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2017-04-12 19:34 piggymouse

Russia To The Pacifists
by Rudyard Kipling

God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
But – leave your sports a little while – the dead are borne this way!
Armies dead and Cities dead, past all count or care.
God rest you, merry gentlemen, what portent see you there?

Singing: – Break ground for a wearied host
That have no ground to keep.
Give them the rest that they covet most…
And who shall next to sleep, good sirs,
In such a trench to sleep?

God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, but give us leave to pass.
We go to dig a nation's grave as great as England was.
For this Kingdom and this Glory and this Power and this Pride
Three hundred years it flourished – in three hundred days it died.

Singing: – Pour oil for a frozen throng,
That lie about the ways.
Give them the warmth they have lacked so long…
And what shall be next to blaze, good sirs,
On such a pyre to blaze?

God rest you, thoughtful gentlemen, and send your sleep is light!
Remains of this dominion no shadow, sound, or sight,
Except the sound of weeping and the sight of burning fire,
And the shadow of a people that is trampled into mire.

Singing: – Break bread for a starving folk
That perish in the field.
Give them their food as they take the yoke…
And who shall be next to yield, good sirs,
For such a bribe to yield?

God rest you merry gentlemen, and keep you in your mirth!
Was ever Kingdom turned so soon to ashes, blood and earth?
Twixt the summer and the snow-seeding-time and frost –
Arms and victual, hope and counsel, name and country lost!

Singing: – Let down by the foot and the head –
Shovel and smooth it all!
So do we bury a Nation dead…
And who shall be next to fall, good sirs,
With your good help to fall?

via wyradhe

Winter Trees
2017-04-12 19:23 piggymouse

Winter Trees
by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

To Winter
2017-04-12 19:20 piggymouse

To Winter
by William Blake

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
 
He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed
In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes;
For he hath rear’d his scepter o’er the world.
 
Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
 
He takes his seat upon the cliffs, the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st
With storms; till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.

Going Back
2017-03-26 19:18 piggymouse

Going Back
by D.H. Lawrence

The night turns slowly round,
Swift trains go by in a rush of light;
Slow trains steal past.
This train beats anxiously, outward bound.
 
But I am not here.
I am away, beyond the scope of this turning;
There, where the pivot is, the axis
Of all this gear.
 
I, who sit in tears,
I, whose heart is torn with parting;
Who cannot bear to think back to the departure platform;
My spirit hears
 
Voices of men
Sound of artillery, aeroplanes, presences,
And more than all, the dead-sure silence,
The pivot again.
 
There, at the axis
Pain, or love, or grief
Sleep on speed; in dead certainty;
Pure relief.
 
There, at the pivot
Time sleeps again.
No has-been, no here-after; only the perfected
Silence of men.

Что станется в пространстве с топором?
2017-02-02 15:52 piggymouse

Перечитывал поэму Коркии, которую очень любил в шестнадцать лет, обнаружил неожиданную параллель.

Экран старуха крестит через силу
и сквозь меня бросает мутный взгляд.
Уходит в ночь, в метро, в народ, в могилу,
сквозь дождь и снег, бензин и термояд.
Идёт на фронт, на стройки пятилетки,
на смертный бой, на подвиг трудовой
не к сыну-забулдыге, не к соседке –
на красный свет, на голос роковой:

«Народы мира!
Главное – здоровье,
покой и воля,
если счастья нет,
но счастье есть!
Всё больше поголовье
рогатого скота...»

Ей триста лет.
Или хотя бы восемьдесят.
Или...
Ей всё равно.
Она уже в раю.

Всевышний Космонавт,
над ней не ты ли
паришь у мрачной бездны на краю?...

When Christ smiles his smile is broken
Holly ivy old dead trees
Dead dead dead
Holy and ivy dead dead dead dead
Dead dead dead dead
Dead dead dead dead
Rainbow lovely arc lovely lights
Dead dead dead dead
Horn stag cross meets hunter
Dead dead dead dead

Oh Saint Eustace ora pro nobis

Old woman old woman old woman
Old and dead dead dead dead
Now no summers left
This side of boxwood
Crosses broken in my midsummer 
The south is dying
The north is dying
The west is dying
The east is dying 
There are four corners to the world she said
And every one
Is dead dead dead dead
Dead dead dead dead

Sunset
2016-09-25 21:08 piggymouse

Sunset
by E. E. Cummings

Great carnal mountains crouching in the cloud
That marrieth the young earth with a ring,
Yet still its thoughts builds heavenward, whence spring
Wee villages of vapor, sunset-proud. —
And to the meanest door hastes one pure-browed
White-fingered star, a little, childish thing,
The busy needle of her light to bring,
And stitch, and stitch, upon the dead day’s shroud.
Poises the sun upon his west, a spark
Superlative, — and dives beneath the world;
From the day’s fillets Night shakes out her locks;
List! One pure trembling drop of cadence purled —
“Summer!” — a meek thrush whispers to the dark.
Hark! the cold ripple sneering on the rocks!

