Waterfall at Lu-shan
Sunlight streams on the river stones.
From high above, the river steadily plunges–
three thousand feet of sparkling water–
the Milky Way pouring down from heaven.
Li T’ai-po
In The Seven Woods
I HAVE heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
Tara uprooted, and new commonness
Upon the throne and crying about the streets
And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
Because it is alone of all things happy.
I am contented, for I know that Quiet
Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart
Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,
Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs
A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.
William Butler Yeats
The Plain
I was alone with a chair on a plain
Which lost itself in an empty horizon.
The plain was flawlessly paved.
Nothing, absolutely nothing but the chair and I
were there.
The sky was forever blue,
No sun gave life to it.
An inscrutable, insensible light
illuminated the infinite plain.
To me this eternal day seemed to be projected —
artificially– from a different sphere.
I was never sleepy nor hungry nor thirsty,
never hot nor cold.
Time was only an abstruse ghost
since nothing happened or changed.
In me Time still lived a little
This, mainly, thanks to the chair.
Because of my occupation with it
I did not completely
lose my sense of the past.
Now and then I’d hitch myself, as if I were a horse, to the chair
and trot around with it,
sometimes in circles,
and sometimes straight ahead.
I assume that I succeeded.
Whether I really succeeded I do not know
Since there was nothing in space
By which I could have checked my movements.
As I sat on the chair I pondered sadly, but not desperately,
Why the core of the world exuded such black light.
Jean Hans Arp
O sing, fair lady, when with me
Sad songs of Georgia no more:
They bring into my memory
Another life, a distant shore.
Your beautiful, your cruel tune
Brings to my memory, alas,
The steppe, the night – and with the moon
Lines of a far, unhappy lass.
Forgetting at the sight of you
That shadow fateful, shadow dear,
I hear you singing – and anew
I picture it before me, here.
O sing, fair lady, when with me
Sad songs of Georgia no more:
They bring into my memory
Another life, a distant shore.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
James Dean on Times Square
Dennis Stock
By the photographer that gave stock photography its name. This was taken just a few months before the car crash in which James Dean was killed.
View From The Dresden City Town Hall
Richard Peter sen.
One of the few building to escape the firestorm of 13/14 Feb 1945 that destroyed 6 square miles of city. The statue is “Goodness” by Richard guhr.
So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.
Byron
Dream Land
She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.
Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.
Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart’s core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake;
Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.
Christina Georgina Rossetti
The Cherry Trees
The cherry trees bend over and are shedding,
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.
Edward Thomas
New York Times article looking towards the rebuilding of New Orleans, and the prevention of anything similar ever happening again.
From the page: “On a cold winter night in 1953, the Netherlands suffered a terrifying blow as old dikes and seawalls gave way during a violent storm.
Flooding killed nearly 2,000 people and forced the evacuation of 70,000 others. Icy waters turned villages and farm districts into lakes dotted with dead cows.
Ultimately, the waters destroyed more than 4,000 buildings.
Afterward, the Dutch – realizing that the disaster could have been much worse, since half the country, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, lies below sea level – vowed never again.
After all, as Tjalle de Haan, a Dutch public works official, put it in an interview last week, “Here, if something goes wrong, 10 million people can be threatened.”
So at a cost of some $8 billion over a quarter century, the nation erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea’s fury – one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years.”
References
———————-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Flood_of_1953
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier
“Around 5:30 AM, February 1, the Groenendijk collapsed under the immense pressure. The seawater broke through and started moving into South Holland. In desperation, the mayor of Nieuwekerk commandeered the river ship “de Twee Gebroeders” (the Two Brothers) and ordered the owner to plug the hole in the dike by navigating the ship into it. Fearing that the ship may break through and dive into the polder, captain Arie Evegroen took a row boat with him. The mayor’s plan turned out to be successful, as the ship lodged itself firmly into the dike, sparing Holland.”
