Lane behind 2226 Girouard Avenue, 22 October 2009

This is the lane behind my grandmother's home at 2226 Girouard Avenue. Below are photographs of her back porch where someone took photos of my mother and I in the early 1950s and other photos of my Uncle Alex and his son, Herb, taken in the late 1930s. The place wasn't maintained after my grandmother's passing in 1965, and here we are, 44 years later, (photographs taken on this day in 2009), and the building has completely gone to ruin.

In 2015 I published an essay, Remembering Girouard Avenue, about my family living here. It can be found at https://archive.org/details/RememberingGirouardAvenueStephenMorrissey

 

Video: honey bees and asters

This is a short YouTube video I made in October 2025, showing honey bees collecting pollen from asters. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2974r4LolJc

Asters and honey bees, 28 September 2025

When asters bloom in September

honey bees arrive, not seen

most of the summer

this final nectar 

and pollen

is too much 

for them to ignore

Commentary on The Epic of Gilgamesh (1)

 

    

                                     "He who saw the Deep"

If you begin with the first great work of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, written between 2700 and 2000 years B.C., and you follow a literary continuum, from Gilgamesh to what is being written today, then, in total, you have the great exposition of the human condition. It is the collective vision of millennia of poets and artists; they see “the Deep” where it has always existed, in the unconscious mind—in the psyche—in the creative expression of what it means to be human.

-o-

Our literature—our heritage, our inheritance, our legacy—describes what it means to be a human being living in relationship with other people, living in a community, in solitude, with or without God, living a life of the imagination, with the human spirit, in war, in peace, in love, in anguish, in grief, and it describes the whole panoply of human experiences. By its very nature this literary continuum always affirms and celebrates human life no matter how much it expresses the dark side of human existence; to write, to create, to make something new, this is always affirmative.

-o-

Lucy Worsley, one of my favourite television personalities, recently presented the life of  Agatha Christie. In her old age, when Christie was planning her funeral, she considered having Edward Elgar's Nimrod performed. Nimrod is a deeply moving memorial for Elgar's friend and business associate Augustus Jaegar. Similar to Gilgamesh's grief when his friend Enkidu died, Elgar experienced grief and despair when Jaegar died, this music is an expression of these deeply felt emotions. Nimrod is also a city of antiquity in Assyria, on the Tigris River, and was excavated by Christie's husband, the archaeologist Max Malloran; Nimrod is associated with Gilgamesh, so this music had a deeper and synchronistic meaning for Christie who accompanied her husband on the various archaeological digs at Nimrod. Coincidentally, Nimrod is also a biblical king, and some scholars associate (apparently wrongly) Nimrod with Gilgamesh. The grief of losing a close friend—an ally, a companion—is as though to lose a part of one’s own being; as Gilgamesh grieves for Enkidu, as Elgar grieves for Jaegar, as Max would grieve for Agatha upon her death.

-o-

Gilgamesh's loss of Enkidu also reminds me of John Milton's poem, "Lycidas", an elegy written after the loss of Milton’s close friend, Edward King, who died by drowning; death is certainly a cause for questioning life and one's place in life. There is a meeting and connection of souls between Gilgamesh and Enkidu; when Enkidu dies, part of Gilgamesh's inner being is also lost; but what will Gilgamesh do about it? Milton's father, well-meaning and supportive of his son's poetry, thought writing about the death of Lycidas was a poor choice of subject matter for his son, but Milton was driven by what the soul demanded and in writing poetry this is of greater importance than anything else. In "Lycidas" Milton reflects something of Gilgamesh's loss.

Milton writes:

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer;

Who would not sing for Lycidas? he well knew

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rime.

He must not flote upon his watry bear

Unwept, and welter to the parching wind

Without the meed of som melodious tear. 

And, at the poem's end, he writes"

Now Lycidas, the shepherd's weep no more;

Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shoar

In thy large recompense, and shalt be good

To all that wander in that perilous flood.

.  .  .  .  .  

And now the Sun had stretcht out all the hills,

And now was dropt into the western bay;

At last he rose and twitcht his mantle blew:

To morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. 

