a love song

The little river twittering in the twilight,

The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,

This is almost bliss.

And everything shut up and gone to sleep,

All the troubles and anxieties and pain

Gone under the twilight.

Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the river

That will last forever.

And at last I know my love for you is here;

I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,

It is large, so large, I could not see it before,

Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,

Troubles, anxieties and pains.

You are the call and I am the answer,

You are the wish, and I the fullfilment,

You are the night, and I the day.

What else - it is perfect enough.

It is perfectly complete,

You and I,

What more--?

Strange, how we suffer in spite of this.

~ DH Lawrence
from Look! We Have Come Through!
photo by kate thompson

Brute force crushes many plants

...
Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.


...
~ DH Lawrence
 
.

The Elephant is Slow To Mate

The elephant, the huge old beast,
     is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
     they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
     slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
     and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake
     of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
     together, without a word.
 

 So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
     grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
     hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
     so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
     for the full repast.

They do not snatch, they do not tear;
     their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
     till they touch in flood.

D.H. Lawrence