Who is that old man? I don't recognize him. So that's what it's like to be in the oldest 1% of the living of our species.
I thank my friend, Michael, I think, for giving me permission to use the photo which he took a couple of evenings ago on his, Layne's, and Rusty's way through on their temporary return to Key West.
Sometimes it is good to see ourselves as others do. Perhaps.
As is known I read some poetry every day. Usually I read some Western poetry and some Eastern. I have come to prefer Eastern.
Presently I am reading from THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE and JAPANESE DEATH POEMS.
There have been many editions of THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE. My Kindle edition is a copy of that of 1900 and it almost gives poetry a bad name. There are as many bad, too wordy, too obscure, too long poems in it as there are bad paintings of Madonna and Child in museums in Lisbon, Portugal. Probably museums everywhere; but Carol and I particularly noticed them in Lisbon. I judge editions of OXFORD by whether they include Chidiock Tichborne's ELEGY also known as ON THE EVE OF HIS EXECUTION because that is when he wrote it to his wife. He was executed for his part in a Catholic plot to assassinate Elizabeth I. The 1900 OXFORD does not.
Chinese and Japanese poetry, at least that which I have come across, is simple, concise, and elegant.
Here are two more Japanese death poems.
2 comments:
I was making tea aboard GANNET2 after my dawn walk on our last morning and two of your neighbors appeared, worried by Rusty lying on the ground outside the van, his favorite place. I reassured them he was properly leashed but they had thought he was an unloved stray.
Which is to say: don’t trust how others see you. My camera is a terrible tool for portrait photography. It ages people unnecessarily.
Somehow I don't think your camera is at fault this time. Time is.
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