Monday, September 13, 2010


Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower (Albert Camus)

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A piece of prose, a poem and two haiku - I’ve chosen them because they show the kind of attitude poets have for what we consider to be households pests.

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House or Window Flies

These little indoor dwellers, in cottages and halls, were always entertaining to me; after dancing in the window all day from sunrise to sunset they would sip of the tea, drink of the beer, and eat of the sugar, and be welcome all summer long.

They look like things of mind or fairies, and seem pleased or dull as the weather permits. In many clean cottages and genteel houses, they are allowed every liberty to creep, fly, or do as they like; and seldom or ever do wrong.

In fact they are the small or dwarfish portion of our own family, and so many fairy familiars that we know and treat as one of ourselves. 
(John Clare 1793-1864)

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An August Midnight

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor;
On this scene enter - winged, horned and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;*
While ’mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly that rubs its hands.

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space,
My guests besmear my new-penned line,
Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.
“God’s humblest, they!” I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I. 
(Thomas Hardy 1849-1928))

* dumbledore = bumblebee (old modern English)
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Two haiku by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)

don’t worry
little spider
I won’t touch your web

I’m going out
you flies can relax
make love

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