Another late night poem. 

Read it and weep. 

I do.


By Rabindranath Tagore 


In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same 
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – 
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

When first we faced...

I adore Philip Larkin. It's like he speaks and feels and writes just for me sometimes. 

When first we faced, and touching showed

How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonise.

Admitted: and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself--no cost,
No past, no people else at all--
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?

Notification alert.

There comes a time in everyone's life when you have to sit up and smell the coffee / roses / epoisse. Whether that relates to your work or home life, it happens. The realisation that you cannot continue to behave in a certain way, or that you have to knuckle down, pull your socks up and essentially start behaving like a responsible adult.

I believe some people are blessed with this skill from an early age. I have friends that I've known for years that have always been 'level headed' or been certain in their ability and goals. They've worked really hard and achieved.
For others that turning point may come a little later. Maybe after college or university, in their first job or relationship. I've seen it happen. They're essentially noticing that they've hit an age, gained a few extra responsibilities - maybe a car or an apartment or a 'proper' job, and they have made noticeable changes to accommodate the maturity.
This is a natural process for many, most even.

Then there are some others, late comers to the club. Those that have ridden the wave of immaturity since their teens and refused to get out of the sea of denial (NOT De Nile). Even though their shitty surfboard from 1994 is all broken and splintered and their mothers and fathers are calling from the shoreline. Waving a desperate flag of hope in their reckless child's direction, hoping they notice.



I am of the latter category.

I shan't go on too much about it but it has happened.

I feel largely positive about this.

I hope I don't lose momentum too quickly.