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The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

John Steinbeck (via theparisreview)

The Cigarette by Francis Ponge (translated by Lee Fahnestock)

First let’s set the atmosphere, hazy yet dry, wispy, with the cigarette always placed right in the thick of it, once engaged in its continuous creation. Then, the thing itself: a small torch, far more perfumed than illuminating, from which, in a number of small heaps set within a chosen rhythm, ashes work free and fall. Finally, its sacrifice: the glowing tip, scaling off in silvery flakes, while a tight muff formed of most recent ash encircles it.

#Francis Ponge #The Cigarette #Lee Fahnestock #poem

WoodbinePlayer'sCapstanSeniorService

#gif

ManPig

The Licorice Fields At Pontefract by John Betjeman

In the licorice fields at Pontefract My love and I did meet And many a burdened licorice bush Was blooming round our feet; Red hair she had and golden skin, Her sulky lips were shaped for sin, Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd The strongest legs in Pontefract.

The light and dangling licorice flowers Gave off the sweetest smells; From various black Victorian towers The Sunday evening bells Came pealing over dales and hills And tanneries and silent mills And lowly streets where country stops And little shuttered corner shops.

She cast her blazing eyes on me And plucked a licorice leaf; I was her captive slave and she My red-haired robber chief. Oh love! for love I could not speak, It left me winded, wilting, weak, And held in brown arms strong and bare And wound with flaming ropes of hair.

#The Licorice Fields At Pontefract #john betjeman

fireshovel

Burma’s famous snake charmer Saya Hnin-Mahla kissed her King Cobra on the head as the highlight of her show.

vjeranski

Louise Bourgeois

nyctaeus

Jill Greenberg

Stars and Planets

by Norman MacCaig Trees are cages for them: water holds its breath To balance them without smudging on its delicate meniscus. Children watch them playing in their heavenly playground; Men use them to lug ships across oceans, through firths. They seem so twinkle-still, but they never cease Inventing new spaces and huge explosions And migrating in mathematical tribes over The steppes of space at their outrageous ease. It's hard to think that the earth is one – This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters, Attended only by the loveless moon.

#stars and planets #Norman MacCaig #poem

Clyde.

#clyde

Glasgow panoramas.

#glasgow #panorama

oldbookillustrations

Hundreds of peacocks of gorgeous plumes….

Warwick Goble, from Folk-tales of Bengal, by Lal Behari Day, London, 1912.

(Source: archive.org)

Robert Burns, A Sonnet upon Sonnets.

Fourteen, a sonneteer thy praises sings; What magic myst’ries in that number lie! Your hen hath fourteen eggs beneath her wings That fourteen chickens to the roost may fly. Fourteen full pounds the jockey’s stone must be; His age fourteen – a horse’s prime is past. Fourteen long hours too oft the Bard must fast; Fourteen bright bumpers – bliss he ne’er must see! Before fourteen, a dozen yields the strife; Before fourteen – e’en thirteen’s strength is vain. Fourteen good years – a woman gives us life; Fourteen good men – we lose that life again. What lucubrations can be more upon it? Fourteen good measur’d verses make a sonnet.

#Robert Burns #A Sonnet upon Sonnets #poetry bins

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