October 2011
1 post
September 2011
3 posts
“I asked a Kantian, “Does this mean that, if I don’t give myself...”
– DEREK PARFIT on Kant’s Universal Law
February 2011
2 posts
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll...
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in...
January 2011
1 post
Autobiographia Literaria
When I was a child I played by myself in a corner of the schoolyard all alone. I hated dolls and I hated games, animals were not friendly and birds flew away. If anyone was looking for me I hid behind a tree and cried out “I am an orphan.” And here I am, the center of all beauty! writing these poems! Imagine!
(FRANK O’HARA)
December 2010
8 posts
London Snow
When men were all asleep the snow came flying, In large white flakes falling on the city brown, Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying, Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town; Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing; Lazily and incessantly floating down and down: Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing; Hiding difference, making...
The Disciple
When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort.
And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, ‘We do...
Remembrance
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave? Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover Over the mountains, on that northern shore, Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover That noble heart for ever, ever more? Cold in the earth, and...
“I’d call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating...”
– WOODY ALLEN
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside...
When I Have Fears
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact’ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair...
I lost myself on a cool damp night I gave myself...
The Garden Of Love
I went to the Garden of Love,And saw what I never had seen:A Chapel was built in the midst,Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut,And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;So I turn’d to the Garden of LoveThat so many sweet flowers bore; And I saw it was filled with graves,And tomb-stones where flowers should be;And Priests in black gowns were...
November 2010
4 posts
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
(WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS)
“A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of someone who had searched for...”
– P.G. WODEHOUSE, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
“The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very...”
– BILLIE HOLIDAY
Having A Coke With You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches partly because of the secrecy...