The Lake Isle Fellowship

One of the pleasures of poetry is the way a line returns to you, unexpectedly. There you are, a schoolchild, being forced to learn of a poet's strange intent -

'I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there' - why? Why will he have nine bean rows? And why wattles? What were wattles to me? But learn the lines I did. And now, as I curl up on a rainy Sunday, and watch the green grass of home slowly soak up the new March rain, as I wait eagerly for spring to unfurl, I understand Yeats...

'And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.'

Yeats was in London, longing for Lough Gill, like any exile in a home away from home, like any lover separated from their beloved...

'While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.'

I didn't call him consciously to mind, but what Yeats heard all those years ago, echoes now in me as his words resound with each drip-drip dropping of peaceful rain today. Happiness is a funny thing - sometimes it feels just as sudden as unhappiness. And all you can give thanks for is that the path has been trodden before, and with great care, by a fellow poet who understands your dreams.

image by digital artist Walter Smith for dverse

William Butler Yeats by John Singer Sargent, 1908 

Looking Into The Sun

I can hardly believe it. In my last post, which was admittedly two weeks ago, I was drawing messy I Heart U's in the snow, trailing my fingers across crystalline branches and feeling deeply for the homeless. And suddenly, now, with the sun, there are buds on the cherry and apple trees. Are the seasons playing games with us, or have I simply reached the age at which it is all scurrying by in a tearing hurry?

I walk out into the sun and stand looking into it, daring it to swallow me whole. I wouldn't mind, but it doesn't oblige. It is a cold sun, so I return to the warmth, inside. The pheasants from last week are not to be found and the muntjacs are causing havoc elsewhere.

During my infusion at the hospital earlier this week, I managed to put together the skeleton of a screenplay to be worked on for this semester. The heroine is of course going to be a much improved version of myself, and lucky for her I am creating a rather interesting hero, who shall travel across oceans to find her. There shall be tragedy and comedy and romance... Or as Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose Theatre says to William Shakespeare, "You see, Will? Comedy. Love, and a bit with a dog. That's what they want."

I recently saw this brief video of starlings dancing - a murmuration; that's what starlings are called when they gather together this way. There are only blackbirds outside my window, but isn't it lovely to know there are always forms of beauty enchanting someone, somewhere?

A Walk In The Snow

for Joanna Haybittle

I walk in the snow
with the green grass

just beginning to show

I am calmed
and grow fearless
with each step

Gathering nothingness
listening to emptiness
fill herself

with birdsong
        and the crunch of ice
        and the sense of cold
        finally, taking me
by surprise.


© Shaista Tayabali, 2012
Joanna was the second daughter of my beloved friend Mary Haybittle, and her funeral takes place today. Can only pray for it to be a peaceful, blessed sort of day with the angels singing and listening in wait.

Books Actually

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
~ Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice.

On the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, I wanted to share something of bookstores and libraries - I recently stumbled across some of these collections online so they are not places I have visited, but isn't the internet brilliant for couchsurfing? In Paris, there is a bookstore called Shakespeare & Company, which looks delicious...

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare ~ Kenko Yoshida wrote that some time between 1283 and 1350. What would he have thought of a movie palace being converted into a reading room? This is the Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which uses theatre boxes for reading rooms...

A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it. William Styron, who wrote that in 1958, would perhaps have approved of the Poplar Kids' Republic in Beijing, China - cosy nooks for naps everywhere!

I quite like this quote: "Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you re-read ~ François Mauriac.

There is a bookstore in Mexico which has a trail of greenery wrought around the books, and a tiny one I love in Singapore, which is endlessly quirky, called Books Actually. Bookstores are becoming magical places, but some libraries are really extraordinary, like this ornate cathedral to books in Coimbra, Portugal...

or the University of Salamanca library in Spain, which is brilliantly colourful...

Of course, the college libraries in Cambridge hold a special place, like Wren's and Queen's...

but my favourite bookstore/library was tiny, cramped, dark, dusty, and very likely long destroyed. We used it during our childhood trips to Mahableshwar, a favourite colonial hill station. The librarian was terrifying and extremely strict. The books and comics were crammed together in cupboards, but the ecstatic illusion of feeling one could choose anything and take home plenty, has lasted all these years. I wonder if my brothers remember... I shall have to ask! Meanwhile, am off to hospital tomorrow for a very long day of infusions - and the kindle shall serve as my magical portable library.

Images from flavorwire via and via 

CONFIDENCE (An Abstract Theory)

I Write My Face
Upon My Age
In Lines
Of Poetry -

I Right My Wrongs
Up On The Stage
For All The World
To See.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2012
image prompt: red spot II, wassily kandinsky, 1921, magpie tales
poetry prompt: dverse

(Lady of) No Fear in the Year of the Dragon

Yesterday found me at the Arts Picturehouse -watching Aung San Suu Kyi in a brief documentary about her early years as a North Oxford housewife, mother of two young sons, trying to ascertain what her true purpose in life would be. Michael Aris, her husband, was the famous Tibetan scholar, Oxford don, figure of importance. And then suddenly, late one night in 1988, the phone rang. Suu's mother had had a stroke. She returned to Burma alone and never left, could never leave, inherited her father's heroism and became mother (Daw Aung San) to Burma. When Michael died in 1999, the military regime persisted in their refusal to grant him entry. He had not seen his wife for an unbearably long time. He had been walking in her footsteps for years, as carefully and diplomatically as possible - she had been walking, and continues to walk, in the footsteps of the Buddha, who sacrificed being with his family, his son Rahula, for humanity.

Perhaps such grace, such fearlessness, can only come with such sacrifice. When, after ten years, Daw Aung San was re-united with her son Kim in 2010, there was such tenderness in her embrace; she held him lightly as though he were the breeze, or a feather. As though she had never held him at all.

But she had. Of course she had.
How does a warrior survive house arrest over decades? How does a prisoner of conscience smile the way she does? Tease and laugh with her people the way she does? I think it must be because she is living up to her father's memory, and because she knows her sons are safe. I think it is because she is a mother.

In the Quiet Land of Burma, where cries are strangled, one flower blooms for all of us.

May the Year of the Dragon bring something wonderful for mothers everywhere. May your children be protected, may your fears be calmed. May your children recognise and be grateful for your sacrifices.

Dissolution of a New Year Resolution

My good intentions
fall woeful
by the wayside;
here a hope, there a plan,
and suddenly
it's 5am

And I am anywhere
but here
and the birds have begun
to chirp
and the sky begins
to lighten

And I am a traveller
on a new dirt road
with a blue blue sky
and no alibi;
only my good intentions
to stand me by.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2012
Do you make New Year Resolutions? One of mine was to sleep early, respectably early. But how? There are books to be read, and curling up at night to read is a source of great comfort and pleasure to me. So the other resolution. To be a better human being. I shall try my best with that one.

Image prompt at bluebell books

Moving Plates

The perfect home
has something sentimental
resting side by side
with the practical.

Everything a meaning,
a memory,
a moment - even the broken,
the chipped china,
but especially the hand woven
crochet craft work
and the little notes
you write yourself -

you leave for us
a forget-me-not trail
winding all the way
to 1939
when the plates
          of your atlas
moved forever.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2012
image prompt from poets united
inspired by Annette Rowntree-Clifford, who was forced to leave Germany and all that was dear when the war broke, and much that was precious was lost forever.

Flight of a Yellow Winged Umbrella

I like the small flights
from here to just there,
Manageable -
This is how we learn
to believe,
One small step
at a time;
One small step of success
and suddenly I
am a pirate
commandeering a fleet

and I shall try to be gentle
and I shall try to be sweet ~

but my sails are billowing
and my confidence is growing
now that I am standing
on my two feet.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2012
Image prompt: bluebell books

Sea Changes and Red Threads

The sea blew away
my identity

without asking -
the sea knew me,

stormed in
without asking -

and I gave in
gratefully.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2012
The sea was at high tide along the Gold Coast of Australia, in the last days of 2011, but we were permitted to let the waves buffet us between two red flags. The salt sea spray scraped away eons of my past life. It is 2012, and I am experiencing a steady bliss, an endless river of joy; the monk David Steindl-Rast describes this joy as 'that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens'.
I catch myself in moment after moment thinking 'This is it. This is where I have always longed to be.'

Not just reunited with both my brothers, but meeting, at long last, my beloved artist friend Jeanne-ming Brantingham, who fascinated and riveted us with tales of the red threads that connect her to a precious life. I am one of those threads now, and will hold on carefully.
I wish us all a quietly joyful year, but every year seems to peak and trough, so if this is as good as it gets, that is alright by me!

Image of Marilyn Monroe courtesy Magpie Tales