White Boy Time Machine: Override
No matter where we go, there’s a history
of white men describing a landscape
so they can claim it. I look out the window
& I don’t see a sunset, I see a man’s
pink tongue razing the horizon.
I once heard a man describe the village
in Vietnam where my family comes from.
It was beautiful
a poem I would gift my mother
but somewhere in the pastoral I am reminded
a child (recently) was blown apart
after stepping on a mine, a bulb, I guess
blooming forty years later—
maybe it was how the poet said dirt
or maybe it was how he used fire
to describe the trees.
—Hieu Minh Nguyen
listen its about the last unicorn being fundamentally no different from the harpy and feeling more compassion for her than she does the trapped animals or the humans trapped by circumstance. it's about haggard grabbing the unicorn only once she has become human enough for him to drag her down and realise her eyes are empty. it's about schmendrick and the magic that lives in him more than he wields it, it's about "never run from anything immortal, it attracts their attention" while walking slowly from an unspeakable horror devouring an old woman, it's about "how dare you come to me now, when I am this?". it's about the unicorns staying in the water until they can't anymore, until the castle crumbles and the one unicorn who is different from the others now - she lowers her horn and she digs her hooves in and she stands her ground for a dear, dead boy. it's about the trade of immortality between schmendrick and the unicorn, it's about stories needing to be told, it's about lir loving the unicorn enough to know that she cannot stay with him, and to let her would be to do her a disservice.
it's about "your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. i would tear myself to pieces to call you once by your name." it's about regret.
(it's also about little 5 year old me renting the movie from the library whenever i could and watching it on loop for hours. it's about just how much this story has shaped me and my understanding of storytelling.)
baffled by people who (apart from their own club) only want to see man city to win the prem. i want my own club to win obvs but i would rather see literally any random club win it than sit back and watch football further fall to the evils of money and the knowledge that the richest man in the room will always win no matter what you do
Praising Spring
The day is taken by each thing and grows complete.
I go out and come in and go out again,
confused by a beauty that knows nothing of delay,
rushing like fire. All things move faster
than time and make a stillness thereby. My mind
leans back and smiles, having nothing to say.
Even at night I go out with a light and look
at the growing. I kneel and look at one thing
at a time. A white spider on a peony bud.
I have nothing to give, and make a poor servant,
but I can praise the spring. Praise this wildness
that does not heed the hour. The doe that does not
stop at dark but continues to grow all night long.
The beauty in every degree of flourishing. Violets
lift to the rain and the brook gets louder than ever.
The old German farmer is asleep and the flowers go on
opening. There are stars. Mint grows high. Leaves
bend in the sunlight as the rain continues to fall.
—Linda Gregg
The God Abandons Antony
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
—C.P. Cavafy (trans. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)