...Requiem...

Memorial Day, Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, 2015

For the Fallen
Poem by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21st September 1914.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

...instagram / wallpapers / a little bit of both...16sep14...

picking back up on instagram since twitpic may be shuttering up; here's a few photos from my Windows Phone shot recently at Huntington Library and Level 3 at Hollywood and Highland...

 


there i am in the midst of weeds
in the uncaring tangle of refuse
returning to the earth returning to the earth
this is not what i meant
this is not what i sought
but they came all around like hunger
like decision bury me please bury me
all desires have melted into the earth
and all i ask is to unexpose me
the desire in how i left
in reaching out to the voice on the other end
find me find me

is what i meant find in me - open as i am

...it's as you never left...14feb14...

I have not forgotten.  I don't need to.  This is who I am, this is the 'why'.  Meaning is immaterial.  These days, they are formed in chaos and there is little of what should make sense.  I see the undulating greens in the conifers above me.  Their needles dark against the dark blue of dusk.  Darken more and the greens leave first.  The blue changes to the finality of the day.  My head aches for laying too long in the hard dirt that surrounds the root.  The evergreen pulls all the moisture out of the soil, the ring of grassless exposed dirt does not hid it's spindly roots.  It is Valentine's today, but eagerly I want it to end.  The ache comes again, to the surface, hungry and encompassing.  How long will this go on?  Muse!   The internal voice cries out through the day.  The facades echo nothing of your light.  How would they?

:The impassable stone is silent and still
It has set it's flint and shale to the fore
It has patience and knows little more
Than what was proven, what is cast,
And what is still the same, e'en now.:

:The greens of the hills and their contrasted span
The distance insurmountable.
But all around, in moments fleeting
The hues of jade and amethyst
Alternate and alight the memory:

:Patience.  But not in this life, is known
The world conspired against it
How cruelty is proved true by its most diabolical proofs
And that my letters will never be read
But hide in the crags and lines of the eager edifice:

:If you but knew it was only you
I doubt it would change little else.
And you, it was you, and that is all that I knew
But the travails quickly dulled to memory
But who can tear at the stones that shall mount
And oh, how they mount Higher with each passing year:

:I aware at the thought, they shall surpass me
And the records of man prove aright
That may little be known of the man that lay here
But for the woman, his Muse, did he love!: