Five lines in memory of al-Ma'arri (Abu 'L-ala Ahmad ben Abdallah al-Ma'arri, 973-1057)

Prophets have come and gone, humanity to teach,
And priests and imams from their pulpits preach.
They pray, exhort and pass away;
their congregations listen, mumble, slay.
And I am a buried pebble on the beach.

The vagaries of fashion.

In 1860
it was quite acceptable in England
for men and women to bathe together naked,

but by 1880 it was unacceptable
for the leg even of an elegantly-carved table to be seen,
much less a woman's nether limb.
Today Englishwomen parade more than half-naked
and want only to be slim.

Living alone

without desire
without regret
life is no longer
drama
but a poem.

The oft-quoted 'Chinese' curse

 “May you live in interesting times”, 
does not exist in China itself,
according to the Financial Times.
It is just another canard or hoary chestnut
like Zhou Enlai's misreported comment
on 'The French Revolution'.

Of course there is such a thing as a Free Lunch.

My last one was in Dublin Airport (Terminal 2)
on my way to France, where I sat down at a table
on which was abandoned
a whole plate of rather good Belgian Fries,
which I washed down with my delicious,
journey-soured litre of milk.

I love those French photographers.

Doineau (left) and Atget.

The Pitfalls of Religiosity are Legion.

An extreme (and extremely visible) hermit
- say a Stylite atop a column like the original
Simeon Stylites
or the present Maxim of Georgia
depends on foll-
owers for his
(they seem to be always male)
existence,
which means that he is not
cut off from 'society' at all,
but is an egomaniac fraud
worshipping a false god.
And what happens to his shit ?
I guess his followers treasure (or market) it...

The names of vehicles.

In the not-so-Good Old Days
cars could be aristocratically named
Sceptre, Cavalier, Consul.
Or they suggested bravery Mustang, Husky, Lancer...
though, strangely, never Buster.
But now some make the mind boggle.
Citroën have a Jumpy and Dacia a Lodgy.
Soon there may be a Renault Rusty.
to accompany their Duster.

Another (but dizzying) photo of my balcony.

Nature-morte | Still-life

Discuss.

Generosity
rarely accompanies
weakness of character.

An autumn leaf on my balcony.

Quote of the Day :

"Life is a cosmic infection... It's very hard to get rid of."
- Dr Seth Shostak, astronomer, on BBC Radio 4.

Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val

At my future grave
in the village where I used to live,
I dig a little hole
and put my foot in
to find out how I feel.
- Rather good.
Worse men pass by!

Films for me are daytime dreams

which, of course, like nighttime dreams, I rarely remember,
unless I see them twice or more often.
Yesterday evening I went to Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val to see a film
which was listed here as a comedy - yet, to me
was anything but that, more a thought-provoking, gentle,
possibly even profound and filmically beautiful and beautifully-crafted
discussion on levity.

In the service of poetry

I got up in the middle of the night to look at the eclipse of the moon.
The last full lunar eclipse I saw was when I was eight,
keen on astronomy, and liked to lie down in the grass
with my little tripod and mariner's telescope.

66 years later I wanted to write a poem about the blood-moon,
and a river of dark bloody moonlight streaming over the world -
or something in that rather unsubtle vein.
What I saw - this time through cheap binoculars -
was a moon the colour of an old earthenware pot,
not even coppery. But
I was out on the balcony as wisps of mist rose up from the lake,
an owl hooted back and forth over the forest, and bats flittered by.
I watched for an hour.  I should have put on a pullover
and not stood half-naked gazing with weak eyes up at the sky.

photo taken with cheap camera

A quatrain by al-Ma'arri*

When we laugh, our laughter is in vain:
we can't erase our existential pain,
who are shattered like thin glasses made for wine,
never, never to be made again.

* Abu 'L-ala Ahmad bin Abdallah al-Ma'arri of Aleppo (973-1057)

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Oh yes, they are right to say

that it is essentially death-awareness,
more even than language,
which separates us from the other animals.
They are also right to argue
that death-denial - even more than its imposition
- is one of the most powerful forces in human culture. 
Yet many human beings  - even very young ones -
have welcomed, now find, have found, will find
a floating freedom in their mortality.
And true philosophers think of themselves as dead already.

In Memoriam

P.J. Kavanagh, a poet who declared himself Irish
but who was quintessentially, impenetrably
third-generation English,
and declared:
                        I declare my triumphant uselessness, and sing
of, for example:

...yesterday a mist
draped shrubbery in white, like frost

(new cobwebs, dewed, in layers).
 

I wrote of that, as though no wars,
diseases, prisons, others’ cares

affected me one jot.

And he concurred with the great and (of course) unrecognised English poet Peter Reading: 

Phoney-rustic bards,

Spare us your thoughts about birds.

Iris Murdoch wrote:

"We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction."
(in The Sea, The Sea.)

It's strange how many men worry about baldness

when (it seems to me) it is a Northern adaptation
to acquire more Vitamin D from what sunlight is available.
So - bald men in Scotland or Southland -
don't wear a hat when the sun is shining.

Second-best

often turns out for the best.

A Meditation Method.

This is a photo of a man meditating
(it's always men) (for four hours)
with a broken pot of burning cow-dung on his head.
What more can be said ?

Living In The Moment

Getting older,
getting through the days
wondering where the moment is to live in.

A cripple in Caylus [http://cailutz.tumblr.com]

The cambered streets of villages in France are not a bother
when you have one foot a little shorter than the other.

Ungularly singular.

People used to judge each other
by the horny translucent plate at the end of their fingers..
Perhaps they still do.
Mine are almost always dirty - so I fail
the social acceptability test
because of the large gaps
which I have between finger and nail.

Culture has become :

1. Indoctrination into Debt.
2. An ephemeral and universal
    cult of ephemera.

Cryptolect -

a lovely word to describe a cant or semi-secret
and of course unwritten language
such as Shelta
and Po[r]lare/Polari/Parlare
a cant derived from performers' Italian
(Commedia del arte; Punch and Judy)
and Romani, as well as some Cockney rhyming-slang
and back-slang (like modern verlan* in French)
which leaked into ordinary English slang with words like
to scarper (to bugger - i.e. run - off) from Italian scappare, to escape or run away
and/or from rhyming slang Scapa Flow** = to go.
A double etymology is bonarissima,
nespa ?

* verlan is an embellished back-formation of envers = back to front, reversed, wrong way round.
** Scapa Flow is a stretch of deep, calm water in the Orkney islands of Northern Scotland, notorious for being a place where ships (British, German) were deliberately sunk (by Germans, British).

Evil in the service of banality :

Bambi
made in delicate and pure white porcelain
at Dachau.

[This white product also has exacted,
misery, slavery and pain.]

Suicide

is simply returning
the overdue library-book
of life.

To children,

the world is a more or less continual
Punch-and-Judy show
in which they feel
more than they know.

I am saved

from the sink and the sheen of celebrity
by being a recluse
and having little talent
and no vulgar muliebrity.

A message to the ridiculous Donald Trump.

Republican President Garfield,
reared on a poor Ohio farm by his widowed mother,
could write Latin with one hand while writing Greek with the other.
He was an advocate of civil rights for African-Americans,
reformed a corrupt Post Office administration -
but lasted only 200 days in office
(4th March – 19th September, 1881)
due to his unfortunate assassination.

When all the words

have strutted past
there's just the trampled truth.

I could have told them this for free.

It seems absolutely obvious to me.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/human-brain-hardwired-for-rural-tranquillity-8996368.html 

The first and only page of a book.

"What were you doing before you opened the cover of this book
and turned the title  pages in order to read this sentence ?
What was I doing before I wrote that line ?
Let me tell you: I was writing a book of some kind or other.
Not a novel.
Almost anyone, it now seems, can write a novel.
Quite a few write excellent novels.
I am no-one, certainly not a nation.
I will have nothing to do with publishers.
I will have nothing to do.
I have nothing to do.
Soon I will have nothing.
Soon I will be nothing.
Soon."

A Sorry Anniversary.

Sixty years ago the Fish Finger was invented -
in order to use up over-fished Atlantic cod
(which of course does not have fingers)
after Iceland lost the last Cod War with Britain.
(Not many people remember it.)
I ate one (as a guest)
in 1969, and was not impressed.

'Foot Soldiers'

Shoe-shine hands by C. Griffith.    Click for slide-show.

La Comédie Humaine.

The most sacred river in the world
is the most polluted - by people
excreting in it.

Three million people bathe in the Ganges in one day...

the mind boggles, never mind the dead fish.

 

Gratitude.

Half-naked on the balcony I halve wild pears for jam,
throwing the rotten and the damaged ones six metres below -
to make a little pear-copse long after I go ?

A Tragic Tale

Born in 1941, Anthony was raised by humans.
It was a quarter of a century before he was united with Dog.

1967

To visit

a horrible death on someone
is considered a crime
(except, of course, when glorified in war).
To visit a horrible life on someone
is quite unremarkable.

Amy Golden

is seriously disabled due to infantile meningitis :
she can move only her right arm,
and cannot speak.
To hear her amusing
observations and comments on her life
(splendidly spoken from Amy's script
by Rhiannon Neads)

click here >>>

Late summer in Caylus.

