December 2009
9 posts
1 tag
When You are Old
by W.B.Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down...
1 tag
1 tag
Introduction To Poetry
by Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do is...
“Systems of power don’t have good intentions. You’ll occasionally in history find...”
– Noam Chomsky, in an interview. (via asuph)
You’ve got to get in to get out
by John Siddique
The world will impinge into your need for silence, into your prayers. In the hardest seconds of your life, your neighbours will be drunk, booming hip-hop through thin inconvenient walls.
At the lighting of your candles, in the moment you need to focus – the apex of your flame, the voice of the Holy Spirit, someone will be vacuuming, talking, ringing up change, a bin wagon...
2 tags
The Rainy Day
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains,and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains,and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the...
2 tags
What the Rubber Farmer Said
by Michael Creighton
May 2004, Kottayam District, South India
Sit and drink your coffee— when it rains like this, what else can we do? See there—how I gather the water that runs in crooked torrents from my roof? My neighbors called me a fool, but dented buckets and pans have kept my well full, even when those owned by this district’s many fools ran dry.
You can smell that, can’t you? I, for...
Creighton again
South Delhi Jungle Park at Four
by Michael Creighton
The beetle walks on its front legs, back legs pushing a ball of dung across our path. You complain the ants will bite you if we don’t keep moving.
Even the neon-necked peacock fails to hold your attention; there is grit between your toes, a bothersome slipperiness in your puddle-soaked sandals.
Only the tiny purple and brown speckled egg on...
2 tags
poetry unexpected
Sometime in April this year I came across this delightful poet. His insights are always so startling.
Witness
by Michael Creighton
Like other good men from South Delhi, her husband drives each month by the temple, where a few hundred dusty souls form a ragged line along the north side of the road. From the seat of his car, he feeds them – ice cream or pears in summer, oranges or apples in...