Rest in Peace John Keats

John Keats
Born on All Hallows Eve: October 31, 1795
Died on this day: 23 February 1821

Portrayed here by Ben Whishaw
with Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne
in the biopic Bright Star (like the sonnet, 1819)

In a slightly earlier sonnet (1818),
Keats describes what, sadly, will become
the truth of his life, cut short by illness:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance . . .

Previous blog posts: FN / QK

Most recently:
"Half in love with easeful Death"
&
Sitting Down to Read Keats

~~~~~

Click to read what other poets
have written about Keats!

Dawn of Doom

Last year, the Dawn or Doom take-away for me was the term wisdoom. I never did figure out if it was an unintentional misspelling or an intentional pun; but either way, it captures the intertwining essence of Dawn or Doom -- in much wisdom is much sorrow; in much dawn is much doom (to extrapolate from Ecclesiastes).

This year's winning moment occurred when Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor for The New Yorker Magazine, glanced over his introductory notes with a quizzical look and said, "I just now realized that the title of this conference is Dawn or Doom. I thought it was Dawn of Doom!"



Mankoff went on to define various theories of humor such as nonsense, bisociation, and incongruity resolution -- reminding me of a long ago Humor & Satire class in which we learned Aristotle's theory of frustrated expectation and Plato's theory of derision and superiority. He explained how an A.I. editor could be taught to sort for key words and length of punchline, even if it was not endowed with a sense of humor.

But what I kept coming back to throughout the day was that little misreading: Dawn of Doom. It was kind of funny but also worrisome. Have we been keeping watch all through the night in anticipation of the Dawn of Doom? I carried that potentially gloomy revelation with me for the remainder of the conference.

As we used to say when studying Keats, "After dark vapors -- dark vapors." In this mostly optimistic dawn - foretelling sonnet, the poet predicts sweetness after sorrow, a "long dreary season" followed by the "calmest thoughts":

After dark vapors have oppress’d our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieved of its pains,
Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;
The eyelids with the passing coolness play
Like rose leaves with the drip of Summer rains.
The calmest thoughts came round us; as of leaves
Budding—fruit ripening in stillness—Autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves—
Sweet Sappho’s cheek—a smiling infant’s breath—
The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs—
A woodland rivulet—a Poet’s death.

John Keats, English Romantic Poet (1795 - 1821)

Aside from the sadly accurate prophecy of the "Poet's death," Keats opts for a vision of Dawn; but back in the day, we graduate students took a gloomier view. Forget all that sweetness and light! The first line of the poem was all that we needed: "After dark vapors -- dark vapors." We shared the sardonic grad school humor of

1. Woody Allen: "Mankind is facing a crossroad -- one road leads to despair and utter hopelessness and the other to total extinction -- I sincerely hope you graduates choose the right road."

and

2. Jorge Cham, roboticist and cartoonist, who entertained us at Dawn or Doom16 with his books and movies, particularly The PHD Movie and The PHD Movie 2 (watch both).

Thanks to Jorge Cham ("1. Never 2. Probably Never 3. Maybe In A Million Years" ) and Bob Mankoff ("How About Never--Is Never Good for You?") and so many others who spent a day at Purdue exploring the spectrum from Brave New A. I. World to Techno - Apocalypse.

Previous Posts

Twister

Dawn or Doom2

Dawn or Doom?

Safe Home

Never Dead, Never Ceasing

The poetry of earth is never dead . . .

Happy 221st Birthday John Keats: born on Halloween 1795
Gone too soon: February 23, 1821
"The Grave of Keats" ~ by Walter Crane
At the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, England

On the Grasshopper and Cricket
The Poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
~Keats

And here's another little autumnal insect, to go along
with the Grasshopper and the Cricket . . .
the Ladybug!

Thanks to Carmen & Sacred Mists

Further reading for the three - day season of
ALLHALLOWTIDE
From Catholic & Protestant Perspectives

This is the Night!

Halloween Accessories From Lizone's Jewelry With an Attitude
~ More About Lizone's ~
Hallowe'en
This is the night when witches fly
On their whizzing broomsticks through the wintry sky;
Steering up the pathway where the stars are strewn,
They stretch skinny fingers to the walking moon.

