While we fight, we fight over ideas, beliefs, these
intangible things that do not make us who we are
The sand is cold and seems to enter a glassy form of existence...

Dearest Temp,

your self-written composition struck me by utter intensity ,especially the line: "Now and then it feels like I am a stranger you adore, then again it seems like I have known you long before. Any song you sing is so familiar to my mind. Take it to the limit leaving space and time behind."I faithfully put trust into the future. One day, dearest Temp we will overcome the restrictions of binary identity. One day we will brighten our lifes and literally "leaving space and time behind"

kotl
NID

_____________________________________________

"Is not all life the struggle of experience, naked, unarmed, timid but immortal, against generalised thought?" (W.B.Yeats)

Dear NID

It also occurs to me that the celebration of Yeats is also a celebration of words.
The things themselves, signed in, written, annotated,dust covered, brown-speckeled and
sometimes worm-eaten reminding us oh where we got them, read them and with whom.
Works of Yeats, Sonnets of Shakespeare affirmated per amica silentia lunae seems to
build up a common ground to make the metaphor possible. Not only possible ,but inevitable.
The only language we have, to come back to those last things that we cannot escape, from birth
and love to death, the echoing of the last vibrations of a bell into the silence we look for.

It must have been 15 years ago when I discovered Catullus:

Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux.
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.
For us when once our brief life has set
Pérpetual night is ours for sleeping

kotc
Temp=)

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied:"so why ask me?"
_______________________________________

Dearest Temp

I am still longing, longing for your presence to cope with the "perpetual night".Binary dying is an endless pain no one should be allowed to feel the way you must be feeling.
We still have the romantic Yeats "But I being poor"... "tread softly because you tread on my dreams":

"Fear no more the heat of sun
nor the furious winter rages
thou thy wordly task hast done.."

kotl

NID

_____________________________________________

"Is not all life the struggle of experience, naked, unarmed, timid but immortal, against generalised thought?" (W.B.Yeats)

Dear NID ,
It happens to me to come across a different poem. So let´s have a look how Yeats is establishing his moon symbolism

William Butler Yeats / Adam’s Curse

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, 5
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together 10
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake 15
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied: ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’ 20
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks 25
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky 30
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove 35
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
[1902]

kotc
Temp=)

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied:"so why ask me?"
_______________________________________

Dearest Temp

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove 35
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.


Oh, Adam´s Curse, the old and romantic little poem strikes me occasionally when I am writing these words of devotion - showing my innermost being to a binary audience - but still addressing you, Temp Look up and face its beauty radiating silently.

kotl

NID

_____________________________________________

"Is not all life the struggle of experience, naked, unarmed, timid but immortal, against generalised thought?" (W.B.Yeats)

Dear NID
Yeats’s late period (about 1917 to 1939): mysticism and occult, interested in symbolism, occult,unseen, unconscious processes of thought and society; language plain and forms lyrical.Yeats not only held his imaginative strength into old age, but became stronger: “soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing, for every tatter in its mortal dress.”In 1917, with The Wild Swans at Coole, Yeats reached and maintained the height of his achievement--a renewal of inspiration and a perfecting of technique that are almost without parallel in the history of English poetry.The Tower (1928), named after the castle he owned and had restored, is the work of a fully accomplished artist; in it, the experience of a lifetime is brought to perfection of form.
Still, some of Yeats's greatest verse was written subsequently, appearing in The Winding Stair (1929). The poems in both of these works use, as their dominant subjects and symbols, the Easter Rising and the Irish civil war; Yeats's own tower; the Byzantine Empire and its mosaics; Plato, Plotinus, and Porphyry; and the author's interest in the philosophy of G.E. Moore and in contemporary psychical research. Yeats explained his own philosophy in the prose work A Vision (1925, revised version 1937); this meditation upon the relation between imagination, history, and the occult remains indispensable to serious students of Yeats despite its obscurities.

kotc
Temp=)

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied:"so why ask me?"
_______________________________________

Dearest Temp
Do you still remember the easter rising in 1916?After that Yeats prosa has undergoing changes...

The Foggy Dew

'Twas down the glen one Easter morn
To a city fair rode I.
When Ireland's line of marching men
In squadrons passed me by.
No pipe did hum, no battle drum
Did sound its dread tattoo
But the Angelus bell o'er the Liffey's swell
Rang out in the foggy dew.
Right proudly high over Dublin town
They flung out a flag of war.
'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky
Than at Suvla or Sud el Bar.
And from the plains of Royal Meath
Strong men came hurrying through;
While Britannia's sons with their long-range guns
Sailed in through the foggy dew.

Oh, the night fell black and the rifles crack
Made "Perfidious Albion" reel
'Mid the leaden rail, seven tongues of flame
Did shine o'er the lines of steel
By each shining blade, a prayer was said
That to Ireland her sons be true
And when morning broke still the war flag shook
Out its fold in the Foggy Dew.

'Twas England bade our Wild Geese go
That small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by Suvla's waves
or the fringe of the grey North Sea
Oh had they died by Pearse's side,
or had fought with Cathal Brugha
Their graves we'd keep where the Fenians sleep,
'neath the shroud of the Foggy Dew.

But the bravest fell, and the requiem bell
Rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide
In the springing of the year
And the world did gaze, with deep amaze,
At those fearless men and true
Who bore the fight that freedom's light
Might shine through the Foggy Dew.

