Plus my only natural talent's wasted

[sovay]

I sat down to write up this weekend and the bits and pieces of news that I've been reminding myself to report since last Thursday, but my brain has gone to slurry.* Consequently, I am forced to fall back on other people's brains for my entertainment. Don't let me down here.

So. I saw this done once with icons. If you want to comment on this post, you must do so in quotation. If you want to respond to a comment, you must do so in quotation. Prose, poetry, film, television, song lyrics, academic criticism, all are fair game; the language is likewise left to your discretion, although I cannot promise that you won't be asked to provide translations. Neither will I stipulate that you must be able to identify the quotation to which you are responding, although more power to you if you can. Quote characters who are already speaking in quotation, if you feel like it.** Now watch a total radio silence fall.

"Is anybody there?" said the Traveler . . .

*I blame this partly on the fact that I'm reading what must be the perkiest whaler's journal ever. A sample entry: December 10. Saturday. Set in, bright & beautiful! 9 AM raised "Right Whales!!!!!" Lowered! The Larboard Boat went on & struck a fine one! He tried hard to get away but the lance "hurt his feelings" and in consequence, he was a dead whale at 22 AM!! 3 PM Cut in. 7 PM Boiling! You think I'm making those exclamation points up.

**And if you are Pamela Dean, you should properly be started with a handicap . . .

Comments

[sovay]

What is deep, as love is deep, I'll have
Deeply. What is good, as love is good,
I'll have well. Then if time and space
Have any purpose, I shall belong to it.
If not, if all is a pretty fiction
To distract the cherubim and seraphim
Who so continually do cry, the least
I can do is to fill the curled shell of the world
With human deep-sea sound, and hold it to
The ear of God, until he has appetite
To taste our salt sorrow on his lips.

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them

[sovay]

I have the fervor of myself for a presence
and my own spirit for light;

and my spirit with its loss knows this;
though small against the black,
small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost;

before I am lost,
hell must open like a red rose
for the dead to pass.

[zdenka]

And I know there is truth in this,
for I know what it is to stand
before the very gates of Dis,
and Dis was stretching out his hand --

[sovay]

They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.

[zdenka]

In this happy little community, Death, when he comes, doth so in punctual and business-like fashion; and, like a courtly gentleman, giveth due notice of his advent, that one may not be taken unawares.

[sovay]

Nine coaches waiting,—hurry, hurry, hurry.
Ay, to the Devil . . .

[larryhammer]

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

[zdenka]

O komme Tod, und löse diese Bande!
Ich lächle dir, o Knochenmann,
entführe mich leicht in geträumte Lande,
o komm und rühre mich doch an.

O come, Death, and release these bonds!
I welcome you with a smile, o skeleton;
carry me off lightly into lands I dreamed of,
o come and lay hold of me.

[sovay]

I'll hold your hand while they drag the river
I'll cuddle you in the undertow
I'll keep my hand on your trigger finger
I'll take you down where the train tracks go
Let's while away the hours
Let's spend an evil night together

[zdenka]

Don't you hear your lover moan?
Eyes of glass and feet of stone
Shells for teeth and weeds for tongue
Deep, deep down in the river's bed
He's looking for the ring
Eyes wide open, never asleep
He's looking for the ring

[sovay]

You have had a cruel mother, Willie, and I have had another
And now we'll sleep in the Clyde Water like sister and like brother

[zdenka]

Through Evernight he back was borne
on black and roaring waves that ran
o'er leagues unlit and foundered shores
that drowned before the days began . . .

[sovay]

Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.