Mon, 2003/12/01 - 11:07pm
Vancouver Lights
By Earle Birney, 1941
About me the night moonless wimples the mountains
wraps the ocean land air and mounting
sucks at the stars The city throbbing below
webs the peninsula Streaming the golden
strands overleap the seajet by bridge and bouy
vault the shears of the inlet climb the woods
toward me falter and halt Across to the firefly
haze of a ship on the gulf's erased horizon
roll the spokes of a restless lighthouse
Through the feckless years we have come to the time
when to look on this quilt of lamps is a troubling deligh
Wlling from Europe's bog through Africa flowing
and Asia drowning the lonely lumes on the oceans
tiding up over Halifax now to this winking
outpost come flooding the primal ink
On the mountain's brutish forehead with terror of space
I stir of the changeless night and the stark ranges
of nothing pulsing down from beyond and between
the fragile planets We are a spark beleagered
by darkness this twinkle we make in a corner of the emptiness
how shall we utter our fear that the black Experimentress
will never in the range of her microscope find it? Our Phoebus
himself in a bubble that dries on Her slide while Nubian
wears for an evening's whim a necklace of nebulae
Yet we must speak we the unique glowworms
Out of the waters and rocks of our little world
we cunningly conjured these flames hooped these sparks
by our will From blankness and cold we fashioned stars
to our size and signalled Aldeberan This must we say
whoever may be to hear us if murk devour
and none weave again in gossamer:
These rays were ours
we made them and unmade them Not the shudder of continents
doused us the moon's passion nor crash of comets
In the fathomless heat of our dwarfdom our dream's combustion
we contrived the power the blast that snuffed us
No one bound Prometheus Himself he chained
and consumed his own bright liver O stranger
Plutonian descendant or beast in the stretching night—
there was light |
These are the last three pictures from our trip to New York last June.
My back is very sore tonight
It's "Crappy Drawing Day" and I decided to do a little limnery. A while back I attached a shelf to my easel to rest my palette on while I'm painting. It works great, but it looked odd folded up. Since this thing lives in the living room something had to be done to spruce it up a bit. This is what I came up with:
