A little Lamb…

” We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.”               –  Charles Lamb

“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and have to have it found out by accident.” –  Charles Lamb 

“I love to lose myself in other men’s minds.”  – Charles Lamb

The Old Familiar Faces

I have had playmates, I have had companions,

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,

Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women;

Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her –

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;

Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;

Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood

Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,

Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?

So might we talk of the old familiar faces –

How some have died, and some they have left me,

And some are taken from me; all are departed;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Charles Lamb 1775 – 1834

Bisous,

Léa

Le deuxième café

“I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” – L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

“Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.” – Pierce Brown, Golden Son

Le deuxième café

There is a second café now, in

Villeseque

C’est petit

Not so grand as the first

Cosy – like that favorite old sweater

Clung to on autumn’s first chill

Across the road, a large wooden table

Around it are six stools – room for twelve (stacked nearby)

Another small table just outside the door

The pattern is repeated inside

Tapas, wine, beer as you like

No extra charge for welcoming service

From your first visit,

You have come home

Bisous,

Léa

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Villeseque Café

I Walk A Little Above The Ground

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”  – Carl G. Jung

“The more powerful and original the mind, the more it will incline to the religion of solitude.”  – Aldous Huxley

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”            – Albert Camus

 

I walk a little above the ground

 

I walk a little above the ground

In that place where birds

Are usually hit.

A little above the birds

In the place where they usually lean forward

To take flight

 

I fear dead weight

Because it is a scattered nest

 

I am slightly above what dies

On that slope where the word is like bread

A little in the palm of the hand that breaks it

And like the silence that attends my writing I do not separate

 

I walk lightly above what I say

And I pour blood into my words

I walk a little above the poem’s transfusion

I walk humbly through the word’s outskirts

a passer-by one invisible step above earth

In that place of trees with fruit and trees

Engulfed by fire

I’m a little inside what burns

Slowly dwindling and feeling thirsty

Because I walk above power to satiate whoever lives

And I squeeze my heart out for what descends on me

And drinks

 

Daniel Faria 1971-1999

 

Bisous,

Léa

 

What Can I Do To Drive Away…

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter.”  – John Keats 

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”  – John Keats

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language, and the last, and it always tells the truth.”  – Margaret Atwood

 

What can I do to drive away

Remembrance from my eyes? For they have seen,

Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!

Touch has a memory, O say, love, say,

What can I do to kill it and be free

In my old liberty?

When every fair one that I saw was fair

Enough to catch me in but half a snare,

Not keep me there:

When, howe’er poor or particolour’d things,

My muse had wings,

And ready was to take her course

Whither I bent her force,

Unintellectual, yet divine to me;

Divine, I say! – What sea-bird o’er the sea

Is a philosopher the while he goes

Winging along where the great water throes?

How shall I do

To get anew

Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more

Above, above

The reach of fluttering Love,

And make him cower lowly while I soar?

Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,

A heresy and schism,

Foisted into the canon law of love;

No, – wine is only sweet to happy men;

More dismal cares Seize on me unawares,

Where shall I learn to get my peace again?

To banish thoughts of that most hateful land,

Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand

Where they were wreck’d and lived a wrecked life,

That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour

Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,

Unown’d of any weedy-haired gods;

Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,

Iced in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;

Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,

Would fright a Dryad; whose harsh herbag’d meads

Make a lean and lank the starv’d ox while he feeds;

There flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,

And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.

O, for some sunny spell

To dissipate the shadows of this hell!

Say they are gone,-with the new dawning light

Steps forth my lady bright!

O, let me once more rest

My soul upon that dazzling breast!

Let once again these aching arms be plac’d,

The tender gaolers of thy waist!

And let me feel that warm breath here and there

To spread a rapture in my very hair,
O, the sweetness of the pain!

Give me those lips again!

Enough! Enough! It is enough for me

To dream of thee!

 

– John Keats 1795 – 1821

 

Bisous,

Léa

Defeat

The darker things get, the more I find myself turning to the wise words that are never far away. In fact, I hope you find some below. There is much more on the bookshelf, library, and the internet. Poetry and quotes have long been a refuge for many.

 

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.” – Maya Angelou

“Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.”                       – George E. Woodberry

 “What is defeat? Nothing but education. Nothing but the first step to something better.”  – Wendell Phillips

 

Defeat 

 

Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude, and my aloofness;

You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,

And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.

 

Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge, and my defiance,

Through you, I know that I am yet young and swift of foot

And not to be trapped by withering laurels.

And in you, I have found aloneness

And the joy of being shunned and scorned.

 

Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword, and shield,

In your eyes, I have read

That to be enthroned is to be enslaved,

And to be understood is to be leveled down,

And to be grasped is but to reach one’s fullness

And like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.

 

Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,

You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences,

And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings,

And urging of seas,

And of mountains that burn in the night,

And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.

 

Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,

You and I shall laugh together with the storm,

And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us,

And we shall stand in the sun with a will,

And we shall be dangerous.                              – Kahlil Gibran

 

Bisous,

Léa

Master Racism

David Redpath

I followed the money trail
That sap laden root of evil
Through the land of Mordor
To the heights of Mount Doom
Only to discover
Under a shadow of gloom
The dark arts of Sauron
Veiled behind the illusion
Of a philanthropic institution
Euphemistically referred to as
A reproductive health foundation

View original post 597 more words

Letter from a contract worker

This is too beautiful not to share it would be dereliction on my part.

Affair with Hemingway

“I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye – that was the trouble – I wanted to kiss you good night – and there’s a lot of difference.”  –  Ernest Hemingway

“They love me like a pack of wolves.”   – Ernest Hemingway

“Love is forever. Lust is for the moment. Got a moment?” –  Michael Gorman

 

Affair with Hemingway

 

Remote corners du café

Closerie des Lilas

Summer evenings beneath stars

Sidewalk tables and stories

Late at night – mon chambre

I take you to my bed

Crawl deep inside your stories

I have my way with you

You reach out through time

Together, we do Paris

Huddled in corners

Sipping wine and champagne

Dark Smokey tables shared

Avec Fitzgerald, Ezra et

Ford Madox Ford

War stories, the bulls

Nights at Bricktops

Josephine’s rocking the joint

Gertrude’s salon

Champagne et art du jour

Picasso, Modigliani

Breathless with anticipation

I surrender and plead for more

It is the life – it is life

Bereft, insatiable, pleading for more

C’est magnifique!

 

Bisous,

Léa

stay soft

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”                                                       – Kurt Vonnegut

“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”  – Albert Schweitzer

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”  – Mahatma Gandhi

“Kindness is contagious, spread it around.”  – moi  (Léa)

*

stay soft

–

stay soft

be a sieve

to bitterness

let it run off you

like water

on glass

–

stay soft

turn away

from the pain

that hardens

a mind so swayed

reach out to

hold a kitten

hear its mews

as a call to peace

–

stay soft

tread your footsteps

gently on the earth

les oiseaux

sing eternal truths

listen, listen, listen

you can still learn 

open yourself, let love in

whistling in the wind

secrets softly whisper

stay soft

stay soft 

stay soft

–

bisous,

lea

Turning — Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo

Snowflakes of memory fall Kissing the gentle night, Melting on my skin In the moonlight. I remember winter, Sunlight on frozen hills When I sought summer In the pale eyes of spring, And found the gold of autumn Waiting in the silence As the seasons turned.

via Turning — Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo