a shandean commonplace book

Tonight, for the first time in many years, there appeared to me again a vision of the earth's splendor: in the evening sky the first star seemed to increase in brilliance as the earth darkened until at last it could grow no darker. And the light, which was the light of death, seemed to restore to earth its power to console. There were no other stars. Only the one whose name I knew as in my other life I did her injury: Venus, star of the early evening, to you I dedicate my vision, since on this blank surface you have cast enough light to make my thought visible again. Louise Glück

In this little borrowed wooden house in January, down on the field-colored rug I came across a cricket close to death, or sleeping. Not breathing, that I could see. Out walking, I saw a skull of snow, and a snow-frog listening.           Back in the house, my cricket, your heart has stopped. Would you like snow over you? Or be in here together, by the hearth. But now your body is fallen in pieces around you. Help me find a leaf for you to lie on, another to cover you. Jean Valentine

Don’t Do That It was bring-your-own if you wanted anything hard, so I brought Johnnie Walker Red along with some resentment I’d held in for a few weeks, which was not helped by the sight of little nameless things pierced with toothpicks on the tables, or by talk that promised to be nothing if not small. But I’d consented to come, and I knew what part of the house their animals would be sequestered, whose company I loved. What else can I say, except that old retainer of slights and wrongs, that bad boy I hadn’t quite outgrown — I’d brought him along, too. I was out to cultivate a mood. My hosts greeted me, but did not ask about my soul, which was when I was invited by Johnnie Walker Red to find the right kind of glass, and pour. I toasted the air. I said hello to the wall, then walked past a group of women dressed to be seen, undressing them one by one, and went up the stairs to where the Rottweilers were, Rosie and Tom, and got down with them on all fours. They licked the face I offere...

When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you'll remember. For you need not so. Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know It is not curses heaped on each gashed head? Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow. Nor honour. It is easy to be dead. Say only this, A They are dead. @ Then add thereto, A Yet many a better one has died before. @ Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you Perceive one face that you loved heretofore, It is a spook. None wears the face you knew. Great death has made all his for evermore. Charles Sorley 1916