the swiss lounge

stephen dunn

2012-01-27T07:27:00.001Z

In Love, His Grammar Grew

In love, his grammar grew
rich with intensifiers, and adverbs fell
madly from the sky like pheasants
for the peasantry, and he, as sated
as they were, lolled under shade trees
until roused by moonlight
and the beautiful fraternal twins
and and but. Oh that was when
he knew he couldn’t resist
a conjunction of any kind.
One said accumulate, the other
was a doubter who loved the wind
and the mind that cleans up after it.
For love
he wanted to break all the rules,
light a candle behind a sentence
named Sheila, always running on
and wishing to be stopped
by the hard button of a period.
Sometimes, in desperation, he’dlook
toward a mannequin or a window dresser
with a penchant for parsing.
But mostly he wanted you, Sheila,
and the adjectives that could precede
and change you: bluesy, fly-by-night,
queen of all that is and might be.

star wars

2012-01-24T23:23:00.000Z

genius...

Star Wars Uncut: Director's Cut from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

naomi shihab nye

2012-01-24T10:27:00.000Z

i don't have the text of this which is a shame as it's so full of good lines. more of this at the poetry foundation

maxine kumin

2012-01-24T07:24:00.000Z

Whereof the Gift Is Small

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

And short the season, first rubythroat
in the fading lilacs, alyssum in bloom,
a honeybee bumbling in the bleeding heart
on my gelding’s grave while beetles swarm
him underground. Wet feet, wet cuffs,
little flecks of buttercup on my sneaker toes,
bluets, violets crowding out the tufts
of rich new grass the horses nose
and nibble like sleepwalkers held fast -
brittle beauty - might this be the last?

lepidoptera

2012-01-23T12:22:00.002Z

for a variety of reasons butterflies are exercising my mind at the moment. and then, as if by magic, i see that i've has schumann's papillons sitting on my piano for months! t thought she heard me playing it but it was this. i wish!!

frightening accuracy

2012-01-23T09:36:00.003Z

i do not, and never have used the term 'stoked'. or 'rad'. or 'phat' or 'epic'. nor do i own a 29er...

the luck thing

2012-01-21T12:12:00.003Z

sometimes you just have to feel the inevitability of things, or perhaps that they are just against you. certainly the signs were there....

i was out last week on my regular hard tail summerish bike, forgetting that if i don't absolutely clean the drive to clean room standards that at the merest whiff of mud i'll be getting chainsuck of epic proportions. and unfixable too i'm told (tho only after replacing all of the aforesaid drive)

midweek, i got away up glen almond on the rohloff bike. true, i chosen a wending easy route to see if the 'fixes' to it were working. sadly no. taking some advice on it, it appears that my lbs haven't takne chain line into account at other than the most guesstological level. if i wanted that level of work done on my bike i'm thinking it would be me doing it...

so yesterday i decide to dig out the winter bike. true, last time i was out on it i got a bruised live but that was something i wasn't thinking about. there's really no such thing as a jinx bike, honest. the drive looked pristine and, aside from a few not being used brake issues, it seemed fine. at least it was until we were butting along, i decide to change gear and, for some reason best known to itself, the chain pops off the outside of the big ring, wraps round the cranks and i'm in an instant faceplant.

the second i hit the ground (on my bad knee of course) i knew all was not well. i think the urge to throw up was a clue plus the look on super g's face when i wasn't jumping up again. even lying on the ground i could feel fluid hosing into the joint. super g raced off for the van and i hirpled back. even one legged pedalling wasn't working but that was nothing coma red to trying to get the clutch working in the van.

t, who is no fan of injury, took one look at my pineapple knee and shouted 'put it away, put it away'. which i took to me a couple of ice packs and let's go out in the car to take my mind off it. doubly foolish. by the time we got back the joint wouldn't straighten or bend. more ice packs.

today it's slightly better but i can't paint because i can't kneel which is going to be causing me significant problems real soon. at least it's bending tho and i can weight bear more effectively. will it need aspirated? time will tell. one thing's for sure - i'll not be back on the bike for a couple of weeks. on top of all last year's injuries i'm feeling just a tad deflated.

on the upside now i have to write because i can't do anything else! hurrah!

carl rakosi

2012-01-21T07:23:00.000Z

Fluteplayers from Finmarken

How keen the nights were,
Svensen.
Not a star out,
not a beat of emotion
in the humming snowhull.
(Now and then an awful swandive).

It seemed ordained then that
my feet slip on the seal bones
and my head come down suddenly
over a simple rock-cistvaen,
grief-stricken and archwise.
Thereon were stamped
the figures of the noble women
I had followed with my closed
eyes
out to the central blubber
of the waters.

(There is not a pigeon
or a bee in sight.
My eyes are shut now,
and my pulse dead as a rock).

The Swedish mate says he recalls
this fungoid program of the mind
and matter,
where the abstract signals to the
abstract,
and the mind directs the final
white lens
on the spewing of the waterworm
and the wings of the midsea.

It was not clear what I was after
in this stunted flora
and husky worldcold
until the other flutes arrived:
four masters musing
from one polar qualm to another.

colm breathnach

2012-01-19T07:04:00.001Z

Good Night, Ya Bastard

(to my father)

In Ballyferriter on holidays
we stayed above Seáinín na mBánach’s shop
and some nights
a crowd of locals
and summer visitors
would return after closing time
in Daniel Keane’s pub.

We, the children, lying in suspense
feigning sleep in our beds
waiting for the soft murmur ofthe company
making its way up the stairs.

Things would start with a bit of a chat,
stories being told, fun beingpoked,
you acting as shy host
’til the Beamish gave you voice
and you called for a song.

Everyone joining in the chorus,
the hiss as another bottle is opened.

And when the revelling was over
we’d hear the people going,
down on the road in the early morning
someone shouts, “Good night, ya bastard.”
in the full of his voice on the village street.

My sorest wish
to have grown up in time,
before you died,
so I could come
to a night you organised
over Seáinín’s shop
in Ballyferriter.

And when the night was over
and the company were going
I would head for my own lodgings too
in Baile Eaglaise or the Gorta Dubha.
Before I left I would turn to you
and say “Good night, ya bastard,”
fondly, tipsily.

jenny lewis

2012-01-16T17:03:00.000Z

Fathom

My face
is changing again

I caught it in a different light
yesterday

the flaky grey
of ocean-going
tankers

my face has turned
to someone else's

inside the inside
of the ocean, fish are hanging
cuttle-coloured

they sway, silent
not even a rattle of bones

and the dead stir in us too,
coming as they do from the weight
of darkness

they want our breath

want to tunnel out of us,
force apart our gullets,
appear stark-white

and raving at daylight

one more moment
they plead
just one more.

speaking the language

2012-01-05T15:22:00.006Z

having spent a large part of the day dodging work and getting myself involved in a debate regarding diane abbot's perceived racism (the long story short version - yes she is, all the way back to the finnish nurses thing which i wrote to her about at the time. i've no wish to reiterate any of this but i can forward you onto where i have been on about it should you wish) rather than writing the poetry which is so desperate to get out of my notebooks i find myself mulling over the linguistic interactions that have coloured and informed my work life, just the sort of thing that wouldn't have happened had ms abbot had her way.

for a good part of last year i was working with a finnish-swedish girl (who trained in newcastle - it was a strange, strange accent). when i was attempting finnish it was, she said, obvious 'to anyone who had ears' that i had some sort of swedish thing going on as i was unable to pronounce any of the finnish words without that hurdy hurdy hurdy cadence going on, a description that both hurt and pleased me at the same time.

i looked after a poor wee french woman for a while and tho it's true my french these days is execrable at least she understood me and i, for the most part, her (i have a colleague who is half french for back up for the difficult bits!). this was grand but my moment of the year was going into another poor wee woman who while she did speak english had, in her illness, reverted back to her native italian. now my italian doesn't extend much beyond - hello, how are you. my name is mr swiss and i need a blood sample - but i had that magic moment when her eyes opened and i knew the language had gone in. the nurses were loving it also. ask me i need a blood sample they say. all of the shift. ho ho, how we laughed...

i'm liking the german these days and really must make more of an effort seeing as how there are actually quite a number of germans round these parts i could actually practice with. i had a beautiful afternoon at the end of autumn where i spent a bit of time with friend chrissie and her her dad just listening. i get the odd word but the grammar and such like to hook it all up just isn't there. this almost inevitably leads to that moment when the german speaker will ask me why it is i know these fragments from the tongue of goethe and schiller and, esp if they're from the east, there's that impossibly weary sigh as i admit i know most of my german form listening to rammstein

this week, in a set of circumstances that would've made diane abbot's blood run cold, i was working with a girl fresh of the plane from romania, never been in the uk, never spoken to a scottish person before. i did try to check google translate to check if i could remember any romanian greetings but for some reason it doesn't work at work. nevertheless my mangled romanian was understood and off we went, me with a new friend for the night. it's amazing just how quickly you can break the ice if you can just say your name and hello in the other person's language, something i've tried and broadly failed to get others to do in hospital for years but has seen me getting stuck into everything from cantonese to farsi.

my favourite last year was after getting my haircut (and the big fiery cotton bud in the ear) by a man whose accent i couldn't place, who turned out to be turkish, turkish hairdressers being the latest immigrants around these parts. i was straight round to waterstones and back again - er, i said, tessukur edirim? my first ever turkish!

speaking languages badly is great fun. true, there can sometimes be misunderstandings but the one thing it's necessity to do is listen. and then having listened shape someone else's words in your mouth. it's an adventure!

as an aside, one of my friends is a fluent russian speaker and fan of putin - we exchange many things russian. my favourite advert this year is this one. burger king in moscow - who knew?

and inside the tin

2011-12-30T14:06:00.000Z

comes the poetry.

as usual i need to have read the whole of the book for it to get on the end of year list but i was a wee bit more assiduous in my completion of poetry books this year.

honourable mentions to valzhyna mort and factory of tears. i was liking all the russian, not because i could read it, but because it looked pretty. one of these days i'll get my russian speaking buddy to read it to me and find out what it should actually sound like. i was well taken with it.

tomas transtromer's new collected poems was well worth a burl and the time i took in it. i've spent a lot of time in sweden since i first read him and the recognition of the landscapes along with the fact i could actually read some of them gave them a new meaning for me.

bargain of the year was lucie brock-broido's soul keeping company which i picked up stupidly cheap somewhere and can't keep out of my head since. i particularly her take on emily dickinson's master letters which, for me, should place her firmly on the reading list of emily fans. but to focus on that would be to ignore the great snowdrifts of language she piles up either side of this. a sublime read.

i wasn't to be missing out on alice oswald's memorial which i was after from the first. i'd kind of liked robert craw ford's take on simonides and this is a similarly slanted view of the iliad taking its perspective from the names of the dead. beautiful, beautiful to read, my only criticism would be the repetitions but even so i'll be buying this on audio as well

poetry of the year tho, goes to pauline stainer and parable island. i picked this up solely because it was something about orkney and that'll pretty much do for me. and then it came thru the post... now i'm putting up parable island as the poetry book of the year but that's only because i haven't finished the others. and i have...all of them (thank goodness for amazon and an itchy purchase finger!)

now i'll happily hold up my hand and say that as of six weeks ago, stainer had almost completely escaped my consciousness except for a couple of anthologies she appeared in. it was only when i posted her on here i got more into her. now i find myself in the position that i'm reading her in the morning, mulling it over the course of the day, coming back, reading some more, rereading...

parable island isn't about orkney, even when it is. stainer is a poet who concerned with the word and the Word and everything in between. there's a ton of stuff in here that comes flying at you but for me it's the language. there's no long poems but she manages more in these wee works than most of us manage in longer and more contrived fashion and is so much better than many more high profile poets that it's just plain depressing.

everything i like about poetry i'm reading in pauline stainer. she has that quality that makes you not only want to shift your own work up a gear but equally leaves you wide eyed with the loveliness of it. best poet i've read in years. i am a fanboy. it's official.

the cake tin

2011-12-30T07:13:00.001Z

is that place you look in and there's only good things inside, things that for whatever reason conjure up the word yum or its many synonyms.

so, good things about this year. it was a good years for cycling books, indeed the first book i read last january was tomorrow we ride by jean bobet which set me up good style. david miller's racing thru the dark is another worth reading if only to see how he slides ever so easily into drug use a process he makes a whole lot more difficult than it would've been for the likes of me. you want me to ride how far? can i have some drugs please? how i won the yellow jumper by ned boulting is enjoyable fluff for the cyclist in your life and, should that cyclist be the type who pores over maps looking for that great journey that he (and let's face it's almost always a he) deep down knows he's never going to make then one man and his bike by mike carter is worth a look.

all of which is my way of avoiding the topic of uk fiction which was no more inspiring than it was last year. indeed the high point of that might have been the culture show's alternate booker selection process tat they do up the road in comrie had it not been for a.s. byatt with whom i spent a sleepless night reading babel tower while avoiding the cataclysmic snorer i was supposed to be sharing a room with. i'd recently read john fowles' daniel martin with which their makes a rather interesting pendant with byatt coming out on top. maybe, it could be argued because fowles' book and its protagonist is very much of its time but for me byatt trod similarish ground to greater effect.

by way of the comrie lot i read the sisters brothers by patrick de witt which i rather liked and jamrach's menagerie by carol birch which i wanted to like rather more than i did. both are worth a shot especially if you've got one of those days where you've got nothing better to do going on. i did a bit of kazuo ishiguro courtesy of nocturnes and liked it and i was more than happy to read robert alan jamieson's da haapie land.

i could've gone down the moby dick route again seeing as how i'm happily ensconced in close reading it again while parallel reading the utterly superb thing that is matt kish's moby dick in pictures. this last fits into no comfortable genre which, kind of like moby dick itself, is the way it should be. currently i'm thinking i really need to go back and watch the wrath of khan as it's even more closely tied to the moby dick story than i'd previously suspected.

in the end i feared i might have to be going for another graphic novel this year courtesy of bryan talbot's grandville follow up or canales and guarnido's hardboiled delight blacksad and those before i even get started on shaun tan. actually shaun tan gets it by a country mile just for the drawing! but seeing as it's my favourite fiction it'll be a toss up between bernard schlink's the weekend and manuel rivas' the carpenter's pencil. i'd like to say something kind of literary about either of these but, despite shlink's the reader being wildly more popular (possibly because of a british readerships crazy fascination for anything from 'the war') the weekend felt like something much more contemporary and something i can ask the local german's about. plus it was one of those rainy afternoons and it did the trick nicely. as for the carpenter's pencil i got that in foyle's while i was down in london - they were offering a free pencil with pencil themed books! - and i lost myself nicely in it while i was on the train. what can i tell you!

actually i'll change my mind then. fiction book of the year was effi briest by theodor fontaine in part because i'd never heard of it before i read it and also because it's just the sort of book i'd have loved when i was studying. if you liked emma bovary's shenanigans then you'll like this.

