Aged 80 you feel free to say want you want but what is there of value left to say?
Once again the pretty swimming pool in the hotel is ours undisturbed by other guests. Its surroundings are exotic, banana and date palms, bougainvillea, pomegranate trees and hibiscus, and living among them three feral cats, the remains of a family of four or five kittens which were there last year. As soon as we arrive the cats look affronted at the intrusion and vanish into the undergrowth.
3 comments:
marvellous picture full of light and energy
You will always have something of value to say.
What more to say? Don't give up now. How about the million and one events and thoughts that came into being and departed between the end of yesterday and the start of today.
As an exercise - and I know how you hate those - pick the most familiar line of the most over-trammeled piece of poetry you know and tell us all something new about it. And I really mean familiar - no hiding in the more obscure reaches of RS Thomas. A thought occurs to me so it's denied you: "To be..." How incredibly concise, containing human existence in four letters. Or rather, offering the shortest of springboards so that we may leap from those two words in more or less any direction. How positive they appear, those words, detached from the rest of the line. Nothing more ripe, more obvious, more mysterious, more forceful, more reflective. Dragging us into what's next.
Mind you the exercise is not without its dangers. To grasp the familiar is to risk being misunderstood by those who foolishly believe that the familiar is synonymous with the banal. On the other hand, you may catch the eye of someone who has never reflected on poetry. Or catch your own eye.
And it's an exercise that doesn't require special machinery.
Post a Comment