(no subject)

Happy Birthday scionofgrace - who informs me that today is (or was, rather, because today for liturgical purposes started at 6pm yesterday) Birkat Hachama, when the sun returns to the position (er, from an earth-relative point of view!) in which, according to Rabbinic tradition, it was at creation - a cycle of 28 years.

There are a number of readings appropriate to this, and also a blessing: "Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who effect the work of creation," to be said when you see the sun rise.

This year, for the first time since 1925, it also falls on 14 Nissan, the Eve of Passover; tradition holds that this is a time proper for redemptive acts, and that the first Passover and the first Purim fell at such times.

I wish I'd known this yesterday. I'd have got up for that!

NAPOMO Day 8: In Memoriam WB Yeats, III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

-- W.H. Auden

The best poem about the poet's vocation that I know.

Twitter-witter!

( Beware the ramblings! )