Never Again Such Innocence

On Veterans / Armistice Day

Mcmxiv

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheats' restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word—the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)
[See also: KL & FN]

Previous & Additional & Related
Veterans Day posts:

Armistice Day

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child

"The same war continues . . . "

94 Years Ago Today

Flanders Fields ~ What Have We Learned?

War Horse

Point of Balance

**********

Instead of Poppies

Veterans Eve

Martinmas

Pale Battalions

A Form of Madness

An Undying Hate of War

Angel of the Hills

Drummer Hodge

Winging Wildly

Never Again Such Innocence

**********

Day of the Dead ~ 2009

Uncle Samuel

Too Soon For Snow

JSL's Side of the Story

A Night for Lanterns

Martinmas Eve ~ Long Lost Traditions

Mouse & Cricket
with Chinese Lantern Seedpod Lamp
Artwork by Maggie Vandewalle
[also Catnap]

And here's the real thing,
growing in my garden
[On facebook]

A lyric for the season . . .
This is why we need lanterns . . .

Now dreary dawns the eastern light

Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
And fall of eve is drear,
And cold the poor man lies at night,
And so goes out the year.

Little is the luck I've had,
And oh, 'tis comfort small
To think that many another lad
Has had no luck at all.

A. E. Housman
(1859 - 1936)

Cobwebs & Concrete

More Leaves in Concrete
#1 & #2

Glad to discover
two new poets for the season:

The Next-to-Last Canary Speaks

It’s a moment.
Our lives are a moment.
It’s between those moments
we live,
a space of time
between the blinks
where we crowd in
our tears laughs great books
not-so-great poems
& all else that fits.

It’s a moment
between solar cyclones,
between trips to the store,
where among the aisles
we pause hoping to
choose one or two things.

Between the finish line
& the thirteen steps,
before when we
hear something,
a sharp sound

this moment this vast space
between other moments
where we take a
measure with no markings

creates another space
with no defined depth
or width, but great heights
over which we cannot
see the moments
we forgot to count.

Until this one,
this immeasurable moment,
where time yawns
like a big cat
after swallowing
the next-to-last
canary whose moment
stopped suddenly.

by Sara M. Robinson
from her book Needville (2019)

Yes, it's definitely that moment
between October and November,
between Halloween and Thanksgiving,
between autumn and winter,
when we're lucky for concrete
and grateful for cobwebs!

Wilt or Stray

I am incredibly lucky --
even this haze knows it
even my useless gaze says so
in every way.

To be where I am now
living like this
is like cherries on a branch.

In fact I’m not nearly grateful enough
for this mud and for its reasons.

Not thankful enough for fences down
or kinked hoses.

No I don’t deserve porches.

In fact I need to tip my hat in love and honor
to every buzzing swarm that’s coming at me
to every wilt or stray.

And I should also surely thank my lucky stars
my blessings
for what last night had its way
with the row of beans out back
in the garden.

by Hiram Larew
from his book This Very Much (2025)

Do I deserve this bonus patio at my side door?
How about these decorations provided by Nature:
leaves and cobwebs completely spontaneous!

Goodbye Ghost of Halloween Past!

These Pumpkins, Quick and Dead

Perfect for All Souls!

Eerie artwork
by Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946)
son of Andrew Wyeth and grandson of N.C. Wyeth
[previous posts: QK & FN]

above:
Mischief Night (1986)

below:
Pumpkinhead Visits the Lighthouse (2000)

A Poem for All Souls

On Kingston Bridge

On All Souls' Night the dead walk
on Kingston Bridge. — Old Legend.

On Kingston Bridge the starlight shone
Through hurrying mists in shrouded glow;
The boding night-wind made its moan,
The mighty river crept below.

'T was All Souls' night, and to and fro
The quick and dead together walked,
The quick and dead together talked,
On Kingston Bridge.

Two met who had not met for years;
Once was their hate too deep for fears:
One drew his rapier as he came,
Upleapt his anger like a flame.
With clash of mail he faced his foe,
And bade him stand and meet him so.
He felt a graveyard wind go by
Cold, cold as was his enemy.
A stony horror held him fast.
The Dead looked with a ghastly stare,
And sighed "I know thee not," and passed
Like to the mist, and left him there
On Kingston Bridge.

'T was All Souls' night, and to and fro
The quick and dead together walked,
The quick and dead together talked,
On Kingston Bridge.

Two met who had not met for years:
With grief that was too deep for tears
They parted last.
He clasped her hand, and in her eyes
He sought Love's rapturous surprise.
"Oh Sweet!" he cried, "hast thou come back
To say thou lov'st thy lover still?"
—Into the starlight, pale and cold,
She gazed afar,—her hand was chill:
"Dost thou remember how we kept
Our ardent vigils?—how we kissed?—
Take thou these kisses as of old!"
An icy wind about him swept;
"I know thee not," she sighed, and passed
Into the dim and shrouding mist
On Kingston Bridge.