(or, as i did while writing this re-read revolutionary road by richard yates. maybe the film version is good - i can't watch it - because ethe book is so well realised that well, why would you?)

onto non-fiction then, of which i read much more and choosing one out of that lot is a much trickier business. a high bar was immediately set by sarah bakewell's how to live: a life of montaigne which, while not being better than actually reading montaigne, is a great way to get into it, feel your way round the different versions and get a view of the life and times of the man.

a different way to live came out in patrick barkham's the butterfly isles in which the author relives some of his times with his dad by trying to get out and see all the native species of butterfly in the british isles in a season while at the same time not realising his home life is heading into rocky waters. it's grand on the lepidoptera tho and it's courtesy of this book i could manage to spot most of the common scottish butterflies from the bike.

a. s. byatt pops up again with he ragnarock another addition in the canon gate myths series and possibly my favourite of them. a real need to read for anyone who's a fan of or, like me, was brought up with norse legends not only does she look at the myth proper byatt style but relates that to her first readings of it as a child. great stuff.

top of the non-fiction tree tho is andrew greig's at the loch of the green corrie. in normal circumstances greig's one of those folk i can take or leave depending on my mood so i ended up getting this when waterstone's were still doing their three for two thing. now i could tell you it's about greig's relationship with norman maccaig and maccaig's poetry. or i could tell you it's about flyfishing. either of those is true but it's about way more than that. i was glued to this from cover to cover. buy it, maybe along with a maccaig selected, and get yourself along to some wee loch or other, sit in the sun and read it. it's brilliant!

gary snyder

2011-12-28T09:28:00.002Z

Old Bones

Out there walking round, looking out for food,

a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed that you can crack

plucking, digging, snaring, snagging,

barely getting by,

no food out there on dusty slopes of scree—

carry some—look for some,

go for a hungry dream.

Deer bone, Dall sheep,

bones hunger home.

Out there somewhere

a shrine for the old ones,

the dust of the old bones,

old songs and tales.

What we ate—who ate what—

how we all prevailed.

thomas merton

2011-12-25T09:24:00.001Z

Song for Nobody

A yellow flower

(Light and spirit)

Sings by itself

For nobody.

A golden spirit

(Light and emptiness)

Sings without a word

By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun

In whose dark eye

Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color

And no thought:

O, wide awake!)

A golden heaven

Sings by itself

the delirium of swiftness

2011-12-23T08:42:00.002Z

christmas is coming, the goose (curiously shaped liked a vegetarian roast) is getting fat and maybe, just maybe santa t has bike shaped goodies for me in her sack. so while i wish everyone well ifeel i should sound a note of caution prior to the christmas excesses for those who may be cycling during the christmas period.

ladies, for you are all ladies, as the good doctor says, beware the 'danger of serious bodily illness due to excessive straining' especially, i would infer, if you are not in the flower of life.

and for all of us, take a moment to raise our eyes up from the bars, 'ashen faced and haggard' and let a smile for the world at this festive time cresses the rigours of your 'bicycle face'. and do not, whatever, give in to the 'delerium of swiftness' however much you may be tempted and consider that perhaps it is time to be at the fireside sharpening a pencil, enjoying the putting down of thoughts of reflection on the passing year and perhaps a small glass of sherry.

all of which is sound medical advice so have a care.

merry christmas....

just when you thought

2011-12-22T15:24:00.002Z

poetryland couldn't get any more up itself along comes this gem.

you'd think there was no bother about the future of the book as an object, that such world weary concerns are beyond the reach of such lofty debate. and lofty it is, lofty like an m&s advert. these are not just poems but 'emblazoned on pennants along the road we have just traversed'. brilliant!

it's absolutely worth following all the wee link dinky things in the article as a variety of suspects, well known and not, cue up to give us their views as if somewhere in poetryland a fat controller figure decided that what was needed was a dose of controversy of the storm in a tea cup type that's so favoured by the keyboard warriors of the internet.

in a nutshell, somebody writes a book, leaves out some people, includes others. 'outrage' ensues. obviously by outrage i mean the type of outrage you can have that plath, ginsberg, rexroth and the like, all those poets you've most likely got or read anyway, have been left out of a book you're more than likely not going to buy. or folk like mary oliver and billy collins have been included. and just a sweet nugget of racism and misogynism and the like. all those isms. swiss is tired now - wants to go sleepy time on the keyboard...

i read some fantastic poems this week. i was also out and about in my particular section of the world where the concerns of poetryland, notions of poetry, arts and any related are about as far away from relevant as its possible to be. when i got back i liked the fact i could recognise i had the time, the health and the ability to read all that fantastic poetry.

poetry, the act of reading, the space to paint and all of that are privileges i allow myself when i finish work. i don't have kids who are sick, i don't have elderly relatives whose minds are fusing into themselves, i'm not watching a loved one disintegrate in the face of disease. i am not worried that i'm losing my job, that my home is in danger or any of those things. i'm grateful for all of that and i'm grateful that not having to face any of these circumstances means i can help those that are.

getting upset over a poetry anthology! honestly, a wee bit of perspective...

(none of which is going to stop me posting more choice quotes form the ongoing debate. obviously!)

w. s. graham

2011-12-22T09:26:00.003Z

To Alexander Graham

Lying asleep walking

Last night I met my father

Who seemed pleased to see me.

He wanted to speak. I saw

His mouth saying something

But the dream had no sound.

We were surrounded by

Laid-up paddle steamers

In The Old Quay in Greenock.

I smelt the tar and the ropes.

It seemed that I was standing

Beside the big iron cannon

The tugs used to tie up to

When I was a boy. I turned

To see Dad standing just

Across the causeway under

That one lamp they keep on.

He recognised me immediately.

I could see that. He was

The handsome, same age

With his good brows as when

He would take me on Sundays

Saying we’ll go for a walk.

Dad, what am I doing here?

What is it I am doing now?

Are you proud of me?

Going away, I knew

You wanted to tell me something.

You stopped and almost turned back

To say something. My father,

I try to be the best

In you you give me always.

Lying asleep turning

Round in the quay-lit dark

It was my father standing

As real as life. I smelt

The quay’s tar and the ropes.

I think he wanted to speak.

But the dream had no sound.

I think I must have loved him.

john clare

2011-12-20T09:25:00.001Z

The Yellowhammer’s Nest

Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up,

Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down

To reach the misty dewberry—let us stoop

And seek its nest—the brook we need not dread,

'Tis scarcely deep enough a bee to drown,

So it sings harmless o'er its pebbly bed

—Ay here it is, stuck close beside the bank

Beneath the bunch of grass that spindles rank

Its husk seeds tall and high—'tis rudely planned

Of bleachèd stubbles and the withered fare

That last year's harvest left upon the land,

Lined thinly with the horse's sable hair.

Five eggs, pen-scribbled o'er with ink their shells

Resembling writing scrawls which fancy reads

As nature's poesy and pastoral spells—

They are the yellowhammer's and she dwells

Most poet-like where brooks and flowery weeds

As sweet as Castaly to fancy seems

And that old molehill like as Parnass' hill

On which her partner haply sits and dreams

O'er all her joys of song—so leave it still

A happy home of sunshine, flowers and streams.

Yet in the sweetest places cometh ill,

A noisome weed that burthens every soil;

For snakes are known with chill and deadly coil

To watch such nests and seize the helpless young,

And like as though the plague became a guest,

Leaving a houseless home, a ruined nest—

And mournful hath the little warblers sung

When such like woes hath rent its little breast.

w. n. herbert

2011-12-18T02:23:00.001Z

The Working Self

the naked man with the briefcase

descending three flights of lighthouse stairs

his neckmuscles held by a hatstand of stress

and a new version of the Inferno blackening his cerebellum

in which the only dead are his poetic texts

and those of all the writers he has ever loved

wanting to be asleep with all the fervour of the truly middle-aged

is not

the naked man running into

the midnight sea at Teignmouth

wiht the surprisingly large breasted girl

he will not sleep wiht later in the sand

all the car-loads of friends all following The Wedding Present

from gig to gi allstoned and half-undressed and

sleepily silenusian in the cold cupping sand

is not

the student standing with a white furred uvula in

the campanile of his newly-smoking throat

before the galvanised facade of Milan cathedral

on his first morning in Italy, before visiting the Brera, the Uffizi,

focusing on the lens as it falls from his spectacles and smashes

on the delicious pasticeria of the paving stones

is not

the seventeen year old staring at Rossetti’s

loganberry compote of a dream of Dante and the corpse of Beatrice

remembering the final cold corner bust up by the bridge

by the Post Office where he stood for hours knowing

she would never feel the need to come back

not knowing that he would never speak to her again or know

her whereabouts or children or the moment of her death

is not

the boy visiting a grandfather

he hadn’t seen so long he almost had begun

to think of him as dead and dreamed about it endlessly

after the rapidly-following death

the slow hand touching the bandaged throat, the querulous witty voice

the dark, conspiratorial spectacles, always

not dead after all but still with him, talking

is not

the boy who dreamt that all his classmates sat in darkness in

a circle and the circle was so large it seemed to contain

all the people of the multis at Trottick, all the people in Dundee

perhaps all the people in Scotland and in the centre was a figure,

cowled like a monk, roating in the darkness with an index finger

pointing and revolving like a planet in an orrery

and when the figure pointed straight at him

woke up in the dark moon-streaked fourth-floor bedroom for the first time

clearly alone

rené char

2011-12-15T06:21:00.001Z

To ***

For years now you have been my love,

The vertigo I feel when I lie waiting

That nothing can make old, make cold;

Even that which was expecting our death,

Or geadually knew how to combat us,

Even that which we are strangers to,

My eclipses also and also my returns.

Barred like a boxwood shutter,

An extreme and compact fortune

Is our mountain range,

Our compressing splendour.

I say fortune, o my wrought one;

Each of us can receive

Anther’s share of mystery

Without spilling its secret;

And the suffering that comes from elsewhere

Finds at last its separation

In the flesh of our untiy,

Finds at last its solar road

At the center of our dense cloud

Which it tears and recommences.

I say fortune the way I feel it.

You have raised the summit

That my waiting will have to cross

When tomorrow is no longer there

trans by mark hutchison

czeslaw milosz

2011-12-12T07:19:00.006Z

Faith

Faith is in you whenever you look

At a dewdrop or a floating leaf

And know that they are because they have to be.

Even if you close your eyes and dream up things

The world will remain as it has always been

And the leaf will be carried by the waters fo the river.

You have faith also when you hurt your foot

Against a sharp rock and you know

that rocks are here to hurt our feet.

See the long shadow that is cast by the tree?

We and the flowers throw shadows on the earth.

What has no shadow has no strength to live

trans by author

rabindranath tagore

2011-12-09T09:17:00.000Z

Gitanjali 42

Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, 
only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this our 
pilgrimage to no country and to no end. 
In that shoreless ocean, 
at thy silently listening smile my songs would swell in melodies, 
free as waves, free from all bondage of words.
 Is the time not come yet?
 Are there works still to do?
 Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore
 and in the fading light the seabirds come flying to their nests. 
Who knows when the chains will be off,
 and the boat, like the last glimmer of sunset, 
vanish into the night?

trans by the author

auchentoshan

2011-12-06T16:18:00.003Z

i caught myself the other day, getting all soap boxed up about the state of mountain bike videos. cue - twinkly, noodley guitar music. an empty trail. close up of vegetation. then a bike wheel, the sound of tyre on trail. some more of these. amp up the guitar music. proceed. it was a nice enough video but, i told myself, if you're going to girn you need to make one yourself.

which is not what the following is (tho it does, more or less, avoid the above). this is the scottish cyclocross championships at auchentoshan. i was, as usual, not there because, as usual, i was working. true, even if i hadn't have been i'm not fit enough but that's neither here nor there. i like the scant crowds, the cloying and relentless mud, the lack of panorama over lovely scottish countrysides. i love that calf breaking slog up the wee hill. i miss cyclocross!

(better yet this vid comes from that rarest of all breeds - a scottish frame maker - i have got to have me one of them!)

Scottish Cycling Cyclocross Championships 2011 from Shand Cycles on Vimeo.

pauline stainer

2011-12-06T07:16:00.000Z

The Ringing Chamber

I was four months gone -
my breasts already tender
against the bell-ropes;

we were ringing quarter-peals,
the sun flooding the bell-chamber,
the dust rippling between the joists

when the child quickened,
fluttered against the changes;
and suddenly through the clerestory

I saw that colder quickening -
random - reciprocal -
cloudshadow

and the flaxfield
like water under the wind.

stop motion

2011-12-05T16:35:00.002Z

after the cyclotrope here's this

mary oliver

2011-12-04T09:14:00.000Z

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

the bicycle zoetrope

2011-12-03T08:47:00.003Z

which shows there's really no end to what you can do with some card, a pair of scissors and a bit of time...

you can judge a book by its cover

2011-11-23T23:10:00.003Z

or at least you can when it's a penguin classic deluxe edition. which is what happened when i went into waterstones today and was confronted by a bunch of them. i was loving the cover of nathaniel hawthorne's scarlet letter so much i really wanted it even tho i've utterly failed to get thru the book at any attempt. it seems then that i am definitively one of those who can be suckered by book design.

and i make no bones about it. true, there will always be an edition that suits one and not the other but beyond that there's just that certain set of somethings that draws me in. i like an opaque high contrast paper. i like it when there's been choice of font and that whoever's made the book has seen fit to let me know (usually) at the back. i like the rough cut that you find on the finishes of (predominantly) american books. i wish more english publishers would follow. i remember when susanna clarke's jonathan strange and mr norrell came out in hardcover, loving the black edging on the paper an effect i've even managed to still like on one of the twilight books.

i like a matt cover, being completely converted back in my new york days - one of the only things i can say with assurance when i'm at the printers is 'matt laminate'. which is probably why i will never really engage with the kindle or any other such electronic reading device. it does the job but it leaves out everything else.

so, today it was the faber john clare that i ended up with. it looked pleasing, true but at the end of the day it was what was inside that counted. after the sojourn down south and listening to the wordsworth in the last post i recalled that, altho i can do wordsworth, i've never really liked him that much. clare on the other hand i always have but have never really spent a lot of time with him. picking up the book (and an excellent wee foreword by editor paul farley) that england i saw at the weekend, that's clare's england. i have my lovely wee book and it takes me somewhere else entirely...

the green and pleasant land

2011-11-22T22:14:00.002Z

so, we were off down to that england-land this weekend to visit ilkley and the loveliness that is the yorkshire dales. to be honest i was expecting sheets of rain, wind and general northern grimness but, as it happened, it turned out rather lovely.

t was off a-felting so i got the bike out and headed out with only the vaguest sense of where i was going. what i definitely wasn't doing, and doubly so after a long morning rest, was cycling the whole of the dales way. i'd hoped the sun was up a wee bit longer but really no.

first thing i noticed was the massive numbers of cyclists. not just the kind of stuffed together, badly adjusted bike, out for the weekend type tourist (of which there were none) but proper roadies. and gangs of them. i haven't seen so many cyclists outside of a sportive in the last couple of years. it was great. and for those who might grin a bit about roadie taciturnity i put it to you (for you are all inglese) that this is not because these are sullen people but rather that there are just too many of you and that to give everyone the nod would result in a neck injury!

and not just numbers but diversity. not only did i see more cyclists but i saw the biggest group of them i've ever seen (40+ on a club run!!), the full range of beardie men and best of all, actual women. this may sound surprising to those south of the border but up here the sight of a proper roadie woman, while not quite akin to coming across a unicorn, is in the general vicinity.

and all this in the space of about twenty minutes. the first place i came across was bolton abbey. the mist was just lifting and the sun was hitting the valley and, having had the good sense to stop, i was all like, this is like something out of wordsworth or turner, which of course it was. the cyclists had thinned out so i had the roads pretty much to myself. i was rowed in with dry stone walls, in fact there were walls everywhere and the fields dotted with barns. every few miles there were amazing wee villages that looked like they'd stepped out of some englandshire poster book, wee pubs, folk sitting drinking and blethering, flowers in the windows. i imagine in tourist season it must be nightmarish but not this weekend. and great names - kettlewell, starbotton, appletreewick.

i picked up a roadie guy on the way back in and we ended up cycling back. altho i'd overtaken him to ask for directions he was straight back at me. i should've noticed this. i definitely should've paid attention when he came alongside checked me, my legs and my bike. but no matter, he was local and great chat with all the places but as we were dotting along i was aware that the pace was maybe not quite so mellow and my cadence was just that bit higher. and higher. and then he bumps into his mate. he's from the club he says. and then i realised. a club guy. here we go.

to give him his due he didn't push too hard, just enough so that when we got back into ilkley, just at the last hill my legs gave out with the faintest of sighs and he had me beat. but it was great fun and i thank you, chris from ilkley, for a very pleasant hour.

the following day everywhere was slabbed in mist. we made abortive attempts to go to a tea room but ilkley was mobbed and we mainly failed. we did go to their wee museum which is in a gorgeous old 14th century building. and t got a copy of that ilkla moor baht'at thing (dominic). we couldn't make head nor tail of it!

on monday we had to leave ilkley but not without firm plans for a return visit down the dales. off we went into the mist and as we passed some stately home or other i managed to make what is possibly my only old english joke (i should point out i'd been reading david crystal's latest book not long before) it went something like this -

t: that must be where the laird lived

m: the laird? the lord on these parts

t: is there a difference

m: surely you're having a hlaf

i do apologise. and moving swiftly on we headed out of the murk and into northumberland for a quick nosey around hadrian's wall. again perfect weather, all misty and atmospheric and not a soul to be seen. england had been uniformly lovely!

getting home tho we were glad to be back. englandshire is great for a visit, esp at this time of year when there's not so many folk about but, even allowing for the cyclists, there's just too many people in such a wee space. it was odd to see all the private property, no trespassing, no going on the river signs but i could kind of understand why. the countryside down there is not like it is here and not just because of the access laws - there's a closeness of the urban and the rural that gave me a real insight into kind of englishness i hadn't been aware of, something about the specialness and preciousness of the countryside that finds a different expression in their northern neighbours.

it was a grand weekend out. i can't wait to go again.

olympic posters

2011-11-05T12:20:00.001Z

as i'm just after some quality ranting re the paralympic posters from both t and a bunch of assorted mountain bike types i thought i could do worse than share.

please feel free to vent. for what it's worth i like the howard hodgkin one....

gellu naum

2011-10-30T07:23:00.001Z

After all

After all I remember perfectly the day
when my seven mothers birthed me

(among them one, uniquely primordial,
knew the joys of conception
one who no longer knew how to read or write
her octogenarian arms rocking me
as the four-eyed cat of death
nestled on her shoulders
I worked hard to be lighter

The other six mothers sang
transfigured by labor pains
I slept serenely in each of them
slept cowering in their thighs their knees
slept purely in their maternal purity
bread, milk and honey close by
and memories of Amsterdam
the world fashioned peacefully all around

on the fourth day waters a world with fish and reeds
with the man from the Hotel Alger who lost his mouth on the sixth day

a world of suns and snows on the ninth day

but my octogenarian mother’s arms were tired
(the cat around her shoulders purring scarcely audible)
and I wanted to be lighter

Then I sat by the fire
sitting in my geomantic suit
slowly shaking a hazelnut switch
right there by the fire trying to be lighter

The other five mothers fell silent
aggrieved by my unexpected gesture
Why–I asked them–do you look at me so
My old mother’s arms exhausted
and I wanted to be lighter
would have gone to sleep in an apple
but I didn’t want to complicate your perpetual maternity

They shook their heads in remonstrance
and closed themselves off to me

Then on the tenth day
dogs started to bark
and witnesses crept into the room.

trans by martin woodside and chris tanasescu
see more of their translations here

something lazarus

2011-10-28T09:04:00.002+01:00

it's all been a wee bit quiet on the poetry front for a wee while (hence no elvis) but that's mainly because i've been working on othe things.

today sees a lazarus out on kindle and there will be more publishing to come soon. i'd say more but i've said it already. check it out!

ingrid jonker

2011-10-27T07:28:00.001+01:00

The Child who was shot dead by soldiers in Nyanga

The child is not dead
the child raises his fists against his mother
who screams Africa screams the smell
of freedom and heather
in the locations of the heart under siege

The child raises his fists against his father
in the march of the generations
who scream Africa scream the smell
of justice and blood
in the streets of his armed pride

The child is not dead
neither at Langa nor at Nyanga
nor at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station in Philippi
where he lies with a bullet in his head

The child is the shadow of the soldiers
on guard with guns saracens and batons
the child is present at all meetings and legislations
the child peeps through the windows of houses and into the hearts of mothers
the child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere
the child who became a man treks through all of Africa
the child who became a giant travels through the whole world

Without a pass

trans by antjie krog & andré brink

michio mado

2011-10-23T09:18:00.001+01:00

Upon Facing Death

Dear God,
I thank you
for letting me,
a scrawny spoon,
scoop from the ocean just once
The ocean
was beautiful
Carefully holding
this drop of
glorious sunset
I will come
to make an offering
to you

trans by takako lento

snow report

2011-10-20T08:10:00.004+01:00

in the end it wasn't quite cyclocross but the gentler gears of the mtb that triumphed. and just as well as my poor wee underused legs can't cycle for toffee! but as i went out i looked north and there, just a couple of days after moscow, the first snow of the season. it seems too early but all the same it was the first time i'd had long sleeves and long fingered gloves on - and needed them!

to be honest i still wasn't looking forward to being out - whatever weasels i've planted in my head with regard to the bike are still there - but once i got out i was reminded that there are few places more lovely to be out and about than perthshire in the autumn (when the sun's shining!). best make the most of it then as the snow is surely not far away now.

gerður kristný

2011-10-19T09:16:00.000+01:00

Anne

By day there’s not a peep
from Anne who lives
in widowhood overhead
– except when she dozes off
over her diary
drops it on the floor

Otherwise not a peep

It’s another matter at night
then there’s all hell of a hubbub
Anne’s friends pound up the stairs
hollering their hellos
and crack open a feast
Some with a bottle of buttermilk
others nursing eggs

Towards dawn the neighbours are fed up
of fiddles and folksongs
The guests depart in haste
melting into the walls

When the police force the door
Anne sits at the kitchen table
writing

trans by victoria cribb

readability

2011-10-18T21:29:00.002+01:00

it's that time of year when a wee bit of controversy gets the broadsheets a-going about the booker prize. manufactured? suggest such a thing? moi? i wud neva....

but it was pleasing to see, quite by chance, the culture show's annual jaunt up the road to comrie to do their alternate take on it. i've seen these the last couple of years and found them much more amusing than the real thing, so much so sometimes i wonder why the bbc and , more pertinently, bbc scotland and their ilk, can't get it together to do more of this sort of thing, or on scottish tv's case, any of this sort of thing.

the books aside, it's just up the road from me, is full of nice wee necks of the woods and accompanying types who frequent these parts. you can watch it here

all of that should see me giving up on the bike hiatus and getting the cross bike out tomorrow for some late autumn action. what with the injury coupled with a couple of trip failures i've been proper scunnered with it of late. but with next month's yorkshire trip rapidly approaching i'm fancying a trip round the dales so a bit of fitness back in the legs will be required, esp with the look of some of the climbs!

rati amaghlobeli

2011-10-16T09:14:00.000+01:00

As soon as I open my eyes towards morning

As soon as I open my eyes towards morning
I shall open the balcony doors, then
Into the room will come voice and pavement
In its very own image.

I know it’s only existence. In the tap
There’s almost no water, but
Morning will come, which you drank,
Which can be drunk like water.

Morning will bring itself to the window,
Morning is a dream in reality:
The fountain, the street, avenue and square
Cautiously

Are touched by it every day at the appointed time.
It will flicker its eyes for a moment,
And that moment something
Dyes everything in its own colours.

trans by donald rayfield

valzhyna mort

2011-10-12T09:12:00.000+01:00

Belarussian I

even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we parted their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl from the ruins after a bombing
we couldn’t tell which of us was a girl or a boy
we gorged on dirt thinking it was bread
and our future
a gymnast on a thin thread of the horizon
was performing there
at the highest pitch
bitch

we grew up in a country where
first your door is stroked with chalk
then at dark a chariot arrives
and no one sees you anymore
but riding in those cars were neither
armed men nor
a wanderer with a scythe
this is how love loved to visit us
and snatch us veiled

completely free only in public toilets
where for a little change nobody cared what we were doing
we fought the summer heat the winter snow
when we discovered we ourselves were the language
and our tongues were removed we started talking with our eyes
when our eyes were poked out we talked with our hands
when our hands were cut off we conversed with our toes
when we were shot in the legs we nodded our head for yes
and shook our heads for no and when they ate our heads alive
we crawled back into the bellies of our sleeping mothers
as if into bomb shelters
to be born again
and there on the horizon the gymnast of our future
was leaping through the fiery hoop
of the sun

trans by valzhyna mort, franz wright and elizabeth oehlkers wright

scottish cyclocross

2011-10-11T09:29:00.003+01:00

the last laugh-a-minute email i got basically boiled down to - are you going to plean?

as my work continues to ensure i work every weekend it's physically possible my, somewhat caustic, answer was, no, i shall not. but, for those who may be cyclocross inclined it is indeed plean coming up this weekend. all the other scottish series dates are here

if anyone hasn't done a cyclocross race i'd absolutely recommend it. i note also that the cyclocross mob have managed to get some sponsorship from minx.girl. excellent news. even if you're not racing get along to one of these just to see some fun in the mud.

in the wake of london

2011-10-10T19:45:00.004+01:00

i find myself lolling on the couch flicking thru my alexander mcqueen book savage beauty. if you share a house with someone who works with textiles i'd imagine it's almost impossible to see how one couldn't be fascinated with his work. and altho, to the best of my memory, neither of us paid that much attention while he was alive, certainly in the last year or so his presence has become more palpable and, weirdly, our sense of loss at his passing has only increased.

anna wintour, quoted in this month's rouleur no less, said fashion's not about looking back. it's always about looking forward. which, while sounding oldly futurist, is a statement that could easily aplied to mcqueen. except that mcqueen doesn't just take the viewer to the future but to a range of other places entirely.

for me, looking at pictures of mcqueen's work is like looking at a landscape. but while much fashion can be reduced to a procession of skinny models plodding bovinely from one end of a plank to another mcqueen is all about the work. here's an artist (and i don't use the word loosely) who genuinely transcends boundaries. for me it's all about the colour, for t all about the textile. either is breathtaking and that's before considering the almost sculptural vision that powers the collections. put altogether like this (the book was done for a retrospective at the met) it's transcendent and dazzling.

waiting for me on my return from london, coincidentally considering what went on this week, was my copy of tomas transtromer's new collected poems which i got because i knew sorlil was reading them and i felt i'd been avoiding him too long. then along came the nobel.

frustratingly it's all in english which i hadn't realised. there are great lines, such as -

The herring gull: a harpoon with a velvet back.
In close up like a snowed-in hull
with hidden pulses glittering in rhythm

(from song) that when i read them out had both us wondering what they'd sound like in swedish. that'll be a request to the relatives then!

and the opposite of london, a place i've read so much about but spent so little time in, so that while i can draw a map of the place in my head the actual lived experience of it is entirely alien to me, the opposite is true of stockholm and reading about it thru the lense of transtromer. the poeple and places here are those that i know, the names seemingly plucked out and deposited in this book so that i feel as if i'm creeping back into my own memory in order to process the images/feelings, almost like a reverse phenomenology!

sitting scanning it tho, i find myself getting tetchy, particularly with philip hensher's snidey review in the telegraph. here is a haiku, he declares waspishly, that perhaps might have more 'swing' in swedish. except that it's not presented as a haiku but part of a longer work (section 6 - the great enigma). one's forced to question if hensher has actually read it with any attention whatsoever.

speaking to t about it later i was surprised how much it reminded me of being out on the boat (i spend a fair amount of time out on the archipelago, so much so i get the english and swedish pronunciations mixed up!), especially the earlier poems. there was also a thing in the memoir section - the title menninen ser mig, memories look at me, seems rather ideal - where he goes on about his liking for drawing when he was wee. i'm into a lot of drawing these days so this struck a chord, along with his haunting of libraries. i didn't know the word tranan (crane) either , which was a bonus.

so, new collected poems then. i'm told the translations are great but without the swedish it's hard to tell. what you have got is very readable and i have to say i was pleasantly surprised. nobel material? well, now....

what we won't be getting down to london for is the bush theatre's sixty six books which is running for most of this month and is a bunch of folk getting in about their copies of the king james bible. i have to say, this looks fabulous and i am saddened to be missing it. it is worth a scan around the website tho just to see what they're up to. it's great to see the bible getting used in this way, true it's a bit of a trawl at times but always around the corner is some fabulous chunk of language which makes it all worthwhile. plus those big old narrative paintings make a lot more sense when you know the references!

so we're still a bit pining for london. would we up sticks and move? that's a bit up in the air and seems unlikely in the short term but in a couple of years who knows. in the meantime it may be that i have to go back to sweden - unless of course last year's winter makes its predicted return early and i don't have to!

louis simpson

2011-10-09T09:12:00.000+01:00

Carentan O Carentan

Trees in the old days used to stand
And shape a shady lane
Where lovers wandered hand in hand
Who came from Carentan.

This was the shining green canal
Where we came two by two
Walking at combat-interval.
Such trees we never knew.

The day was early June, the ground
Was soft and bright with dew.
Far away the guns did sound,
But here the sky was blue.

The sky was blue, but there a smoke
Hung still above the sea
Where the ships together spoke
To towns we could not see.

Could you have seen us through a glass
You would have said a walk
Of farmers out to turn the grass,
Each with his own hay-fork.

The watchers in their leopard suits
Waited till it was time,
And aimed between the belt and boot
And let the barrel climb.

I must lie down at once, there is
A hammer at my knee.
And call it death or cowardice,
Don't count again on me.

Everything's all right, Mother,
Everyone gets the same
At one time or another.
It's all in the game.

I never strolled, nor ever shall,
Down such a leafy lane.
I never drank in a canal,
Nor ever shall again.

There is a whistling in the leaves
And it is not the wind,
The twigs are falling from the knives
That cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,
The way to turn and shoot.
But the Sergeant's silent
That taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quickly
Our place upon the map.
But the Captain's sickly
And taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what's my duty,
My place in the platoon?
He too's a sleeping beauty,
Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan O Carentan
Before we met with you
We never yet had lost a man
Or known what death could do.

the poetry thing

2011-10-07T15:45:00.005+01:00

two things come thumping into my inbox on national poetry day that remind me why i won't be putting anything up for national poetry day. aside from the fact i'm not fussed for the numbing compulsory nature of these 'days', a bit too contrived, a bit too generic. even burn's night, at least in scotland, seems too much of an excuse to wallow in nationalist sentiment and generally get shit faced.

so, one of the things i got was a poetry give away. the publisher doing this has done it before so i was pleased to see them doing it again. free stuff is free stuff after all! what bothered me more was that they were having a big sale of their other material all available at a mere £2.99. now that's a decent price to buy a bunch of books any day of the week but looking at it i wondered what exactly was happening with their margins when they are to all intents and purposes giving their product away. which leads to that old saw, that people like reading poetry far more than they like buying it. or perhaps i'm wrong and just missing how it's possible to get something printed and sold and still cover your costs for that price!

another thing that arrived was some announcement about something or other, couched in that language that can best be described as poetspeak, complimenting the poet on his or her 'admirable risk taking'. now maybe it's just me but i'm struggling to think of any activity that's more risk free than poetry. even reading such reviews it seems carries inherently more risk as your hold on the book might loosen as you drift into slumber and then hit you in the face. or perhaps there's a movement, of which i'm as yet unaware, of extreme poetry writing, that maybe i can find on the extreme channel, that famously obscure collection 'haiku written while doing a double back flip over a gnarly tabletop'. yes, i'd read that. or maybe there's an as yet unappreciated risk that one can become so absorbed in the poetry world that it's actually possible to absorb oneself. who knows? it could be true. i have an notion to do something like the bad sex prize for bad writing about poetry/literature. i think that could fly....?

talking of which today's the day after the welcome news that tomas transtromer has won the nobel prize for literature. now i kind of like transtromer but i wouldn't claim to be super familiar with his work, beyond an annoying desire to write his name as tomas transformer and evoking an image of the old poet turning into some of sort of mechanised killer robot laying waste and destruction in the streets of central stockholm. and maybe it's just me but i kind of like the idea that transtromer has managed to keep working in the face of really quite disabling ill health. it occurs to me - last time a writer with significant physical disability won a prize?

which is the sort of thinking you can only get from some of the critical response to transtromer's win, as if certain writers have entirely forgotten that any judging process is entirely subjective and will always leave at least some people a bit stunned (i still can't read elfriede jelinek but i'm not, and i'm sure she isn't, losing any sleep over it). this infighting and general cattiness (which really, is nothing compared to the recent poetry shenanigans) seems to cleave to a rather negative image of poetry types and oddly at cross purposes with an activity that seems to me to sublimely engaging and really rather pleasant. whether it's reading or writing it i really rather recommend it!

goodness me, a post about poetry. and here's me who wud neva...!!!! i must get myself a soothing cup of tea. and much while i'd like to claim it for me maybe i'll just set it as a poetry challenge for those who like that sort of thing. tomas transformer, alien giant robot, wins nobel. can you do anything with that? too risky?

halyna petrosanyak

2011-10-07T09:06:00.000+01:00

A tiny town that once was the center of the universe, right now is clinging
to the very corner of the map, and its streets
full of holes like certain souls are out of favor in space time,
they bump into the mountains as through into absolute helplessness.
And they end up there, even the one called Freedom Street.
It’s just the river, as always, carrying off its green waters in the winter,
avoiding obstructions.

The grayness even oppresses the colors of fall. In the center
of the town a monument not for the person for whom it was once designated.
His facial expression confirms when one’s on the battlefield alone one’s
not a great warrior.

In the park the benches are painted blue and yellow.
In the mornings, especially on Sunday, the highlanders descend downtown
(most of them are Marijkas and Ivans, or Vasyls and Hannas).
They’re heading to the bazaar, less often — to church, to light a candle
for a departed soul.

The men, as a rule, go to the Smerichka Café.
You would never even come back here, if you knew no guilt
But something holds you firmly — evidently it’s a navel-string.
You suddenly make a powerful jerking movement — and behind you
your own innards will stretch, the way they do behind a wood nymph.

trans by michael m. naydan

why

2011-10-05T10:11:00.003+01:00

one has to ask on occasion do we do things that only serve to make us irate, in my case this seeming to be almost anything to do with watching or reading the news, in particular the guardian. now just to make it clear this doesn't mean i'm off cruising the pages of the express or the mail, papers which easily succeed in making the likes of the guardian look like the complete works of tolstoy but just because something can look like something else it doesn't mean it is. and the guardian's lazy. complacent journalism certainly isn't.

today's offender was what looked like a fairly innocuous article about archery. now that's as maybe but the subtext of reading that article is that yours truly, once upon a time, was an archer of some repute and, in both athens and beijing, was fascinated by the archery competitions. not so for the guardian, for whom archery is posh darts, apparently favoured mainly by koreans. even schools can't be bothered watching it they tell us. because it's just not good viewing.

well of course not, especially if you don;t know what you're looking at. t, who is long inured to my liking for tv's minority sport, is these days, a big fan of the cycling when she has time to actually watch it. it was not always thus but the curiousity of seeing the person you live with engaged with a bunch of blokes seemingly doing nothing but cycling along a road had her looking for explanation.

maybe i wasn't quite as successful with the archery it's true but t was in no doubt as to the majestic performance of the koreans last time around. watching them shoot was transcendent. total stillness, total focus, if ever there was a zen sport it's this one.

in athens you could go along to the archery for nothing. beautiful venue, totally atmospheric. maybe lords isn't quite that but sports fields are where you do your archery in britain for the most part so as venues go, it's a good one. empty stands? archery isn't a jumping up and down sport! of course given the pricing for london you could buy yourself a set of cheap kit and join an archery club for the price of their tickets. i would recommend the latter.

archery is a beautiful sport that, once it's got a hold of you, is difficult to let go. it also, if you're going to do it at national level and beyond, requires massive commitment for very little outward gain. if the guardian and their ilk really want to be writing about olympic sport they should maybe start asking people who actually participate in them what it's all about.

me, i gave it all up years ago. i did have a brief return a while back but the club structure did nothing for me. i used to shoot every day, get coaching input every day so the notion of social shooting was completely alien to me. back then i could put three arrows in a milk bottle top at 20m seven times out of ten. that was good for juniors but nowhere near where i needed to be. back at the archery club they were about hitting the target, any notion of grouping was beyond them. whatever i did there it was never going to get me back to competition level.

but, that was me. everyone else there seemed to love it. and it was great to be back among the targets and nets, to listen to the quiet of shooting, to try and blank the mind so there is only draw and release.

watch the archery. be puzzled over what it's about. don't read lazy british journalism but get down to a club and give it a go. don't worry about hitting the centre of the target (tho please hit the target!). take three arrows, try and get all three within the space of the palm of your hand. achieve this. now do it again. and again. becoming a bit obsessive about that? now you understand....

what do you call it

2011-10-04T10:37:00.003+01:00

when you lose fifteen degrees and get a bucket of rain in return? that'll be scotland. only two days before i found myself lying in t's mum's back garden in the blazing sunshine listening to old school reggae so loud it'd blister paint. true there was a bit of interchange from the originator of the music and his dad but that just added to the local colour,

it's been years since i was down in london town and prior to going i heard all the usual stories of crowdedness, poor air quality and general unfriendliness. the first two can be debated about but the last has never been my experience and certainly wasn't again this time. not only were the people lovely but there were so many of them and from so many places, it's been ages since i lived in a proper city and returning i saw exactly why i miss it, as if some part of myself had magically been coloured in.

naturally doing the family thing it meant it was three whole days before t hinted strongly that i should maybe have a day on my own, using the not unreasonable gambit of saying 'i think it's better that you have a day on your own' and it was great. i love that feeling in a city of being set adrift, set free, just wandering about and seeing where you wash up, eating different foods, listening to different languages (languages murdered by me = spanish, french. italian. i drew the line at mandarin but it was great to hear so much of it spoken)

we saw a load of stuff. from tate modern to a rather excellent craft exhibition at the v&a (this last contributing to a bit of an ongoing rant about the attitude to craft in this country some of which may appear on here if i can tone down the inflammatory content!) and everything in between. we dropped in at the british library on the way to see thomas heather wick's bleigiessen and this, as is the way of such things, was a bit of a highlight, even if we only managed to see a couple of things these being a rather excellent mervyn peak exhibit that had originals drawings and text for gormenghast and the like and then one of their larger exhibits that had the originals of, among others, the manuscript for mrs dalloway and jane eyre (yes, i've now seen the actual handwritten copy of reader, i married him). we both got proper excited about this and got a few bemused stares from servitors and punters alike. no bother tho - being scotch in london town has a few advantages!

it was the wee things that caught up with us tho. why, we wondered, when island communities up here are doing such consistent bitching about the price of fuel is petrol only 8p cheaper along the length of the a1 and, more astonishingly, diesel a full 20p dearer than where we live. this compared to the food prices which, across the board, were stupidly cheaper. and then wandering around other things started to emerge.

black guys on bikes. which might sound a bit odd but there's a discussion in the cycling world about the whitey nature of the sport. not in london town tho. put enough folk together and no matter what ethnicity they'll soon all be on their bikes. i passed thru herne hill a few times but,as is the way, no time to go to the velodrome. there seems tho, amongst pedestrians and car drivers as well as cyclists a wilful ignorance of other people. folk wander into the street, bikes, jump thru lights, cars seem to assume people walking and cycling are mad of oxygen. it was a bit mad. but equally i didn't see anyone i couldn't have taken in a spot of commuter racing. i was dying for my bike!

and the cultural melting pot that i'm such a fan of wasn't so shiny, shiny. where t's mum lives is where the riots were happening and the reverberations of that are still very evident if not worthy of the attention of the media anymore. and while me and my 'funny accent' might have drawn a few odd looks there when i made it over to the more well to do area of town it was fairly obvious that if you look like me then you're most likely in the back of a van or up some scaffolding. and if you've got any colour you'll be making a delivery. it felt weird and schizophrenic, to me vibrant and alive, but speaking to the folk in the local area made for a level of tension, esp if they had kids. talking about the differences between here and there made me much more aware of my outsiderness and the difficulty, if not foolishness, of drawing any conclusions based on such a short visit. that said, i'd have paid money to put a couple of shifts in at some salty local hospital!

but it was brilliant. given only slightly different circumstances i'd move there in a flat second. true it's dirty, a bit stinky, the public transport is possibly the most oddly set up (outside scotland - see edinburgh trams - and yes how i laughed when we in croydon and the joke that never got old for t was - what's that thing on the rails, moving, with folk inside? what is that?) i've seen in a major city and there's no countryside but the inglese themselves are just a pleasure with their funny accents, red buses and omnipresent politeness and definitely eased a certain part of my scotch wolfishness (t's phrase, not mine!)

next time i want to do one of those bus tours, go to a football match (or at least watch one with next doors serbian chelsea fans), have a posh cup of english tea, take the train down to brighton. and yet for all of that when i got back up the road and came down into the valley, seeing all the trees and hills again, the river curving round like glass, just waiting for us to stick the boat in it, clouds rolling over the landscape in strange and wonderful wave forms, despite the cold and the rain, it was good to be back.

anne carson

2011-10-03T09:03:00.001+01:00

She

She lives on a moor in the north.
She lives alone.
Spring opens like a blade there.
I travel all day on trains and bring a lot of books—

some for my mother, some for me
including The Collected Works Of Emily Brontë.
This is my favourite author.

Also my main fear, which I mean to confront.
Whenever I visit my mother
I feel I am turning into Emily Brontë,

my lonely life around me like a moor,
my ungainly body stumping over the mud flats with a look of transformation
that dies when I come in the kitchen door.
What meat is it, Emily, we need?

read the rest of this poem here http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178364

tomas tranströmer

2011-09-29T09:02:00.000+01:00

nattboksblad

Jag landsteg en majnatt
i ett kyligt månsken
där gräs och blommor var grå
men doften grön.

Jag gled uppför sluttningen
i den färgblinda natten
medan vita stenar
signalerade till månen.

En tidrymd
några minuter lång
femtioåtta år bred.

Och bakom mig
bortom de blyskimrande vattnen
fanns den andra kusten
och de som härskade.

Människor med framtid
i stället för ansikten.

a page of the night-book

I stepped ashore one May night
in the cool moonshine
where grass and flowers were grey
but the scent green.

I glided up the slope
in the colour-blind night
while white stones
signalled to the moon.

A period of time
a few minutes long
fifty-eight years wide.

And behind me
beyond the lead-shimmering waters
was the other shore
and those who ruled.

People with a future
instead of a face.

trans by robin fulton

susan stewart

2011-09-27T09:00:00.000+01:00

Yellow Stars and Ice

I am as far as the deepest sky between clouds
and you are as far as the deepest root and wound,
and I am as far as a train at evening,
as far as a whistle you can't hear or remember.
You are as far as an unimagined animal
who, frightened by everything, never appears.
I am as far as cicadas and locusts
and you are as far as the cleanest arrow
that has sewn the wind to the light on
the birch trees. I am as far as the sleep of rivers
that stains the deepest sky between clouds,
you are as far as invention, and I am as far as memory.

You are as far as a red-marbled stream
where children cut their feet on the stones
and cry out. And I am as far as their happy
mothers, bleaching new linen on the grass
and singing, "You are as far as another life,
as far as another life are you."
And I am as far as an infinite alphabet
made from yellow stars and ice,
and you are as far as the nails of the dead man,
as far as a sailor can see at midnight
when he's drunk and the moon is an empty cup,
and I am as far as invention and you are as far as memory.

I am as far as the corners of a room where no one
has ever spoken, as far as the four lost corners
of the earth. And you are as far as the voices
of the dumb, as the broken limbs of saints
and soldiers, as the scarlet wing of the suicidal
blackbird, I am farther and farther away from you.
And you are as far as a horse without a rider
can run in six years, two months and five days.
I am as far as that rider, who rubs his eyes with
his blistered hands, who watches a ghost don his
jacket and boots and now stands naked in the road.
As far as the space between word and word,
as the heavy sleep of the perfectly loved
and the sirens of wars no one living can remember,
as far as this room, where no words have been spoken,
you are as far as invention, and I am as far as memory.

andrea gibellini

2011-09-24T08:59:00.001+01:00

Hedgehogs, Threshing Machines and More

Huge machines, phosphorescent red
in the June sun, dig into the hay already stirred from pre-autumnal
slumbers and thresh it, creating
survival music. That is the place
for vacation, above all things, inside all things,

today again they began to push through the ears standing high in the sky,
a centripetal accusative thrust where everything is reborn from the harvest.
In the sight of sunlit nature, first morning, then afternoon,

hurts the eyes, not because of sun
but hedgehogs cut to pieces on the road, its asphalt
clogged with the flight, at least four or five I saw
squashed in the slow, exasperated scampering that

was useless for gaining refuge, stretching to the maximum
that internal defence of skin and flattened shell of bones.

At first it seemed a large coincidence in the hot asphalt

where the motorway meets trunk roads breathing dust
expelled from the indolent plain: it was a headlong
flight not really en masse but individual, each one’s body

flipped in a different direction beyond the fields and the houses
where you glimpse other fields, other natures.

trans by n s thompson

marina ivanova tsvetaeva

2011-09-22T08:57:00.001+01:00

Every Verse is a Child of Love

Every verse is a child of love,
A destitute bastard slip,
A firstling -- the winds above --
Left by the road asleep.
Heart has a gulf, and a bridge,
Heart has a bless, and a grief.
Who is his father? A liege?
Maybe a liege, or a thief.

trans by yevgeny bonver

stay on your bike!!!

2011-09-15T11:50:00.004+01:00

some typically understated commentary from rob warner et al as danny hart wins in italy.

les murray

2011-09-13T01:08:00.000+01:00

Morse

Tuckett. Bill Tuckett. Telegraph operator, Hall's creek,
which is way out back of the Outback, but he stuck it,
quite likely liked it, despite heat, glare, dust, and the lack
of diversion of doctors. Come disaster you trusted to luck,
ingenuity and pluck. This was back when nice people said pluck,
the sleevelink and green eyeshade epoch.
Faced, though, like Bill Tuckett
with a man needing surgery right on the spot, a lot
would have done their dashes. It looked hopeless (dot dot dot)
Lift him up on the table, said Tuckett, running the key hot
till Head Office turned up a doctor who coolly instructed
up a thousand miles of wire, as Tuckett advanced slit by slit
with a safety razor blade, pioneering on into the wet,
copper-wiring the rivers off, in the first operation conducted
along dotted lines, with rum drinkers gripping the patient:
d-d-dash it, take care. Tuck!
And the vital spark stayed unshorted.
Yallah! breathed the camelmen. Tuckett, you did it, you did it!
cried the spattered la-de-dah jodhpur-wearing inspector of Stock.
We imagine, some weeks later, a properly laconic
convalescent averring Without you, I'd have kicked the bucket...

From Chungking to Burrenjuck, morse keys have mostly gone silent
and only old men meet now to chit-chat in their electric
bygone dialect. The last letter many will forget
its dit-dit-dit-dah, V for Victory. The coders' hero has speed,
resource and a touch. So ditditdit daah for Bill Tuckett.

the cycle that wasn't

2011-09-13T00:45:00.008+01:00

yes, there was supposed to be a big cycle happening last month and while i do have pictures of what went on that week, cycling wasn't one of them. there were gales, there were hills, of course abundant rain and an abundance of midges that just wasn't funny (i told geo that i was going to camp in morvern and he just laughed and that was before jojo, a cycling acquaintance of much more tenacity than me, bailed out of the great glen as it was all 'just too much').

off to the sea instead for a bit of kayaking and, when we got back, a bit of canoeing. all very lovely.

and then the festival. readings went well and there was a (very) surprise appearance by a couple of old school friends who i hadn't seen since the early eighties. there are few times i am stumped for words but this was one of them.

and finally this week via watching the tour of britain i did manage to get back on my mountain bike. sure it was only glentress but i made a decent enough fist of it considering and didn;t get too annoyed by those trailcentre types who have to 'rest' at every available point right in the middle of the trail. that they couldn't catch up with an out of shape fat man made me feel, well, not too bad really! i even took my shaken bones to this the new peel centre. now that the dust has settled i found it rather nice. very plush in fact.

anna couani

2011-09-11T06:47:00.001+01:00

The Map of the World

The map of the world is felt from the inside. Rough around the coastlines and smooth over the hills and sand dunes. Warm and moist through the rivers which lead outside to the forests like long hair then sparser like shorter more bristly hair to the touch. Reading a glove of the world its topography in relief. Reading with the fingers as though blind. Feeling it with the back, down the spine. Making contact with the nipples and the nose only. Moving at a fast rate underwater trough the oceans and large lakes. Most fo the oceans connect up with each other. Moving so fast you become aware of the earth’s surface being curved. Flying low but fast across the land masses. Make yourself feel like the world. A solid but not as troubled.

julia hartwig

2011-09-09T07:46:00.000+01:00

Not Eternity and Not a Void

Time is in us and alongside us
but isn’t us
though the clatter of our heart
is also its clock

It is measured by our steps
but like the mythical messenger
light-footed Iris
always moves away from us with an unknown message

Someone might say
it stays close to us like a meticulous accountant
watching capital assets melt away
which willing or not
we must use to the end

Perhaps nothing in the world
is used with such wastefulness
or such stinginess
as time

But princes
ignoring their obligations
order it out of te way
Didn’t Baudelaire say:
It is free tim that made me great

trans john and bogdana carpenter

luljeta lleshanaku

2011-09-06T06:43:00.001+01:00

Men

Human existence is like a dead language
Of which only an expression, a quotation, or a single word remains.

But a man without sons is a mutation.
His name will move from one ear to another by a clean female whisper
voiced like a dream without conflict
difficult to remember after night’s end.

Six daughters, each birth a failure
like the gold prospector
who brings home only silk and medicinal herbs.

Without a son in the family,
there is no river to carry the toxic remains
of his black-and-white anger,
no one to foresee war in the bones of the pet
sacrificed for dinner;
no wars, no births or deaths
when life gets lazy in peacetime.

His cell is a cave
sketched with naïve carbon drawings:
the hunter against the beast, the hunter against nature,
until the moment a woman appears around the fire.
Then strength moves from his muscles
to his eyes
and the angle of the arrow’s aim shifts.

This is the end of the ice age
the end of clarity.
There is a secret that extinguishes men from the inside
like Dwarf Stars
changing from yellow to white
and then… to black, a smudge across the cosmos.
There is no son to inherit the father’s secret…
not the secret itself
but the art of solitude.

trans by henry israeli and shpresa qatapi

georg trakl

2011-09-03T07:42:00.001+01:00

Decline
To Klaus Borromäus Heinrich

Over the white pond,
The wild birds have journeyed on.
At evening an icy wind blows from our stars.

Over our graves
Leans the shattered brow of the night.
Beneath oaks we rock in a silver boat.

Ever the white walls of the city ring out.
Beneath arches of thorn
O my brother, our blind hour-hands climb towards midnight.

trans by will stone

sound recording

2011-09-01T10:52:00.002+01:00

so i have to make a sound recording, something i approach with dread. it used to be i used audacity but now i've got garageband which is widely reputed to be idiot proof. the proof then is in the pudding and, of course, garageband is far from this idiot proof.

problems, as with audacity, start as soon as i put the mic in. of course i can't hear it. it's a posh all singing all dancing mic but in either system it'll only work in mono. not only that but the levels i can achieve are such that i need to peer to see if there's any up and down at all. i check with one of those online tutorial things. do the stuff. doesn't work, because it never works. and there's that curious thing that when i listen to these guys their voices all sound something like normal. mine's, despite the levels being set so low as to be practically unable to see them, makes me sound like i'm recording in a bell, with all the low tones taken out.

i remember in the old days, although tape was expensive, you plugged the mic in, set some basic recording levels, pressed record and you were off. it was finicky but something like enjoyable. this digital recording malarkey tho seems just an exercise in stress esp when everyone and their cat tell me just how 'easy' it is. i wonder if it;s something i'm missing or if there's some quality in the technology that's just passing me by. recording sound used to be time consuming but satisfying. now it's just time consuming!

edwin morgan

2011-08-30T03:41:00.001+01:00

The Glass

To love you in shadow as in the light
is light itself. In subterranean night
you sow the fields with fireflies of delight.

Lanarkshire holds you, under its grim grass.
But I hold what you were, like a bright glass
I carry brimming through the darkening pass.

john ashberry

2011-08-27T08:40:00.000+01:00

What is Poetry

The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow

That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid

Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving

The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it

As we believe it. In school
All the thought got combed out:

What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, ad you can feel it for miles around.

Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us – what? – some flowers soon?

lack of comment

2011-08-26T08:50:00.002+01:00

it seems there something funny at play with blogger in that i can only comment on certain blogger blogs and then only with a computer that's not my old one. if then i seem peculiarly unresponsive and you have one of those blogs that's got the wee account box at the bottom of the comments bit tht's your answer right there.

i have no idea why this should be and can only apologize

kenneth white mikhail bakhtin death match

2011-08-24T14:23:00.003+01:00

as i attempt to re-don my critical theory trousers i have abandoned a (much) longer post about bakhtin and white on the grounds it felt a wee bit negative (and for that i can look to ian bell).

what i will say is that a return to reading bakhtin was like a joy. and in the ensuing googlefight (yes, such is the extent of my critical engagement) there could be only one winner

mikhail bakhtin wins!

charlotte mew

2011-08-23T07:39:00.000+01:00

Not for That City

Not for that city of the level sun,
Its golden streets and glittering gates ablaze –
The shadeless, sleepless city of white days,
White nights, or nights and days, that are as one –
We weary, when all is said, all thought, all done.
We strain our eyes beyond this dusk to see
What, from the threshold of eternity
We shall step into. No, I think we shun
The splendour of that everlasting glare,
The clamour of that never-ending song.
And if for anything we greatly long,
It is for some remote and quiet stair
Which winds to silence and a space of sleep
Too sound for waking and fro dreams too deep.

the collaboration charabanc

2011-08-22T12:33:00.004+01:00

it's a jolly wee life just now sitting in my workspace, finishing off a couple of paintings, listening away to whatever internet radio takes my fancy but there;s always that temptation to look away, click on the internetathimgumajiggy and lose a bit of time. worse, it can lead to the guardian, the tabloid broadsheet of those middle classes of whom i am so very much one.

first off this catches my eye. so far, so dandy you might say, i am after all the one who likes all the collaboration and what not. so why then do i find this article so profoundly depressing? i'm all about the science, history of it and all of that. i like marc quinn, i was all happy when blood head made an appearance in kick-ass. and yet when i see a title like 'we share our chemistry with the stars' i can't help but think that it's all a bit leadenly simplistic.

sure the whole art/science thing is in vogue just now. i guess it's a chance for the science types to step a bit outside themselves for a wee while but it seems a whole lot more to do with the arts types to feel just a wee bit (even more) self important. lavinia greenlaw may feel she's 'ridiculously analytical' but, and respect to her point of view, really, she's not.

maybe i'm just a wee bit jealous and hey, who wouldn't be, to get a chance to do all this cool stuff but at the same time, there just seems to be a lack of rigour. and, dare i say it, elegance? i remember it from my time as a science boy, that kind of unfolding, deep satisfaction at recreating an elegant experiment, or interpretation of a set of data, the instinctual (i'm rubbish at maths) pleasure the vision of a well laid out set of equations, exactly the same feeling as i get when i look at a painting or read a poem.

i think someone says it in the comments section - artists are not scientists and scientists are not artists - it's a statement that doesn't stand up (tho it's nowhere near the ridiculousness of say, irigaray's gendered equation nonsense!) but surely, these days, there are enough people who do both? certainly the two fields didn't used to be exclusive. or maybe i'm just being just a tad precious and up on my soapbox!

in which case back to the guardian! old words being retired? what's this? for a start i can't quite see how they make the leap to 'retiring' succedaneum even if it is for this particular use rather than the caput succedaneum with which i'm far more familiar (can you hear the soapbox being dragged back out?). aerodrome? i refuse to believe that the word aerodrome isn't appearing often enough for collins to include it and even if it isn't they should keep it because it's such a perfect word. back when i was really young and first going up in gliders we did so from an aerodrome. such a place is not an 'airport' by any means but a place of grass, of sunlight and buttercups, of struts and hangers, magical in a way that the non spaces of a terminal can never be. but worst of all - charabanc? that must be the lexicographical equivalent of a human rights crime. charabanc is one of my favourite words and a language without it is all the poorer.

which leads neatly to a finally and the sort of story that's a nap for guardian readers. the cafe that borges used to go to taken over by nike. i very much suspect that the average guardian reader views borges a bit like one of their five a day vegetables - they know they should but when it comes right down to it they just don't, even if they like to slip borgesian in as an adjective every now and again. all of which is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel - fun but not fair! i've never been to buenos aires but if i was to you can be sure i'd want to be doing some sort of borgesian (see what i did there!) tour. and while yes, things change and all that, there seems sufficient evidence on the strength of the article to suggest the developers knew exactly what they were about. shame.

oh well, that's a nice half hour passed. back to work....

children of crake

2011-08-22T10:04:00.005+01:00

after a decidedly mixed break t decides to have some time in the garden this last weekend. sure enough it's not long, the street these days being awash with the under sevens, when some of her wee pals arrive to see what she's about. what's that smell they demand. that's the herbs says t. it smells like poo, the girls declare and cover their faces. what's a herb asks one of them. you eat them on your food says t. horror from one, why from the other. because they taste nice, says t. the curious one deigns to smell a bit of sage, then a bit of oregano. the other does not. they cycle off.

they return. no t. where has she gone they ask each other. t returns and begins raking the grass. what're you doing they ask. i'm raking up the grass says t. why they ask in unison. because of i don't the dead grass will turn all yucky t say after some thought. how can you pick it up in your hands asks one of them. like this says t. oh they say and watch for a while. can we do that? i'm sure you could says t. can we come in your garden they ask. only if your mum says it's okay says t. why do we need to ask her they ask. because it's polite says t.

this causes some debate. they return to their own house. shortly after a noise that can only be described as bawling ensues. this is not uncommon. they return. a debate ensues on how big a bike they will soon own. that, and the fact that one of them still uses stabilisers and the other doesn't. the fact the gardening is over doesn't seem to bother them. their mother thinks that child labour in the garden, far from being a bad thing, should be encouraged, especially if it's not her garden.

briefly i appear. they are silent. as soon as i've gone they ask, who was that? t tells them. does he live here they ask. yes, says t. is he your husband they ask. no says t. who is he then they ask. he's my boyfriend says t. oh, they say, so where's your husband? t admits later that a rather more elaborate answer than the one she gives suggested itself to her! i don't have a husband she says. oh, say the girls.

later they will return en masse tho this time neither the garden nor i are interesting to them, more the fact that one of the girls has taken one the of the wee boys and 'squeezed his head'. his mother is not bothered by this but does want him to come in to the house as she's sleepy and wants to go to bed. he is unimpressed with this as a gambit to entice him away from the playing.

t comes back inside. i feel like that snowman in oryx and crake trying to explain stuff to the children of crake. and launches off into an exposition on children generally, the children of crake, the hymns in year of the flood and many things atwoodian. draw her a picture of a bunny will you margaret atwood and this is where that sort of caper leads. i firmly expect some sort of appearance of gardener hymns sometime in the near future.

we have a bunch of wee kids in the street these days along with another bunch who are not so wee that we've seen growing up this past few years. it seems a shame that the family has been so limited in recent times and the role of those others, neighbours, friends etc so marginalised as to have been almost criminalised, esp if you're male. we're lucky not to have too much of this looperdom where we are but its effects can be felt at the very least. everything is a threat, everything a danger down to the food they eat (tho this fortunately means they don't rifle our berry crop!). it seems such a shame that we've got to this. children it seems to me benefit those around them so much and they in turn, when exposed to a variety of influences, are benefited themselves. i remember my own childhood in this respect with some fondness but even then i was aware that i just didn't have sufficient in the way of older people around me while i was growing up. the best i can do these days is to be seen reading or drawing outside, looking at insects in the garden or just generally being on my bike

- why are you going on your bike in football boots

- these aren't football boots, these are cycling shoes

- cycling shoes?

- yes, they have these wee clips on the bottom that attach me to the pedals

- can i see?

hart crane

2011-08-20T03:38:00.000+01:00

Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulnes is like a bird whose wing are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless, -
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest, - or a child.
Forgetfuness is white, - white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness.

john berryman

2011-08-16T06:37:00.001+01:00

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me a a boy
(repeatingly) “Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.” I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
People bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, like a drag
and somehow a dog
had taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

robert lowell

2011-08-14T03:35:00.002+01:00

The Flaw

A seal swims lie a poodle through the sheet
of blinding salt. A country graveyard, here
and there a rock, and here and there a pine,
throbs on the essence of the gasoline.
Some mote, some eye-flaw, wobbles in te heat,
hair-thin, hair-dark, the fragment of a hair-

a noose, a question? All is possible;
if there’s freewill, it’s something likeis hair,
inside my eye, outside my eye, yet free,
airless as grace, if the good God… I see.
Our bodies quiver. In the rustling air,
all’s possible, all’s unpredictable.

Old wives and husbands! Look, their gravestones wait
in couples with the names and half the date –
one future and one freedom. In a flash
I see us whiten into skeletons,
our eager, sharpened cries, a pair of stones,
cutting like shark-fins through the boundless wash.

Two walking cobwebs, almost bodiless,
crossed paths here once, kept house, and lay in beds.
Your fingertips once touched my fingertips
and set us tingling through a thousand threads.
Poor pulsing Fête Champêtre! The summer slips
Between our fingers into nothingness.

We to lean forward, as the heat waves roll
over our bodies, grown insensible,
ready to dwindle off into the soul,
two motes or eye-flaws, the invisible…
Hope of the hopeless launched and cast adrift
on the great flaw that gives the final gift.

Dear Figure curving like a question mark,
how will you hear my answer in the dark?

yannai

2011-08-11T06:32:00.002+01:00

The Celestial Fire

Now an angel of the Lord appeared to
Moses in a blazing fire –

a fire that devours fire; a fire that burns
in things dry and moist; a fire that
glows amid snow and ice; a fire that is
like a crouching lion; a fire that reveals
itself in many forms; a fire that is, and
never expires; a fire that shines and
roars; a fire that blazes and sparkles; a
fire that flies in a storm wind; a fire
that burns without wood; a fire that
renews itself every day; a fire that is
not fanned by fire; a fire that billows
like palm branches; a fire whose sparks
are flashes of lightning; a fire black as
a raven; a fire, curled, like the colours
of the rainbow!

trans by t. carmi

langston hughes

2011-08-09T06:28:00.000+01:00

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be-the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!

today's the day

2011-08-08T08:08:00.003+01:00

so, half of that. sun's shining so i'm just geting my bottles etc filled and the trailer hooked up. exciting!

the (slightly) unbroken truth

2011-08-07T08:23:00.006+01:00

after last month's shenanigans the mountain bikes have stayed firmly in the shed and it's been a ginger process of getting back on the road bike and seeing what my injured leg can do. all of which has been fine in the main despite not getting to see any of my mtb pals in an age and most likely another month before that starts happening again. i can cycle that much is true but i still can't get down on the bars going uphill without feeling an all too familiar tearing sensation in my right hip.

bothersome but not overcomeable. so, post the graeme obree advice, i get myself a carry freedom trailer, a device of sublime function that has also had the handy side effect that i very much doubt i will ever, ever use panniers again. i took it out last week for a test run (load = all my tools) and met these weegie guys escaping their environment for the loveliness of perthshire. not only could i keep up but they were well impressed by how little it impeded me on the downs or corners. you can feel it on the up - there's no dodging the extra kilos! - but i feel in this mode i should start to work on the belly (the groundwork for which i've put in) and wee beard that seems to characterise the touring cyclist. i may even ditch the clipless pedals and go old school!

so the plan for my return to form is a long half loop up from perth, braemar, cairngorms, down the great glen, around loch eil, down the coast of loch linnhe, into morvern, across to mull, over to oban and then down argyll to meet t at the end of the week in machrihanish for kayak and wave based fun. i do have a return via dunoon but no time to do it. it may be i get there quicker than planned if my leg holds up and i go easy but there's some choice hills along the way that may have a say in that!

today's the day i should've been away but, obviously, there's a severe weather warning and flooding so it looks like a day's delay and a sunday watching of some of t's 'creature feature' dvds on the couch. could be worse!

so what's been done during injury time? the jam making has been lovely and it's generally been berrytastic in the garden. the raspberries haven't done us so well this year (the wild season is just starting so we're not too bothered) but the red currants are a ruby red abundance. the beans and peas are now starting to really go for it so much beaniness in sage, tomato and olive oil. plus the first of the potatoes. we've had what maybe a bit of blight so they're all cut back and we've got all historical on the topic.

having comprehensively binned tv watching this month we've gotten all bookish. i have roasted thru a bunch of kenneth white essays while t has gone margaret atwood daft. she's wheeched thru oryx and drake (loved it), made plans on in the year of the flood, finished alias grace, done some of the poetry and is currently eyeing the blind assassin. all this after atwood's drawing of a bunny! me, my favourite read so far is zachary mason's lost books of the odyssey.

we've spent quite some time gearing up for the next set of outdooriness, keeping our motivation up over the last couple of days by having a good laugh watching some of alastair humphries videos (we highly recommend the tour of shetland on a brompton). we came across alastair via kate and the fact it turning out he was just down the road from us at strathpuffer and have been very taken with his notion of micro adventures. i put it to t that her recent paddle across loch lubnaig was just such. she retorted that it was no such thing. but you did something new and you faced your fears i said. because I WAS IN THE FRONT OF THE CANOE she asserted strongly and with feeling. no matter, the pair of us being out on the water, even if it was just for a short time and even, yes, even if she did have a panic attack it has been one of my top experiences of the year and i have no doubt she'll be back in the kayak in machrihanish (tho only if they really teeny-tiny waves!)

lady sute-jo

2011-08-06T06:26:00.001+01:00

Woman

Woman –
How hot the skin
She covers

trans by lucien stryk and takashi ikemoto

jacques prévert

2011-08-03T06:24:00.003+01:00

Pater Noster

Our Father who art in Heaven
Stay there
And we’ll stay here on earth
Which is sometimes so pretty
With its mysteries of New York
And its mysteries of Paris
At least as good as that of the Trinity
With its little canal at Ourcq
Its great wall of China
Its river at Morlaix
Its candy canes
With its Pacific Ocean
And its two basins in the Tuileries
With its good children and bad people
With all the wonders of the world
Which are here
Simply on the earth
Offered to everyone
Strewn about
Wondering at the wonder of themselves
And daring not to avow it
As a naked pretty girl dares not show herself
With the world’s outrageous misfortunes
Which are legion
With legionaries
With torturers
With the masters of this world
The masters with their priests their traitors and their troops
With the seasons
With the years
With the pretty girls and with the old bastards
With the straw of misery rotting in the steel
Of cannons

trans by lawrence ferlinghetti

peony moon

2011-08-02T12:26:00.006+01:00

i'm happy to say that myself and marion appear in peony moon this week. i've been reading the letters of william maxwell and frank o'connor recently and, i'm sure it's in there, it recounts how if one were to go round to see maxwell for an interview it was pointless taking a dictaphone as it was his habit to type the answers to questions. i like that description and it puts me in mind of this 'interview'. it's nice to be able to sit back and consider for a time, almost like writing a letter and certainly more time friendly than twitter, facebook or any of those other forms that i don't entertain! it was something of a pleasure to do.

in the doing tho i discovered that maxwell lived just around the corner from me when i was living in new york. that i could have passed him in the street, and most likely did, fills me with some non-specific sense of loss, of having missed an opportunity even if, at that age, i most likely wouldn't have taken it.

so when queried on peony moon as to why i hadn't mentioned george mackay brown i was surprised to feel myself experiencing something of the same. the short answer as to why i hadn't mentioned george mackay brown is that the question related to poets and mackay brown is simply a writer whose poetry i'm not that familiar with. the novels yes but, beyond the inscription on his gravestone, not so the poetry.