This is the night when old wives tell
Strange and creepy stories, tales of charm and spell;
Peering at the pictures flaming in the fire
They wait for whispers from a ghostly choir.

This is the night when angels go
In and out the houses, winging o’er the snow;
Clearing out the demons from the countryside
They make it new and ready for Christmastide.

Leonard Clark, 1905-1981
English poet and anthologist
[I wonder of there's a way to get a copy of
Clark's Christmas book for less than $36!]

Christmas Witches?
I love their red dresses!

Vintage Halloween Witch Stickers
by Violette
P.S. For celebrating the birthday of poet John Keats -- which just so happens to fall on 31 October -- check out this great blog:
Baroque in Hackney
"Halloween is the night the dead come back.
That’s how serious it is.
So happy birthday, John Keats."

Rocks, Keats, Sentences

These good luck rocks in my car are souvenirs
from Ben & Sam's sleepover at St. John the Divine
Junior high field trip ~ New York City ~ 2004

[below: good luck charms and worry beads
from my father - in - law Ron & my friend Etta]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recent posts from my
Fortnightly Blog:

1. Indoor Rocks
&
2. Sitting Down to Read Keats

And my
Book Blog:

Do You Like Sentences?

~ some good luck worry beads in my car ~

Isabella and the Pot of Basil

CURRENT POST ON
THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER:
LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE
"SWEET BASIL EVERMORE"

A FEW HIGHLIGHTS:
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1846
by English Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt (1827 - 1910)
"Isabella, or the Pot of Basil" is a long narrative poem by John Keats, adapted from a tale in Boccaccio's Decameron about a young woman whose family plans for her to marry a local wealthy landowner. Isabella, however, is in love with Lorenzo, who works as a clerk for her family. When her two controlling brothers learn of Isabella's inappropriate love interest, they murder Lorenzo in the woods. Isabella is at a loss until Lorenzo's ghost appears in a dream to inform her of his whereabouts. She proceeds to exhume the body, bury the head in a pot of basil, and go a little crazy.

Keats' poem was popular with the nostalgic sentimental Pre-Raphaelite painters, who illustrated it from several perspectives. First came William Holman Hunt's version (above) which in turn influenced several later artists:

Lorenzo and Isabella, 1849
by English Pre-Raphaelite, John Everett Millais (1829 - 1896)
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1879
by English Pre-Raphaelite, John Melhuish Strudwick (1849 - 1937)
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1907
by English Pre-Raphaelite, John William Waterhouse (1849 - 1917)
In contrast to these lush Pre-Raphaelite renditions, an additional painting, by John White Alexander, conveys a portrait-like figure of Isabella in neutral tones:

Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1897
by American Painter and Illustrator, John White Alexander
(1856 – 1915)

CLICK TO READ / SEE MORE DETAILS:
"SWEET BASIL EVERMORE"

Do Not Stand Bereft

A Somber Feline Visitor at the
Gravesite of English Poet John Keats
at the Protestant Cemetery in Rome
Do not stand at my grave and weep
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,

I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave bereft
I am not there. I have not left.

by Clare Harner, 1909–1977

or

Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905 - 2004

This is one of those poems (like the "Desiderata") whose format and authorship have apparently been unclear for some time. According to wikipedia, it is Harner; Goodreads still says Frye (with a disclaimer).

You must also listen to this absolutely beautiful version
as sung by Libera on their CD free:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.

Official Libera website:
http://www.libera.org.uk/

This post would not be complete without the inclusion of Oscar Wilde's beautiful tribute to the "Young English Poet" whose "Name was writ in Water":

The Grave of Keats
Rid of the world’s injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,

Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
But gentle violets weeping with the dew
Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.

O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter of our English Land!
Thy name was writ in water——it shall stand:

And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
As Isabella did her Basil-tree.*

written in 1881
by Oscar Wilde, 1854–1900
Prolific, witty Irish poet and playwright

Oscar Wilde's Tomb in Paris ~ in Père Lachaise Cemetery
Wikipedia photograph by Jacob Epstein
*On the topic of Isabella, please check out
my earlier blog post:
"Sweet Basil Evermore"

Songs of Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun . . .
. . . touch[ing] the stubble-plains with rosy hue . . .
