Raised on a diet of broken biscuits
I use this place as a trivial kind of commonplace book, to collect things which interest/edify/amuse or attract me, along with some journalish musings.
The library had a stack of cute, self-advertising postcards and I picked one up a couple of weeks ago. I like using it as a bookmark. I love them all, but my favourites are:
Poetry is either language lit up by life or life lit up by language
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words
When I am dead, and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain drenched hair,
Tho you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough.
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.-written by Chicago lyrical poet Sara Teasdale.
This poem, though originally published in her 1915 collection Rivers to the Sea, is commonly referenced as her suicide note. In fact, Teasdale did commit suicide, but not until 1933.
you wanted from this life even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires | Henry TONKS | The pearl necklace
Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
Bids me wear them, warm then, until evening
When I’ll brush her hair. At six, I place them
Round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her…
from Warming her pearls - Carol Ann Duffy
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Yet each night as I lie in bed beside you
And you are faraway curled up in sleep
I array the moonlit ceiling with a mosaic of question-marks;
How was it I was so lucky to have ever met you?
I am no brave pagan proud of my mortality
Yet gladly on this changeling earth I should live for ever
If it were with you, my sleeping friend.
I have my troubles, and I shall always have them
But I would rather live with you for ever
Than exchange my troubles for a changeless kingdom.
But I do not put you on a pedestal or throne;
You must have your faults but I do not see them.
If it were with you, I should live for ever.
That has no outward sign.
But we fight for life,
we fight, they say, for breath,
so what good are your scribblings?
this - we take them with us
beyond death; Mercury, Hermes, Thoth
invented the script, letters, palette;
the indicated flute or lyre-notes
on papyrus or parchment
are magic, indelibly stamped
on the atmosphere somewhere
forever; remember O Sword,
you are the younger brother, the latter-born,
your Triumph, however exultant,
must one day be over,
in the beginning
was the Word.
This is an interesting commentary on three translations of a poem by Wu-ti 156-87 BC. The poem was written to mourn the death of the Emperor’s favourite concubine, Li Fu-Ren. My favourite of the three translations is the second, by Arthur Haley:
The sound of her silk skirt has stopped.
On the marble pavement dust grows.
Her empty room is cold and still,
Fallen leaves are piled against the doors.
Longing for that lovely lady
How can I bring my aching heart to rest?
I first read it in Vita Sackville-West’s memorial to her cousin, Lady Idina Sackville, as quoted in The Bolter. It was a very moving book, and a very touching tribute.