-o-

I remember studying Tennyson's poem, "In Memoriam A.H.H.", at university; it is one of the great poems of the Victorian era, a greater poem than I realized when I first read it. "In Memoriam A.H.H." has a thematic connection to Gilgamesh in that both texts are written out of grief for a deceased friend. Like Milton’s "Lycidas" it is an elegy; it took Tennyson almost twenty years to write and publish "In Memoriam A.H.H.", a poem that memorializes Tennyson's friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. It is grief over the loss of a loved one that Gilgamesh, Milton, and Tennyson experienced. And while these poems are expressions of grief they are also means of going beyond grief; alas*, grief has its own schedule, one that may require acceptance of things as they are and living with grief. Here, I must also emphasize the importance of writing poetry, and reading poetry, as healing; "In Memoriam" is a kind of confessional poem but written long before the invention of confessional poetry by Robert Lowell; writing this poem, and reading it, was a healing experience. “In Memoriam” was Queen Victoria's favourite poem, in it she found solace and consolation from grief after the death of her much loved husband, Prince Consort Albert. This is why poetry is not "writing", it has a greater importance than mere writing; the best poetry is, as Keats understood, soul work, it is the archaeology of the soul, it is to see “the Deep”. Tennyson writes, 

CVI

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

-o-

Note: (1) Please forgive me for using this word, "alas", but I will never get another chance to say "Alas..." and I couldn't let it go...

          (2) I hope the reader has some familiarity with The Epic of Gilgamesh; if not, there are summaries of Gilgamesh online, as well, it isn't a long text, it's accessible and fairly easy to read, and reading Gilgamesh is a good idea even if what I've written here is of no interest.

  (3) Some of the above links have been inserted by Google AI at my request 
(out of curiosity as to the results) and some by me. I am not sure I like 
this new AI function and will probably not use it in the future. 

"Shine, Perishing Republic" by Robinson Jeffers

 

Robinson Jeffers

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
   
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught — they say — God, when he walked on earth.

Photographs taken after reading at Cafe Sarajevo on 12 October 2011

I was part of a group poetry reading at Cafe Sarajevo, located at 6548 Blvd. St-Laurent, on 12 Oct 2011; after the reading I took these photographs of store windows across the street from the reading venue. 

 

"The New Normal" by Sheryl Crow

 

Crazy is as crazy does
Wrapped around your finger, look at us, sign is up
What is his name we trust?
Now you got us swinging on a loose trapeze
No matter what you'll land on your knees, begging
"Please, what do you want from me?"

Is it science fiction or prediction wrapped in George Orwell?
If the news is fake and fear is hate and nothing's immoral
To the leader of the free world, then welcome to the new normal
The new normal

A woolly mammoth's on his way
Back in time to watch us leave for space, it's a race
Not very human race
Ah, but if you really wanna know the truth
We've got an algorithm tailor-made for you, yeah, it's true
According to who?

Is it science fiction or prediction wrapped in George Orwell?
If the news is fake and fear is hate and nothing's immoral
To the leader of the free world, then welcome to the new normal
The new normal

Punch the clock and walk away
While you still have a job and while that job still pays, it's a way
You're gonna wake up someday
To a robot that's in your place
Like all the predictions say

Is it science fiction or prediction wrapped in George Orwell?
If the news is fake and fear is hate and nothing's immoral
To the leader of the free world, then welcome to the new normal
The new normal

Songwriters: Audley H Freed Jr / Frederick J Eltringham / Jennifer M Gunderman / Peter Williams Stroud / Robert Kearns / Sheryl Crow

The New Normal lyrics © Peermusic Publishing

The Robert Burns Pub

As though it never existed, demolished, removed, trucked away, and a layer of earth smoothed over the old building site. Photographs taken the morning of 01 October 2025.                        

The Robert Burns Pub is no more

 

Nothing left but a pile of rubble. The Robert Burns Pub, demolished earlier this week, and derelict for over a decade, is no more. Now this corner lot is available for condos, stores, apartments, or whatever else someone wants to build here. Photos taken morning of 06 September 2025.

Rear of Robert Burns Pub from parking area, April 2015

"City Lights 1961" by Diana di Prima

 

Going there for the first time
it was so much smaller then
that crowded downstairs full of poetry
racks of tattered little mags against the wall
those rickety white tables where folks sat reading/writing
Vesuvio’s was like an adjunct office

Arriving again a year later, two kids in tow
Lawrence gave me a huge stack of his publications
“I’ve got books” he said “like other people have mice”

And North Beach never stopped being mysterious
when I moved out here in 1968
that publishing office on Filbert & Grant was a mecca
a place to meet up with my kids if we got separated
during one of those innumerable demonstrations
(tho Lawrence worried, told me I shd keep them
out of harm’s way, at home) I thought they shd learn
whatever it was we were learning—
Office right around the corner from the bead store
where I found myself daily, picking up supplies

How many late nights did we haunt the Store
buying scads of new poems from all corners of the earth
then head to the all-night Tower Records full of drag queens
& revolutionaries, to get a few songs

And dig it, City Lights still here, like some old lighthouse
though all the rest is gone,
the poetry’s moved upstairs, the publishing office
right there now too       & crowds of people
one third my age or less still haunt the stacks
seeking out voices from all quarters
of the globe