A poem for a cold day

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
(Byron)

Art Sunday

Landscape near Chatou (1905) , by André Derain.

Thursday afternoon

Nude Descending a Staircase

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh.
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterfall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair
Collects her motions into shape.

(Painting by Marcel Duchamp. Poem by X.J.Kennedy)

Rainy day

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what is is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
(e.e.cummings)

the painting is Rain, by Gustave Caillebotte

Art on a cold Sunday

Called a masterpiece from the very first day,Manet's train station, the Gare Saint Lazare, is a favourite of mine. I love airports and railway stations, mainly because I like to sit there watching the people go by, guessing where they come from and where they're going to, I am the little girl on Manet's painting, also from the first time I saw this work.

de profundis

OH why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.
I would not care to reach the moon,
One round monotonous of change;
Yet even she repeats her tune
Beyond my range.
I never watch the scatter'd fire
Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train,
But all my heart is one desire,
And all in vain:
For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.
(Christina Rossetti)

A sea of one's own

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea, 1906

Painting by Edward Hopper

An Atlantic mood

Atlantique, painted by Jean-Louis Courteau

The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,
Came dazzling around, into the rocks,
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas

To posess Aran. Or did Aran rush
to throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity.

(Lovers on Aran, by Seamus Heaney)

A lighthouse of one's own

"When darkness fell, the stroke of the Lighthouse, which had laid itself 
with such authority upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern, 
came now in the softer light of spring mixed with moonlight gliding gently 
as if it laid its caress and lingered stealthily and looked and came 
lovingly again." ( Virginia Woolf, To the 
Lighthouse)

the painting is The Lighthouse at Colliure (1905) by fauve artist André Derain

Southern Gardens

(painting by Paul Klee)
Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, their balconies
Fine as handmade lace,
Or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.

Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.

A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
Of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun ( poem by Sylvia Plath)

Their words

Jane Austen's house

The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own.—"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!—Selina would stare when she heard of it."—But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union. ( Emma, by Jane Austen)

Music for Monday

And so it was that later as the miller told his tale, that her face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale.



Procol Harum, one of my favourite bands. Inspired by Bach ( Air on the G String,from the "Suite No. 3 in D Major"), and with the only reference to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in rock music,this is one of the best songs of the sixties. It is also one of John Lennon's favourites , they say he bought a lot of copies to keep it playing after each of them wore out.

On the edge of the world

A painting by German artist Joachim Lehrer. Dedicated to Sal and to all those who like lighthouses.