Say what is freely yours and you shall have it.

Big sky. Long Beach, Sandy Bay. April 2020.

In my opinion, Easter Saturday is the most pointless and disappointing of all holidays...

Dialogue on the Headland, Robert Graves

SHE: You'll not forget these rocks and what I told you?
HE: How could I? Never: whatever happens.
SHE: What do you think might happen?
Might you fall out of love? - did you mean that?
HE: Never, never! 'Whatever' was a sop
For jealous listeners in the shadows.
SHE: You haven't answered me. I asked:
'What do you think might happen?'
HE: Whatever happens: though the skies should fall
Raining their larks and vultures in our laps -
SHE: 'Though the sea turn to slime' -say that -
'Though water-snakes be hatched with six heads.'
HE: Though the seas turn to slime, or tower
In an arching wave above us, three miles high -
SHE: 'Though she should break with you' - dare you say that? -
'Though she deny her words on oath.'
HE: I had that in my mind to say, or nearly;
It hurt so much I choked it back.
SHE: How many other days can't you forget?
How many other loves and landscapes?
HE: You are jealous?
SHE: Damnably.
HE: The past is past.
SHE: And this?
HE: Whatever happens, this goes on.
SHE: Without a future? Sweetheart, tell me now:
What do you want of me? I must know that.
HE: Nothing that isn't freely mine already.
SHE: Say what is freely yours and you shall have it.
HE: Nothing that, loving you, I should dare take.
SHE: O, for an answer with no 'nothing' in it!
HE: Then give me everything that's left.
SHE: Left after what?
HE: After whatever happens:
Skies have already fallen, seas are slime,
Watersnakes poke and peer six-headedly -
SHE: And I lie snugly in the Devil's arms.
HE: I said: 'Whatever happens.' Are you crying?
SHE: You'll not forget me - ever, ever, ever?

Comments

Sue said…

I agree. It is a Clayton's holiday. The holiday you have when you aren't really having a holiday. Everything is open except everything I need. Make your mind up businesses. All of you shut...or none. Bah! Humbug!

7 April 2012 at 22:17

Carola said…

Awesome sky!

10 April 2012 at 06:05

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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