"Bound for Hell" by Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941)

 

Marina Tsvetaïeva en 1925.

Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,

Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell—

We, who have sung the praises of the lord

With every fiber in us, every cell.

We, who did not manage to devote

Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway

Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat,

Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.

Every morning, every day, we’d rise

And have the finest Chinese silks to wear;

And we’d strike up the songs of paradise

Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,

We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran,

Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been

Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan:

The world was ours, each one of us a queen.

First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled,

Then plaited with a starry diadem;

We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled:

But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,

Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden

Where apple trees from paradise are found.

No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent

And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.

Fire on Westmore Avenue

05 September 2025

After last night’s rain and heavy winds—broken tree boughs, many branches littering the streets, loss of electricity—after that, a property fire occurred on Westmore Avenue. 

Here is the communique from our Borough mayor regarding the fire:

Update – Fire on Westmore

Our thoughts are with the residents affected by the major fire currently underway on Westmore. Videos and images circulating on social media show just how serious the situation is.

Thankfully, everyone has been safely evacuated and is safe and sound. The Red Cross is on site providing emergency housing and immediate support to those in need.

The borough has set up an emergency response team, in collaboration with OMHM and the NDG Community Council, to support residents in the coming days as they navigate this difficult time.

A heartfelt thank you to the firefighters and all first responders for their courage and swift action.

 

Canadian Cottage Garden on 3 September 2025

Fall is not far away, the days are shorter, the sunshine is not as hot, the nights are cooler, there is the smell of fall in the air, birds are flying south, bears prepare to hibernate, and the garden is closing down. While flowers are dying back we know that they will return in eight months, that’s eight long cold months. Cruel months. Monochromatic months of sense deprivation. No wonder we celebrate summer, tolerate winter, see winter as something to survive and put behind us, and in November we already count the months to spring.

The garden on 3 September 2025

A herb garden, 31 August 2025

Yesterday—it was the last day of August—I visited the city/farm garden behind the Hingston Hall residence at Concordia University (Loyola Campus). I’ve visited this garden for many year; it is thriving and the herb garden is growing better than ever. This was a good summer for gardening!

Elf dock 

Common primrose 

Milkweed 

Worm wood 

Mullein

Bee balm

Horse raddish

White sagebrush 

Chives

Leaving the herb garden 

31 August 2025

"Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore

 

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

"A Subaltern's Love Song" by John Betjeman

 

John Betjeman

Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

“I am happy living simply” by Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941)

 

Marina Tsvetaeva

I am happy living simply:

like a clock, or a calendar.

Worldly pilgrim, thin,

wise—as any creature. To know

the spirit is my beloved. To come to things—swift

as a ray of light, or a look.

To live as I write: spare—the way

God asks me—and friends do not.

1919

Daily walk on 24 August 2010

On the exterior wall of an IGA store next to the Montreal West train station 

After a building collapsed this Turret cigarette advertisement was exposed 

Statue of the Virgin Mary at Loyola Campus of Concordia University 

"Transcendence", Loyola Campus,
Concordia University

Gilbert Layton Park

 

"Vacillation" by W.B. Yeats

 

W.B. Yeats in 1923

I

Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it death,
The heart remorse.
But if these be right
What is joy?

 

II

A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew,
And he that Attis’ image hangs between
That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
May know not what he knows, but knows not grief

 

III

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon these maxims meditate:
All women dote upon an idle man
Although their children need a rich estate;
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.

No longer in Lethean foliage caught
Begin the preparation for your death
And from the fortieth winter by that thought
Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such men as come
proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

 

IV

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

 

V

Although the summer Sunlight gild
Cloudy leafage of the sky,
Or wintry moonlight sink the field
In storm-scattered intricacy,
I cannot look thereon,
Responsibility so weighs me down.

Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.

 

VI

A rivery field spread out below,
An odour of the new-mown hay
In his nostrils, the great lord of Chou
Cried, casting off the mountain snow,
‘Let all things pass away.’

Wheels by milk-white asses drawn
Where Babylon or Nineveh
Rose; some conquer drew rein
And cried to battle-weary men,
‘Let all things pass away.’

From man’s blood-sodden heart are sprung
Those branches of the night and day
Where the gaudy moon is hung.
What’s the meaning of all song?
‘Let all things pass away.’

 

VII

The Soul. Seek out reality, leave things that seem.
The Heart. What, be a singer born and lack a theme?
The Soul. Isaiah’s coal, what more can man desire?
The Heart. Struck dumb in the simplicity of fire!
The Soul. Look on that fire, salvation walks within.
The Heart. What theme had Homer but original sin?

 

VIII

Must we part, Von Hugel, though much alike, for we
Accept the miracles of the saints and honour sanctity?
The body of Saint Teresa lies undecayed in tomb,
Bathed in miraculous oil, sweet odours from it come,
Healing from its lettered slab. Those self-same hands perchance
Eternalised the body of a modern saint that once
Had scooped out pharaoh’s mummy. I – though heart might find relief
Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief
What seems most welcome in the tomb – play a pre-destined part.
Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
The lion and the honeycomb, what has Scripture said?
So get you gone, Von Hugel, though with blessings on your head.

O’Gorman’s Stationery Bookshop in Galway, 1978

A few days ago I was looking for a copy of W.B. Yeats’ poem “Vacillation” and looked in Yeats’ Selected Poems for it, of course the poem was there. Then I noticed that I had written the date of when and where I bought this book; it was in Galway, Ireland, on 22 July 1978. I remember being in Galway and walking near a cliff overlooking the ocean and drinking hot tea, it rained and was chilly all the time. I noticed I had purchased the book at O’Gorman’s Stationery Bookshop but I have no memory of being there. I know that the smell of old books, and just the presence of books, has an equilibrating affect on me; I have happy memories reading in bed (for instance, Kathleen Raine's autobiography), falling asleep reading, and even sleeping with a few books on my bed, the weight of books is comforting. Here is another example of the importance of books, of the curative influence of books: I visited an antiquarian bookstore in Arundel, in the UK, before visiting Galway, in July 1978, and immediately felt at peace and at one with the world which I hadn’t been feeling when I entered the store; breathing in the smell of old books brings me peace and happiness. And now, a few weeks after visiting Arundel, here I was in Ireland; it was not a happy time in my life, I was far from home, cold, wet, and lonely. After finding Yeats’s poem I Googled O’Gorman’s Stationery and found that it had closed years ago, but the O’Gorman’s were interesting, especially Ronnie O'Gorman, a grandson of the founder of the bookshop. Ronnie O'Gorman loved books and after his passing his very large collection of books was donated to the University of Galway; Mr. O'Gorman's library is a national treasure. No one needs to be lonely and unhappy if they love books and surround themselves with them.

   

There was a fourth volume to this set of Yeats's books, it was a selection of his plays; I should probably have bought it but didn't. Here are the two Yeats' books that I bought in Sligo a few days after being in Galway: