I was phoned today from halfway across the world by someone who had just lost a loyal friend. He said he felt he had lost part of himself. After telling him how sorry I was I said I could do no more than read to him the words of John Donne who was Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London from 1621 to 1631. Please listen. You may have to turn up the volume. Thank you.
No man is an island
I am Kiera. I love the woods. Especially enchanted woods. I have some questions for you. Who am I? What am I? What am I to you? Am I closer to you than you can ever imagine? In the stillness of an enchanted wood I heard you answer me. I have recorded our sacred conversation in a poem. Here it is. Please step softly on my dreams.
IN CONVERSATION WITH KIERA …..
Who or what am I?
A star in the sky?
Or think perhaps I could
Be a nymph in the wood?
A fish that swims maybe?
Delighting in the sea …..
A bird that flies the air?
A pig, cat, horse or bear?
I’m none of these
So help me please ………
“You are LOVE in motion and give devotion
You feed my soul and make me whole
A DOG so wise
In disguise …..
My Brightest Star
That’s who you are!”.
(Kiera lives with her devoted companion Anna in East Sussex, England. Anna also loves and writes poetry.)
Omar Khayyam
“Read mark and inwardly digest” – The Book of Common Prayer
Thank you Alex
In the darkness before dawn
The birds begin to sing
With you by my side I can hear
*
In the middle of the winter
Comes promise of the spring
With you by my side I can fly
*
In the depths of my blackness
I see the birth of day
With you by my side I can fly
John Bartels – Words and music Feb. 1999. Posted on 23 Jan. 2021 in the sure and certain hope that Covid will be defeated
Why is there a feeling that things are falling apart in these uncertain times? Do we sense that anarchy is increasingly eroding law and order? What has happened to ethics? Is there a centre that is falling apart? What is that centre? What is your centre? What is my centre?
Scroll below picture on your phone, please.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Opening to The Second Coming – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
No, this is not a recently discovered painting by Turner! It is a photo taken by our friend, artist Professor Estelle Marais. The picture is of sunrise over the harbour in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on 7 June 2020.
Silhouetted against the rising sun is a harbour crane, affectionately described by Estelle as “The Harbour Giraffe walking into the sun this morning”.
Estelle always finds the welcoming dawn encouraging and inspiring.
This wonderful photograph is a powerful reminder of Kalidasa’s greatly loved poem “Look to this Day”:
Scroll down below the picture to read the famous poem:
Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement
Are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!
Thank you Kalidasa and Estelle
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshýd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahrám, that great Hunter–the Wild Ass
Stamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald
Something to think about.
When you wake up in the early morning, this is the call at dawn:
Live well today. This will create happy memories and hope for the future.
Excellent advice, not put over in a very exciting way.
Let’s hear the original advice penned by Kalidasa the classical Sanskrit writer c 6th-7th CE
No wonder this is the favorite poem of so many people.
Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement
Are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!
Below is the ode “To Autumn” by the poet John Keats
Here is a short, fun exercise that will show you what a genius Keats was when he chose words.
I have deleted some words in the ode.
Choose some words yourself. What would you put in?
Have a go and then at the bottom of the post I have printed the original ode with Keats’s words on bold red.
Then, compare your choices with Keats’s choices.
Ode with some words taken out
To Autumn
Season of mists and ……fruitfulness,
Close ……….friend of the ……….sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves …….;
To ….with apples the …..cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To ….the gourd, and ….the hazel shells
With a …..kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think ….days will never cease,
For summer has ……….. their clammy cells.
Keats’s version with Keats’s words in bold red
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
How did you do?
You can do the same exercise for the rest of the ode.
Enjoy.
PS My late Uncle told me about the above exercise. He learnt it from a teacher in Southern Rhodesia, probably in the 1930s.
johnbartels.com 