A commonplace book
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Wendell Berry, To Know the Dark
One cocksure fox in a house of hens
Les Savy Fav, “The Sweat Descends”
It’s not the purple hills
It’s not the silver lakes
It’s not the snowcloud shadowed interstates
It’s not the icy bike chain rain of Portland, Oregon
Where nothing’s wrong and no one’s asking
But the fear’s so strong it leaves you gasping
No way to last out here like this for long
Purple Mountains, “All My Happiness is Gone”
[…]
They lie; they lie; secure in the decay
Of blood, blood-marks, crowns hacked and coveted,
Before the scouring fires of trial-day
Alight on men; before sleeked groin, gored head,
Budge through the clay and gravel, and the sea
Across daubed rock evacuates its dead.
Geoffrey Hill, Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings
Yes, we are going to suffer, now; the sky
Throbs like a feverish forehead; pain is real;
The groping searchlights suddenly reveal
The little natures that will make us cry,
Who never quite believed they could exist,
Not where we were. […]
W.H. Auden, In Time of War, XIV
Do you feel like a chain store: practically floored ?
Blur, “Coffee & TV”
published