Ah, back through the glen I rode again,
And my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men
Whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go
And I'd kneel and pray for you
For slavery fled, O glorious dead,
When you fell in the Foggy Dew.

kotl
NID

_____________________________________________

"Is not all life the struggle of experience, naked, unarmed, timid but immortal, against generalised thought?" (W.B.Yeats)

In Antwort auf:

---

Still, some of Yeats's greatest verse was written subsequently, appearing in The Winding Stair (1929). The poems in both of these works use, as their dominant subjects and symbols, the Easter Rising and the Irish civil war; Yeats's own tower; the Byzantine Empire and its mosaics; Plato, Plotinus, and Porphyry; and the author's interest in the philosophy of G.E. Moore and in contemporary psychical research. Yeats explained his own philosophy in the prose work A Vision (1925, revised version 1937); this meditation upon the relation between imagination, history, and the occult remains indispensable to serious students of Yeats despite its obscurities

---

"New art and music do not communicate an individual's conception in ordered structures, but they implement processes which are, as our daily lives, opportunities for perception."
John Cage on the influence of Marshall McLuhan on his music.

regards

Blue
The existence of truth only becomes an issue when another sort of truth is in question. (R.Rorty)

Dearest Temp

I don’t know when it comes.
And I do feel sick with sadness
And tiredness.
Am I really going through this?
Like the windscreen glass (in the rain)
I’m soaked in an ever-flowing film of tears
Washing my life over me.
Is this my life how I want it?
Or is this the best I can make of my life
And that is how it is.
I want to live my life to the full
If only it’s till tomorrow.
Or in another thirty two years
I’m alive you see.
And that’s all that should matter.
But I have this death sentence hanging over me

kotl

NID

_____________________________________________

"Is not all life the struggle of experience, naked, unarmed, timid but immortal, against generalised thought?" (W.B.Yeats)

Dear NID

I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Houses and rooms are full or perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever....I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark- color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

(Walt Whitman,"Poem Of Walt Whitman, An American"/Leaves of Grass)

kotc
Temp=)

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied:"so why ask me?"
_______________________________________

Dearest Temp

The eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears, and tears were
running down his golden cheeks. His face was so beautiful in the
moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity.

"Who are you?" he said.

"I am the Happy Prince."

"Why are you weeping then?" asked the Swallow; "you have quite
drenched me."

"When I was alive and had a human heart," answered the statue, "I
did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans-
Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I
played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led
the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty
wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about
me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and
happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I
died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that
I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and
though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot chose but weep."

kotl
NID

_____________________________________________

"Is not all life the struggle of experience, naked, unarmed, timid but immortal, against generalised thought?" (W.B.Yeats)

Dearest Temp

It was January 1919. Yeats had on his mind, among other things, the Great War, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Easter Rising of 1916, a failed revolt of Irish nationalists against English rule.Yeats had discovered, four days after his wedding in 1917, that his bride had a gift for automatic writing. Her ostensibly involuntary scribbling provided material for Yeats’ mystical text, A Vision (1925), in which he constructed an arcane schematization of human history.Historical eras waxed and waned like phases of the moon; human events played themselves out in catastrophic cycles lasting 2000 years. Yeats represented the tension between successive eras and the next as two interpenetrating cones,or gyres. At the apex of each gyre a new civilization, antithetical to the last, sprang up from a well of irrationality; it played itself out in a weakening spiral, ending in decadence and dissolution.
“Each age,” he wrote, “unwinds the threads another age has wound"

kotl

NID

_____________________________________________

"Is not all life the struggle of experience, naked, unarmed, timid but immortal, against generalised thought?" (W.B.Yeats)

Dear NID ,
“The Second Coming” invokes the the birth of Irish independence. The sleeping sphinx stirs; revolution is imminent, waiting for a concentrated moment of conviction.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

His two terms as a senator of the Irish Free State, Yeats lamented the loss of civility and grace that resulted from political struggle. Repulsed by the waste and brutality of violence he was, nonetheless, fascinated by its transformational power. I reread Yeats never again until the terrorist attacks on New York (we don't need this war/I say there's some things worth fighting for - What about our freedom and this piece of ground?/We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down) and Washington (some went down like heroes in that Pennsylvania field) drove me to the comfortless harbour of this poem.

kotc

Temp

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied:"so why ask me?"
_______________________________________

Dearest Temp

We were the last romantics -- chose for theme
Traditional sanctity and loveliness;
Whatever's written in what poets name
The book of the people; whatever most can bless
The mind of man or elevate a rhyme.
(1931)

Yeats here summarizes the implicit agenda of much Romantic and Modernist poetry: it is rooted in a newly conceived sense of tradition; its aim is beauty and pleasure; it draws its language and thematic concerns from ordinary working men and women; and its intention is no less than to transform human consciousness.
The great contemporaries of whom he was thinking undoubtedly included Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, and it is to the poetry and prose writings of these two American poets and the Anglo-Irish Yeats that we will be devoted. We will discuss both the ways that Modernist poetry grew out of the central concerns of English Romanticism and the ways in which modern poets defined themselves as reacting to what they perceived as Romantic imprecision of language and extravagance of emotion.

kotl

NID

_____________________________________________

"Is not all life the struggle of experience, naked, unarmed, timid but immortal, against generalised thought?" (W.B.Yeats)

Dear NID,

Poetry is part of the human struggle to enlarge and extend the reach of consciousness. Its ambition is not
simply to imitate or dramatize, but also, through stylistic and formal mastery, to illuminate and control the irrational and unknown aspects of our nature. Every good poem seems like an act of moral discovery (of moral judgment?) — in which feelings are understood as well as expressed.
In the modernist period, when most critics and poets were arguing for some exclusive, non-rational way of writing— “a poem should not mean but be” (Archibald MacLeish), “ no ideas but in things” (William Carlos Williams), “a systematic derangement of the senses” (Arthur Rimbaud).

kotc

Temp=)

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied:"so why ask me?"
_______________________________________