Tuesday 31 August 2010

On Water

Water

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My litany would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

In the words of Philip Larkin

Saturday 28 August 2010

On Wolves

Wolves

I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
Flushed by the children's bedtime, level with the shore.

The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want
To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus
But to keep my eye only on the nearer future
And after that let the sea flow over us.

Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle,
Join hands and make believe that joined
Hands will keep away the wolves of water
Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed
That no one hears them among the talk and laughter.

In the words of Louis Macneice

On Being Wrong

To experience a thing as beautiful means: to experience it necessarily wrongly

In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche

On Ditches

Vladimir: May one enquire where His Highness spent the night?
Estragon: In a ditch.
Vladimir: (admiringly)A ditch! Where?

In the words of Samuel Beckett