it feels like a Monday

[incandescens]

First day back at work.

. . . well, okay, not that bad, but first day back at work is always "first day back at work" and something of a grind.

Ah well. Welcome January, welcome 2011, and no doubt it will get colder again.

Have started hacking away at the springkink prompts for February. Feeling of conscious virtue will hopefully keep me working at them. And Winter War. And the Library story. And everything else.

I suspect "having eyes larger than mouth" is probably under the Sin of Pride. Ah well.

---

The Dead Knight

The cleanly rush of the mountain air,
And the mumbling, grumbling humble-bees,
Are the only things that wander there,
The pitiful bones are laid at ease,
The grass has grown in his tangled hair,
And a rambling bramble binds his knees.

To shrieve his soul from the pangs of hell,
The only requiem-bells that rang
Were the hare-bell and the heather-bell.
Hushed he is with the holy spell
In the gentle hymn the wind sang,
And he lies quiet, and sleeps well.

He is bleached and blanched with the summer sun;
The misty rain and the cold dew
Have altered him from the kingly one
(That his lady loved, and his men knew)
And dwindled him to a skeleton.

The vetches have twined about his bones,
The straggling ivy twists and creeps
In his eye-sockets; the nettle keeps
Vigil about him while he sleeps.
Over his body the wind moans
With a dreary tune throughout the day,
In a chorus wistful, eerie, thin
As the gull's cry -- as the cry in the bay,
The mournful word the seas say
When tides are wandering out or in.

-- John Masefield