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Even the gulls of the cool Atlantic
Even the gulls of the cool Atlantic retip the silver foam,
The boats that warn me of the fog warn me of their motion
I have looked for my childhood among pebbles my home
Within the lean cupboards of motherhubbard and clipped Albion
A wind whose freshness blows over the Cape to me
Has made me laugh at the memory of a friend whose hair is blond
Still we laugh and run our hands over the sea
From the farthest tip of land to the end of the end.
I had so often run down to these shores to stare out
If I took an island for a lover and Atlantic for my sheet
There was no one to tell me that loving across distance would turn about
And make the here and now an elsewhere of defeat.
In my twenty first year to have the grubby hand of a slums
Be the small child at my knee knee the glistening chalk
That sails to meet the stationary boat the water sloping as it comes
And all the Devon coast of grey and abrupt rock
By gazing across water I have flicked many gulls from my eyes
Shuffled small shells and green crabs at my feet
The day is cool the sun bright the piper cries
Shrilly tampering the untouched sand with delicate conceit.
Up beyond the height and over the bank I have a friend
How are your winter days and summer actions
There could be little more than a tea cup hour to make us comprehend
A mature man’s simplicity or grave child’s sweet reaction.
Joan Murray
(1917-1942)
Even the gulls of the cool Atlantic
(poem)
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Joan Murray, Natural history
A Requiem
For Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports
When, after storms that woodlands rue,
To valleys comes atoning dawn,
The robins blithe their orchard-sports renew;
And meadow-larks, no more withdrawn
Caroling fly in the languid blue;
The while, from many a hid recess,
Alert to partake the blessedness,
The pouring mites their airy dance pursue.
So, after ocean’s ghastly gales,
When laughing light of hoyden morning
breaks,
Every finny hider wakes–
From vaults profound swims up with
glittering scales;
Through the delightsome sea he sails,
With shoals of shining tiny things
Frolic on every wave that flings
Against the prow its showery spray;
All creatures joying in the morn,
Save them forever from joyance torn,
Whose bark was lost where now the
dolphins play;
Save them that by the fabled shore,
Down the pale stream are washed away,
Far to the reef of bones are borne;
And never revisits them the light,
Nor sight of long-sought land and pilot more;
Nor heed they now the lone bird’s flight
Round the lone spar where mid-sea surges
pour.
Herman Melville
(1819 – 1891)
A Requiem
For Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Herman Melville, WAR & PEACE
One Morganatic Leer
You think you complain
of the ugliness of people.
Meet your own bed.
Smell what you said.
Your words, unmitigated, dead,
Sink like a noon sun in the crass tomb
beneath the steeple.
Two feet above the sand,
look down
A tartan shore,
A clan, a clack, a whore,
A mobile open door,
To the dog against the tree,
the brittle mugging clown.
Claws like tumbled fingers here
Stand for hands,
Elastic bands,
Minds and trends.
Thighs sprout here enough to breed
the honor of your morganatic leer.
Joan Murray
(1917-1942)
One Morganatic Leer
from: Poems (1947)
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Joan Murray
Art
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt–a wind to freeze;
Sad patience–joyous energies;
Humility–yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity–reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel–Art.
Herman Melville
(1819 – 1891)
Art
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Herman Melville
Night
I come, like Oblivion, to sweep away
The scattered beams from the car of day:
The gems which the evening has lavishly strown
Light up the lamps round my ebon throne.
Slowly I float through the realms of space,
Casting my mantle o’er Nature’s face,
Weaving the stars in my raven hair,
As I sail through the shadowy fields of air.
All the wild fancies that thought can bring
Lie hid in the folds of my sable wing:
Terror is mine with his phrensied crew,
Fear with her cheek of marble hue,
And sorrow, that shuns the eye of day,
Pours out to me her plaintive lay.
I am the type of that awful gloom
Which involves the cradle and wraps the tomb;
Chilling the soul with its mystical sway;
Chasing the day-dreams of beauty away;
Till man views the banner by me unfurled,
As the awful veil of the unknown world;
The emblem of all he fears beneath
The solemn garb of the spoiler death!