'T was All Souls' night, and to and fro
The quick and dead together walked,
The quick and dead together talked,
On Kingston Bridge. [emphasis added]

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz
(1851–1933)
See also "So Wags the World"

More pumpkins
by Andrew Wyeth (1917 - 2007)

above:
Mischief Night (1994)

below:
November First (1950)

FOR THANKSGIVING
by N. C. Wyeth (1882 - 1945)

********************

Yesterday, these pumpkins
by Cassie Bourque:
These Pumpkins, These Bones

These Pumpkins, These Bones

Fantastical artwork by Cassie Bourque
Posted July 20, 2025
Perfect for All Hallows!

Autumnal Slideshow ~ Preview July 5
And many more autumn paintings
Featured previously

More Roethke for All Hallows
What Can I Tell My Bones?
1
Beginner,
Perpetual beginner,
The soul knows not what to believe,
In its small folds, stirring sluggishly,
In the least place of its life,
A pulse beyond nothingness,
A fearful ignorance.

Before the moon draws back,
Dare I blaze like a tree?

In a world always late afternoon,
In the circular smells of a slow wind,
I listen to the weeds' vesperal whine,
Longing for absolutes that never come.
And shapes make me afraid:
The dance of natural objects in the mind,
The immediate sheen, the reality of straw,
The shadows, crawling down a sunny wall.

A bird sings out in solitariness
A thin harsh song. The day dies in a child.
How close we are to the sad animals!
I need a pool; I need a puddle's calm.

O my bones,
Beware those perpetual beginnings,
Thinning the soul's substance;
The swan's dread of the darkening shore,
Of these insects pulsing near my skin,
The songs from a spiral tree.

Fury of wind, and no apparent wind,
A gust blowing the leaves suddenly upward,
A vine lashing in dry fury,
A man chasing a cat,
With a broken umbrella,
Crying softly.

2
It is difficult to say all things are well,
When the worst is about to arrive;
It is fatal to woo yourself,
However graceful the posture.

Loved heart, what can I say?
When I was a lark, I sang;
When I was a worm, I devoured.

The self says, I am;
The heart says, I am less;
The spirit says, I am nothing.

Mist alters the rocks. What can I tell my bones?
My desire's a wind trapped in a cave.
The spirit declares itself to these rocks.
I'm a small stone, loose in the shale.
Love is my wound.

The wide streams go their way,
The pond lapses back into a glassy silence.
The cause of God in me – has it gone?
Do these bones live? Can I live with these bones?

Mother, mother of us all, tell me where I am!
O to be delivered from the rational into the realm of pure song,
My face on fire, close to the points of a star,
A learned nimble girl,
Not drearily bewitched,
But sweetly daft.

To try to become like God
Is far from becoming God.
O, but I seek and care!

I rock in my own dark,
Thinking, God has need of me.
The dead love the unborn.

3
Weeds turn toward the wind weed-skeletons.
How slowly all things alter.
Existence dares perpetuate a soul,
A wedge of heaven's light, autumnal song.
I hear a beat of birds, the plangent wings
That disappear into a waning moon;
The barest speech of light among the stones.

To what more vast permission have I come?
When I walk past a vat, water joggles,
I no longer cry for green in the midst of cinders,
Or dream of the dead, and their holes.
Mercy has many arms.

Instead of a devil with horns, I prefer a serpent with scales;
In temptation, I rarely seek counsel;
A prisoner of smells, I would rather eat than pray.
I'm released from the dreary dance of opposites.
The wind rocks with my wish; the rain shields me;
I live in light's extreme; I stretch in all directions;
Sometimes I think I'm several.

The sun! The sun! And all we can become!
And the time ripe for running to the moon!
In the long fields, I leave my father's eye;
And shake the secrets from my deepest bones;
My spirit rises with the rising wind;
I'm thick with leaves and tender as a dove,
I take the liberties a short life permits–
I seek my own meekness;
I recover my tenderness by long looking.
By midnight I love everything alive.
Who took the darkness from the air?
I'm wet with another life.
Yea, I have gone and stayed.

What came to me vaguely is now clear,
As if released by a spirit,
Or agency outside me.
Unprayed-for,
And final. [emphasis added above]

Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963)
In The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
(Anchor Books, 1974)
Roethke on my blogs: QK & FN)

***********************

Waiting for the Trick-or-Treaters

Waiting for the Dawn
(July 19, 2025)

Reading with the Cats
(October 2, 2025)

Introspective Autumnal Pumpkin People
by Artist Cassie Bourque
********************

Tommorrow, these pumpkins
by Wyeth & Wyeth
These Pumpkins, Quick and Dead

Vampire Cat

A little Roethke for Halloween

The Bat

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963)
(More by Roethke: QK & FN)

Catnap
Maggie Vandewalle
[also Mouse with Lantern]

Go Little Book

This sweet injunction from my grandmother's
autograph album has come true!
Young Mazie instructed her friend Rovilla
to re-read her autograph album in old age,
but could she have imagined that I --
Rovilla's granddaughter -- would read them
in my old age, 122 years later?

