have not managed to re-size, bursts out of the flist.

Not even Thought for the Day can have one reaching for the off switch like the words 'our Friday poem - William Wordsworth' And Tintern Abbey at that.

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?

Where beth they biforen us weren,
houndes ladden and havekes beren,
and hadden feld and wode?
The riche levedies in hoere bour,
that wereden gold in hoere tressour,
with hoere brightte rode?

Eten and drounken, and maden hem glad;
hoere lif was al with gamen i-lad,
men kneleden hem biforen;
they beren hem wel swithe heye;
and in a twincling of an eye
hoere soules weren forloren.

Were is that lawhing and that song,
that trayling and that proude yong,
tho havekes and tho houndes?
Al that joye is went away,
that wele is comen to weylaway,
to manye harde stoundes.

Hoere paradis they nomen here,
and nou they lyen in helle i-fere;
the fuir hit brennes hevere:
long is ay, and long is o,
long is wy, and long is wo;
thennes ne cometh they nevere.

***

This post is brought to you by my belief that "forlorn" is one of the best words in the English language, and that it is a minor linguistic tragedy that it isn't around more. I am also a sucker for a good ubi sunt motif.

azdak’s posting of Chesterton’s Antichrist, Or The Reunion Of Christendom: An Ode inspired me to think of Chesterton, and what with the present JKR court case, of Harry Potter, hence to this poem, the second stanza of which inspired a plot bunny about Lupin being invited by Narcissa to visit Malfoy Manor after Voldemort's first defeat. Alas, it had no actual plot, and I’m not that interested in Lupin, so its chances of ever being written are slim. But the poem still makes me think of the sudden thick gloom beneath National Trust roller blinds protecting the soft furnishings against the bright light outside, and Agatha Christie type characters sniffing heroin off a feather, and the Death Eaters, which fit in even better after Deathly Hallows, which I am just about to re-read. I don't think it's a brilliant poem, but it makes me think of stories.

The Aristocrat

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What’sitsname (it isn’t far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;
But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t brag himself.

O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What’sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that’s played behind its door,
Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,
Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t keep his word.

There’s a poetry meme. And damn it, but I am going to post.

Hall and Knight( Read more... )