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, --*
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

by John Keats, English Romantic Poet (1795 - 1821)

[*my favorite lines]

Last OozingsThis picture is from a couple of nights ago when I was out in the yard with my camera waiting for the Harvest Moon to rise. Unfortunately, I didn't get any satisfactory photographs of the moon after all -- have to wait 'til next month and try again. However, I was pleased with this view of our back deck, complete with grapevines, both artificial and real. It looks almost as if the "warm days will never cease," but no, what we have here are the "last oozings."

Note on "To Autumn"
"In a letter written to Reynolds from Winchester, in September, 1819, Keats says: 'How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather--Dian skies--I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.' What he composed was the 'Ode To Autumn.' "

Allerheiligen

"When the last person here is dead,
who'll put a tombstone at his head?"

Lenore Eversole Fisher, (1900 - 1990)
Contributing writer to the Indianapolis Star,
the Kokomo paper, and the Poetry Explorer.
Other poems include: "Survivor," "Motif," and "Spring Day."
As you can see from the above collage that I put together in one of my teen - age scrapbooks, I've always known myself to be just a bit like Keats, who was "half in love with easeful Death," and never more so than at this mystical time of year. Fittingly, Keats was born in 1795 on All Hallow's Eve; he loved Autumn, and died young -- "Here lies one whose name was writ in water" -- in 1821.

All Saints and All Souls; Allerheiligen and Allerseelen -- whether in Germany, England, Mexico, or the United States -- these are the days for contemplating mortality and immortality. In Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason , Bridget Jones and her friends are compelled to focus on these issues. When Princess Diana dies, Bridget writes in her diary:

"Is unbelievable. Like dream or sick newspaper April Fool. Is unbelievable. Diana dies is just not kind of thing she would do. . . . Cannot believe it. Is so scary when is obvious no one in authority knows what to do. . . . Seems like the world has gone mad. Is no normality to come back to. . . . Is like Jude or Shazzer being there and full of life and giggly jokes and lip gloss then suddenly being something so grown - up and horror - filled and alien as dead. . . . 'And now Princess Diana is dead,' said Shazzer solemnly. The mood abruptly changed. We all fell silent, trying to absorb this violent, shocking and unthinkable thought" (emphasis added).

A Local Cairn

Connie Converse

As a trusted counselor once advised me:
You're a writer, you're supposed to be sad.

How Sad, How Lovely
Album by Connie Converse (August 3, 1924)

Title song: How Sad, How Lovely

How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the day gathered in
To a single light
And the shadows rising
From the brim of the night
Too few, too few
Are the days that will hold
Your face, your face
In a blaze of gold
How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the lights going on
In the shops and the bars
And the lovers looking
For the first little star
Like life
Like your smile
Like the fall of a leaf
How sad, how lovely
How brief

Music & lyrics by Connie Converse

For further thoughts on
Connie Converse & John Keats
see my recent post

"Half in love with easeful Death"

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

The Darkest Dark, the Descent

~Traditional Celtic Verse ~

The sun is in the south and the days lengthen fast,
soon we shall sing of the winter that's passed;
for now light the candles and rejoice as they burn,
and dance our dance of the sun's return.

~ Solstice Meditation ~

Holiday . . . High Holy Days . . . winter Solstice . . . Yuletide Season . . . Christmas time, a time of family and friends, feasting and firelight, the sound of bells ringing out across a snowy night, the lighting of the candles, the trimming of the trees, and the turning of our thoughts upon the sacred ways of peace.

No matter what its name, this high point of the calendar has forever been celebrated in joyous and sacred ways as we bid farewell to the dark days of winter, and welcome with songs and thanks giving the bright, hopeful sun of a bright new year.

****************
Two lovely passages in celebration of the light. But wait -- today is for celebrating the dark, not the light. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day, the longest night, so meditations such as these are really for the next day, the day after the Solstice, right? Before the light returns, I want to celebrate the season's darkest dark, the year's descent, which is precisely why I relish every day from Mabon to Samhain to Yule.

I embrace the Winter Solstice not because it heralds the return of light but because it is the shortest, duskiest day of all, the culminating magic of increasing darkness. Instead of feeling joyful at the returning light, I am always a little sorry to bid farewell to the short dark days. It may be good that Spring is on the way, yet I always find something disheartening about the edgy new light of January, something jarring.

