Malmaison

Amy Lowell

Verse 1

How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over there, over there, beyond the high wall!  How quietly the Seine runs in loops and windings, over there, over there, sliding through the green countryside!  Like ships of the line, stately with canvas, the tall clouds pass along the sky, over the glittering roof, over the trees, over the looped and curving river. A breeze quivers through the linden-trees.  Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses!  Roses!  But the road is dusty.  Already the Citoyenne Beauharnais wearies of her walk.  Her skin is chalked and powdered with dust, she smells dust, and behind the wall are roses! Roses with smooth open petals, poised above rippling leaves...  Roses ... They have told her so.  The Citoyenne Beauharnais shrugs her shoulders and makes a little face.  She must mend her pace if she would be back in time for dinner.  Roses indeed!  The guillotine more likely.

The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the slate roof sparkles in the sun.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: Josephine's boudoir, Malmaison.

Today's poem:

I Don't Ever Want To Go To Burnley

John Cooper Clarke

Today's Flickr phot with the most hits: the south wing, Towneley Hall, Burnley.

The Ruin

Anonymous, 8th / 9th CE

probably written about Bath

This masonry is wondrous; fates broke it courtyard pavements were smashed; the work of giants is decaying. Roofs are fallen, ruinous towers, the frosty gate with frost on cement is ravaged, chipped roofs are torn, fallen, undermined by old age. The grasp of the earth possesses the mighty builders, perished and fallen, the hard grasp of earth, until a hundred generations of people have departed. Often this wall, lichen-grey and stained with red, experienced one reign after another, remained standing under storms; the high wide gate has collapsed. Still the masonry endures in winds cut down persisted on__________________ fiercely sharpened________ _________ ______________ she shone_________ _____________g skill ancient work_________ _____________g of crusts of mud turned away spirit mo________yne put together keen-counselled a quick design in rings, a most intelligent one bound the wall with wire brace wondrously together. Bright were the castle buildings, many the bathing-halls, high the abundance of gables, great the noise of the multitude, many a meadhall full of festivity, until Fate the mighty changed that. Far and wide the slain perished, days of pestilence came, death took all the brave men away; their places of war became deserted places, the city decayed. The rebuilders perished, the armies to earth. And so these buildings grow desolate, and this red-curved roof parts from its tiles of the ceiling-vault. The ruin has fallen to the ground broken into mounds, where at one time many a warrior, joyous and ornamented with gold-bright splendour, proud and flushed with wine shone in war-trappings; looked at treasure, at silver, at precious stones, at wealth, at prosperity, at jewellery, at this bright castle of a broad kingdom. The stone buildings stood, a stream threw up heat in wide surge; the wall enclosed all in its bright bosom, where the baths were, hot in the heart. That was convenient. Then they let pour_______________ hot streams over grey stone. un___________ _____________ until the ringed sea (circular pool?) hot _____________where the baths were. Then is_______________________ __________re, that is a noble thing, to the house__________ castle_______

Today's photo with the most hits: the Roman bath complex at Bath.

The Great Bath, as seen today.

A model with cut-away to indicate how it was originally.

Bath complex as it was, seen from the south east.

In The Whistling Rooms

Şükrü Erbaş

So not to leave you alone even from your grave I rush back home.

In the whistling rooms I talk I talk I talk.

I came from afar, morning dew on my lips Saying don’t be childish you draw back your lips.

Then I raise my eyes, the window’s not there Dead children like eye lashes lined up.

Can you grow ashamed of your sorrow I’m poisoned by the tears I’ve spilled.

it’s too late for us you said once, how will all these children live in this country, the womb of death.

In a village near Antakya, our hearts full of love Surrounded by such blessings who would think of death.

Come, let us go down to the sea In her arms the blue will rock our fears to sleep.

I’m a loneliness for two before your photos One, the one you take with you, the other, the one you leave.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: a street scene in Antakya, Turkiye.

Atheist Lighting a Candle in Albi Cathedral

Frances Leviston for Tyler

It seems to matter I use a Zippo, not the taper’s monkish flame.

It seems to matter I choose the white over red before asking the difference,

that I love the fresco’s talented horse though couldn’t name his rider –

but what’s not authentic at the Virgin’s feet? She knows I am not a bad person, just troubled. She knows the wick is burning.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: taken in the Musee Toulouse Lautrec, Albi.

A still life, by Utter.

Today's poem:

The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Tupac Shakur

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet. Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: this portrait of Tupac.

Street art, Rome.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: this view of the Holocaust Memorial, Berlin.

Auschwitz

Santino Spinelli

Sunken in face extinguished eyes cold lips silence a torn heart without breath without words no tears.

17 Kinds of Hungry

Adrian Matejka

Until around sundown, the surviving lilies in the yard stay wide open, like the window of a car passing on a hot day. No music from the flowers, but they smell like somebody’s fragrant soap unwrapped on a dish edged with daisies. All those smells expressing themselves haphazardly like a band trying to tune up. Escape is what I’ve wanted since I was little, cramped in summertime Section 8: flowers everywhere, my bird-legged brother a couple steps back, my sister book-nosed somewhere in the radius of us. Just a deciduous minute when the blossom of noises was from my own AM radio & not my thin stomach. No more backtalks, no more slapbacks. Just a quick inhale before I tiptoed out the front door. Unlatch, turn, run away. Escape, as Indiana bats wheeled up top, chirping sonorous somethings. I ran under them & to the bus, past those long-necked lilies, self-congratulatory in their exploded colours. Their purples leaned the way June does, their reds hot as the woman’s attitude waiting at the bus stop while the #17 scooted past without picking us up.

Today's photo with the most hits: the remains of the Franciscan hermitage at Rivotorto, near Assisi. The huts are now housed within a church.

Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi

Nathan McClain

Near the entrance, a patch of tall grass. Near the tall grass, long-stemmed plants;

each bending an ear-shaped cone to the pond’s surface. If you looked closely,

you could make out silvery koi swishing toward the clouded pond’s edge

where a boy tugs at his mother’s shirt for a quarter. To buy fish feed. And watching that boy,

as he knelt down to let the koi kiss his palms, I missed what it was to be so dumb

as those koi. I like to think they’re pure, that that’s why even after the boy’s palms were empty,

after he had nothing else to give, they still kissed his hands. Because who hasn’t done that—

loved so intently even after everything has gone? Loved something that has washed

its hands of you? I like to think I’m different now, that I’m enlightened somehow,

but who am I kidding? I know I’m like those koi, still, with their popping mouths, that would kiss

those hands again if given the chance. So dumb.