I love a public path...

I love a public path: few sights there are
That please me more - such object has had power
O'er my imagination since the dawn
Of childhood, when its disappearing line
Seen daily afar off, on one bare steep
Beyond the limits which my feet had trod,
Was like a guide into eternity,
At least to things unknown and without bound.

Wordsworth

Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire 
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star 
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then close again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine 

how they do it 
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation,
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter, 
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart 
pumping hard. I want 

to think again of dangerous and noble things. 
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings. 

The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe

Wild air, world-mothering air, 
Nestling me everywhere, 
That each eyelash or hair 
Girdles; goes home betwixt 
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed 
Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed 
With, riddles, and is rife 
In every least thing’s life; 
This needful, never spent, 
And nursing element; 
My more than meat and drink, 
My meal at every wink; 
This air, which, by life’s law, 
My lung must draw and draw 
Now but to breathe its praise, 
Minds me in many ways 
Of her who not only 
Gave God’s infinity 
Dwindled to infancy 
Welcome in womb and breast, 
Birth, milk, and all the rest 
But mothers each new grace 
That does now reach our race— 
Mary Immaculate, 
Merely a woman, yet 
Whose presence, power is 
Great as no goddess’s 
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who 
This one work has to do— 
Let all God’s glory through, 
God’s glory which would go 
Through her and from her flow 
Off, and no way but so. 

I say that we are wound 
With mercy round and round 
As if with air: the same 
Is Mary, more by name. 
She, wild web, wondrous robe, 
Mantles the guilty globe, 
Since God has let dispense 
Her prayers his providence: 
Nay, more than almoner, 
The sweet alms’ self is her 
And men are meant to share 
Her life as life does air. 
If I have understood, 
She holds high motherhood 
Towards all our ghostly good 
And plays in grace her part 
About man’s beating heart, 
Laying, like air’s fine flood, 
The deathdance in his blood; 
Yet no part but what will 
Be Christ our Saviour still. 
Of her flesh he took flesh: 
He does take fresh and fresh, 
Though much the mystery how, 
Not flesh but spirit now 
And makes, O marvellous! 
New Nazareths in us, 
Where she shall yet conceive 
Him, morning, noon, and eve; 
New Bethlems, and he born 
There, evening, noon, and morn— 
Bethlem or Nazareth, 
Men here may draw like breath 
More Christ and baffle death; 
Who, born so, comes to be 
New self and nobler me 
In each one and each one 
More makes, when all is done, 
Both God’s and Mary’s Son. 
Again, look overhead 
How air is azurèd; 
O how! nay do but stand 
Where you can lift your hand 
Skywards: rich, rich it laps 
Round the four fingergaps. 
Yet such a sapphire-shot, 
Charged, steepèd sky will not 
Stain light. Yea, mark you this: 
It does no prejudice. 
The glass-blue days are those 
When every colour glows, 
Each shape and shadow shows. 
Blue be it: this blue heaven 
The seven or seven times seven 
Hued sunbeam will transmit 
Perfect, not alter it. 
Or if there does some soft, 
On things aloof, aloft, 
Bloom breathe, that one breath more 
Earth is the fairer for. 
Whereas did air not make 
This bath of blue and slake 
His fire, the sun would shake, 
A blear and blinding ball 
With blackness bound, and all 
The thick stars round him roll 
Flashing like flecks of coal, 
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt, 
In grimy vasty vault. 
So God was god of old: 
A mother came to mould 
Those limbs like ours which are 
What must make our daystar 
Much dearer to mankind; 
Whose glory bare would blind 
Or less would win man’s mind. 
Through her we may see him 
Made sweeter, not made dim, 
And her hand leaves his light 
Sifted to suit our sight. 
Be thou then, O thou dear 
Mother, my atmosphere; 
My happier world, wherein 
To wend and meet no sin; 
Above me, round me lie 
Fronting my froward eye 
With sweet and scarless sky; 
Stir in my ears, speak there 
Of God’s love, O live air, 
Of patience, penance, prayer: 
World-mothering air, air wild, 
Wound with thee, in thee isled, 
Fold home, fast fold thy child.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Boy with Orange by Lotte Kramer

A boy holding an orange in his hands
Has crossed the border in uncertainty.

