The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

The earth turned to bring us closer,
it spun on itself and within us,
and finally joined us together in this dream
as written in the Symposium.

Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;
time passed in minutes and millennia.
An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh
arrived in Nebraska.

A rooster was singing some distance from the world,
in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.
The earth was spinning with its music
carrying us on board;

it didn’t stop turning a single moment
as if so much love, so much that’s miraculous
was only an adagio written long ago
in the Symposium’s score.

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

Sometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup d’etat by the second rank – troupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth men – I dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while the eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Minister’s Humber – comedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stooges – And march – an army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-hand men – storming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet mallet – stand-ins of the world stand up!

Timekeeping

Late home for supper.
He musn’t seem drunk.
‘The pob cluck’, he begins,
And knows that he is sunk.

The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don’t participate. Let Big Brother do the singing and dancing for you. Be a reporter. Be a good witness. A grateful member of the audience.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it the superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable cry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

1952-1977

In times when nothing stood
but worsened, or grew strange,
there was one constant good:
she did not change.

on the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977

You are not a human being in search of spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

How Doth the Little Crocodile

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

Strange Waters

I’ve seen a high cairn kissed by holy wind
Seen a mirror pool cut by golden fins
Seen alleys where they hide the truth of cities
The mad whose blessing you must accept without pity

I’ve stood in airports guarded glass and chrome
Walked rifled roads and landmined loam
Seen a forest in flames right down to the road
Burned in love till I’ve seen my heart explode

You’ve been leading me
Beside strange waters

Across the concrete fields of man
Sun ray like a camera pans
Some will run and some will stand
Everything is bullshit but the open hand

You’ve been leading me
Beside strange waters
Streams of beautiful lights in the night
But where is my pastureland in these dark valleys?
If I loose my grip, will I take flight?

You’ve been leading me
Beside strange waters
Streams of beautiful lights in the night
But where is my pastureland in these dark valleys?
If I loose my grip, will I take flight?

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.

Two Fragments

Love holds me captive again
and I tremble with bittersweet longing.

As a gale on the mountainside bends the oak tree
I am rocked by my love.

Rain

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

Love flies, runs, and rejoices; it is free and nothing can hold it back.

The darkest hour in any man’s life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

There is a solitude of space

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself —
Finite infinity.

of John Dryden

His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.

James James
Morrison Morrisson
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great care of his mother
Though he was only three.
James James said to his mother
Mother he said, said he:
You mustn’t go down to the end of the town if you don’t go down with me.
James James Morrison’s Mother
Put on a golden gown.
James James Morrison’s Mother
Went to the end of the town
James James Morrison’s Mother
Said to herself, said she:
I can go right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea!

What is the object of playing a gambit opening?… To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game.

An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.

I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men

Tides

There are some coasts
Where the sea comes in spectacularly
Throwing itself up gullies, challenging cliffs,
Filling the harbours with great swirls and flourish,
A theatrical event that people gather for
Curtain up twice daily. You need to know
The hour of its starting, you have to be on guard.

There are other places
Places where you do not really notice
The gradual stretch of the fertile silk of water
No gurgling or dashings here, no froth no pounding
Only at some point the echo may sound different
And looking by chance one sees ‘Oh the tide is in.’

The small force that it takes to launch a boat into the stream should not be confused with the force of the stream that carries it along: but this confusion appears in nearly all biographies.

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.