I’m absolutely flat out here trying to get myself together to go to Aldeburgh in the morning – it’s Halloween tonight and the deadline ghouls are howling…
Meanwhile the Poetry Festival Blog is already live, with several posts on it, so do have a look. I’ll be posting to here from there over the weekend, I’m sure.
But first – just to finish with the events of the week, which are still preying on the mind rather. I was up till about 3am the other night, watching Sky News and Twitter – strangely reminiscent of the riots last summer – only this time it was my other city (the one I’m never in) being destroyed in front of my eyes. The thing that really got me – no, there were several things. Let’s just say I’ll be happy when they’ve got the subway working again. And the fire. Oh Lord. You know, there was this video of a bit of the boardwalk from Far Rockway floating down a residential street in Queens, while overhead a live electrical cable kept sparking little flames in a tree. Just too much. And the rest.
But anyway, there are two pictures of the aftermath that I really want to share. I’m not going to mention Grubby-Mitts. You can all read the papers and learn the egregiousnesses of the week if you don’t already know them. There are several. But, ‘eerie and scary and sad’ as a friend called it, I keep going back to this picture at the top, taken from Union Square, looking north to the Empire State Building. It reminds me somehow of the feeling of being a child. It is magic, it’s a magic world you can never go to, except for the people who are there and can go, but for them even its unattainable because they have no power or transport and there are floods. You see?
And the second one is the reason I suddenly reached for my ‘new post’ button, right now, when I don’t have time. THIS is a picture of the PRESIDENT. For one more week we know we can say this and we are LUCKY and if I see ONE more post on Facebook ‘questioning’ the ‘system’ and touting for Jill Stein, lovely as I’m sure she is, I will SCREAM. Please, people, just work together this once, will you? Just put your goddamn backs into it and PUSH. You can have your kaffee-klatsches after.
On a more lasting note, like the one at the top this picture has for me a very interior element to it. It feels like a painting, the dynamic, the postures, the faces, the blue. A Renaissance painting. Or a Grayson Perry tapestry. O the wonder.
Click image as usual to go to the source. In this case an article about Grubby-Mitts. But, as Derek Mahon wrote:
… there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright…
{ 1 comment }
Wonderful photo of the Empire State Katy (despite its implications). Interesting that you quote that Mahon poem. It has been dismissed by at least one good poet, who, for one thing, took issue with the repetition of the first line within such a short poem. I’ve no problem with that; the parallelism is part of the rhythm/music. After all, it is a line we repeat to comfort ourselves and others, and so it is perfectly appropriate that it should embrace itself at the close of the poem, like someone hugging him/herself for warmth. I loved Mahon’s little secular prayer (for that’s what it is) from the moment I first read it. It is something worth having by heart.