Why do I feel so proprietary about the Met?  As if it’s mine?  As if New York is mine, as if this moment of my life in New York IS life in New York in general, or my life in general?

Well, I shall enjoy this bliss while it lasts, and try to remember it’s only a moment.  A precious, beautiful, ephemeral moment.  And that time rushes and only seems to lull.

Central Park from the tranquil Temple of Dendur

PAUL CELAN

The forest gave you a necklace of hands. So dead you walk the rope.

~ Paul Celan (line from Tallow Lamp)

Your hands full of hours, you came to me–and I said:
Your hair is not brown.
So you lifted it lightly on to the scales of grief; it weighed more
than I…

~ Paul Celan (fragment from Your hands full of hours)

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with serpents he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair
Margarete
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are flashing he
whistles his pack out
he whistles his Jews out in earth has them dig for a grave
he commands us strike up for the dance

~ Paul Celan (fragment from Death Fugue)

ADONIS

Life produces death, which is its essence.

~ Adonis (line from Explanations)

How can I call what is between us a past?

“What is between us is not a story
not a human apple or a jinn’s
not a sign of a season
or a place
not anything that could be historicized”       This is
what the vicissitudes inside us say

How can I say then that our love
has been taken by the wrinkled hands of time

~ Adonis (How can I call what is between us a past; from Beginnings of the Body, Ends of the Sea)

He holds the plow to his chest,
clouds and rain in his palms.
His plow opens doors
toward a richer possibility.
He scatters dawn on his field
and gives it meaning.

~ Adonis (fragment from Rains)

Pond with Ducks, Central Park

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.  ~ Picasso

You are the one who writes and the one who is written.  ~ Edmond Jabès

“Stop shouting, Nemesis!” she shouts.

Nemesis.  I kid you not.

Not a common boy’s name, I don’t imagine.  Surely I misheard?  Surely it was something more staid, more done.  Something like… Pegasus?

The wild wonders of queuing.

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry—the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

~ Wallace Stevens

fountain of sky and world

Bath’s Pulteney Bridge and weir–the bridge probably based on (or inspired by) the Rialto in Venice

Bath Abbey, Roman Baths, sausage car

King’s and Queen’s Baths

benches outside of Bath Abbey

Bath Abbey, with the angels going up ladders along its front wall

near Roman Baths

Roman Baths

Stonehenge

The Avebury Stones, even older than Stonehenge

A rose placed on an Avebury Stone

Silbury Hill is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, and is the size of some of the smaller Giza pyramids in Egypt. No-one quite knows what it was for–but it was created and then buried and the earth allowed to grow over it. Charles Dickens also stayed at a pub/inn near here.

bridge at Castle Combe

Castle Combe

churchyard at Castle Combe

market at Salisbury

gate at Salisbury

Salisbury

the cloisters at the exquisite Salisbury Cathedral

statues on the Salisbury Cathedral facade

grim face on Salisbury Cathedral

Salisbury Cathedral and its beautiful baptismal font

the baptismal font at Salisbury Cathedral (from the front)

darkening at Salisbury Cathedral

from the market at Salisbury

bridge at Salisbury

swan at Salisbury

chapel in St John the Baptist Church, Cardiff (the oldest church, pre-medieval, in the city)

another view inside the St John the Baptist Church in Cardiff, so understated, under-visited, and beautiful

Cardiff Castle, an amalgamation of styles

gorgeous hall, Cardiff Castle

ceiling, Cardiff Castle

alcove in the library, Cardiff Castle

Library, Cardiff Castle

cultures of wisdom, Cardiff Castle

Cardiff Castle keep and moat

Crops coming in at King’s Stanley

view from Cam Long Down (which felt longer going up than down)

The lovely lush wheat fields (methinks) near North Nibley en route to the Tyndale Monument, celebrating the life and courage of William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English and was killed for his trouble. The King James bible draws significantly on his version.

lovely woodland

graveyard and view, I think in Wotton-under-Edge

graveyard at Wotton-under-Edge

gorgeous area at the tree root level

tree fallen over path

we wondered if once this had been a riverbed

more beautiful deep walkways

wandering in search of the path after turning off for lunch at Hawkesbury Upton (where we saw cricketers emerge white and shivery mystical in the misty greens, like unicorns)

the church at beautiful and small Tormarton (where we watched the Jubilee on the telly)

the walk to dinner from Pennsylvania, rain clouds a’gathering

part two of our walk to dinner from Pennsylvania–by this time we’re used to what used to be a novelty (climbing over gates (at the appropriate points))

we are so ready to see Bath, finally!