Beatrice

Send out the singers – let the room be still;
They have not eased my pain nor brought me sleep.
Close out the sun, for I would have it dark
That I may feel how black the grave will be.
The sun is setting, for the light is red,
And you are outlined in a golden fire,
Like Ursula upon an altar-screen.
Come, leave the light and sit beside my bed,
For I have had enough of saints and prayers.
Strange broken thoughts are beating in my brain,
They come and vanish and again they come.
It is the fever driving out my soul,
And Death stands waiting by the arras there.

Ornella, I will speak, for soon my lips
Shall keep a silence till the end of time.
You have a mouth for loving – listen then:
Keep tryst with Love before Death comes to tryst;
For I, who die, could wish that I had lived
A little closer to the world of men,
Not watching always thro’ the blazoned panes
That show the world in chilly greens and blues
And grudge the sunshine that would enter in.
I was no part of all the troubled crowd
That moved beneath the palace windows here,
And yet sometimes a knight in shining steel
Would pass and catch the gleaming of my hair,
And wave a mailed hand and smile at me,
Whereat I made no sign and turned away,
Affrighted and yet glad and full of dreams.
Ah, dreams and dreams that asked no answering!
I should have wrought to make my dreams come true,
But all my life was like an autumn day,
Full of gray quiet and a hazy peace.

What was I saying? All is gone again.
It seemed but now I was the little child
Who played within a garden long ago.
Beyond the walls the festal trumpets blared.
Perhaps they carried some Madonna by
With tossing ensigns in a sea of flowers,
A painted Virgin with a painted Child,
Who saw for once the sweetness of the sun
Before they shut her in an altar-niche
Where tapers smoke against the windy gloom.
I gathered roses redder than my gown
And played that I was Saint Elizabeth,
Whose wine had turned to roses in her hands.
And as I played, a child came thro’ the gate,
A boy who looked at me without a word,
As tho’ he saw stretch far behind my head
Long lines of radiant angels, row on row.
That day we spoke a little, timidly,
And after that I never heard the voice
That sang so many songs for love of me.
He was content to stand and watch me pass,
To seek for me at matins every day,
Where I could feel his eyes the while I prayed.
I think if he had stretched his hands to me,
Or moved his lips to say a single word,
I might have loved him – he had wondrous eyes.

Ornella, are you there? I cannot see –
Is every one so lonely when he dies?,
The room is filled with lights – with waving lights –
Who are the men and women ’round the bed?
What have I said, Ornella? Have they heard?
There was no evil hidden in my life,
And yet, and yet, I would not have them know –

Am I not floating in a mist of light?
O lift me up and I shall reach the sun!

Sara Teasdale

Crush

It’s a fever.
A hand on the throat, squeezing.
Like sweat in all the strangest
corners of the body.
It feels like a fox bite.
A wolf uncoiling in the neck.
Think all the birds falling out of the sky,
nose diving to make nests in your hips.
He turns you into a house, swinging doors
that creek constantly with longing.
Hands not your own.
Heart beating faster than normal.
Like this: not breathing.
Like this: all the oceans falling off the
map into your lungs.

Karese Burrows

reared by the toil of the dead

But here, is this place of eternal bareness and solitude, it seemed that life could never have been. The stark, eroded stones were things that might have been reared by the toil of the dead, to house the monstrous ghouls and demons of primal desolation.

Clark Ashton Smith
The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis

engaged with my work

Technique (in writing) is mainly what I care about – it’s what keeps me entertained and engaged with my work on a day to day basis. I think any artist will tell you that – and probably most athletes as well. To be good at anything, whether dance or painting or Olympic diving, you have to be really, really attentive to detail. And you also have to be able to forget about technique in the heat of the moment – you have to know your technique so well that it’s second nature. But you never stop trying to refine it.

Donna Tartt
Interview with Laurie Grassi for 8th November 2013 issue of Chatelaine Book Club

Make Big Changes –

Scrap 2020, delete it NOW! Download it again, but this time ensure it is virus free!

wordless novel

I want to write a wordless novel about silence.

take the pigs for a walk

Morning. Silver streaks in the sky between intermittent layers of thick cloud hanging low on the moor. Time to take the pigs for a walk. Nice pink leads, they have. Walk them across the back of my dreamscape before the rain sets in and washes us all away –

The artwork has been created by David M. Bower, who said about his work:

People always want to know what I was thinking when I create one of my more unusual paintings. My answer to them is simple: I just really wanted to paint that girl wrapped in plastic, holding a dead rat. The story sometimes just happens during the painting process. Sometimes the hidden narrative or true meaning is in the title itself. I am often inspired by an image that I see and my painting materializes from that image. It will often morph into so much more.