Carlyle on blind deference to data (from "Chartism")
2016-08-18 15:04 piggymouse

A witty Statesman said you might prove anything by figures. We have looked into various statistic works, Statistic-Society Reports, Poor-Law Reports, Reports and Pamphlets not a few, with a sedulous eye to this question of the Working Classes and their general condition in England; we grieve to say, with as good as no result whatever. Assertion swallows assertion; according to the old Proverb, 'as the statist thinks, the bell clinks!' Tables are like cobwebs, like the sieve of the Danaides; beautifully reticulated, orderly to look upon, but which will hold no conclusion. Tables are abstractions, and the object a most concrete one, so difficult to read the essence of. There are innumerable circumstances; and one circumstance left out may be the vital one on which all turned. Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on. Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.

From Stenbock's "Faust"
2016-08-08 11:11 piggymouse

I said, continuing my enquiry (which was both official and ecclesiastical), ‘You must tell me exactly about it. I know that you monks, observing the rule of silence, are not inaccurate when you do talk.’

‘Well,’ said the guest-master, ‘although our Order is generally silent, I have to do the talking for the whole community; but I will try and tell you as best I can, though, perhaps, one of the others might relate it better, being less accustomed to speak.’

Week-night Service
2016-07-23 16:33 piggymouse

Week-night Service
by D. H. Lawrence

The five old bells
Are hurrying and eagerly calling,
Imploring, protesting
They know, but clamorously falling
Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,
Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket dropping
In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.
 
The silver moon
That somebody has spun so high
To settle the question, yes or no, has caught
In the net of the night’s balloon,
And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in the sky
Smiling at naught,
Unless the winking star that keeps her company
Makes little jests at the bells’ insanity,
As if he knew aught!
 
The patient Night
Sits indifferent, hugged in her rags,
She neither knows nor cares
Why the old church sobs and brags;
The light distresses he eyes, and tears
Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her face,
Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells’ loud clattering disgrace.
 
The wise old trees
Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,
While a car at the end of the street goes by with a laugh;
As by degrees
The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt,
And the stars can chaff
The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old church
Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that lurch
In its cenotaph.

What the Thrush Said
2016-07-23 16:29 piggymouse

What the Thrush Said
by John Keats

O Thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops ’mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phœbus was away,
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge—I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge—I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At the thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.

Most Sweet It Is With Unuplifted Eyes
2016-07-23 16:24 piggymouse

Most Sweet It Is With Unuplifted Eyes
by William Wordsworth

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes
    To pace the ground, if path be there or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
    Which he forbears again to look upon;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
    The work of Fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
    The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
If Thought and Love desert us from that day,
    Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
    Whate’er the senses take or may refuse,
The Mind’s internal heaven shall shed her dews
    Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

The Secret People
2016-06-25 17:56 piggymouse

В связи с событиями в Великобритании один умный коллега ссылался на Киплинга, но другой, куда более умный коллега ссылался всё-таки на Честертона.

The Secret People
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.

The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.
We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.
The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;
There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
And the eyes of the King’s Servants turned terribly every way,
And the gold of the King’s Servants rose higher every day.
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk’s house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
The King’s Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.

And the face of the King’s Servants grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey’s fruits,
And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.

A war that we understood not came over the world and woke
Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.
They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people’s reign:
And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and scorned us never again.
Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;
Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.
In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,
We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,
We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than a man we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.

Our patch of glory ended; we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain,
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires rode slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

QotD: Regarding the untimely demise of Jo Cox
2016-06-17 23:22 piggymouse

kouzdra quoted Chesterton's immortal novel once again in connection with Jo Cox's murder, but he did it in Russian, while I'm really, really eager to savour the original.

“Oh, no,” answered Dorian, “I’ve heard all about it since, and as you’re rather the persecuted party, so to speak, it wouldn’t be fair not to tell you that I don’t agree much with Ivywood about all this. I disagree with him; or rather, to speak medically, he disagrees with me. He has, ever since I woke up after an oyster supper and found myself in the House of Commons with policemen calling out, ‘Who goes home?’”