Among my grandmother's photos and papers,
I found one autograph album belonging to her mother . . .

Family History #11:
Anna Mary's Autograph Album

. . . and one that first belonged to Anna Mary
and was subsequently passed on to Rovilla . . .

Family History #12:
Rovilla's Autograph Album

. . . both containing an asssortment of entries
from nieces, nephews, and cousins, such as these:

Rovilla ~ Willie ~ Ruth

Barrel of Fun

Rovilla, age 18
in 1910 with her cousins
Willie Golder & Ruth Reider

These recent Fortnightly posts
represent the continuation of my
Family History Project

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

A Month or Two at Least

This photo is from exactly 1 yr, 11 months ago:
November 25, 2024
As of today -- October 25, 2026 -- all of those leaves
remain green, but the change is soon to come!
See also: December 28, 2026

"Leaves fell, she watched them drop off, curl down and lodge in a bed of grass, still heavy with moisture, they were falling all around her, simple and unceremonious; for a month or two at least, a cool and lovely autumn." (197)

Edna O'Brien (1930 - 2024)
from the novel August is a Wicked Month

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be
are full of trees and changing leaves.” (166)

Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941)
To the Lighthouse
Woolf is quoting from the poem
“Luriana, Lurilee”
by Charles Elton (1839 - 1900)

A Day in Autumn

It will not always be like this,
The air windless, a few last
Leaves adding their decoration
To the trees’ shoulders, braiding the cuffs
Of the boughs with gold; a bird preening

In the lawn’s mirror. Having looked up
From the day’s chores, pause a minute,
Let the mind take its photograph
Of the bright scene, something to wear
Against the heart in the long cold.

Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913 – 2000)

Thanks to Clare Coleman
for sharing this poem on Michaelmas

Cherifa Wexler

Have not yet learned much
about Cherifa Wexler
but find myself enchanted by these
mystical embodiments of autumn
and have been sharing them
with my nearest & dearest
on their birthdays.

Found this one for my sister Di
on a page called "Her Circle Woven"

A Goddess with Antlers
Perfect for Evelet

This one for Jessi
From A Potpourri Of Likes & pinterest

Cute Halloween Preview

Didn't I used to live in some houses
kind of like these?

And . . .

Don't I have some cats
kind of like these?

So many cute illustrations come pouring
in every day; my goal is to get them
organized into a Halloween Album . . .

Joyriding
by Maggie Vandewalle,

I want to say, "Coming Soon!"
But it may take a while . . .

Only a Hand

Detail from the Louvre
Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1528)
by Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497 - 1543)

Preliminary Sketch
from the 1523 London Portrait

"How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks of the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes...Who would move this hand? The anonymous throng? The spirit of the times? The collective unconscious? I do not know. It is not in order to be the spokesman for something definable that I would like to erase myself. Only to transmit the writable that waits to be written, the tellable that nobody tells."

(Chapter 8, p 171; ellipses in original)
from the novel
If on a winter's night a traveler

by Italo Calvino (1923 - 1985)

****************

Full Portrait
plus other renditions
of Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
(1466 - 1536)

It looks like
Artist Douglas Granville Chandor (1897 – 1953)
had a similar idea for his
1945 portrait (oil on canvas)
of Franklin Deleno Roosevelt (1882–1945)
Thirty-second President of the United States, 1933–1945

P.S.
Not forgetting
The Addams Family!

****************

Longer excerpt from Calvino
on my current book blog:

"Readers are my vampires"
@Kitti's List

Rest Traveler, Rest

Our favorite little place in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Always reminds me of that charming fireplace inscription
at the Yankee Doodle Taproom ~ Princeton, New Jersey:

“Rest Traveler, Rest,
and Banish Thoughts of Care;
Drink to Thy Friends
and Recommend Them Here”

*****************

Welcome to Oakhurst!

Come on in, the coffee's great!

We usually eat inside,
but the one day we chose the patio . . .

a single leaf
drifted down onto my Americano!

We love getting the platinum rainbow
pitcher for our steamed milk.

In the background, Gerry's regular:
tomato soup & grilled cheese

A total splurge: the Monte Cristo!

Yet another fancy day!

We happened to be at the very next table
the day that a local food writer was
photographing Brunch at the Oakhurst

You'll find the hotel right around
the corner from the cafe.