Philosophy

I

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and history,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way—the children's eyes
In momentary...

1
Well, what on earth is there to say? 
2
He knows something, but won’t tell. 
3
Who knows, maybe you’re …

Two underworlds, in Poussin.

The one touched by the force
of necessity, the other
remaining untouched.

Simone Weil makes her way
to the refectory
in Ashford. She walks slowly
down the corridors, with
or without help.

The hem of her gown brushes
the maculate plaster
of the long wall.

She could live...

By G C Waldrep

Frank is a
young boy
asleep in
ancient
Tibet

what you
thought was
your life is
really his
dream

he may
wake at any
moment

Frank knows a
butterfly
who wonders
about her old
caterpillar
friends

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a...

You enter the city with harps and with flutes,
with drums and with baskets
of grapes and pomegranates.
You enter the city of blue ash and blue spruce,
that terraced city rumored of the spirit.

You come there as would a fire,
but neither you nor...

              I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest monthApril is the cruellest month The Waste Land begins with a subversion of the first lines of the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. He paints April...

Growing up in a rural factory town I watched my creative family extend the grind oft monotonous jobs outside the factory walls and into their lives until they were no longer capable of accessing their artistic abilities. The factory essentially...

Always the one alone longs for mercy,
the Maker's mildness, though, troubled in mind,
across the ocean-ways he has long been forced
co stir with his hands the frost-cold sea,
and walk in exile's paths. Wyrd is fully fixed.

       Thus spoke the...

Here begynnes a tretys and god schorte refreytebytwixe Wynnere and Wastoure

Sythen that Bretayne was biggede and Bruyttus it aughte,
Thurgh the takynge of Troye with tresone withinn,
There hathe selcouthes bene sene in seere kynges tymes,
Bot never so many as nowe by...

in the wind / an inky air

in the air / finchness

in the ink / a stone

in the winter / winter

in the nest / in the piney

in the tree / filigree

in the great / bye and bye

in the worm / William...

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts...