of what survives

Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.

Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.
---Ted Hughes, Thistles.

'Solstice: A turning, culminating, or stopping point; a furthest limit; a crisis' (OED)

Now can we let it fall away?
Let us say
Not what we have or want but what we
Have in common
Solsticity, where we be
Cool as we will
The distant sun seems to stand still
Sol is both the sun and the one.

Solsticity, the place of stasis and extremes
Where it's Christmas and Midsummer all the time, the fall
In that desire means,
Missing what this place was once to us all
The stillness of the sea away from the shore
Our coming, our being home more.

---Adrian May, friend of the Dougal.

Amidst all the glass and steel that was our university, between the cracks of the cement and the dullness of the flatlands, the communist dystopias of the towers, the stifling air, a few human beings floated our way, whittling away at time with a whimsical aimlessness, brushing dark thoughts off as one would nonchalantly dust off particles on one's shoulder; And so what if the majority saw them as ghosts, thin and insubstantial remainders of the past?

So much grey matter! These evenings of the mind. We were like one-eyed men in the land of the blind. Even with one eye one must look, remember the colours.The vast fortress of the intellect melted with the remembrance of summer days; no winter rain could blot out what was given to us; no howling winds drown out the melodious voice that testified to our survival, to what survives...

Everything that is given with love, with an open hand, will be returned; everyone that gives so, will return. The mythical soul remembers the fields of gold, carries them in her.

------------------------------

'Were we not made for summer, shade and coolness
And gazing through an open door at sunlight?'

Today, a summer's day in spring.
Everything's out of sync., off the hinge.
And still the heart doesn't know why.
Until a Summerfield truck hurtles by.
Carrying desire far and wide.
As the old house shudders, side to side.
The still centre of the world is here.
All roads of the future, the past, laid bare.
In yellow pages and the silence of the wood
Dust settles, whilst windows sigh, streams flood.

I've been here before, but didn't stay.
A golden beach and childhood play.
Smiles glint on timeless screens.
Radios blare their seventies' dreams.
The ices in their hands nothing like the starred heart.
The old ones tired, having played their part.
Afterglow, afterwords.
Fading light, never heard.
-----b.

Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And loves dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance

Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie