hay fever rears it's ugly head once more...
and lo & behold it's the burch pollen that's doing it, great pollen index website from the ever helpful BBC told me that...
went over to O's today, reversal of the last few fridays... wrote another killer tune with him & M, then drank to his birthday in the same pub that we drank to felinity's birthday in last year, which is fast approaching again now...
last night i played a piano gig in mamilanji... nice people, nice place... white piano... not the best grand piano i've ever played but pretty good, and hard work to push down those keys...anyway i've lost the proust book somewhere and so i had cavafy with me and in between sets i found a couple of poems that i really like in that "open the pages at random" way... this book so full of tiny poems i love, finding a couple i hadn't read already was lovely:
SINCE NINE O'CLOCK
Half past twelve. Time's gone by quickly
since nine o'clock when I lit the lamp
and sat down here. I've been sitting without reading,
without speaking. Completely alone in the house,
who could I talk to?
Since nine o'clock when I lit the lamp
the shade of my young body
has been haunting me, reminding me
of shut scented rooms,
of past passion - what daring passion.
And it's also brought back to me
streets now unrecognisable,
bustling night clubs now closed,
theatres and cafés no longer there.
The shade of my young body
also brought back the things that make us sad:
family grief, separations,
the feelings of my own people,
of the dead so little recognised.
Half past twelve: how the time has gone by.
Half past twelve: how the years have gone by.
----(and on the facing page - both poems written in 1918)----
OUTSIDE THE HOUSE
Walking yesterday in an outlying neighbourhood,
I went by the house
I used to go to when I was very young.
There Eros with his wonderful power
laid hold of my body.
And yesterday
when I walked down the old road,
shops pavement, stones,
walls and balconies and windows-
all were suddenly made beautiful by the spell of love:
there was nothing ugly left there.
And as i stood staring at the door,
stood lingering outside the house,
my whole being radiated
the sensual passion stored up inside me.
(translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
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