Archive for November, 2007
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pin rest; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney
November 8th, 2007
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don’t want so much misery.
I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.
Pablo Neruda
November 8th, 2007
Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.
William Shakespeare
November 8th, 2007
At first cock-crow the ghosts must go
Back to their quiet graves below.
Theodosia Garrison
November 8th, 2007
Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
November 8th, 2007
If you would create something,
you must be something.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
November 8th, 2007
Two human loves make one divine.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
November 8th, 2007
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose.
Helen Keller
November 8th, 2007
What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
November 8th, 2007
When you stood in the doorway
engulfed in summer shadow
and waved goodbye to me,
I made a silent promise to the setting sun
and hoped you would hear me.
I’ll never love another like I love you, Darlin’
I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep.
It doesn’t really matter if you don’t feel like that;
Compared to you, they’re only second best to me.
They followed me around, offerin’ me kisses,
gold, and diamond rings.
But to each of them I said,
“Hey, Honey, I’m sorry, but I know my heart’s desire. ”
I’ll never love another like I love you, Darlin’
I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep.
It doesn’t really matter if you don’t feel like that;
Compared to you, they’re only second best to me.
The years passed by, college came and went
and now, I’m comin’ home.
I dialed your number, said a quick hello,
then sang into the phone:
I’ll never love another like I love you, Darlin’
I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep.
It doesn’t really matter if you don’t feel like that;
Compared to you, they’re only second best to me.
Silence on the line, then I heard you smile,
and take a long deep breath.
You said, “Baby, I know exactly what you’re thinking,
but why’d you wait all this while? ”
Because I’ll never love another like I love you, Baby
I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep.
I’ll never love another like I love you, Baby.
Compared to you, they’re only second best to me.
Daisy
November 8th, 2007
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