I'm saying this to myself, but you can read it too (translation mine)

Nukkumaan käydessä ajattelen:
Huomenna minä lämmitän saunan,
pidän itseäni hyvänä,
kävelytän, uitan, pesen,
kutsun itseni iltateelle,
puhuttelen ystävällisesti ja ihaillen,
kehun: Sinä pieni urhea nainen,
minä luotan sinuun.

~ Eeva Kilpi

(As I'm going to bed I think:
Tomorrow, I'll heat up the sauna,
I'll treat myself kindly, I'll
take myself for a walk, a swim, I'll wash myself,
invite myself for evening tea,
I'll address myself fondly, with admiration,
I'll praise myself: You little, courageous woman,
I trust you.)

This Post Is About Orgasms, Take Two, aka The Second Coming. The Anniversary Edition, Including the Final and Ultimate Truth on the Matter at Hand.

Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.

(Salvatore Quasimodo)

(The author of this blog would like to thank all her siblings-and-partners-in-crime, who came and exposed themselves, so beautiful, so naked, so poignant, so funny, so brilliant. Thank you. You made my earth move, you changed my life.

She would also like to point out that the idea for an anniversary post was put into her head by someone else. Bloody poets.)

This post is about everything. And love.

I started this blog about two years ago. Happy Birthday, blog girl. It is quite safe to say a fair amount has happened in these two years - when I started blogging, I was married in the tropics, now I am divorcing in the Arctic (okay, near enough, and it sounds good).

Now before y'all hasten to lace your congratulations with commiserations I will categorically state that this is not a miserable state of affairs, at all. Being a divorcee in the Arctic clearly suits me, is much more right for me than the other option, because I am if not happy (for what, pray, is happiness, and do people seriously expect to achieve it as a permanent state of affairs?) at the very least the shape of my life is a shape that fits, if you see what I mean.

(I am here reminded of several lines from some Finnish poets - names forgotten, sorry. One says something to the effect of "Life is given to you so you can decide what position you'd like to be dead in", another "Life is made that way so you wouldn't long to come back too quickly", and a third states that "Just as the visitor starts to feel at ease, it is time to leave." The last is a bit startling, because I am rather feeling at ease in my life - even with the pain. The pain, in fact, is okay, has been okay for quite some time, it's the sticky immobility horror that is still bad to cope with. Time to shut up in these brackets.)

So yes. My life is a shape that fits, and it's surprising to me, really, how difficult it's been getting here - although to be fair there have been times before now when my life has fitted me okay and I've given it up, either through choice or necessity. I have clutched various instructions and users' manuals on life in my time - and I'd bet I'm not the only one. They tend to state very standard guidelines, though - if you're from a cold country with miserable weather, fantasise about warmer climes, please, if you're single, hope for a relationship. And so on.

I don't mean to sound miserable or embittered here. For I'm not, gentle Reader, most emphatically. Spring has returned, bringing with it birdsong (the other night when I was on my way to the sauna, the blackbird gave me a single and piercingly lovely wolf-whistle. I interpreted that as A Very Good Sign (hello, sis). Put a spring in my step, I can tell you that for free), things that grow, and light - all good things I appreciate greatly (nothing wrong with seasonal change, though, and autumn and death-moon and all that are fine too when their time comes). But there is a certain unnameable something, a wistfulness that the return of spring stirs up in me. Particularly, I suppose, the light, that unreal light of Northern summers which seems to glow from the inside, more and more the later it gets. The further into spring and summer we get, the lighter the light becomes, in both meanings of the word, a weightless other-worldly light which makes you feel like something will come, some redemption, darkness and death are no more, Heaven will surely come unto the earth, and the feeling builds up and builds up with the light, and I can't help myself, can't help my body and soul responding to it and believing the feeling, even though this is my forty-first spring (although only my thirty-first of these my native white springs of such painful beauty. As it is, existence owes me ten more springs, wouldn't you agree? And so, once I'm dead, I will come back for ten more springs. Yes). But alas, maybe it is my age, maybe it is my nature, but while I allow myself, once more, to believe it, can't help but believe it, once again, one more time, I also know it's not going to happen, it will build up and build up and never peak, for just as you think it will, it turns and though it is still lovely it is already descending. I tried to explain this the other night to someone who, miraculously, seemed to get me despite the garblational pig's ear I made of it.

So yes. This blog is two years old, and - probably rather by coincidence than by planning - it has had a fine birthday present from the one-and-only Montag (whom, incidentally, I urge you all to visit. He cares about stuff, and is poignant, funny, angry, amongst other things, sometimes alternately, sometimes concurrently, so there's something for everyone over at his house). Although he is stupefyingly prolific on his "main" site, Montag also has another site where he posts a poem a week, because he fasts and writes poems weekly, for peace. And the present for my blog girl, gentle Reader, was a poem, dedicated to yours truly and my sisters. This is a special and fine thing and one I cannot hope to match, so I'll just say thank you again, Montag, and here - have some trees. I believe you have a liking for them.




(So, if you got this far, gentle Reader, thank you for bearing with me. To all those who have gone on at me about putting up a new post, you've only yourselves to blame (love you really). I feel it may well be I'm pretty much written out for a good long while to come. But another anniversary is also approaching, so I may have to return before too long for a few words on the Second Coming.)

Sometimes,

quite often really, the words of others say what you'd say yourself, if only you found the words.

This poem is by the Finnish-Swedish poet Edith Södergran. The translation is mine, and unfortunately from the Finnish translation only - because I'm too bone-idle to look up the Swedish original.

LIFE

I, a prisoner to myself, say thus:
life is not spring, dressed in light-green velvet,
nor a caress seldom received,
life is not a decision to go
nor two white hands to hold you back.
Life is a tight ring which imprisons us,
an invisible circle we never cross,
life is a close happiness which passes us by,
the thousands of steps we are unable to take.

Life is to despise oneself
and to lay immobile at the bottom of a well
and to know that above, the sun is shining
and golden birds fly through the air
and the days shoot past swift as arrows.
Life is to wave a short goodbye
and to go home and sleep...
Life is to be a stranger to oneself
and a new land for everyone else who comes.
Life is to neglect one's happiness
and to reject the only moment,
life is to believe oneself weak and not to dare.

Hyvää ystävänpäivää

This poem is very good - part of the collection of spoken Finnish folk poetry, first noted down in the 1700s. Although relatively short and even simple, as a translation job it is way beyond me because of the archaic nature of the language and the repetition and the rhythmic pattern typical of its genre.

Jos mun tuttuni tulisi,
Ennen nähtyni näkyisi,
Sille kättä käppäjäisin,
Vaikk ois käärme kämmenpäässä,
Sille suuta suikkajaisin,
Vaikk ois suu suden veressä,
Siitä kaulahan kapuisin,
Vaikk ois kalma kaulan päällä,
Vielä vierehen kävisin,
Vaikk ois vierus verta täynnä.

What it says, to cut the poetic effort altogether, is
"If the one I know were to come, the one I've seen before were in sight now, I'd take his hand even if there were a snake in it, I'd kiss his mouth even if it was covered in wolf's blood, I'd wrap my arms round his neck even if death itself was upon it, I'd lie down by his side even if his side was flowing with blood. "

So there. This has been my contribution to the "Valentine's Day" palaver, and I am posting it eleven days late. Don't get mad, get even.

I begin with a four now

It's true. Being born at the very end of "The Summer of Love" means I am forty today.

It doesn't upset me.

Some people have done and will do an amount of gentle teasing - one of my oldest friends, with whom I went to school and who is exactly four months older than I, sent me a Shakespearen snippet text message to describe my forty-year-old looks to me:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:
...
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days?

It didn't upset me. In fact it delighted me (and I suppose I got what I deserved since I sent her similar Byronic message when she turned 36:

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others hath it ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!)

Anyway, poetry aside. I am not going to be one of these people who turn thirty-seven (or indeed, thirty-six) several times over. I have been given lovely presents, and my Spanish friend pulled my ears forty times (twenty on each ear) - a Spanish tradition, I am told. Apparently, they have the same tradition in Mexico, but the ears are pulled upwards.

I begin with a four now. I must be a grown-up.

Come on then if you think you're hard enough

There are times when being a parent just makes you want to shake a fist at the skies (even if you are an agnostic-atheist-unbelieving rationalist-world-view type like myself) and chant like a hard lad picking a fight.

Do anything you like to me, take from me anything and everything I hold dear, kill me, cripple me, maim me, strike me dumb, have me betrayed, ridiculed, humiliated - but lay off my fucking children, alright?!

...How little there is that can be done to protect them, how little I can do to protect mine.

"I do not will him to be exceptional.
It is the exception that interests the devil.
It is the exception that climbs the sorrowful hill
Or sits in the desert and hurts his mother's heart.
I will him to be common,
To love me as I love him,
And to marry what he wants and where he will."

I need to cleanse my mind and soul now

And what better to do it with than art (or love, I suppose)? So here's a love poem by the recently-deceased Jarkko Laine. I thought it was lovely:

SUUTELEN UIMARANNALLA HIEKKAA JOSSA ISTUIT, PIENI MARSILAISENI
Noël Coward laulaa We Were Young

Olen hulluna sinuun, oma pieni marsilaiseni.
Suutelen uimarannalla hiekkaa jossa istuit.
Jokaisen hiekanjyvän joka ihosi tunsi, minä talletan kieleni alle.
Tämä kivi tässä - sulana vieläkin, keskikesän lumikide,
merestä palavana noussut, Airiston kuukivi.
Jos ilmaa voisi koota syliinsä,
viesin kotiin jokaisen kuution jossa sinä viivyit.
Rantakadun asfaltista lohkon irti jalkojesi jäljet.

Sinä sanot että rakastan sinua liikaa.
Miten se olisi mahdollista?
Mikä mies minä sinulle jos en ylitse sinun miehesi?

Oletko koskaan nähnyt kissan pääkalloa?
Niin hauras on minun maailmani. Runoutta kyllä, siroutta,
mutta hetkessä mureniksi murskattavaa.

Miten osaisin sen sanoa:
unikuvien laatijalle vain väärentämätön kylliksi.
Utumies kaipaa käsin kosketeltavia asioita.

Älä väisty pois, jää auringon eteen. Sinä olet valoni.


AT THE BEACH, I KISS THE SAND WHERE YOU SAT, MY LITTLE MARTIAN
Noël Coward sings We Were Young

I am mad about you, my own little Martian.
On the beach, I kiss the sand where you sat.
Every grain of sand which felt your skin I will store beneath my tongue.
This stone here - still molten, a midsummer snow crystal,
risen, burning, from the sea, a moonstone of Airisto.
If you could gather air into your arms,
I would take home every cubic metre where you stayed.
From the tarmac of the seaside street I chisel off the marks of your feet.

You say I love you too much.
How could that be possible?
What man would I be for you, if not more than your man?

Have you ever seen the skull of a cat?
So fragile is my world. Poetry, yes, gracefulness,
but crushable to crumbs within a moment.

How could I say it:
for the maker of dream images, only what is genuine will do.
The man of mist misses tangible things.

Do not move away, stay in front of the sun. You are my light.

- Jarkko Laine -

The translation being mine, and a quick one at that - some words are not right, but what do you know. And, sorry - but I couldn't find We Were Young to link to...

If I keep on doing this, sooner or later someone will sue me for copyright infringement, or alternatively, offer me work as a translator. Place your bets, please.

This is not a post, this is a page from my notebook

Around thirty years ago, I read a snippet of information which pleases me to this day: Finland has (used to have?) the world's largest number of books per capita.

Thank god for the Finnish library system and the above bit of trivia. Together these two facts (factoids?) allow me access not only to the internet (alright, before 8 pm only, but I'm not complaining), of which I have been so cruelly deprived, but also access to books that still have stuff in them which is difficult to come by online.

For various reasons, I need access to this poem by Bertolt Brecht - twenty minutes of dicking about online came up with sites that had the last two verses only, and I want to have the lot. So - I shall post it here, on my bloggy, and hurrah, I shall have it at my fingertips for ever (if I can get online, yes yes).

To Those Born Later

I

Truly, I live in dark times!
The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs
Has simply not yet had
The terrible news.

What kind of times are they, when
A talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
That man there calmly crossing the street
Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends
Who are in need?

It is true I still earn my keep
But, believe me, that is only an accident. Nothing
I do gives me the right to eat my fill.
By chance I've been spared. (If my luck breaks, I am lost.)
They say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink if I snatch what I eat
From the starving, and
My glass of water belongs to one dying of thirst?

I would also like to be wise.
In the old books it says what wisdom is:
To shun the strife of the world and to live out
Your brief time without fear
Also to get along without violence
To return good for evil
Not to fulfil your desires but to forget them
Is accounted wise.
All this I cannot do:
Truly, I live in dark times.

II

I came to the cities in times of disorder
When hunger reigned there.
I came among men in a time of revolt
and I rebelled with them.
So passed my time
Which had been given to me on earth.

My food I ate between battles
To sleep I lay down among murderers
Love I practised carelessly
And nature I looked at without patience.
So passed my time
Which had been given to me on earth.

All roads led into the mire in my time.
My tongue betrayed me to the butchers.
There was little I could do. But those in power
Sat safer without me: that was my hope.
So passed my time
Which had been given to me on earth.

Our forces were slight. Our goal
Lay far in the distance
It was clearly visible, though I myself
Was unlikely to reach it.
So passed my time
Which had been given to me on earth.

III

You who will emerge from the flood
In which we have gone under
Remember
When you speak of our failings
The dark time too
Which you have escaped.
For we went, changing countries oftener than our shoes
Through the wars of the classes, despairing
When there was injustice only, and no rebellion.

And yet we know:
Hatred, even of meanness
Contorts the features.
Anger, even against injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. Oh, we
Who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness
Could not ourselves be friendly.

But you, when the time comes at last
And man is a helper to man
Think of us
With forbearance.

- Bertolt Brecht. Transl. John Willett, Ralph Manheim & Erich Fried.

For godssakes

That atrocious child of mine has now moved on to fire-blowing.

Parenthood SUCKS, dear Reader. If you haven't any children yet, keep this in mind.

Later:

Some of you have kindly expressed enthusiasm and sympathy in various degrees. I thank you for it. To show support for my home-made dork's horrible hobby, I am allowing you this chance of sharing in my misery (but thankfully, no fire-blowing - I don't know whether I'll bear to watch that) - himself doing his stuff on youtube. (Being the vain thing he is, he has edited out the times when he drops the stick, although I told him that was a bit phony.)

I would also like to dedicate this poem to him and to all the other young dorks of the world - not my own, except for the translation - it is by the touched-by-genius Arto Melleri - himself a bit of a wild child.

Nuoruus! Kaiken pitää olla sille siivekästä,
siivekästä ja veristä!
Sillä on niin kiire muuttamaan maailmaa
että se on valmis siihen heti kun on käynyt
eteisessä ja nähnyt avaimenreiästä sisään...
"Maailma! kyllä se tiedetään! se on avaimenreiän
muotoinen!" niin se huutaa, Nuoruus, kuulee
korvissaan oman sydämensä lyönnit:
"Maailman sydän lyö! ettekö te kuule?"
Kaiken pitää olla sille siivekästä!
Siivekästä ja veristä! ja se joutuu aina petetyksi
tai pettää itse itsensä, kumpaankin se on valmis,
ja kaikkeen
Kun kompastut omiin jalkoihisi älä sano sitä
Kohtaloksi, sido ensin kengännauhasi

Youth! For it everything must be winged,
winged and bloody!
It is in such a hurry to change the world
it is ready for it straightaway when it has been
in the hall and seen through the keyhole...
"The world! we know all about that! it is the shape
of a keyhole!" so it shouts, Youth, hears
in its ears the beating of its own heart:
"The heart of the world is beating! can you not hear?"
For it everything must be winged!
Winged and bloody! and it will always be deceived
or will deceive itself, it is ready for both,
and for everything
When you stumble in your own feet don't call it
Fate, tie your shoelaces first

Three books: How my world was changed by the inner goodness of man.

The incredible anticant has opened a thread on three books that changed my world. With 72 hours to answer at the time of his posting, meaning I have already lost sixteen or so, I haven't the time to think forever; also, in matters such as these, there is something to be said for gut-reaction answers. Methinks. So:

The Diary of Anne Frank
Animal Farm

and, I shall cheat some, a poem rather than a book:

The Tomb at Akr Caar, by Ezra Loomis Pound.

Allow me to explain. Both the Anne Frank and Animal Farm were slipped to me, as an unsuspecting ca. six-year-old, by my (most unusual) maternal gran. Anne Frank became a hero, an object of identification, which infatuation lead me to be the most-knowledgable-on-the-Holocaust ca. seven-year-old Finnish girl I ever met. I wrote my diary for a good few years addressed to Anne. Animal Farm, on the other hand, I read not only because my gran gave it to me, but also because it had animals on the cover (a fine enough reason, don't you think). I remember the growing sense of "hang on a minute, there's more to this than meets the eye, this is not just about a bunch of pigs dogs and horses" my child's mind experienced during the read. Needless to say, I read both of these books countless times.

And on to the Pound poem. (I have found it quite tricky to find a suitable online site to link to, so shall stick the poem in its entirety at the end of this post.) My mother used to read and recite poetry to me probably while I was still in nappies, and she didn't stop at nursery rhymes. She had a wonderful collection of a thousand years of Western poetry Tuhat laulujen vuotta (a thousand years of song), with the original on the left-hand page and the Finnish translation on the right. She read plenty to me from that, but the Pound poem wasn't (still isn't) one she cares for. I know it to be the first poem for certain which I discovered for myself - again, at around the age of five - six. The visual imagery the piece gave me was incredible.

So. I have chosen these three works of writing based on the fact I read them before entering formal schooling (starts at seven in Finland). In a short autobiography which opens a collection of her short stories, Marina Tsvetayeva writes: "Everything I have loved, I have started to love by the age of seven, after that, nothing. At the age of forty-seven, I would say that all I was meant to know, I got to know by the age of seven, the subsequent forty years I have spent learning to understand it." (translated from the Finnish translation of the Russian original by yours truly - Tsvetayeva refers to her early-and-for-ever loves, reading at four, writing at five). I would agree on the importance of early interest and influence. For the life of me, I cannot think of books read later in life that would have been as formative to me. Anne F. gave me a near-physically-experienced abhorrence of oppression. Animal Farm gave me a healthy sense of mistrust, both in the surface-level appearance of writing, and in ideologies. The Pound poem set poetry as something that has always been a part of my life, even in the non-intellectual years of punk. I was much older when, to my horror, I discovered Pound had been accused of anti-semitic sympathies or even Nazi collaboration. It was a discovery so against my liking I never really looked into the facts. You may want to enlighten me.

Anticant's thread also suggests listing, as an optional extra, a fourth, imaginary book you would've wanted to be influenced by. In keeping with the conceptual continuity of my other three choices, I would've liked to have read (before age seven) Anne Frank's post-Holocaust, post-Auschwitz collection of poetry, "(I Still Believe in) The Inner Goodness of Man".

The Tomb at Akr Caar

"I am thy soul, Nikoptis. I have watched
These five millenia, and thy dead eyes
Moved not, nor ever answer my desire,
And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame,
Burn not with me nor any saffron thing.

See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee,
And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues;
But not thou me.
I have read out the gold upon the wall,
And wearied out my thought upon the signs.
And there is no new thing in all this place.