Susanna Moodie
Night (Poem)
(1803 – 1885)
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, CLASSIC POETRY
America
I
Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand
I saw a Banner in gladsome air-
Starry, like Berenice’s Hair-
Afloat in broadened bravery there;
With undulating long-drawn flow,
As rolled Brazilian billows go
Voluminously o’er the Line.
The Land reposed in peace below;
The children in their glee
Were folded to the exulting heart
Of young Maternity.
II
Later, and it streamed in fight
When tempest mingled with the fray,
And over the spear-point of the shaft
I saw the ambiguous lightning play.
Valor with Valor strove, and died:
Fierce was Despair, and cruel was Pride;
And the lorn Mother speechless stood,
Pale at the fury of her brood.
III
Yet later, and the silk did wind
Her fair cold for;
Little availed the shining shroud,
Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm
A watcher looked upon her low, and said-
She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead.
But in that sleep contortion showed
The terror of the vision there-
A silent vision unavowed,
Revealing earth’s foundation bare,
And Gorgon in her hidden place.
It was a thing of fear to see
So foul a dream upon so fair a face,
And the dreamer lying in that starry shroud.
IV
But from the trance she sudden broke-
The trance, or death into promoted life;
At her feet a shivered yoke,
And in her aspect turned to heaven
No trace of passion or of strife-
A clear calm look. It spake of pain,
But such as purifies from stain-
Sharp pangs that never come again-
And triumph repressed by knowledge meet,
Power delicate, and hope grown wise,
And youth matured for age’s seat-
Law on her brow and empire in her eyes.
So she, with graver air and lifted flag;
While the shadow, chased by light,
Fled along the far-brawn height,
And left her on the crag.
Herman Melville
(1819 – 1891)
America
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Herman Melville
The Lynching
His spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven.
His father, by the crudest way of pain,
Had bidden him to his bosom once again;
The awful sin remained still unforgiven.
All night a bright and solitary star
(Perchance the one that ever guided him,
Yet gave him up at last to Fate’s wild whim)
Hung pitifully o’er the swinging char.
Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view
The ghastly body swaying in the sun:
The women thronged to look, but never a one
Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue;
And little lads, lynchers that were to be,
Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.
Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay
(1889 – 1948)
The Lynching (Poem)
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More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Danse Macabre
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM | TILBURG: Overzichtstentoonstelling vier jaar TilburgsAns, een kunstproject van Sander Neijnens en Ivo van Leeuwen
Wè knòrrie?
Sinds april 2016 zwerft TilburgsAns door de stad, een lettertype met eigenzinnige karakters en inmiddels 123 pictogrammen. Het lettertype is ontworpen door Sander Neijnens en geïnspireerd op het rauwe, eigenzinnige, humoristische, verrassende en experimentele karakter van Tilburg. De pictogrammen van karakteristieke Tilburgse locaties, evenementen, verhalen en woorden zijn van de hand van Ivo van Leeuwen. TilburgsAns is een uniek (typo)grafisch portret van Tilburg. Dit kunstproject is omarmd door de inwoners van de stad.
Het lettertype wordt op allerlei manieren toegepast in wijkkranten, kleding, etiketten, plattegronden, kaarten, stickers, posters, flyers en tatoeages. Daarnaast organiseerden de ontwerpers de wekelijkse kaajbaandexpositie van pictogrammen op de vuilcontainers van 81 huishoudens en hielden zij reeds vele workshops, lezingen in binnen- en buitenland en lessen voor basis-, middelbaar en hoger onderwijs. Ook presenteerden zij ‘Dègge bedankt zèèt dè witte wèèn’ en ‘We zullen et saome wel rôoje wèèn’, Chocolinde sjeklaatjes, de Tilburgse lekkernij met een Q en een serie speldjes. Na vier jaar wordt de tussenbalans opgemaakt met deze expositie in het Metropolitan Museum Tilburg, de raamtentoonstellingen aan de Stedekestraat 15 te Tilburg.
