My Small Boat

A poem is a little machine for remembering itself

From Ode to Memory
Thou who stealest fire,
From the fountains of the past,
To glorify the present, oh, haste,
Visit my low desire!
Strengthen me, enlighten me!
I faint in this obscurity,
Thou dewy dawn of memory.

The way to be safe is never to be secure.

The Highwayman
PART ONE
I
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The […]

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Be patient and calm - for no one can catch fish in anger.

The world is a box
My heart is a box of affection.
My head is a box of ideas.
My room is a box of protection.
My past is a box full of years.
The future’s a box full of after.
An egg is a box full of yolk.
My life is a box full of laughter
And the world is a box […]

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning - how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

My general formula for my students is “Follow your bliss.” Find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it.

Many of my friends are under the impression that I write these humorous nothings in idle moments when the wearied brain is unable to perform the serious labours of the economist. My own experience is exactly the other way. The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is […]

Trade Winds
In the harbor, in the island, in the Spanish Seas,
Are the tiny white houses and the orange trees,
And day-long, night-long, the cool and pleasant breeze
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.
There is the red wine, the nutty Spanish ale,
The shuffle of the dancers, the old salt’s tale,
The squeaking fiddle, and the soughing in the sail
Of […]

In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, [Lucifer] could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.