Transformations

These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!

(Transformations, Hardy... for a blue star, Marh)

Marh was the first person to write a comment on my blog. Two months later she passed away. A bright kid, aged 17. May her soul rest in peace. Koss, from Lahore.

The iceberg cuts its facets from within
Like jewelry from a grave.


But he sleeps on the top of his mast
with his eyes closed tight...
The spangled sea below wants me to fall
It is hard as diamonds, it wants to destroy all.

As we lie down to sleep the world turns half away
through ninety dark degrees;the bureau lies on the wall
and thoughts that were recumbent in the day
rise as the others fall,
stand up and make a forest of thick-set trees.
(E.B)

~~~~~~

The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.

If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
(E.B.)

~~~~~~

Alone beside the sea
like a mind alone in the universe,
her reason like man's
the sum of it how to get a meal.

A mind restless seeking,
a more restless flesh returned,
unrest and sleep without a gleam,
music delirium, and an hour of rapture

The hour of rapture is the clear hour
that comes from the darkened blind brain,
horizon-breaking to the sight,
a smile of fair weather in the illusion.

On the bare stones of the shore,
gazing at the slipperiness of the sea,
listening to the sea's swallowing
and brine rubbing on the stones.

Alone in the vastness of the univesre,
though her inaccessible kin are many,
and bursting on her from the gloom
the onset of the bright blue god.

I am with you, alone,
gazing at the coldness of the level kyle,
listening to the surge on a stoney shore
breaking on the bare flagstones of the world.

What is my thought above the heron's?
the loveliness of the moon and the restless sea
food, and sleep, and dream,
brain, and flesh, and temptation.

Her dream of rapture with one thrust
coming in its season coming without stint,
without sorrow but with one delight,
the straight, unbending laws of heron.

My dream exercised with sorrow,
broken, awry, with the gliter of temptation,
wounded, morose, with but one sparkle,
brain, heart and love troubled.
--The Heron, Sorley Maclean

~~~~~~~~~

The Choice

I walked with my reason
out beside the sea,
We were together but it was
keeping a little distance from me.

Then it turned saying:
is it true you heard
that your beautiful white love
is getting married early on monday?

I checked the heart that was rising
in my torn swift breast
and I said: most likely;
why should I lie about it?

How should I think that I should grab
the radiant golden star,
that I would catch it and put it
prudently in my pocket?

I did not take a cross's death
in the hard extremityof Spain
and how then should I expect
the one new prize of fate?

I followed only a way
that was small, low, mean, dry, lukewarm,
and how then should I meet
the thunderbolt of love?

But if I had the choice again
and stood on the headland
I would leap from heaven or hell
with a whole spirit and heart.
---Sorley Maclean

~~~~~~~~~

"...big thick clouds were hurrying to the East through the dark. Three days ago they had inflated over the Atlantic, had waited for a wind from the West, had set out, slowly at first then faster and faster, had flown over the phosphorescent autumn waters, straight to the continent, had unraveled on the Moroccan peaks, had gathered again in flocks on the high plateaus of Algeria, and now, at the approaches to the Tunisian frontier, were trying to reach the sea to lose themselves in it. After a journey of thousands of kilometers over what seemed to be an immense island, shielded by the moving waters to the North and to the South by the congealed waves of the sands, passing scarcely any faster above this nameless country than had empires and peoples over the millennia, their momentum was wearing out and some already were melting into occasional large raindrops"

~~~~~~~

Photo courtesy of Roxana