Dream

-
In a pocket of earth 
I buried all the accents 
of my mother tongue 

there they lie
like needles of pine 
assembled by ants 

one day the stumbling cry 
of another wanderer
may set them alight 

then warm and comforted 
he will hear all night 
the truth as lullaby.


*******
✎John Berger (Stoke Newington, London, England, 5 November 1926 ~ Paris, France, 2 January 2017).
◙ Artwork: Maurice de Vlaminck

Popular posts from this blog

Finding the Words

-
Image
"It is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions in the head and express something – perhaps not much, just something – of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are." ******* ✎ Edward James "Ted" Hughes (Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, England, 17 August 1930 ~ London, England, 28 October 1998). ◙ Artwork: Hughie Lee-Smith.
Read more

Look, Stranger

-
Image
Look, stranger, on this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea. Here at a small field's ending pause Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges Oppose the pluck And knock of the tide, And the shingle scrambles after the suck- -ing surf, and a gull lodges A moment on its sheer side. Far off like floating seeds the ships Diverge on urgent voluntary errands, And this full view Indeed may enter And move in memory as now these clouds do, That pass the harbour mirror And all the summer through the water saunter.  ******* Wystan Hugh Auden (York, 21 February 1907 ~ Viena, 29 September 1973)
Read more

Our Own Light

-
Image
"The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their Idealism—and their assumption of Immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong -and lucky- he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile ...
Read more