Anne Sexton, from 'Rowing'

I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyeball,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that the island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
bu there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat inside of me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it.

As the African says:
This is my tale which I have told,
if it be sweet, if it not be sweet,
take somewhere else and let some return to me.
This story ends with me still rowing.

sahara

"I shall always remember how, as we left the station, I lifted my left hand to see the time by my wrist-watch, and rode into the desert. Time was of enormous importance on the railway; and so was one's luggage, and there was speed and noise there, among other worries; but in the desert there was only sunrise and sunset to notice, and noon, when all the animals slept and the gazelles were not to be found." (Lord Dunsany, Patches of Sunlight)

pitch

Pitch, blackest-black,
You do not know it yet,
but someday you will watch me jumping off of rock cliffs
swallow-like, gold in the water.

Salt-spray will wash against our house,
foundation of bones webbed-in-earth,
together we make limestone, chalk;
we are the old bodies of sea-creatures and sponge-fossils,
transformed into light-shades.

My house has always been that one,
in the distance, white chalk-walls,
pebble strewn, blue-shadow-on-white cliffs.

I am woman in the black shawl, village creeper,
I am ribbon wound, kohl-eyed,
spirit-companion.

You are beloved one, laughing-eyes, smoke from lips.

elg 2010

Hardy (feels like love and winter at the same time)

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

Thomas Hardy

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand-new birds of twelve-months' growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales.
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.

scents.

ambergris
castoreum, civet, honey bee and hyraceum

brihadaranyaka upanishad

The human being has two states of consciousness: one in this world, the other in the next. But there is s a third state between them, not unlike the world of dreams, in which we are aware of both worlds, with their sorrows and joys. When a person dies, it is only the physical body that dies; that person lives on in a nonphysical body, which carries the impressions of of his past life. It is these impressions that determine his next life. In this intermediate state he makes and dissolves impressions by the light of the Self.