Het lettertype TilburgsAns kan gratis gedownload worden op de website www.tilburgsans.nl. Daar treft u ook nadere achtergrondinformatie over het project en het bijbehorende letteradoptieplan alsmede vele voorbeelden van hoe het lettertype en de pictogrammen in en buiten de stad worden toegepast.
Gratis raamtentoonstelling
‘Wè knòrrie?’ van TilburgsAns
Sander Neijnens en Ivo van Leeuwen
dagelijks nog t/m 18 februari 2020
‘Metropolitan Museum | Tilburg’
Stedekestraat 15 | 5041DM Tilburg
Sjon Brands en Dorith van der Lee
telefoon 013 5358041 | 06 20325030
mail post@metropolitanmuseum.nl
site www.metropolitanmuseum.nl
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More in: - Book Lovers, Archive K-L, Archive M-N, Art & Literature News, Exhibition Archive, Ivo van Leeuwen, Metropolitan Museum Tilburg, Sander Neijnens, Theater van de Verloren Tijd
Shelley’s Vision
Wandering late by morning seas
When my heart with pain was low–
Hate the censor pelted me–
Deject I saw my shadow go.
In elf-caprice of bitter tone
I too would pelt the pelted one:
At my shadow I cast a stone.
When lo, upon that sun-lit ground
I saw the quivering phantom take
The likeness of St. Stephen crowned:
Then did self-reverence awake.
Herman Melville
(1819 – 1891)
Shelley’s Vision
•fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Archive S-T, Archive S-T, Herman Melville, Shelley, Percy Byssche
The Land Of Love
Hail! voyagers, hail!
Whence e’er ye come, where’er ye rove,
No calmer strand,
No sweeter land,
Will e’er ye view, than the Land of Love!
Hail! voyagers, hail!
To these, our shores, soft gales invite:
The palm plumes wave,
The billows lave,
And hither point fix’d stars of light!
Hail! voyagers, hail!
Think not our groves wide brood with gloom;
In this, our isle,
Bright flowers smile:
Full urns, rose-heaped, these valleys bloom.
Hail! voyagers, hail!
Be not deceived; renounce vain things;
Ye may not find
A tranquil mind,
Though hence ye sail with swiftest wings.
Hail! voyagers, hail!
Time flies full fast; life soon is o’er;
And ye may mourn,
That hither borne,
Ye left behind our pleasant shore.
Herman Melville
(1819 – 1891)
The Land Of Love
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Herman Melville
The Maldive Shark
About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat —
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.
Herman Melville
(1819 – 1891)
The Maldive Shark
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Herman Melville, Natural history
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, although renowned for his novels, memoirs, and plays, honed his craft as a short story writer. From “The Fig Tree” (“Mugumo” in this collection), written in 1960, his first year as an undergraduate at Makerere University College in Uganda, to the playful “The Ghost of Michael Jackson,” written as a professor at the University of California, Irvine, these collected stories reveal a master of the short form.
Covering the period of British colonial rule and resistance in Kenya to the bittersweet experience of independence—and including two stories that have never before been published in the United States— Ngũgĩ’s collection features women fighting for their space in a patriarchal society; big men in their Bentleys who have inherited power from the British; and rebels who still embody the fighting spirit of the downtrodden.
One of Ngũgĩ’s most beloved stories, “Minutes of Glory,” tells of Beatrice, a sad but ambitious waitress who fantasizes about being feted and lauded over by the middle-class clientele in the city’s beer halls. Her dream leads her on a witty and heartbreaking adventure.
Published for the first time in America, Minutes of Glory and Other Stories is a major literary event that celebrates the storytelling might of one of Africa’s best-loved writers.
Title: Minutes of Glory and Other Stories
Author: Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Publisher: New Press, The
Format Hardcover
224 pages
ISBN-10 1620974657
ISBN-13 9781620974650
Publication Date 01 March 2019
Hardcover – $24.95
# new books
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Minutes of Glory and Other Stories
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Short Stories Archive, - Book News, - Book Stories, Archive M-N, Art & Literature News, FDM in Africa
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