He stands there, stares with marble eyes at scenes
Too desolate for him to comprehend.

New, in this globe he's clutching something safe.
A round assurance and a promised joy

No one shall take away. He cannot smile.
Behind him are the stones of babyhood.

Soon he will find a hand, perhaps, to hold,
Or a kind face, some comfort for a while.

A Strange Type of Beauty

Let's play a game.
Let's peel back the skin of the city
and rearrange its insides till
we have created a strange kind of beauty
we don't recognise. Let's move this city's landmarks
like chess pieces; take the London Eye and
roll it to the adges of the city,
drag the Tate into zone five,
have the Royal Opera House playing
in outskirt basement halls,
grab some chicken and chips via the London Coliseum.

Classrooms become their own theatres
so that young people can unfurl their
aches into creative roars. For the shy ones
the pen becomes a microphone
to their power and those words travel further
than the lulls of their stomachs. Instead
those notebooks soliloquies become a future
bouquet of verses blossoming into the mouths of thespians.

Art galleries are not echo chambers
of prestige. Instead their doors have become
a fleshy open smile, their tongues speaking in
a language of visual miscellany, Graffiti masterpieces
are hanging with Cézanne and Monet. There are
Dali moustaches on corridors twitching and beckoning
young people to find new works of art to get lost in.
Workshops are being run by Barka,
wide floors and windows for children to paint on

Young people are composing digital sonotas
in their rooms and we've taken their roofs off.
We've unplugged their headphones so that
those tsks tsks in their ears have now become a siren of noise
the sky has broken into an orchestra of patois symphonies
there's grime-fused electro sprinkled with classical undertones,
rap lyrics chasing bhangra, bouncing off of buildings,
the sky a new constellation of sounds
pulsating like shooting stars across the city.

Let's play this game,
let's play it everywhere.
Till we do not know where the
highs and lows of this city
begin and end,
till the backbone of London is a
helix of hybrid noises, words, neon colours and shapes
for young people to skip and dance across.
So that wherever they go
their footprints will leave traces
of the city they played in.
So that wherever they go
they are left reeking
with this strange kind of beauty

and they will not live less
they will not live less
they will not live less.

By Selina Nwulu
Young Poet Laureate for London 2015/2016

A Strange Kind of Beauty was commissioned by cultural education charity A New Direction, as a response to the challenges young Londoners face in contributing to the creative life in the city.
Watch an animation of the poem at www.anewdirection.org.uk/a-strange-kind-of-beauty

RSA Journal Issue I 2016

Short Talk on Hedonism

Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away.
When I look at Paris I long to wrap my legs around it.
When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea.
Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.

Anne Carson

La Rose et le Réséda

Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Tous deux adoraient la belle
Prisonnière des soldats
Lequel montait à l'échelle
Et lequel guettait en bas
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Qu'importe comment s'appelle
Cette clarté sur leur pas
Que l'un fût de la chapelle
Et l'autre s'y dérobât
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Tous les deux étaient fidèles
Des lèvres du coeur des bras
Et tous les deux disaient qu'elle
Vive et qui vivra verra
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Quand les blés sont sous la grêle
Fou qui fait le délicat
Fou qui songe à ses querelles
Au coeur du commun combat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Du haut de la citadelle
La sentinelle tira
Par deux fois et l'un chancelle
L'autre tombe qui mourra
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Ils sont en prison Lequel
A le plus triste grabat
Lequel plus que l'autre gèle
Lequel préfère les rats
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Un rebelle est un rebelle
Nos sanglots font un seul glas
Et quand vient l'aube cruelle
Passent de vie à trepas
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Répétant le nom de celle
Qu'aucun des deux ne trompa
Et leur sang rouge ruisselle
Même couleur même éclat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
Il coule il coule et se mêle
A la terre qu'il aima
Pour qu'à la saison nouvelle
Murisse un raisin muscat
Celui qui croyait au ciel
Celui qui n'y croyait pas
L'un court et l'autre a des ailes
De Bretagne ou du Jura
Et framboise ou mirabelle
Le grillon rechantera
Dites flûte ou violoncelle
Le double amour qui brûla
L'alouette et l'hirondelle
La rose et le réséda

Louis Aragon
Extrait de La Diane française 
Seghers, 1944