It's a good thing because it gives me more time to work on Real Port Talbot, a book I've been commissioned to write about my hometown in South Wales, which will be published in November 2013. And you know how one project can easily and excitingly lead into another.
And it's a sad thing because I will miss this concentration of poetry, your voices, our conversations on this blog.
But the AppleHouse site will remain up for people to browse through. These have been wonderful years and there will be more in the future, I am sure.
Let me leave you with the following poem that appeared on The Writer's Almanac today.
Keep saying it too. And stay in touch.
L xx
Saying It
Saying it. Trying
to say it. Not
to answer to
logic, but leaving
our very lives open
to how we have
to hear ourselves
say what we mean.
Not merely to
know, all told,
our far neighbors;
or here, beside
us now, the stranger
we sleep next to.
Not to get it said
and be done, but to
say the feeling, its
present shape, to
let words lend it
dimension: to name
the pain to confirm
how it may be borne:
through what in
ourselves we dream
to give voice to,
to find some word for
how we bear our lives.
Daily, as we are daily
wed, we say the world
is a wedding for which,
as we are constantly
finding, the ceremony
has not yet been found.
What wine? What bread?
What language sung?
We wake, at night, to
imagine, and again wake
at dawn to begin: to let
the intervals speak
for themselves, to
listen to how they
feel, to give pause
to what we're about:
to relate ourselves,
over and over; in
time beyond time
to speak some measure
of how we hear the music:
today if ever to
say the joy of trying
to say the joy.
to say it. Not
to answer to
logic, but leaving
our very lives open
to how we have
to hear ourselves
say what we mean.
Not merely to
know, all told,
our far neighbors;
or here, beside
us now, the stranger
we sleep next to.
Not to get it said
and be done, but to
say the feeling, its
present shape, to
let words lend it
dimension: to name
the pain to confirm
how it may be borne:
through what in
ourselves we dream
to give voice to,
to find some word for
how we bear our lives.
Daily, as we are daily
wed, we say the world
is a wedding for which,
as we are constantly
finding, the ceremony
has not yet been found.
What wine? What bread?
What language sung?
We wake, at night, to
imagine, and again wake
at dawn to begin: to let
the intervals speak
for themselves, to
listen to how they
feel, to give pause
to what we're about:
to relate ourselves,
over and over; in
time beyond time
to speak some measure
of how we hear the music:
today if ever to
say the joy of trying
to say the joy.
6 comments:
Auvoir
(Cara Dillon, Here's to a health)
Kind friends and companions, together combine
And raise up your voices in chorus with mine
We will drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may and might never all meet here again
Here's a health to the company and one to my lass
We will drink and be merry, all out of one glass
We will drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may and might never all meet here again
Thanks, Martin. x
It's been fun, encouraging and informative. Though we 'drink from one glass' we seem to have sung with many voices on this blog a veritable chorale of 'good company'. But things move on - so enjoy your new venture - my glass too is raised.
Thanks, Keith. x
The fragmented nature of this poem is absolutely fascinating, it really conveys that sense of inexpressibility all the way through the poem.
My solemn duty, dear, is to serve and honor you…
I looove to giveth unto thee ideas,
thots you never thot of:
the picturesque protagonist, par excellence,
the non-perishables, the luxurious ditzy-glitz:
the generous, undiluted expansion of d’bizarre;
the epic endoorphins - an open door to an
onomatopoeia Vernacular;
the high-flying, barnstorming,
toxic firewurKS from yeee-haw KS
taking you in a completely new direction
than where you originally planned!!
O! the mind doth boggle, girly-whirly!!
Why else does a moth fly FROM the night
than to a bold, attractive candle Light??
Don’t let His extravagant Brilliance be extinguished.
You’re creative, yes?
Then, fly-away with U.S. to the antidote…
Whether you obtain morality4mortality to wiseabove
or just glean tantalizing specimens for thy next best seller,
I realize my penname is quite morbid, yet,
you shall find in our blogs a lotta (subliminal) moxie
which has taken this sinfull mortal yeeeeers to compile:
I lay it ALL out for you, dear, with All-Star-Oxygems:
Wouldn’t ya love an endless eternity
of aplomBombs falling on thy indelible cranium?
An XtraXcitinXpose with no zooillogical-expiration-date?
An IQ much higher than K2?
An extraordinarily, anti-establishment-victory
With both sardonic, satirical wit Who’s savvy
and avant-guarde-humility??
Here’s what the exquisite, prolific GODy sed
(with a most-excellent-detector of bull§ht):
“Faith, hope, and love,
the greatest of these is love -
jump into faith...
and you'll VitSee with love”
Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe (what I write);
God believes in you.
Meet me Upstairs, girl, where the Son never goes down
from a super-passionate, lucrative iconoclasm where you’ll find
nonillionsXnonillionsXnonillionsXnonillionsXnonillionsX…
of deluxe-HTTP [<- pi] opportunities for excitement BTW.
Do it. Do the deed, dude. Sign into the Big-Zaftig-House.
PS “It is impossible that anyone should NOT receive all that they have believed and hoped to obtain; it gives Me great pleasure when they hope great things from Me and I will always give them more than they expect”
-our Lord Jesus to Saint Gertrude
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