not so very long ago i was listening sorley maclean and having a bit of difficulty with it so i went to see one of my workmates who was a first language gaelic speaker to ask her what the deal was. oh, she said, he's from skye but not only that he speaks bodach gaelic, old man's gaelic. and there it was that divide not only between me (mangled college lewis gaelic) and my hearrach (harris) speaking colleague but also an age related thing, a language passing and past. out in uig somewhere there's a handwritten text of old gaelic seafaring and boat language, all gone now. apparently it was to be published but there was some shenanigans with the publishers doing what gaelic speakers do, fiddling with it, changing it and that's the last i ever heard of it.

going back to orkney now everything i remember is gone. the trees i planted when i was wee are thirty feet high (an answer to that old trope that trees won't grow - plant some!), the house i lived in is now in a housing estate, the places and names that are so familiar yet strange on my tongue are not the memories i have of them. kirkwall is much like any other wee town, lovelier i'll grant you, but still much the same. it's stromness i like to walk through - the flagstones don't seem to have lost their age, there's no way to unjumble the houses and closes.

i'm guessing mackay brown was still here when i was wee. i can't say i didn't know this, he was writing for the orcadian so i must have read him at some point but i was too young to be reading his novels and even then i was more interested in the sagas. severed heads versus mackay brown would've been no contest!

my own copy of greenvoe is up on the shelf beside where i'm writing this, nearly thirty years old. i take it down, marvel at the cheapness (which wasn't so cheap in the day) open it up and find the inscription inside faded and watermarked into the opposite page. here's a good book for you to read it says. and it's not wrong. where we lived in bruntsfield was still a bit ragged, not what it's become these days and this book was, i imagine, bought in the wee book shop across the street (long since gone, the same place i would buy the copy of lanark that sits beside greenvoe.

i remember being alone in the bruntsfield flat reading it for the first time. what a brilliant book. it wasn't so much what it talked about - even at seventeen i knew that life was done - but the manner in which it did. this was the orkney i remembered, the old geezers down the harbour who were dying out even in my time. i remember, like timmy (tho much later), having to sign for meths! maybe on the smaller islands there was still a life that resembled what mackay brown described but on the mainland change was coming hard.

so that's where it sits, alongside hawkfall, magnus and the sun's net. i don't read them much these days. vanished landscapes are all fine and good except when they're your own. i remember coming up over the hill to kirkwall after years of absence and not recognising the place. not for the worse, you can see where the oil money's gone but as if the world has slipped, become strange.

maybe i'll read it this afternoon, the rain is hosing down and the bike seems just too uncomfortable a proposition, but most likely i won't. these days, as seems to be the way for those of us who read his prose when we were younger, it seems it's his poetry that's emerging in insistent fragments...

(you can get lots of mackay brown info here and hear him reading here)

A Work for Poets

To have carved on the days of our vanity

A sun

A ship

A star

A cornstalk

Also a few marks

From an ancient forgotten time

A child may read

That not far from the stone

A well

Might open for wayfarers

Here is a work for poets -

Carve the runes

Then be content with silence.

raymond queneau

2011-07-31T06:22:00.002+01:00

If you imagine

If you imagine
if you imagine
little sweetie little sweetie
if you imagine
this will this will this
will last forever
this season of
this season of
season of love
you’re fooling yourself
little sweetie little sweetie
you’re fooling yourself

If you think little one
if you think ah ah
that the rosy complexion
that waspy waist
those lovely muscles
the enamel nails
nymph thigh
and your light foot
if you think little one
that will that will that
will last forever
you’re fooling yourself
little sweetie little sweetie
you’re fooling yourself

The lovely days disappear
the lovely holidays
suns and planets
go round in a circle
but you my little one
you go straight
toward you know not what
very slowly draw near
the sudden wrinkle
the weighty fat
the triple chin
the flabby muscle
come gather gather
the roses the roses
roses of life
and may their petals
be a calm sea
of happiness
come gather gather
if you don’t do it
you’re fooling yourself
little sweetie little sweetie
you’re fooling yourself

trans by michael benedikt

pedro salinas

2011-07-28T06:21:00.002+01:00

Wake up. Day calls you

Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
Root it out of the glum
night and the darkness
that covered your body
for which light waited
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
Simple will to be
A pure slender virgin.
Test your body’s metal.
Cold, heat? Your blood
Will tell against the snow,
Or behind the window.
The colour
In your cheeks will tell.
And look at people. Rest
Doing no more than adding
Your perfection to another
Day. Your task
Is to carry your life high,
And play with it, hurl it
Like a voice to the clouds
So it may retrieve the light
Already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live.
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more.

trans by willis barnstone

le tour etc

2011-07-25T14:33:00.003+01:00

so, that'll be the tour over for another year. and evans won so i'm happy. but it was so much more than that. thor hushovd may not have gone for green but what a week he had in yellow and that second victory was pure class. i'd love to see him getting a couple of classics victories off the back of that.

and then voeckler. somewhat of the flavour was taken off that because of the inevitable eyebrow raising at the performance but even so the last ditch defense on galibier and the alpe was pure class. deep in the suitcase of courage indeed. and pierre rolland, now there's someone to look out for in the future.

and i think looking forward to the future was kind of what this tour was all about. not only new names in the frame (and that's without the likes of john degenkolb) but seemingly a different approach. andy schleck attacks from 60k, contador from 90!!! not in the epo days they wouldn't! and there was no inhumanly quick climbing of the alpe either. i feel a bit sorry for contador as whatever the truth around the clenbuterol affair he'll be tainted by it (and the schlecks are far from clouds hanging over their particular horizon) but that last vain attack was something else.

the only marginal disappointment was the king of the mountains competition which. for me, has been devalued since the richard virenque days and, like they did for the sprint competition this year, must surely be due for an overall. not that that's to take anything away from samuel sanchez but it'd be nice to see less points on the minor hills forcing pure climbers to compete in their natural environment.

cavendish's victory had something of the inevitable about it even if he had to work proper hard for it. unlike the schlecks cavendish showed proper respect for his team and, in the surprising shape of andrei greipel, those around him. even tears on the podium!

and the schlecks. aside form andy's breakaway they were as unimaginative as i predicted. what's most frustrating is that they're better than that, andy at least as franck sems to have gone a bit off the boil. as a solo effort i severely doubt if he'd have made it to the podium. there was too much looking over the shoulder, too much expecting others to work and, even allowing for the stresses and strains, they did themselves no favours with the media. andy schleck's breakaway should be the stuff of legend. instead i think it'll be contador the following day and evans' fightback that people will remember.

that, and of course johnny hoogerland's torn up backside! not forgetting juan antonio flecha who, arguably, lost the most over that incident.

so, drama all round, thoroughly entertaining and lovely france as usual. i'm totally looking forward to the next one.

myrinos

2011-07-24T06:16:00.002+01:00

Time topples Statyllios like a doddery oak

Time topples Statyllios like a doddery oak

Death hauls the old queen off, but before he goes,
He solemnly dedicates to the God of Cock:

His summer frocks dyed Dayglo puce
One shoulder-length, blonde, greasy, lacquered wig
Two glittering, sequined, high-heeled shoes
An overnight grip stuffed full of drag
And flutes smelling of cachous and booze.

trans by tony harrison

martial

2011-07-23T06:15:00.003+01:00

Either get out the house or conform to my tastes, woman

Either get out the house or conform to my tastes, woman.
I’m no strait-laced old Roman.
I like prolonging the nights agreeably with wine: you, after one glass of water,
Rise and retire with an air of hauteur.
You prefer darkness: I enjoy lovemaking
With a witness – a lamp shining or the dawn breaking.
You wear bed-jackets, tunics, thick woollen stuff,
Whereas I think no woman on her back can ever be naked enough.
I love girls who kiss like doves and hang around my neck:
You give me the sort of peck
Due to your grandmother as a morning salute.
In bed, you’re motionless, mute –
Not a wriggle
Not a giggle –
As solemn as a priestess at a shrine
Proffering incense and pure wine.
Yet every time Andromache went for a ride
In Hector’s room, the household slaves used to masturbate outside;
Even modest Penelope, when Ulysses snored,
Kept her hand on the sceptre of her lord.
You refuse to be buggered; but it’s a known fact
That Gracchus’, Pompey’s and Brutus’ wives were willing partners in the act,
And that before Ganymede mixed Jupiter his tasty bowl
Juno filled the dear boy’s role.
If you want to be uptight – all right
By all means play Lucretia by day. But I need a Laïs at night.

trans by james michie

petronius arbiter

2011-07-22T06:13:00.002+01:00

Doing a filthy pleasure is, and short

Doing a filthy pleasure is, and short;
And done, we straight repent us of the sport:
Let us not rush blindly on unto it,
Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:
For lust will languish, and that heat decay,
But thus, thus, keeping endless Holy-day,
Let us together closely lie, and kiss,
There is no labour, nor no shame in this;
This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please; never
Can this decay, but is beginning ever.

trans by ben jonson

vitězslau nezval

2011-07-20T06:11:00.002+01:00

The Clock in the old Jewish Ghetto

While time is running away on Přikopy Street
Like a racing cyclist who thinks he can overtake death’s machine
You are like the clock in the ghetto whose hands go backwards
If death surprised me I would die a six year old boy

translated by ewald osers

primo levi

2011-07-17T06:09:00.002+01:00

Shemà

You who live secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

trans by ruth Feldman and brian swann

lady ki no washika

2011-07-14T06:07:00.002+01:00

No

It’s not because I’m now too old
More wizened than you guess…

If I say no, it’s only
Because I fear that yes
Would bring me nothing, in the end,
But a fiercer loneliness.

trans by graeme wilson

horace

2011-07-11T09:05:00.002+01:00

Tibullus, pull yourself together!

Tibullus, pull yourself together!
You musn’t make such heavy weather
When women throw you over.
All day you melt in songs of woe,
Merely because a younger beau
Is now Neara’s lover.

The slender-brow’d Lycoris burns
For Cyrus: presto, Cyrus turns
To court the peevish Julia;
But Julia will no more abate
Her virgin pride, than does will mate
With wolves from wild Apulia.

Thus Venus plays her grimmest joke;
She loves to match beneath her yoke
Those who have least in common,
And both in looks and characters
Concocts the most unlikely pairs –
No help for man or woman!

Take my own case: I might have wooed
A girl as fair as she was good,
And here you see me slaving,
In utter bliss, for Myrtale,
A slur, more tetchy than the sea
Round southern headlands raving.

trans by edward marsh

john crowe ransom

2011-07-07T06:03:00.001+01:00

Blue Girls

Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward
Under the towers of your seminary,
Go listen to your teachers old and contrary
Without believing a word.

Tie the white fillets then about your hair
And think no more of what will come to pass
Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass
And chattering on the air.

Practise your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;
And I will cry with my loud lips and publish
Beauty which all our power shall never establish,
It is so frail.

For I could tell you a story which is true;
I know a woman with a terrible tongue,
Blear eyes fallen from blue,
All her perfections tarnished – yet it is not long
Since she was lovelier than any of you.

a bit more bike chat

2011-07-06T21:28:00.000+01:00

and a wee something for dominic

after t's chat with graham obree my mind has swung to a trailer for road touring. it seems a bit more convenient in some ways. but how much can you carry. well not as much as this guy who's not only got two trailers but one of them is full of ham radio gear! (call sign KE1THR, dominic). chapeau, i say!

and so le tour. this year, most likely the first in at least the last ten years but more likely the last twenty, i kissed the start reasoning, correctly i think, that time away (potentially) on the bike is better than being in front of the tv. that said, some quality racing missed.

am i going to make a prediction? on paper at least contador would seem to be the man but even he will have to make a bit of an effort. given his efforts on the mur de bretagne i'm not convinced as yet. i am delighted that thor hushovd is in yellow but disappointed he won't be going for green, at least officially - i still think he'll be there or thereabouts in paris.

i'd like to see philipe gilbert or cadel evans getting it. gilbert because he was peerless in the classics and evans just because he's superhard and has absolutely put paid to all those naysayers of yesteryear with massive performances in the giro and also in the tirreno-adriatico this year.

the schlecks i think are too unimaginative to do much unless all the signs point their way. wiggins,m unless he's very lucky, will get dropped in the mountains and, i think, will be fortunate to get a top ten far less a podium. geraint thomas on the other hand i think will get the white jersey.

the polkadot? i rather fancy robert gesink for this tho i feel the competition has been somewhat devalued in recent years as it's possible to mop up the points on the minor climbs and win with just one of the majors. seeing as they've restructured for less bunch sprints this year (i do favour the cav/htc conspitacy theory) the aso might want to do the same for the mountains classification.

that said i think it's going to be a great tour. it's worth a look at the guide for the key stages and book your spot in front of eurosport for some proper drama!

islay

2011-07-06T21:12:00.000+01:00

intending firmly to cycle i took my broken body plus t and geo to islay this weekend. we did a checklist before we went. everything seemed fine. except we'd forgotten loads including geo's birthday present. no matter.
the scottish 'summer' had taken pause and the sun was shining(ish) for a glorious crossing.

there were even cetacean sightings!

in the end we did very little. not least because this was what greeted us in the morning.

as i put it to geo, there's the beach, there's the sea - why would we want to go anywhere else. much splashing about, kayakry and general lying about in the sun ensued. so much so that while my bikey tan lines were barely blushed the rest of my pearly white northern european flesh got a proper cooking. still, nothing like an evening stroll in the sunset to ease the pain...

in the end no cycling was done, not least because of hayfever/cold but also because i just couldn't risk aggravating last week's injury. back yesterday for some proper manipulation but a world of stretching awaits before pushing it on the bike again and, unfortunately that puts 10@kirroughtree completely out of the picture for this weekend. i'm not even sure if i'll be fit for the triathlon next month.

