D. Panikkar

Text of poem - The Presence. I pray and incur silence. Some take that silence for refusal. I feel the power that, invisible, catches me by the sleeve, nudging towards the long shelf that has the book on it I will take down and read and find the antidote to an ailment. I know its ways with me; how it enters my life, is present rather before I perceive it, sunlight quivering on a bare wall. Is it consciousness trying to get through? Am I under regard? It takes me seconds to focus, by which time it has shifted its gaze, looking a little to one side, as though I were not here. It has the universe to be abroad in. There is nothing I can do but fill myself with my own silence, hoping it will approach like a wild creature to drink there, or perhaps like Narcissus to linger a moment over its transparent face.

‘The Presence’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#YPresenoldeb #ThePresence
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

YouTube video by martha argerich Martha Argerich Gaspard de la nuit II. Le Gibet

Le Gibet, from Gaspard de la Nuit. Maurice Ravel, composer. Martha Argerich, piano.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNQ2...

Updike's letters are a terrific read. I am just at the Harvard stage where he sounds like Psmith in the City, his prose performative even when writing to his parents and grandparents—precocity has its price. He did consume a lot of Wodehouse in his school days, I read elsewhere, but avoids pastiche.

One has no weathered grave to visit; only an ashen mirror in which one is held again in that remembered gaze. One marks the passing in conjunctions of moon, sun, and star; in rituals of rice and sesame, flower and scent of sandal: knowing as he was, so you are, and as he is not, so shall you not be.

YouTube video by Polly-Сlassic MARTHA ARGERICH - TCHAIKOVSKY "OCTOBER" "THE SEASONS" - (МАРТА АРГЕРИХ - ЧАЙКОВСКИЙ "ОСЕННЯЯ ПЕСНЬ"

Autumn Song. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer. Martha Argerich, piano.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGNR...

Autumn. Manhattan.

YouTube video by Igor Zhukov - Topic The Seasons, Op.37b: October: Autumn's Song

Autumn Song. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer. Igor Zhukov, piano.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyC5...

YouTube video by Radoslav Kvapil - Topic An Overgrown Path, JW 8/17 Book 1: No. 2, A Blown-Away Leaf

A Blown-away Leaf. From 'An Overgrown Path'. Leoš Janáček, composer. Radoslav Kvapil, piano.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLxB...

Be here now:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPm8...

YouTube video by MJ's Vinyl Channel 1967 - Ivan Moravec - Debussy - Les Sons Et Les Parfums Tournent Dans L'air Du Soir

Les Sons Et Les Parfums Tournent Dans L'air Du Soir. Claude Debussy, composer. Ivan Moravec, piano.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vdG...

Take 2:

Every moon, every year,
every day, every breeze.

They go, and they pass.

Also, all blood arrives
at its place of stillness.

YouTube video by MJ's Vinyl Channel 1967 - Ivan Moravec - Debussy - La Terrasse Des Audiences Du Clair De Lune

La Terrasse Des Audiences Du Clair De Lune. Claude Debussy, composer. Ivan Moravec, piano.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jahC...

Autumn ablaze. New Jersey.

Source: www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5...

bsky.app/profile/dpan...

John Lahr · Every Blink: Walter Murch makes the cut The film frame is both Walter Murch’s canvas and his found object. In his editing suite, whether mechanical or digital...

‘To Murch, who has won three Academy Awards and been nominated for six more, film editing is a sensual “full-body” experience: “a kind of dance, a choreography of images and sounds in the flow of time, forged in movement, eventually crystallising into permanence”.’

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Text of poem - Autumn. Happy the leaves burnishing their own downfall. Life dances upon life's grave. It is we who inject sadness into the migrant's cry. We are so long in dying - time granted to discover a purpose in our decay? Could we be cut open, would there be more than the saw's wound, all humanity's rings widening only towards ageing? To creep in for shelter under the bone's tree is to be charred by time's lightning stroke. The leaves fall variously as do thoughts to reveal the bareness of the mind's landscape through which we must press on towards the openness of its horizons.

‘The Seasons’ - #RSThomas
(Mass for Hard Times, @BloodaxeBooks)
#Hydref #Autumn
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Early autumn. Manhattan.

The Chinese fan palm and cobra lily by Vishnuprasad from Henry Noltie’s Flora Indica, a masterpiece of botanical-art-historical detective work.
The book accompanies a stunning exhibition at Kew Gardens.
@rbgkew.bsky.social @willdalrymple.bsky.social
@sathnam.bsky.social
@eicathomefinn.bsky.social

‘The Empty Church’ - #RSThomas
(Frequencies, Macmillan)

YouTube video by Nino Gvetadze - Topic Poems: V. Paradise - Birds

Paradise-Birds, Poems: V. Cyril Scott, composer. Nino Gvetadze, piano.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djsn...

The pain has dulled now, to a long, lingering ache. One observes it clinically at first, but in so doing it transmutes into some submerged longing, one that plumbs the depths of one's entire life and comes up bearing the poet's late fragment—"and did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?"

YouTube video by Cyril Scott - Topic Lotus Land, Op. 47-1

Lotus Land. Cyril Scott, composer. Cyril Scott, piano.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MLb...

In the evening the pain returned and one observed as it gathered itself from afar and swelled and rose until it swept and overwhelmed without seemingly cresting. Later, still observing, one began to admire the purity of it, the sheer strength of it, and the presence of something very much like will.

Gray-breasted Prinia

Spotted Dove
Red-vented Bulbul
Southern Hill Myna
Black-naped Monarch
Jungle Babbler
Common Woodshrike
Jungle Owlet
Puff-throated Babbler
Changeable Hawk-Eagle
Vernal Hanging Parrot
Asian Green Bee-eater
White-browed Bulbul
Plum-headed Parakeet
Ashy Woodswallow
Jerdon’s Bushlark
Indian Peafowl

Red-whiskered Bulbul
Asian Koel
White-throated Kingfisher
Rock Pigeon
Asian Palm Swift
Black-rumped Flameback
Spotted Owlet
Jungle Myna
Pied Kingfisher
Brahminy Kite
Shikra
Black-hooded Oriole
Greater racket-tailed Drongo
Pied Cuckoo
Yellow-billed Babbler
Coppersmith Barbet
Eastern Barn Owl

Morning Light. Temple pond. Kerala.

Views in Angadippuram, Kerala.