Notebook
For a while I didn't know what to call this; maybe I'm still not sure. It's not a diary. It's not a blog. It's not a column. Words, ideas, images worth keeping. Stories that might not have happened, but are true nonetheless. In any case, here's some stuff I like. Perhaps you'll like it, too.
Archive
Thursday, 29 March 2007
Moving fast a girl came to me one night
Hurrying to abscond from innocence.
When she walked, her body said to the wind,
If you’re serious, this is the way you should stir
The branches.
Abdullah Ibn al-Mu’tazz (861-908 AD)
From Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster, Three Abbasid Poets, trans G. B. H. Wightman and A. Y. al-Udhari, Penguin Books, 1975
Books disappear and reappear in your life. Half a lifetime ago I was given a book of poems with this wonderful title. The poems inside were as remarkable as the words on the cover; but then I lost the book and it was years before I found it again. When I did, it seemed more striking to me that the work I’d so loved, and still did, originated in the 9th and 10th century in what is now Iraq. The book is out of print, which seems a shame.
Hurrying to abscond from innocence.
When she walked, her body said to the wind,
If you’re serious, this is the way you should stir
The branches.
Abdullah Ibn al-Mu’tazz (861-908 AD)
From Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster, Three Abbasid Poets, trans G. B. H. Wightman and A. Y. al-Udhari, Penguin Books, 1975
Books disappear and reappear in your life. Half a lifetime ago I was given a book of poems with this wonderful title. The poems inside were as remarkable as the words on the cover; but then I lost the book and it was years before I found it again. When I did, it seemed more striking to me that the work I’d so loved, and still did, originated in the 9th and 10th century in what is now Iraq. The book is out of print, which seems a shame.
posted at 10:29
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