John's Dura Mater Blog

Night And the spirit of life calling Mamela And a voice With the fear of a child asking Mamela Wait There's no mountain too great Hear these words and have faith Have faith They live in you They live in me They're watching over Everything we see In every creature In every star In your reflection They live in you -"They Live in You" from The Lion King Music and lyrics by Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, and Lebo M

I went by the Druid stone That broods in the garden white and lone, And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows That at some moments fall thereon From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing, And they shaped in my imagining To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders Threw there when she was gardening. I thought her behind my back, Yea, her I long had learned to lack, And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me, Though how do you get into this old track?’ And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf As a sad response; and to keep down grief I would not turn my head to discover That there was nothing in my belief. Yet I wanted to look and see That nobody stood at the back of me; But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision A shape which, somehow, there may be.’ So I went on softly from the glade, And left her behind me throwing her shade, As she were indeed an apparition— My head unturned

This is a day when truths will out, perhaps; leak from the dangling telephone earphones sapping the festooned switchboards' strength; fall from the windows, blow from off the sills, —the vague, slight unremarkable contents of emptying ash-trays; rub off on our fingers like ink from the un-proof-read newspapers, crocking the way the unfocused photographs of crooked faces do that soil our coats, our tropical-weight coats, like slapped-at moths. Today's a day when those who work are idling. Those who played must work and hurry, too, to get it done, with little dignity or none. The newspapers are sold; the kiosk shutters crash down. But anyway, in the night the headlines wrote themselves, see, on the streets and sidewalks everywhere; a sediment's splashed even to the first floors of apartment houses. This is a day that's beautiful as well, and warm and clear. At seven o'clock I saw the dogs being walked along the famous beach as usual, in a shiny gray-green dawn, leavin