31/03/11

Mrs Jaypher Mrs Jaypher found a wafer Which she stuck upon a note; This she took and gave the cook. Then she went and bought a boat, Which she paddled down the stream, Shouting, 'Ice produces cream, Beer when churned produces butter! Henceforth all the words I utter Distant ages thus shall note - 'From the Jaypher Wisdom-Boat.'' Mrs Jaypher said, 'It's safer If you've lemons in your head; First to eat, a pound of meat, And then to go at once to bed. Eating meat is half the battle, Till you hear the Lemons rattle! If you don't, you'll always moan, In a Lemoncolly tone; For there's nothing half so dreadful, as Lemons in your head. Edward Lear

30/03/11

The Street

Here is a long and silent street.
I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall
and rise, and I walk blind, my feet
trampling the silent stones and the dry leaves.
Someone behind me also tramples, stones, leaves:
if I slow down, he slows;
if I run, he runs I turn : nobody.
Everything dark and doorless,
only my steps aware of me,
I turning and turning among these corners
which lead forever to the street
where nobody waits for, nobody follows me,
where I pursue a man who stumbles
and rises and says when he sees me : nobody.

Octavio Paz

29/03/11

435

Much Madness is divinest Sense ---

To a discerning Eye ---

Much Sense --- the starkest Madness ---

'Tis the Majority

In this, as All, prevail ---

Assent --- and you are sane ---

Demur --- you're straightway dangerous ---

And handled with a Chain ---

Emily Dickinson

28/03/11

The Song Of The Beggar

I am always going from door to door,
whether in rain or heat,
and sometimes I will lay my right ear in
the palm of my right hand.
And as I speak my voice seems strange as if
it were alien to me,

for I'm not certain whose voice is crying:
mine or someone else's.
I cry for a pittance to sustain me.
The poets cry for more.

In the end I conceal my entire face
and cover both my eyes;
there it lies in my hands with all its weight
and looks as if at rest,
so no one may think I had no place where-
upon to lay my head.

Rainer Maria Rilke