Persona Non Gata

My Papa's Waltz

I've heard this poem being referred to twice recently. It kind of hurts.

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

posted by Catherine @ 7:14 AM 0 comments

Tagore Monday

Unending Love
by Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

posted by Catherine @ 6:50 AM 0 comments

Sound Familiar?

King Lear Act Four, Scene 6, lines 249-259:

Oswald: Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse.
If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body
And give the letters which you find'st about me
To Edmund, Earl of Gloucester. Seek him out
Upon the English party. O, untimely death!
Death! [He dies]

Edgar: I know thee well: a serviceable villain,
As duteous to the vices of thy mistress
As badness would desire.

Gloucester: What, is he dead?

Edgar: Sit you down, father. Rest you. [Gloucester sits.]



Of course this sounds familiar, if you're a Beatles fanatic. Listen to the end of "I Am The Walrus"....

posted by Catherine @ 7:15 AM 0 comments