Perhaps feeling bereft that the darkening days are over for another year aligns with the Keatsian tendency to be "half in love with easeful death" (more on this to come & previous Keats).

A sunny Winter Solstice in Virginia this year,
standing under the Southern Magnolia

P.S.
Evening Star ~ The Span of Darkness
~ The Vernal Equinox! ~

St. Mark's Day

~ The Feast of St. Mark ~

Charlottesville, Virginia

Venice ~ Italy

Two Very Long Poems for the Day

St. Mark
by D. H. Lawrence

There was a lion in Judah
Which whelped, and was Mark.
But winged.
A lion with wings.
At least at Venice.
Even as late as Daniele Manin.
Why should he have wings?
Is he to be a bird also?
Or a spirit?
Or a winged thought?
Or a soaring consciousness?
Evidently he is all that
The lion of the spirit.
Ah, Lamb of God
Would a wingless lion lie down before Thee,
as this winged lion lies?

The lion of the spirit.
Once he lay in the mouth of a cave
And sunned his whiskers,
And lashed his tail slowly, slowly
Thinking of voluptuousness
Even of blood.
But later, in the sun of the afternoon
Having tasted all there was to taste,
and having slept his fill

He fell to frowning, as he lay
with his head on his paws

And the sun coming in through
the narrowest fibril of a slit in his eyes.

So, nine-tenths asleep, motionless, bored,
and statically angry.
He saw in a shaft of light a lamb on a pinnacle,
balancing a flag on its paw.
And he was thoroughly startled.
Going out to investigate
He found the lamb beyond him,
on the inaccessible pinnacle of light.

So he put his paw to his nose, and pondered.
"Guard my sheep," came the silvery voice
from the pinnacle,

"And I will give thee the wings of the morning."
So the lion of the senses thought it was worth it.
Hence he became a curly sheep-dog with dangerous propensities
As Carpaccio will tell you:
Ramping round, guarding the flock of mankind,
Sharpening his teeth on the wolves,
Ramping up through the air like a kestrel
And lashing his tail above the world
And enjoying the sensation of heaven and righteousness and
voluptuous wrath.

There is a new sweetness in his voluptuously licking his paw
Now that it is a weapon of heaven.
There is a new ecstasy in his roar of desirous love
Now that it sounds self-conscious through the unlimited sky.
He is well aware of himself
And he cherishes voluptuous delights,
and thinks about them

And ceases to be a blood-thirsty king of beasts
And becomes the faithful sheep-dog of the Shepherd,
thinking of his voluptuous pleasures
of chasing the sheep to the fold

And increasing the flock, and perhaps giving a real nip
here and there, a real pinch, but always well meant.

And somewhere there is a lioness
The she-mate.
Whelps play between the paws of the lion
The she-mate purrs
Their castle is impregnable, their cave,
The sun comes in their lair, they are well-off
A well-to-do family.
Then the proud lion stalks abroad, alone
And roars to announce himself to the wolves
And also to encourage the red-cross Lamb
And also to ensure a goodly increase in the world.
Look at him, with his paw on the world
At Venice and elsewhere.
Going blind at last.

AND

The Eve of St. Mark: A Fragment
by John Keats

Upon a Sabbath-day it fell;
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell,
That call’d the folks to evening prayer;
The city streets were clean and fair
From wholesome drench of April rains;
And, on the western window panes,
The chilly sunset faintly told
Of unmatur’d green valleys cold,
Of the green thorny bloomless hedge,
Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge,
Of primroses by shelter’d rills,
And daisies on the aguish hills.
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell:
The silent streets were crowded well
With staid and pious companies,
Warm from their fire-side orat’ries;
And moving, with demurest air,
To even-song, and vesper prayer.
Each arched porch, and entry low,
Was fill’d with patient folk and slow,
With whispers hush, and shuffling feet,
While play’d the organ loud and sweet.

The bells had ceas’d, the prayers begun,
And Bertha had not yet half done
A curious volume, patch’d and torn,
That all day long, from earliest morn,
Had taken captive her two eyes,
Among its golden broideries;
Perplex’d her with a thousand things,—
The stars of Heaven, and angels’ wings,
Martyrs in a fiery blaze,
Azure saints and silver rays,
Moses’ breastplate, and the seven,
Candlesticks John saw in Heaven,
The winged Lion of St. Mark,
And the Covenantal Ark,
With its many mysteries,
Cherubim and golden mice.