still, islay was lovely and well worth going back for a proper look round. on our return we found the garden awash with strawberries so made a bunch of jam as well as strawberry and blackcurrant vodka as a wee perk me up on the long winter nights.

d. h. lawrence

2011-07-03T16:01:00.002+01:00

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 evening s at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

t. s. eliot

2011-07-01T15:56:00.002+01:00

La Figlia Che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair –
Lean on a garden urn –
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair –
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise –
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leave s the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

starry rhymes

2011-07-01T13:26:00.002+01:00

finally, just in time to arrive before i'm off on yet another jaunt (probably sedentary but the bike's coming just in case!) the latest from read this drops through my letter box.

and, despite only the briefest of flick throughs, it looks great. the idea is that the poets would respond to, in some form or another, one of allen ginsberg's poems. and that was that. so what i've got is a grab bag of people, some of whom i know and some of whom i don't, each responding to their own particular task in their own particular way.

i have to admit i'm a sucker for this sort of thing. i love to see how different people solve their own individual problems yet in doing so create something that's both entirely different and yet united by a common theme. i don't want to get all misty eyed but the resultant diversity always has a certain something in me confirmed in its faith in human nature.

i can't give any specifics about the poems included save that the best line must surely be from kevin cadwallandr - ' i write this because claire askew told me to and i'm scared of her'

do yourself a favour and don't listen any more to me, just get yourself out and buy a copy here. i am certain you won't be disappointed

how i got the best hitch ever

2011-06-30T17:17:00.000+01:00

so, finally it's coast to coast time. we start off in corran, or at least we do when we get there, having had a fine old night previously in a wee b&b some miles down the coast. naturally it's raining, it's the west coast. in scotland. in summer. but not just raining, no, that would be simple. this is more like some godawful torrent, a deluge.

no matter, i'm up for it, the bike's ready and so am i. but first a wee stop in glenelg to see the brochs neither of which t has ever seen but which i've been at on and off for the last twenty years, nothing at all really compared to the amount of time they've been here

it's all sorts of lovely in the pouring rain. i do notice that the waterfall down the glen is more in spate than i've ever seen it. it doesn't register. it should.

and off to corran, along a wee road i've never been and again scenery tha somehow suits the conditions - misty islands, inlets, an otter runs across the road until there's just me and my bike and it's time to go. t is working so she's away down the road. this isn't our normal routine and neither of us like it. like a disturbance in the force....

the good times, along with the 'trail' last all of a couple of hundred metres, then i'm into a rutted wood, knee depp in water where the river's flooded. a veritable tourette's is launched. i put that down to the towniness coming out of me and press on. the track becomes a landrover track and then suddenly it seems someone has built a wall. except it isn;t a wall but the track so steep it looks like a wall. okay then....

and then i reach the first burn. or should i say torrent. i gingerly make my way over, dump my pack and then back for the bike.this routine is about to become depressingly common. normally it would just be wet and a pain but as i'm on my own it has that element of stupidity and danger. and of course t's away down the road by this point so it's not like there's a turning back.

on and on i go, all the time the sound of water in my ears. and lots of lovely wee dippers zipping about, more than i've ever seen in one place. i get up to the lochans and the water is battering down off the dam like something demented. i'm glad i don;t have to cross that i think.

the instructions in the route guide are clear. follow the pylons. nothing about a river crossing. except the pylons cross the river. maybe normally you wouldn't get your feet wet. only now it's waist deep and fairly flying down the glen. again the tourette's and casting up and down the river until i finally find an island and manage to get across. i know i have two significant river crossings the following day and already i'm thinking there's no chance i'm risking that.

but anyway, onwards and upwards and a word about tyre choice. normally i'd be on some stubbly mtb tyre. but, as there's a bit of road to come, i've chosen some semi slicks. when you're cycling up a stream filled with slidey granite stones this isn't a good idea. at least i've got a mudguard. then i remember i haven't got any spare brake pads. right around this time i crash.

and again a tourettesian tirade as i've managed to land right on my left knee. what is the deal with this day. but i suck it up. no signal, no easy out so that's all there is to it. my bars are a wee bit bent so i pick the bike up, fix that and then go to roll off. except the bike won't move, the rear wheel jammed up against the frame. i go to get the quick release and then remember, it's rohloff, i don;t have a quick release. and then i see the securing bolt has slipped off the drop out. and right then i realise that despite having a tool to do every job on a regular bike i don't have a 14mm spanner for this bolt. this time i proper lose it.

but just for a second because really, what's the use. i contemplate leaving the bike but it's a long, long way to the nearest road and i won;t get a signal until i reach the end of it by which time t will be long gone. only one thing for it - i shoulder the bike and hike it out. it's a killer. i'm no lover of walking (see the ben nevis post) so i know this is going to take it out of me. and it does. but i make it.

i see a house. i knock the door. eventually a person appears, looks at me, then goes into another room, completely ignoring me. i hope, i say, you have a heart attack and carry my bike down to the next house where, even if i'm not greeted with the 'highland hospitality' (or maybe i am) at least they have a spanner. no cup of tea or other aid which, in their position i surely would've offered but hey ho, my bike's fixed and off i go. straight into the climb.

it's 15% up glenelg and only a little less into loch hourn. after the walk my legs feel cooked. and not in a good way. i check the bike. the tyres should be well pumped up. can it be, really, can it be that the rear is losing air? i hate cycling my mtb on the road but i really hate it when the presures are down in tyres, twice the effort for half the distance. but worrying about it isn;t going to get me where i want to go. and off up the hill.

and then the wind starts. there's a big low blowing in from the west so obviously for me far from being at my back it's hitting me in the face. i'm too done to care. do your worst i say, i can take it, getting my head down and working out the shortest route to the hostel. it's while i'm doing this i cycle through a puddle. innocuous you might think but enough to kick the chain off and into the bottom bracket. which is where it stays.

i spend around half an hour trying to fix it but it won't release and by this time i realise how cold i'm getting. i get my warm gear out. I'm going to have to walk it out i think, a good twenty miles in cycling shoes. great. but nevertheless it is what it is. i get my long fingered gloves on. a brief ray of sunshine breaks through. thanks for that, i smile. it's taken me three hours to go some fifteen miles

and i've taken all of three steps when i hear a car. i stick my thumb out. the car pulls over. have you broken down asks the german girl inside. yes i have i say. this is not a problem, she says, you can put the bike on my bike rack. brilliant i say. where are you going she asks. for augustus i say. but this is excellent she says, i am going to fort augustus. were it not inappropriate i could have kissed her there and then and told her of my belief in a higher power. the best hitch i have ever had.

i'n very cold by the time i get to the hostel but they have one of those skin scorching showers that hammers the heat right into your bones and i emerge refreshed and hungry. legs hurt but hey, t is coming up to get me, way above the call of duty in my opinion, so i can get a new bike and get going again the following day.

which sees me zipping around the xc friendly trails of aviemore. i'm staying at the cairngorm lodge where they feed me like a king. it's great. well almost great if it wasn't for the fact i'm sharing with the king of snorers. but i'm woken early enough to see the bats going to roost and get out to the loch for a day that starts like this

of course i think it'll be okay if i put in a 100k day off road after less than three hours sleep. that sounds like a fine idea. and if the weather holds i'll get off in the boat. first off i do an extended round the back of loch garten and then back in via ryvoan bothy

then the plan is glen einich and finish on the road bike up to the ski station which is around about where it all went wrong. first i got a twinge in one of the hamstring tendons behind my left knee and then all of a sudden it felt like someone had punched me in the right buttock. punched me and then set it on fire. and all of a sudden my trip was down.

in fact not only was my trip done but so was i. comedy scenes at my physio today as i creak onto the couch. i've got a race next week i say. hmm she says and wires into me with some sort of vibrating club thing which she later lets me take away. spend the rest of the day in a haze of ibuprofen, paracetamol and codeine with an ice pack intermittently stuck to my bum. it's not an endearing sight.

so it wasn't a coast to coast. i didn't even do the routes i wanted. but what a journey! sometimes the end point is not the one i thought it was and then it becomes all about how i got there. and that first day? that's an epic that will only get better with the telling!

graham obree

2011-06-29T17:03:00.002+01:00

so t finally gets away to the land of her forbears for a weekend of heavy duty making. it all goes well, even if she sees precious little of the country and she barely sleeps in between working and excited phone calls to me. the best birthday present i shall get her? i'm going to be hard pushed to top it. certainly the pair of us will have to go back ireland at some point so that we can see it together.

anyway on her way back she texts me from the ferry. what's your opinion on graham obree, she asks? time trial, i say, francesco moser, the hour, bother with the cycling authorities, difficult personal life, read his book, haven't seen the film, why do you ask?

because i've just been having a blether with him this last half hour she says. so it turns out she'd heard his name while she was in the queue and, on the off chance, gone up to him, confirmed who he was and asked if he didn't have any copies of his book. sold out he'd said, but he did have copies of the dvd. so off down the ship they go where they get to his bike and obree expounds, seeing as t had been telling him about my cycling 'triumphs' on why a trailer is better than panniers for touring.

then, once the dvd has been exchanged he asks t, and what about you. so t tells him she's been away on the felting course and what's she's doing with all that. and obree's really into it. you need to chase your dream he says to t, which at that point, is exactly what she wants and needs to hear. that graham obree she says, what a great guy. oh yes, she says, and i told him if he was ever passing and needed a place to stay. brilliant, i say, so i can get my legs rode off by graham obree. i think i'll stick to the felt chat.

gerald manley hopkins

2011-06-29T07:54:00.001+01:00

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

heinrich heine

2011-06-26T15:52:00.002+01:00

Looking Back

I have smelled all the perceptible smells
In this world’s kitchen.
All things enjoyable
I have enjoyed if ever man did. I have
Drunk coffee, eaten cake, had a variety
Of fair females, have worn silk waistcoats,
Worn the most elegant tails, and have jingled
A shilling or two in my pocket. I have
Ridden on a high horse like Jonathan Swift.
I owned a house; I also owned a castle.
I reclined on the green fields of good fortune,
And the sun’s gold glance wished me good morning.
A laurel wreath moreover I wore; it subtly
Suffused my brain with dreams. I dreamed,
Dreamed of roses, and of eternal spring –
It was all so delicious as long as it lasted:
Dozing in twilight, bone idle, the pigeons,
Yes roast pigeons literally flew into my mouth,
And angels visited me, producing bottles of
Champagne from their pockets – these were the visions,
Soap bubbles which burst. The grass I now lie on
Is wet, I am crippled with rheumatism,
And my soul, my very soul is ashamed.
Oh, every joy and every pleasure I paid for
With heartache, sour, I was soaked in bitterness,
Eaten by bugs, by black care oppressed,
Driven to deceit, borrowing cash from
Affluent chaps and doddering harridans –
I believe I was even obliged to go begging.
I’m weary now of all this hither-and-thithering.
I want to sleep it all off in a good deep grave.
So then good-bye! Oh yes, up there good Christian brothers,
Naturally we shall see each other up there again.

trans by christopher middleton

samuel hanagid

2011-06-23T06:50:00.002+01:00

The Prison

The earth is a prison to man all his life.
Therefore I say this truth to the fool:
Though you rush about, the sky
Surrounds you on all sides. Try to get
Out, if you can.

trans by t. carmi

catullus

2011-06-19T07:48:00.003+01:00

Less pub than brothel, and you, the regulars

Less pub than brothel, and you, the regulars
The ninth pillar from Castor and Pollux
Do you think you are the only ones equipped with a penis,
That you are the only ones licensed for fucking
And that the rest who do it are merely goats?
Do you think, as you sit waiting in rows
A hundred or two hundred together, that I shall not dare
To do the whole lot of you, two hundred together?
Think again : I will draw scorpions
All over the walls of then place.
For my girl, who has escaped from my arms,
Who was loved as much, and more than any is loved,
For whom I have expended all my forces, She is there. You, the great and the good, all love her,
You the valueless, corrupt, adulterous all love her;
You above all Egnatius
Long-haired son of a rabbit-toothed Celtiberian
Only made good by your beard
Your teeth whitened by Spanish piss.

trans by c.h. sisson

kindlicious

2011-06-18T23:18:00.000+01:00

after what seems an age the anne sexton reading is finally coming to a close, in part because i've been wanting to make it last as long as possible (a waiting game that worked wonderfully with william maxwell) but also because there's only so long i can have anne sexton's voice in my head (a nice wee interview with anne stevenson re sexton here

however i've got loads out of the parallel reading of biography/letters/collected poetry. next up I would imagine will be elizabeth bishop, not least because I've already got her collected letters, poems and anne stevenson's book on her. all i need now is a biography and i'm off.

not that i'll be getting the kindle versions of any of these. my affair with the kindle definitely seems to be more off than on. for what i bought it for – a means of carrying a load of reading material when I''m away on the bike – it's great. true, it's a bit fragile and needs protection from bumps and water but beyond that it's just fine. except really it's not.

getting a cover for it worked really well for me in terms of using it but i was under no illusions that what I was really doing was making it feel more like an actual book. but i miss the feel of the pages, the smell of the paper, all the illustration, the binding, the font, the contrast of the ink on paper, the heft of it in my hands and most of all the simple act of turning the page (and all of that before the fact that the kindle versions are often more expensive and we have to pay vat on them!)

so, for a good wee while now, while i've grudgingly accepted it, overall it's been in the 'not really for me' category. until this week where for various reasons my mind's been turning back to moby dick. i wanted a big hefty copy i could annotate. i had some discussion with joanne and she recommended the folio edition which i duly got on ebay. what a lovely thing (for all the reasons above) and far too nice to write on even if the page size and the paper were just right. i thought then what i could do instead was read the folio edition, then annotate my vintage edition (not the best by virtue of cheap paper)

and then the kindle! finally i can make a set of notes that doesn't rely on me remembering what notes are where or peppering my book with post it notes until it looks like a hedgehog. a bit unwieldy, true, but now my close reading consists of the folio edition for reading, the kindle for making electronic notes and the vintage for marking up. with some nice coffee on the go and a quiet room what better way to spend a rainy scottish afternoon