incandescens | thinking dark grey

Despite an earlier resolution not to spend too much, I returned from town with a Hiroshige calendar (reduced to half price! really!), a new nightshirt, a half-price artbook by the Italian artist Manara (a bit of a disappointment, didn't really live up to the covers), and reduced-price CDs of Starlight Express, music by Capercaillie, and Offenbach's La Belle Helene. And a new ironing-board cover, but that was actually necessary.

My mother has finally admitted that it might have been a mistake to get a new white bath upstairs when she uses purple hairstuff. She has said that in consequence of this, I had better pick a colour for the downstairs shower-stall (which is due for replacement too) which doesn't disagree too strongly with purple splashes.

I'm thinking dark grey.

---

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

-- Federico García Lorca