a Pablo Neruda poem

In The Night

In the night we shall go in,
we shall go in to steal
a flowering, flowering branch.

We shall climb over the wall
in the darkness of the alien garden,
two shadows in the shadow.

Winter is not yet gone,
and the apple tree appears
suddenly changed into
a fragment of cascade stars.

In the night we shall go in
up to its trembling firmament,
and your hands, your little hands
and mine will steal the stars.

And silently to our house
in the night and the shadow,
perfume's silent step,
and with starry feet,
the clear body of spring.

Some Literary Blogs & Current Readings/Sightings

Blogger Jessa Crispin has done a great job of creating an interesting book-lovers blog at BookSlut.

But if you dislike the corporate ads and you need to attach and trust a literary critic, I highly recommend Laila Lalami's blog because she's personal, plus you can see a photo of her writing space. I like that. Maybe I'll add one of those here.

Me? I've recently reread Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal and caught myself wondering how satire might be used to get out of Iraq: a proposal to nuke the Middle East until it's one big hole in the ground? (I'm kidding.)

Saw the movie Byron today. British Jonney Lee Miller does a terrific job as the tortured, pleasurist poet who receives more than his share of society's disdain. My only gripe was not giving Mary Shelley and the famous horror-story challenge more of a place in Byron's life. Oh well. I do have new sympathy for Lord Byron. Now I want to revisit the movie Pandemonium about Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth as I'm having trouble remembering which came first: the radical Byron gang or the Coleridge trio (plus Dorothy Wordsworth).

Next on my agenda: Alexander Pope's mock-heroic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Also still reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose which is a misleading title since it mostly focuses on a thorough understanding of the ego, but then, I'm not finished yet.