Bertha was a maiden fair,
Dwelling in th’ old Minster-square;
From her fire-side she could see,
Sidelong, its rich antiquity,
Far as the Bishop’s garden-wall;
Where sycamores and elm-trees tall,
Full-leav’d, the forest had outstript,
By no sharp north-wind ever nipt,
So shelter’d by the mighty pile.
Bertha arose, and read awhile,
With forehead ’gainst the window-pane.
Again she try’d, and then again,
Until the dusk eve left her dark
Upon the legend of St. Mark.
From plaited lawn-frill, fine and thin,
She lifted up her soft warm chin.
With arching neck and swimming eyes,
And daz’d with saintly imageries.

All was gloom, and silent all,
Save now and then the still foot-fall
Of one returning homewards late,
Past the echoing minster-gate.
The clamorous daws, that all the day
Above tree-tops and towers play,
Pair by pair had gone to rest,
Each in its ancient belfry nest,
Where asleep they fall betimes,
To music and the drowsy chimes.

All was silent, all was gloom,
Abroad and in the homely room:
Down she sat, poor cheated soul;
And struck a lamp from the dismal coal;
Lean’d forward, with bright drooping hair
And slant look, full against the glare.
Her shadow, in uneasy guise,
Hover’d about, a giant size,
On ceiling-beam and old oak chair,
The parrot’s cage, and panel square;
And the warm angled winter-screen,
On which were many monsters seen,
Call’d doves of Siam, Lima mice,
And legless birds of Paradise,
Macaw, and tender Avadavat,
And silken-furr’d Angora cat.
Untir’d she read, her shadow still
Glower’d about, as it would fill
The room with wildest forms and shades,
As though some ghostly Queen of spades
Had come to mock behind her back,
And dance, and ruffle her garments black.
Untir’d she read the legend page,
Of holy Mark, from youth to age,
On land, on sea, in pagan chains,
Rejoicing for his many pains.
Sometimes the learned eremite,
With golden star, or dagger bright,
Referr’d to pious poesies
Written in smallest crow-quill size
Beneath the text: and thus the rhyme
Was parcel’d out from time to time:

——‘Als writith he of swevenis,
Men han beforne they wake in bliss,
Whanne that hir friendes thinke him bound
In crimped shroude farre under grounde:
And how a litling childe mote be
A saint er its nativitie,
Gif that the modre (God her blesse!)
Kepen in solitarinesse,
And kissen devoute the holy croce,
Of Goddes love, and Sathan’s force,—
He writith; and thinges many mo
Of swiche thinges I may not show.
Bot I must tellen verilie
Somdel of Saintè Cicilie,
And chieflie what he auctorethe
Of Saintè Markis life and dethe:’

At length her constant eyelids come
Upon the fervent martyrdom;
Then lastly to his holy shrine,
Exalt amid the tapers’ shine
At Venice,—

~About this poem: wiki & wiki

"Without your pulling it the tide comes in . . . "

Moon Phases & Tides
Without You
What a fool I was, what a dominated fool
To think that you were the Earth and sky
What a fool I was, what an addlepated fool
What a mutton-headed dote was I

No, my reverberating friend
You are not the beginning and the end

There'll be spring every year without you
England still will be here without you
There'll be fruit on the tree
And a shore by the sea
There'll be crumpets and tea without you

Art and music will thrive without you
Somehow Keats will survive without you
And there still will be rain on that plain down in Spain
Even that will remain without you,
I can do without you!

You, dear friend, who talk so well
You can go to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire
They can still rule the land without you
Windsor Castle will stand without you
And without much ado we can
All muddle through without you

Without your pulling it the tide comes in
Without your twirling it, the Earth can spin
Without your pushing them, the clouds roll by
If they can do without you, ducky, so can I

I shall not feel alone without you
I can stand on my own without you
So go back in your shell
I can do bloody well
Without you

Lerner & Loewe

This favorite song, plus readings
by Wayne Muller, Esther Hillesum, Saxon N. White Kessinger
and from the movie Birdman
on my current post

~ "The Galaxy Will Manage" ~

@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony