No.2

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I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. 

- Gilda Radner 1946-89

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I sit beside the fire and think

Of all that I have seen

Of meadow flowers and butterflies

In summers that have been,

Of yellow leaves and gossamer

In autumns that there were

With morning mist and silver sun

And wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think

Of how the world will be

When winter comes without a spring

That I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things

That I have never seen

In every wood in every spring

There is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think

Of people long ago

And people that will see a world

That I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think

Of times there were before,

I listen for returning feet

And voices at the door.

-  J.R.R. Tolkien 1892-1973

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from Blindness by Jose Saramago

Has everyone told their story about the last time they could see, asked the old man with the black eyepatch, Ill tell you mine, if theres no one else, said the unknown voice, If there is, he can speak after you, so fire away, The last thing I saw was a painting, A painting, repeated the old man with the black eyepatch, and where was this painting, I had gone to the museum, it was a picture of a cornfield with crows and cypress trees and a sun that gave the impression of having been made up of the fragments of other suns, Sounds like a Dutch painter, I think it was, but there was a drowning dog in it, already half submerged, poor creature, In that case it must be by a Spanish painter, before him no one had ever painted a dog in that situation, after him no other painter had the courage to try. Probably, and there was a cart laden with hay, drawn by horses and crossing a stream, Was there a house on the left, Yes, Then it was by an English painter, Could be, but I dont think so, because there was a woman as well with a child in her arms, Mothers and children are all too common in paintings, True, Ive noticed, What I dont understand is how in one painting there should be so many pictures and by such different painters, And there were some men eating, There have been so many lunches, afternoon snacks and suppers in the history of art, that this detail in itself is not enough to tell us who was eating, There were thirteen men altogether, Ah, then its easy, go on, There was also a naked woman with fair hair, inside a conch that was floating on the sea, and masses of flowers around her, Obviously Italian, And there was a battle, As in those paintings depicting banquets and mothers with children in their arms, these details are not enough to reveal who painted the picture, There were corpses and wounded men, Its only natural, sooner or later, all children die, and soldiers too, And a horse stricken with terror, With its eyes about to pop out of their sockets, Exactly, Horses are like that, and what other pictures were there in your painting, Alas, I never managed to find out, I went blind just as I was looking at the horse. Fear can cause blindness, said the girl with dark glasses, Never a truer word, that could not be truer, we were already blind the moment we turned blind, fear struck us blind, fear will keep us blind, Who is speaking, asked the doctor, A blind man, replied a voice, just a blind man, for that is all we have here. Then the old man with the black eyepatch asked, How many blind persons are needed to make a blindness, No one could provide the answer.

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I so liked Spring last year

Because you were here; -
The thrushes too -
Because it was these you so liked to hear -
I so liked you.

This year’s a different thing, -
I’ll not think of you.
But I’ll like Spring because it is simply Spring
As the thrushes do.
- Charlotte Mew 1880-1914

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And finally, another kind of poetry . . .

NEXT POST HERE WILL BE ON SATURDAY

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