Today
Today I feel like pleasing you more than before
Today I know what I want to do but I don’t know what for
To be living for you is all I want to do
To be loving you it’ll all be there when my dreams come true
Today you’ll make me say that I somehow have changed
Today you’ll look into my eyes, I’m just not the same
To be anymore than all I am would be a lie
I’m so full of love I could burst apart and start to cry
Today everything you want, I swear it all will come true
Today I realize how much I’m in love with you
With you standing here I could tell the world what it means to love
To go on from here I can’t use words, they don’t say enough
Please, please listen to me
It’s taken so long to come true
And it’s all for you
all for you….
-Marty Balin
—-
I listened to ‘Today’ this morning driving Nephew Andrew, his lady Catherine, and young Eildon to the Salvation Army to buy a new rocker for Catherine and Eildon… Andrew also picked up a Conch Shell, which once outside, I blew upon…. I said to Andrew that Gary Snyder had used a similar one at the Human Be-In… Which I think he appreciated – or not.
Eildon has now discovered Humus, and the joys of the Sippy Cup! He is looking ever so sweet!
Anyway, a nice morning here in the NW. Sunny, bright and the bees are buzzing with pure delight in the garden.
Lots on this entry,
I hope You enjoy!
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The Linkage
Peter’s Picks: NEUNENEU featuring Marlui Miranda
The Changeling and his Bagpipes
Seamus Heaney: Poems for Mid-Summer
Art: William Morris
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The Linkage:
CALL YOUR SENATORS AND YOUR REPRESENTATIVE NOW TO ASK THEM TO CO-SPONSOR THE INTERNET RADIO EQUALITY ACT, S. 1353 IN THE SENATE AND H.R. 2060 IN THE HOUSE!
Historic Tale Construction Kit…
A possible impact crater for the 1908 Tunguska Event
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Peter’s Picks: NEUNENEU featuring Marlui Miranda
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The Changeling and his Bagpipes
A certain youth whom we shall here distinguish by the name of Rickard the Rake, amply earned his title by the time he lost in fair-tents, in dance-houses, in following hunts, and other unprofitable occupations, leaving his brothers and his aged father to attend to the concerns of the farm, or neglect them as they pleased. It is indispensable to the solemnities of a night dance in the country, to take the barn door off its hinges, and lay it on the floor to test the skill of the best dancers in the room in a single performance. In this was Rickard eminent, and many an evening did he hold the eyes of the assembly intent on his flourishes, lofty springs and kicks, and the other fashionable variations taught by the departed race of dancing-masters.
One evening while earning the applause of the admiring crowd, he uttered a cry of pain, and fell on his side on the hard door. A wonderful scene of confusion ensued,–the groans of the dancer, the pitying exclamations of the crowd, and their endeavours to stifle the sufferer in their eagerness to comfort him. We must suppose him carried home and confined to his bed for weeks, the complaint being a stiffness in one of his hip joints, occasioned by a fairy-dart. Fairy-doctors, male and female, tried their herbs and charms on him in vain; and more than one on leaving the house said to one of his family, “God send it’s not one of the sheeoges yous are nursing, instead of poor wild Rickard!”
And indeed there seemed to be some reason in the observation. The jovial, reckless, good-humoured buck was now a meagre, disagreeable, exacting creature, with pinched features, and harsh voice, and craving appetite; and for several weeks he continued to plague and distress his unfortunate family. By the advice of a fairyman a pair of bagpipes was accidentally left near his bed, and ears were soon on the stretch to catch the dulcet notes of the instrument from the room. It was well known that he was not at all skilled in the musical art; so if a well-played tune were heard from under his fingers, the course to be adopted by this family was clear.
But the invalid was as crafty as they were cunning; groans of pain and complaints of neglect formed the only body of sound that issued from the sick chamber. At last, during a hot harvest afternoon when every one should be in the field, and a dead silence reigned through the house, and yard, and out-offices, some one that was watching from an unsuspected press saw an anxious, foxy face peep out from the gently opened door of the room, and draw itself back after a careful survey of the great parlour into which it opened, and which had the large kitchen on the other side. Soon after, the introductory squeal of the instrument was heard, but of a sweeter quality than the same pipes ever uttered before or after that day. Then followed a strain of such wild and sweet melody as held in silent rapture about a dozen of the people of the house and some neighbours who had been apprised of the experiment, and who, till the first enchanting sound breathed through the house, had kept themselves quiet in the room above the kitchen, consequently the farthest from the changeling’s station.