It's not quite a Perfumed Garden
but it is a little of what the designers of the Generalife
gardens of the Alhambra in Granada sought to achieve.
At both ends of the path down to the little lake and forest
are gorgeously-scented Clerodendrum bushes.
In between is a large pendulous Buddleja (also nicely-scented),
a fig tree and a quince tree both bearing fruit within my grasp.
Two plum trees have already shed their fruit.
But alas! there is no Pomegranate tree so treasured by the Moors -
because, according to the Qur'an, pomegranates grow in paradise
and (though having a more complex symbolism in ancient Greece)
are an ancient and present Persian symbol of fertility.
In the nearest town, however, they line two busy streets.

On my 74th birthday.

Having no other,
I can only conclude
(indeed am convinced)
that Death is my father,
whom I forgive
as long as I live.

Birthday sequence of one-line haikai.

Mothering Sunday. No forget-me-nots.

*

I wake up from a noontime nap; only tired shadows.

*

The black storm swept - or smeared - the sky blue.

*

Shipwreck. Only a boat can raise a boat.

*

Behind the grave is better than before.

*

Just above the sea the swollen moon like a great golden stoma.

*

A fig cracks a big smile. Voluptuous true love.

*

My shadow is even less lonely than I am.

*

A pebble in my sock, I think of oysters.

*

My pipe has gone out. Loneliness rarely arrives.

*

The summer acupuncturist pricks my conscience.

*

Long and transparent like a bottle he was fond and died of it.

*

Some nights the snoring sea seems to dream.

*

Red leaves on the ground. My foot-warmer awaits.

*

The wind is coughing in the windswept night.

*

Falling leaves refresh the blue of the sky.

*

Boats cuddle frantically in the winter squall.

*

Park in autumn. Abandoned swings. Naked boughs swaying.

*

Just above the dope-dealers the moon not only loiters - it hangs about.

*

Alone, not lonely, the last leaf.

*

Eternally-fading laughter from the tabloid girl lining the wardrobe.

*

When I see a new moon I am slightly joyful in my cold skinniness.

*

Slightly deaf, slightly blind, slightly crippled : I am living quite slightly.

* * * * *

***

*

These also appear on my website.

Swing low, sweet chariot.

is a moving 'spiritual' reflecting the desire for death
by dispossessed and persecuted people in the United States.

It is, obscenely, the 'anthem' of the English rugby team, a cohort
of continuing Competitive White Supremacy
enjoying a particularly nasty sport.

from Wikipedia:
                                     "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was written by Wallis Willis, a Choctaw freedman in the old Indian Territory in what is now Choctaw County, near the County seat of Hugo, Oklahoma sometime before 1862. He was inspired by the Red River, which reminded him of the Jordan River and of the Prophet Elijah's being taken to heaven by a chariot (2 Kings 2:11). Some sources^[1][2] claim that this song and "Steal Away"^[3] (also composed by Willis) had lyrics that referred to the Underground Railroad, the freedom movement that helped blacks escape from Southern Slavery to the North and Canada.

Listen to the earliest recording.  

A more gospelly version by the wonderful Marion Williams here.

Haiku in memory of Hōsai Ozaki (died 1926)

Long and transparent like a bottle he was fond and died of it.

(Contrary to widespread Occidental belief
most Japanese haikai are one-line compositions.)

More of my versions of Hōsai can be read here >>>

Wisdom’s a puddle,

decease is catharsis -
  We 'civilised' are real only
as we wipe our arses.

(for Raúl in Paraguay)

Remembering Thucydides.

Beyond "freedom"
Beyond "dignity"
there is neither freedom nor dignity -
just hubris, nemesis
and inevitable entropy.

Smug Dork

I have never seen Star Wars
nor the Perseid meteor shower.
I have never seen The Godfather
nor been to a night-club.
I have never owned a television set
nor played a video game.
I have never entered the totalitarian
"world of work", or a McDonald's,
KFC or Starbucks - though I once
ate at a Pizza Hut.
I have never seen Stonehenge
though I have a website on prehistoric megaliths.
I have never been in debt
(mortgage, credit-card, etc),
never eaten sushi or sheep's eyes.
I have never liked 'popular' music
(with perhaps a dozen exceptions)
nor been to a pop concert
nor a football match.
I have never wanted to visit the USA
nor Belarus - though I did visit
East Berlin (as was) just for a day.
I have never driven a tractor
nor a trolley-bus, even though my
driving licence allows me to.
I have never worried about contracting cancer
nor tolerated stress
(because of a low tolerance of adrenalin)
which is why I never was
a taxpayer or a ballet-dancer.