Sunday 14 November 2010

and soon, my friend, we shall have no time for dances.

I don't ever write in this anymore. Sometimes I miss it and think I ought to start it up again, but when do I ever have the time? And what on earth do I have to say for myself? (Of course, a more pertinent thing to wonder might be what I ever had; the importance I placed upon the process of saying it used to be impetus enough, but isn't now. I wonder why that is.)

Still. I read this today, sort of by accident in a quiet, dusty, secret little room and I wanted to keep it somewhere because I thought it was just lovely. I'm not sure why, exactly, I found it so lovely, but perhaps if I put it here and don't lose it, I shall come back to it at some point in the future and puzzle that out. Oh Larkin. You're so bloody depressing but you make me so happy!


This was your place of birth, this daytime palace,
This miracle of glass, whose every hall
The light as music fills, and on your face
Shines petal-soft; sunbeams are prodigal
To show you pausing at a picture’s edge
To puzzle out a name, or with a hand
Resting a second on a random page –

The clouds cast moving shadows on the land.

Are you prepared for what the night will bring?
The stranger who will never show his face
But asks admittance; will you greet your doom
As final; set him loaves and wine; knowing
The game is finished when he plays his ace,
And overturn the table and go into the next room?
                                        - II, from The North Ship by Philip Larkin.

I've been reading a lot of Yeats today so maybe I should have posted some Yeats. I'm afraid that I do like him, but I just don't LOVE him in the same way I love Larkin and Siken and my other favourite poets; maybe some people just speak to you and some people you can, you know, appreciate, without being incredibly moved by. Maybe that's why poetry is cool.

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