St. Pat's crawling

Optimists would undertake climbing Croagh Patrick today as on top his Holiness might be serving free Guinness and uisce beatha.

Instead, more Irish will enter a bar and get pretty stone-drunk.

Which is why clever - one could also say:
optimistic landlords use to have two professions.

Sláinte!

Irish metamorphosis

Early this morning spake Tetrapilotomos:

'Until Wednesday then.'

'Oh, trip to Tibet?

'No, march to Mayo.'

'Ah, celebrating once again that St. Patrick worked wonder?

'What wonder?'

'Expelling all snakes from Hiberna.'

'It was no wonder, at all.'

?

'All Old Paddy did was quasi expemplifying a metamorphosis.'

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Sean, did you ever notice that since there are no serpents the esmerald island is swarming with priests? :)

And off he went.

On the Ides of March ...

... 2054 years after Caesar rattled "You, too, my son Brutus?", 92 years after Austria-Hungary declared war to Portugal, 82 years after the first telephone-line between London and Berlin started to work, 52 years after the first performance of "My Fair Lady" in New York and on the 101st Birthday of Zarah Leander who once sang "Ich weiß, es wirrrd einmal ein Wunnn...derrrrr gescheh'n ..." (I know there will once happen a wonder ...) ...

... I went down in history by not falling off the ladder when being busy in garden. :)

Oh yes, and in Modica Lady Limoncello posted her 1000th 'articulo'.

What a day!

A very dear friend of mine

The Panther

His tired gaze - from passing endless bars -
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world.

His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable.

But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Der Panther [Original]


Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.


Rainer Maria Rilke

When magic strikes

When
the woman of the south & the man from the north
will have united in love for eternity,
and have become one in flesh and spirit,
the children of Lir, who have been transformed
into swans by Aife, will be redeemed ...'

The Swan

This labouring through what is still undone,

as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,

is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying-to let go, no longer feel

the solid ground we stand on every day-

is like anxious letting himself fall

into waters, which receive him gently

and which, as though with reverence and joy,

draw back past him in streams on either side;

while, infinitely silent and aware,

in his full majesty and ever more

indifferent, he condescends to glide.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Der Schwan

Diese Mühsal, durch noch Ungetanes
schwer und wie gebunden hinzugehn,
gleicht dem ungeschaffnen Gang des Schwanes.

Und das Sterben, dieses Nichtmehrfassen
jenes Grundes, auf dem wir täglich stehn,
seinem ängstlichen Sich-Niederlassen –:

in die Wasser, die ihn sanft empfangen
und die sich, wie glücklich und vergangen,
unter ihm zurückziehen, Flut um Flut;

während er unendlich still und sicher
immer mündiger und königlicher
und gelassener zu ziehn geruht.

Rainer Maria Rilke