Month: October 2007

Consolation Grook

Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
the first one again.

I would like to know
What I was fencing in
And what I was fencing out.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Sweater, n. A garment worn by a child when its mother is feeling chilly.

Fairy Tale

He built himself a house,
his foundations,
his stones,
his walls,
his roof overhead,
his chimney and smoke,
his view from the window.

He made himself a garden,
his fence,
his thyme,
his earthworm,
his evening dew.

He cut out his bit of sky above.

And he wrapped the garden in the sky
and the house in the garden
and packed the lot in a handkerchief

and went off
lone as an arctic fox
through the cold
unending
rain
into the world.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn’t any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.

Mrs Icarus

I’m not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he’s a total, utter, absolute Grade A pillock.

It is your concern when your neighbour’s wall is on fire.

Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, I know one boy who won’t be sweating. I intend to raise my coffin-lid briskly, throw a few things into an overnight bag, and, whistling something appropriate, prepare to meet my Maker.

Upon the graving of her Name upon a Tree in Barnelmes Walks

Alas how barbarous are we,
Thus to reward the courteous Tree,
Who its broad shade affording us,
Deserves not to be wounded thus;
See how the Yielding Bark complies
With our ungrateful injuries.
And seeing this, say how much then
Trees are more generous than men,
Who by a Nobleness so pure
Can first oblige and then endure.

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on. ‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least,- at least I mean what I say – that’s the same thing, you know.’ ‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘Why, you might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see!”

A king is history’s slave.

The way to grow grand
is not: to demand.
In life’s every field
you are what you yield.

Sail not as if in pleasure boats upon a troubled sea.

We should never forget that of all the art forms, only the poem can be carried around in the brain perfectly intact.

Let not the Olive boast of her own fatness, nor the Fig-tree of her own sweetness, nor the Vine of her own fruitfulness, for we were all but Brambles.

Galactic Lovepoem

Warm your feet at the sunset
Before we go to bed
Read your book by the light of Orion
With Sirius guarding your head
Then reach out and switch off the planets
We’ll watch them go out one by one
You kiss me and tell me you love me
By the light of the last setting sun
We’ll both be up early tomorrow
A new universe has begun.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

Truth suffers herself to be courted, but evidently she has no desire to be won.

Do good and don’t worry to whom.

Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things.

Ignorance is not so much not knowing an answer as not knowing that there is a question. Ignorance is a blind dependence that someone else will be able to tell you what to do.

What He Said

What could my mother be
to yours? What kin my father
to yours anyway? And how
did you and I meet ever?
But in love
Our hearts have mingled
like red earth and pouring rain.

Cempulappeyanirar was a Tamil poet who wrote about 2000 years ago. In Tamil literary tradition many works remained anonymous and there is the practice of identifying a poet by a phrase or word from his work. So “cempulapeyanirar” literally means ‘the poet of red earth and pouring rain’.

This is the source for the title of Vikram Chandra’s first novel ‘Red Earth and Pouring Rain’.

An undergraduate asked the philosophy professor J L Austin – “When may we hope to see your Harvard lectures published sir?”

To which he gave the characteristically accurate answer – “You may hope to see them published any time.”

I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.

Kindness to Animals

If I went vegetarian
And didn’t eat lambs for dinner,
I think I’d be a better person
And also thinner.

But the lamb is not endangered
And at least I can truthfully say
I have never, ever eaten a barn owl,
So perhaps I am OK.

This poem was commissioned by the editor of “The Orange Dove of Fiji,” an anthology for the benefit of the World Wide Fund for Nature. It was rejected as unsuitable.

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.

When I face an issue of great import that cleaves both constituents and colleagues, I always take the same approach. I engage in deep deliberation and quiet contemplation. I wait to the last available minute and then I always vote with the losers. Because, my friend, the winners never remember and the losers never forget.