Beers & Books CCCXXXVI – Codename Adler

Code name Adler (Eagle)
Klaus Barbie and the Western secret services*

 
* Also highly recommended:
Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, which in 1988 won Marcel Ophuls the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature

Enough

The older I get, the less time I have to be diplomatic, which is why I'm not ill-disposed to (at least largely) put an end to blogging at the end of this month.
Time to write! Without scissors in head.
To put it with Seamus Heaney:
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests. ...

In praise of ...

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbed
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rotted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.


My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy neat the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney

Friday is Skyday

Rain barrel fillers approaching

Laughing Lhursday*

The last visitor

* [For first time visitors]:

Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

 

Beers & Books CCCXXXV – Road to Brightcity

...

Máirtaín O'Cadhain (1906 – 18 October 1970)

Reconnaissance flight

On its way to the trout farm ...

Beers & Books CCCXXXIV – The Swan

The Swan

Guðbergur Bergsson (16 October 1932 – 4 September 2023)

Yummy

Courgettes, mangold, peppers.
And as there are still lots of tomatoes,
today we produced another ten jars each
of spice ketchup and curry ketchup.
Yummy.

Three feasts

Feast of colours,
feast for the bee,
feast for my eyes.

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th started well:
Which ones from my wishlist
might be waiting for me there
so nicely packaged.
Control yourself, Sean.
First of all,
inaugurate the fancy ceramic grater.
Off to the kitchen!

Today 531 years ago

 The American who was the first to discover Columbus made a nasty discovery.

Der Amerikaner, der den Kolumbus zuerst entdeckte,
machte eine böse Entdeckung. [G 183]

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

Laughing Lhursday*

This is ...

... no fairy tale.

 

* [For first time visitors]:

Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.