There was a tiny death in our household today. ( Nobody sentient, don't worry... )

( For example... )

( Musing about Chaucer for some reason... or maybe none at all... )

Scared now.

( Or maybe just short of sleep... )

How could I have forgotten?

( A warrior, too... )

Black as a sloe is the heart that's in me
Black as a crow is the grief that binds me
Black as a bootprint in the shining hallway
And 'tis you have stained it, for ever and alway

For you took what's before me, and what's behind me
You took east and west when you passed by me
Sun, moon and stars from my sky you've taken
And my god above, or I'm much ( Read more... )

Another poem set in the desert - Shelley's famous 'Ozymandias'. This deserves sharing for the name alone:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor ( Read more... )

Since this journal is named Just Deserts, here is a Sufi poem about a quest through the desert.

For your sake, I hurry over land and water:

For your sake, I cross the desert and split the mountain in two,

And turn my face from all things,

Until the time I reach the place

Where I am alone with you.

To Reach God by Al-Hallaj
From: Perfume of the Desert.  ( Read more... )

Revisited my favourite volume of my favourite trilogy today and came across this. It hit the spot, so it deserves to be shared:

Where now the horse and the rider? where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harp-string, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the ( Read more... )