“Indeed,” inquired Dalroy, drawing his red bushy eyebrows together. “Do the officials in Parliament say, ‘Who goes home?’”

“Yes,” answered Wimpole, indifferently, “it’s a part of some old custom in the days when Members of Parliament might be attacked in the street.”

“Well,” inquired Patrick, in a rational tone, “why aren’t they attacked in the street?”

There was a silence. “It is a holy mystery,” said the Captain at last. “But, ‘Who goes home?’– that is uncommonly good.”

— G. K. Chesterton, “The Flying Inn”

City Poetry: "Eurydice" by Sue Hubbard
2016-05-25 14:15 piggymouse

Sue Hubbard was commissioned to write this poem by the Arts Council and British Film Institute for the Waterloo underpass leading to the IMAX cinema in London.

Eurydice
by Sue Hubbard

        I am not afraid as I descend,
step by step, leaving behind the salt wind
blowing up the corrugated river,
        the damp city streets, their sodium glare
of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain;
for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon.
        Already your face recedes beneath the station clock,
a damp smudge among the shadows
mirrored in the train's wet glass,
        will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out
past cranes and crematoria,
boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards
        of roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud,
the rows of curtained windows like eyelids
heavy with sleep, to the city's green edge.
        Now I stop my ears with wax, hold fast
the memory of the song you once whispered in my ear.
Its echoes tangle like briars in my thick hair.
        You turned to look.
Second fly past like birds.
My hands grow cold. I am ice and cloud.
        This path unravels.
Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust
and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping.
        Above the hurt sky is weeping,
soaked nightingales have ceased to sing.
Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue.
        I dream of a green garden
where the sun feathers my face
like your once eager kiss.
        Soon, soon I will climb
from this blackened earth
into the diffident light.

Выписки: Alain de Botton on commercial vs high-minded societies
2016-05-17 19:53 piggymouse

Почти не пишу в ЖЖ. Сейчас читаю новую пачку гениальных коротких книжечек от Алена де Боттона. Вот рассуждение из "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work".

It was in the eighteenth century that economists and political theorists first became aware of the paradoxes and triumphs of commercial societies, which place trade, luxury and private fortunes at their centre whilst paying only lip-service to the pursuit of higher goals. From the beginning, observers of these societies have been transfixed by two of their most prominent features: their wealth and their spiritual decadence. Venice in her heyday was one such society, Holland another, eighteenth-century Britain a third. Most of the world now follows their example.

Their self-indulgence has consistently appalled a share of their most high-minded and morally ambitious members, who have railed against consumerism and instead honoured beauty and nature, art and fellowship. But the premises of a biscuit company are a fruitful place to recall that there has always been an insurmountable problem facing those countries that ignore the efficient production of chocolate biscuits and sternly dissuade their ablest citizens from spending their lives on the development of innovative marketing promotions: they have been poor, so poor as to be unable to guarantee political stability or take care of their most vulnerable citizens, whom they have lost to famines and epidemics. It is the high-minded countries that have let their members starve, whereas the self-centred and the childish ones have, off the back of their doughnuts and six thousand varieties of ice cream, had the resources to invest in maternity wards and cranial scanning machines.

Amsterdam was founded on the sale of raisins and flowers. The palaces of Venice were assembled from the profits of the carpet and spice trades. Sugar built Bristol. And yet despite their frequently amoral policies, their neglect of ideals and their selfish liberalism, commercial societies have been graced with well-laden shops and treasuries swollen enough to provide for the construction of temples and foundling hospitals.

К одному наступающему вскоре событию
2016-04-19 01:42 piggymouse

The Birthnight
by Walter de la Mare

Dearest, it was a night
That in its darkness rocked Orion’s stars;
A sighing wind ran faintly white
Along the willows, and the cedar boughs
Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across
The starry silence of their antique moss:
No sound save rushing air
Cold, yet all sweet with Spring,
And in thy mother’s arms, couched weeping there,
Thou, lovely thing.

The Rolling English Road
2016-03-24 13:16 piggymouse

The Rolling English Road
    or
A Song of Temperance Reform
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

Holy Sonnet V vs Little Gidding mvmt. IV
2016-03-16 21:19 piggymouse

Шурик, ты не находишь?

Два великих христианских поэта разговаривают через расстояние в 330 лет.

Love in a Life
2016-03-16 19:20 piggymouse

Love in a Life
by Robert Browning

Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time, herself! — not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew, —
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.
 
Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune —
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest, — who cares?
But ‘tis twilight, you see, — with such suits to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

The Great London Tube Strike of 2014
2016-01-23 20:20 piggymouse

Текст ниже был написан 10го февраля 2014го года и был связан приблизительно с теми же обстоятельствами, что и сделанная в тот же день заметка про Candlewick. Сейчас я сижу в Нью-Йорке и вокруг меня происходит The East Coast Snow Storm of 2016 (свидетельства которого доступны в более продвинутых социальных сетях по хэштегу #snowstorm2016). Само собой, название этого события напомнило мне про The Great London Tube Strike of 2014. Я нашёл в заметках нижеизложенное и всё-таки решил его опубликовать.

Да, ещё важное. Хочу всё-таки записать для узкого круга.

Тут в Лондоне типа метро бастует, как я уже хвастался. Это третья стачка Трубы, испытанная мной в моей жизни.

И вот прошлые две обладали, сука, предсказуемостью. Вот в 1998м например просто тупо не работала Metropolitan Line. В 2010м не работали куски линий, все где-то во второй зоне и дальше. Ну не работают и не работают, заранее знаешь что жопа и берёшь такси или едешь по другой линии.

В эту стачку я тоже с утра внимательно ознакомился с новостями от TfL и решил, что вот она, картина мира на сегодня. И поехал по всяким делам в разные места.

А потом началось.

Пытаюсь это я доехать из точки А в точку Б, предполагая, что линии, которые открыты, работают как обычно. И времени у меня в общем впритык. Стою на некоторой станции и жду поезда District Line. Сначала мне объявляют, что у нас типа 10 minute service. Ну ОК, будто у вас в обычные дни сильно лучше. Но сначала в реальности поезда приходят не раз в 10, а где-то раз в 15 минут. И при этом и первый, и второй, и третий идут в Wimbledon, а мне бы честно говоря на Edgware Road.

На третьем поезде индеец Зоркий Глаз всё бросает и бежит на другую ветку. Там сразу приходит поезд, индеец Зоркий Глаз в него садится и думает, что сейчас-то он доедет куда надо. Но за пару станций до цели машинист каким-то особенно елейным голосом сообщает, дорогие мол пассажиры, в связи с обстоятельствами мы на следующих двух станциях не останавливаемся, превед.

Я как ошпаренный выскакиваю наверх и прицеливаюсь ловить такси. У станции, как обычно в центре, taxi rank и к нему стоит очередь на квартал. Машинки лениво так подъезжают, шансов успеть к дедлайну у меня точно нет. Идея отойти на квартал и ловить там (за cutting the queue меня бы в этих условиях точно убили) не работает, потому что они все, суки, едут уже занятые. Потом я беру себя в обе руки и опять смотрю в новости от TfL, как ехать. Ехать надо оказывается совсем по третьей ветке.

Ну в общем чудесным образом добрался до дедлайна. После этого перемещаюсь это я к следующей точке по Hammersmith & City, а там тоже всё непросто — ходит она только до Моргейта, Барбикан закрыт и т.д. Причём судя по всему всё это тоже внезапно.

И вот в этот момент меня осенило.

Я понял, что вот где-то сидят организаторы этой стачки.

И импровизируют, как бы им ещё насрать.

Чисто ради лулзов. И ржут, суки, на всё помещение.

А толпы коротышек™ носятся по Лондону как ошпаренные. И совершенно не понимают, куда дальше бежать. Причём далеко не все из них умеют пользоваться TfL smartphone apps. А организаторы между собой общаются в том же духе, как советники Кристи во время Bridgegate. Charlie said you did GREAT!

Но мораль не в этом.

А в том, что после пары дней мне стало казаться, что всё мироздание, сука, так работает. Вернее, что это полезная и прагматичная модель мироустройства. Что если уж скатываться в антропоморфизм, лучше считать, что мироздание управляется не Всеблагим Демиургом, и не Абсолютным Злом, и не их парой, а группой Демиургов, которые ищут исключительно лулзов. Обязательно группой, чтобы они, насрав, перезванивались или переписывались в чатике.

И чем больше я эту мысль думаю, тем больше она мне нравится.

Спокойной ночи.

Собственно, The Laughing King — он именно про вот это вот.