Burning down the House

JMW Turner The Burning of the Houses of Parliament 1834
Watercolour on paper. Tate. Bequeathed by the artist 1856

Clock is ticking, bells are ringing...are we going to do something about it ?

reading

"Girl's party II" óleo s/tela 100x120cm

Breaking the Rule

Breaking the Rule

I. The Art of Illumination



At times it is a good life, with the evening sun

gilding the abbey tower, the brook's cold waters



sliding past and every hour in my Book

a blank page, vellum pumice-stoned



to chalky lustres which my inks suffuse:

saffron and sandarach and dragon's blood,



azure and verdigris. Monsters and every type of beast

curl round the words. Each man here has a past,



and each man reasons for his faith. I wronged

a woman once and nothing I did after could atone



or throw a light upon the blackness of that deed,

whose harm lay in the telling, not the doing.



My floor is strewn with thyme and rosemary

to mask the odours of my craft – fish glue,



gum resins, vinegar and oils. With these I shape

the hosts of the redeemed, and every face



takes on the features of a face I've known

and every angel's face beneath the shadow



of its many coloured wings is hers alone.





II. The Art of Signing



There are ways among the stone and shadow

of our cloisters to transgress the Rule. We speak



in signs: a language with no syntax.

For the sign of bread you make a circle



with your thumbs and index fingers – like a belt

that presses silk against a woman's waist.



For the sign of an eel squeeze each hand tight

as one who grasps a cord of hair to kiss



that one mouth only in the frantic din

of the ale-house where we used to dance,



and later outside with the grainy dusk

unloading a sough of foot-falls in my ear,



our four feet shuffling together

and in time across the quiet earth.



The rhythm of my days goes slower now:

matins and lauds, vespers and compline.



For the sign of silence put a finger

to the dry muscle of your mouth,



the darkness that's inside it. Keep it there

Sal

Penso que o mundo bem precisa de provar nos lábios sal grego novamente. Voltar às fontes clássicas da nossa cultura.
Precisamos de um pensamento e nada como voltarmos à nossa matriz, regressar a casa, agora que vivemos o mundo todo simultaneamente.

Salt
by Eugenio Montale
translated by Jamie McKendrick


We don't know if tomorrow has green pastures

in mind for us to lie down in beside

the ever-youthful patter of fresh water

or if it means to plant us in some arid

outback ugly valley of the shadow

where dayspring's lost for good, interred beneath

a lifetime of mistakes. We'll maybe wake up

in foreign cities where the sun's a ghost,

a figment of itself and angular

starched consonants braid the tongue at its root

so all sense of who we are is lost to words,

and nothing that we know can be unravelled.

Even then, some vestige of the sea,

its plosive tide, its fretwork crests will surge

inside our syllables, bronze like the chant of bees.

However far we've stumbled from the source

a trace of the sea's voice will lodge in us

as the sunlight somehow still abides in

faded tufts that cling to bricks and kerbstones

on half-cleared slums or bomb-sites left unbuilt.

Then out of nowhere after years of silence

the words we used, our unobstructed accents,

will well up from the dark of childhood,

and once more on our lips we'll taste Greek salt.

In Defence of Adultery

In Defence of Adultery

We don’t fall in love: it rises through us
the way that certain music does –
whether a symphony or ballad –
and it is sepia-coloured,
like spilt tea that inches up
the tiny tube-like gaps inside
a cube of sugar lying by a cup.
Yes, love’s like that: just when we least
needed or expected it
a part of us dips into it
by chance or mishap and it seeps
through our capillaries, it clings
inside the chambers of the heart.
We’re victims, we say: mere vessels,
drinking the vanilla scent
of this one’s skin, the lustre
of another’s eyes so skilfully
darkened with bistre. And whatever
damage might result we’re not
to blame for it: love is an autocrat
and won’t be disobeyed.
Sometimes we manage
to convince ourselves of that.







© 2003, Julia Copus
From: In Defence of Adultery
Publisher: Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 2003

noite no rio

August 2011

Anarchy in the UK Painting - Anarchy in the UK Fine Art Print - IDGoodall


"We're not all gathering together for a cause, we're running down Foot Locker."

Portugal

Portugal ao fim do dia

c'est beau...

o padrão ouro

Em tempos o padrão era o ouro e tudo era aferido pelo seu valor nesse metal.
Agora que todos os padrões se fundem e tudo parece volátil, reiteremos a nossa crença na beleza. O padrão que nunca se funde.

é Agosto

É Agosto e penso em ti, avô...

mas sei que não quererias que te separassem da avó.

Fala comigo a linguagem das pedras e do ferro

Fala comigo a linguagem das pedras e do ferro,
bate-me como uma clara luz,
mostra-me a sombra e o iluminado caminho.

Rastros gravados na areia, apaga-os o vento.


(Speak to me the language of stones and iron,
hit me like a revealing light,
show me the shadow and the enlightened way.

Tracks recorded on sand, are deleted by the wind.)

Goat

Goat
by Jo Shapcott
(Her Book/ Poems 1988-1998, Faber & Faber)

Dusk, deserted road, and suddenly
I was a goat. To be truthful, it took
two minutes, though it seemed sudden,
for the horns to pop out of my skull,
for the spine to revolutionise and go
horizontal, for the fingers to glue
together and for the nails to become
important enough to upgrade to hoof.

The road was not deserted any more, but full
of goats, and I liked that, even though I hate
the rush hour on the tube, the press of bodies.

Now I loved snuffling behind his or her ear,
licking a flank or two, licking and snuffling here,
there, wherever I liked. I lived for the push
of goat muscle and goat bone, the smell of goat fur,
goat breath and goat sex. I ended up on the edge
of the crowd where the road met the high
hedgerow with the scent of earth, a thousand
kinds of grass, leaves and twigs, flower-heads
and the intoxicating tang of the odd ring-pull
or rubber to spice the mixture. I wanted
to eat everything. I could have eaten the world
and closed my eyes to nibble at the high
sweet leaves against the sunset. I tasted
that old sun and the few dark clouds
and some tall buildings far away in the next town.

I think I must have swallowed an office block
because this grinding enormous digestion tells me
it’s stuck on an empty corridor which has
at the far end, I know, a tiny human figure.