While they stood or sat entranced as air succeeded to air, and the last still the sweetest, they began to distinguish whispers, and the nearly inaudible rustle of soft and gauzy dresses seemingly brushing against each other, and such subdued sounds as a cat’s feet might cause, swiftly pacing along a floor. They were unable to stir, or even move their lips, so powerful was the charm of the fairy’s music on their wills and their senses, till at last the fairy-man spoke–the only person who had the will or the capacity to hold conference with him being the fairy-woman from the next townland.
He.–Come, come! this must be put a stop to.
The words were not all uttered when a low whistling noise was heard from the next room, and the moment after there was profound stillness.
She.–Yes, indeed; and what would you advise us to do first with the anointed sheeoge?
He.–We’ll begin easy. We’ll take him neck and crop and hold his head under the water in the turnhole till we’ll dhrive the divel out of him.
She.–That ‘ud be a great deal too easy a punishment for the thief. We’ll hate the shovel red-hot, put it under his currabingo, and land him out in the dung-lough.
He.–Ah, now; can’t you thry easier punishments on him? I’ll put the tongs in the fire till the claws are as hot as the dive!, and won’t I hould his nasty crass nose between them till he’ll know the difference between a fiery faces and a latchycock.
She.–No, no! Say nothing, and I’ll go and bring my liquor, drawn from the leaves of the lussmore; and if he was a sheeoge forty times, it will put the inside of him, into such a state that he’d give the world he could die. Some parts of him will be as if he had red-hot saws rasping him asunder, and others as if needles of ice were crossing and crossing each other in his bowels; and when he’s dead, we’ll give him no better grave nor the bog-hole, or the outside of the churchyard.
He.–Very well; let’s begin. I’ll bring my red-hot tongs from the kitchen fire, and you your little bottle of lussmore water. Don’t any of yez go in, neighbours, till we have them ingradients ready.
There was a pause in the outer room while the fairyman passed into the kitchen and back. Then there was a rush at the door, and a bursting into the room; but there was no sign of the changeling on the bed, nor under the bed, nor in any part of the room. At last one of the women shouted out in terror, for the face of the fiend was seen at the window, looking in, with such scorn and hate on the fearful features as struck terror into the boldest. However, the fairy-man dashed at him with his burning tongs in hand; but just as it was on the point of gripping his nose, a something between a laugh and a scream, that made the blood in their veins run cold, came from him. Face and all vanished, and that was the last that was seen of him. Next morning, Rickard, now a reformed rake, was found in his own bed. Great was the joy at his recovery, and great it continued, for he laid aside his tobacco-pipe, and pint and quart measures. He forsook the tent and the sheebeen house, and took kindly to his reaping-hook, his spade, his plough, and his prayer-book, and blessed the night he was fairy-struck on the dance floor.
The mutual proceedings of the intruding fairies and the intruded-on mortals, are not always of the hostile character hitherto described. It is with some pleasure that we record an instance where the desirable re-exchange was effected without those disagreeable agencies resorted to in the case of “Rickard the Rake.”
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Seamus Heaney: Poems for Mid-Summer
Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication
For Mary Heaney
I. Sunlight
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall
of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove
sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.
Now she dusts the board
with a goose’s wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails
and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.
And here is love
like a tinsmith’s scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.
—
The Haw Lantern
The wintry haw is burning out of season,
crab of the thorn, a small light for small people,
wanting no more from them but that they keep
the wick of self-respect from dying out,
not having to blind them with illumination.
But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost
it takes the roaming shape of Diogenes
with his lantern, seeking one just man;
so you end up scrutinized from behind the haw
he holds up at eye-level on its twig,
and you flinch before its bonded pith and stone,
its blood-prick that you wish would test and clear you,
its pecked-at ripeness that scans you, then moves on.
—
Lightenings viii
The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
The abbot said, ‘unless we help him.’ So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.
—
Requiem for the Croppies
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley…
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp…
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching… on the hike…
We found new tactics happening each day:
We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until… on Vinegar Hill… the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August… the barley grew up out of our grave.
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