Cascando (1936)

1

why not merely the despaired of

occasion of

wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden

they will always start dragging too soon

the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want

bringing up the bones the old loves

sockets filled once with eyes like yours

all always is it better too soon than never

the black want splashing their faces

saying again nine days never floated the loved

nor nine months

nor nine lives

2

saying again

if you do not teach me I shall not learn

saying again there is a last

even of last times

last times of begging

last times of loving

of knowing not knowing pretending

a last even of last times of saying

if you do not love me I shall not be loved

if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again

love love love thud of the old plunger

pestling the unalterable

whey of words

terrified again

of not loving

of loving and not you

of being loved and not by you

of knowing not knowing pretending

pretending

I and all the others that will love you

if they love you

3

unless they love you

Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)

Arak

I raised my head on the rampart,

my gaze fell on a corpse drifting down the river, afloat on the water:

I too shall become like that, just so shall I be!

The heart feels pain.

Names are being written upon water

or are traced upon the sands.

Carvèd stones turn to dust

and the vainglories of old are but all forgotten.

Words befuddle memories,

dreams stupefy our impressions and make history.

Seldom rivers disgorge the interred kings of yore;

oftener men determine the rightful

in full fathom five of water.

the wronged are doomed to sail silently to the sea –

the laws of nature and of men equally distrustful.

He who watches rivers exposes himself to such doubt.

And all our visions are frustrated

bewildered

and we come to wander the wild

for we fear death.

The heart, must I remind thee, deals pain

to whoever listens to the beatings

at the dark of the dark of night,

when love has absconded for the day.

The shaking of my hands

stopped on the grip the rampart.

I need an istikan of arak.

HE MOURNS FOR THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED, AND LONGS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

"Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?

I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;

I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns,

For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear

Under my feet that they follow you night and day.

A man with a hazel wand came without sound;

He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way;

And now my calling is but the calling of a hound;

And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by.

I would that the Boar without bristles had come from the West

And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky

And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest."

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), from The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).

The last

They're all that's left of my family,

The last remnants of a ragged house.

Tree bereft of branches and leaves.

Life passing by in fury or drowsily.

They're all that come at night and rouse

Me from slumber, the hours bundled in sheaves.

They're naught more than shadows.

They might be ghosts, roaming the meadows

Before my tired eyes, they might be.

They might be dead, for all I know.

They might be. They might be.

They come and stand at the threshold,

not undaring, not unimpatient.

As old as the world they are, as old,

and wroth they are, and uncomplaisant.

Yet only they remain of those I loved,

once, long ago, when I was young.

Oh, how many a lonely day has passed

since then! Beyond count and unsung

they are. Hours and shadows now glassed,

time having reclaimed them from the deep.

Time slowly through my pores seep

and all I can see are shadows, shadows

around me. They have come – in fact

they have never left. They tell me I owe

them my eyes, stipulated in some obscure contract.

There are talks now the debt to halve

For after this they said they'd leave

And those shades are all the family I have.

A talent of talent

"Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

Even truer now

"A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living."

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Child-ness

"Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play."

Heraclitus of Ephesus, philosopher (circa 535 - 475 BCE)

The long run

I am tired of looking for it / tired of waiting for it too / tired of analysing the whys / the wherefores / and the whatnots / tired of trying to please / trying to look the part / tired of having ideas / and strength for two / tired of carrying / of consoling / of listening / of playing roles I shouldn't play / tired of thinking / of thinking deep into the night / tired of dealing with others' Centipedes / of shepherding / of making mistakes / of being on my own / tired of trudging where others run / of lagging behind / of the days without aim / of solitude / tired of averting my eyes / of the long hours of contemplation, tea in hand, at the outside world / tired of waiting for hours for a phone call or a text message which I know full well won't come / tired of the silence even music I love cannot dissipate / of the long sunrises, the fiery sunsets, the howling of the wind, the loud thunderclaps I cannot share / I am tired of masturbating / tired of the emotivity which plagues my interactions / tired of it all / tired of the long stretches of sand rolling under my feet / tired of staying put here / tired of living in a stagnant, one-horse town / tired of running desultorily / tired of the rain / of being out of breath / of this long, drenching-to-the-bones run

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 3

Poodles really are a peculiar fork in the evolutionary tree. The Wikipedia article concerning them is one of the most ridiculous panegyrics ever written, to men and animals alike. Pudles, as the Old English wills it, are not water dogs: they are etymologically puddle dogs. How come this breed, deprived of any instinct for the most part, became the staple royal items to have? How did they rise to such prominence over, say, the basset hound? I can't imagine a lambda night watchman unleashing a poodle in the dark of night and shouting “Have at them, Troy!” Nor can I imagine them jumping overboard to save the life of a drowning man, nor sniffing their way through the toe of an avalanche. Mephistopheles making his entrance as a black poodle is as ludicrous as having designer dogs, or names such as the Scandinavian clip or the English saddle clip. Poodles were clipped in such fashion by French circus people who, for obvious comical effects, decided to make it look laughable. They succeeded beyond expectations.

The women – pardon me for pointing this out so near after Women's Day, but none of the menfolk have been reported to be clad in similar fashion – who dress themselves and their dog(s) in matching clothes are equally derisible. The interchangeability of the posture of the two is, on the other hand, if you picture it with reasonable accuracy, quite worthy of a laugh.

But enough of poodles, let me direct my irked pen to alternative targets. Others (men and women alike, I can't be picking on the same all the time – bar poodles, they deserve it) who get my goat are those who gesture with their phone as if the person they are talking to were in front of them. They draw aerial charts or point to such and such direction. I can't imagine the bewildered face of their interlocutor at the other end.

Equally irking are those irascible hoi polloi who comment on a movie at the cinema and/or chomp on pop-corn. I sometimes feel like packing an old shoe in my bag beforehand, in order to throw it at them. The cover of darkness shouldn't benefit mosquitoes only.

The effrontery of the rollerbladed post-juvenescent swooshing an inch past my elbow galls me to no end, but more nettling perhaps are the literary parasites who read from your book, above your shoulder, in the tube: their impatience at your slowness – whilst you're trying to enjoy the novel – is baffling. Had they got the nerve, they would turn the wretched page themselves. I drive them around the bend by flipping the page halfway, stopping in mid-air, pretending to finish the page in candid rapture and then turning around and ask: “You done? Because I can't wait to turn that page.” Life, sometimes, has such simple pleasures it would be a sin to let them pass.

The race – or should I say melee – to obtain the last parking space at any supermarket bears witness to the prodigious capacity of man – yes, usually men are up to scratch in this regard – to contrive ingenuous plans of action in a fraction of a second. The ensuing foofaraw between the protagonists more often than not makes your day and appends a flourish of newfangled contumelies to your vocabulary. Unfortunately, we don't usually have time to follow-up on any retaliation taking place once the two belligerents are in the said supermarket. Love is all around.

This being said, I still can't say I'm crustier than my great-grandma, and that means something.

Alt-J (∆) | A Take Away Show

She only ever walks to count her steps,
Eighteen strides and she stops to abide by the law that she herself has set -
That eighteen steps is one complete set, and before the next nine right and nine left
She looks up at the blue and whispers to all of the above:
'Don't let me drown, don't breath alone, no kicks no pangs no broken bones.
Never let me sink, always feel at home, no sticks no shanks and no stones.
Never leave it too late, always enjoy the taste of the great grey world of hearts.'
As all dogs everywhere bark, 'It's worth knowing
Like all good fruit the balance of life is in the ripe and ruin.'