Words and Music

Its late so I'll be brief, though those who know me, know that being brief is not a natural gift of mine and less so when its late.

After a long day in Stockholm, I began a long journey South to Vienna, where sleep eludes me as its nearly midnight and still 23C.

I changed planes in Heathrow, where chaos reigned, blamed variously on computer failures, missing planes and a broken baggage system. As we sat and sweltered, a girl began to sing, very quietly, almost as if she were chanting. Soft , sweet and low, she continued without seeming to draw breath and very slowly, a little circle of calm radiated out from her. I couldn't see her properly but caught something like a reflection in discrete smiles, and quiet rhythmic nods.

Later, on the plane, the lady sitting next to me opened a folder of sheet music and read, closing her eyes every few minutes and moved in a soft rhythm , lost in music that only she could hear.

I opened the little book of poems I had happened on earlier in the day and lost myself in different songs. I read and reread John Clare's , I Am, and then, perhaps in search of something more uplifting, I found myself reading John Donne's The Sun Rising aloud. Transported to a garden by the sea, rehearsing words to other music.

Tis late.

I Am

I AM! yet what I am none cares or knows,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--

Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;

A place where woman never smil'd or wept;

There to abide with my creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;

The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

The Sun Rising

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.