I have been kind. See I have left the jars sealed,
Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine.
And all thy robes I have kept smooth on thee.

O thou unmindful! How should I forget!
--Even the river many days ago,
The river? thou wast over young.
And three souls came upon Thee--
And I came.
And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off;
I have been intimate with thee, known thy ways.
Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips,
Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels?
How 'came I in'? Was I not thee and Thee?

And no sun comes to rest me in this place,
And I am torn against the jagged dark,
And no light beats upon me, and you say
No word, day after day.

Oh! I could get me out, despite the marks
And all their crafty work upon the door,
Out through the glass-green fields. . . .

* * * *

Yet it is quiet here:
I do not go."

Ezra Loomis Pound

Let's, like, completely f*ck off all the copyright people,

because I happen to like these poems.

You sought a flower
and found a fruit.
You sought a spring
and found a sea.
You sought a woman
and found a soul -
you are disappointed.

(Sinä etsit kukkaa
ja löysit hedelmän.
Sinä etsit lähdettä
ja löysit meren.
Sinä etsit naista
ja löysit sielun -
olet pettynyt.)

Edith Södergran

May I fuck you for ten grand? he said to me
on the bus stop at twelve fortytwo am
the empty streets around us growing frosty.
First I shook my head, but then I said:
Not for money, but if you hoover and wash up.
His turn, now, to refuse
and turn, unhappily, to go.

Saisko kymppitonnilla naia? hän sanoi minulle
bussipysäkillä kello 00.42
tyhjät kadut ympärillämme huurtuvina.
Ensin minä pudistin päätäni, mutta sitten sanoin:
Ei rahasta, mutta jos imuroit ja tiskaat.
Silloin hän vuorostaan kieltäytyi
ja kääntyi alakuloisena mennäkseen pois.

Eeva Kilpi

Originals in italics. The translations are my own, and would be better if they weren't late-at-night, off-the-cuff, on-a-whim jobbies.

PS Later in the day: NB Of course I *know* Edith S. was Finnish-Swedish and consequently wrote the poem in Swedish. My bad, my bad - but it was quite late in the night. This also means I don't just infringe on the copyright of the author, but also of the translator. How exciting.

FAO my fellow fans of spam poetry

Something I found on Ishbadiddle. Is it just me, or do these things have great dramatic performance potential?

My strange hobby

I collect spam. I have been collecting spam for some time. Initially, I collected the recipe adverts Gmail lists at the top of the "Spam" folder ("Ginger Spam Salad: serves 1, refrigerate overnight"). Recently, I have developed an interest in the poetry found in the subject field of spam messages. Here's a few samples from my (growing) collection:

on refrain go refrain
with gold and promises,
and nothing Alternate:
The last...
(from Boyd Burgos)

Are restaurateur so restaurateur:
Life's a bitch and then you die.
I love thee to...
(from Rosemarie Locke)

And finally, if not exactly poetry, certainly a profound piece of thinking from my unknown friend, Vernon Friend, entitled "On officer by root":

The creative process is centered in the mind of the artist.

Methinks I shall collect them in a book. Don't get angry, get even.

Warning: red hats

Decades ago, when I was young and easy in Wales, I came across a fabulous poem. I read it in an anthology I had out from the library. Although I remembered it was great and had something to do with growing old really disgracefully, the title and the name of the author had escaped me by the time I was less young and easy and moved back to Finland. Then, incredibly, my colleague asked if I knew a poet called Jenny Joseph, as she had bumped into the poet's son when she (my colleague) was young and easy and interrailing in London, and had actually stayed with the poet and her family and made great friends with her. No, I said, I don't think I do. So, my colleague lent me a Jenny Joseph book, and lo – my poem that I had so strongly identified with and loved but forgotten, was there. Jenny Joseph: "Warning"

(I don't know how the copyright issue stands, so I shall not reproduce the poem here. I will just point you in the direction where you can find it online.)

I performed the poem in a couple of poetry evenings and thought it was really *mine*, I had after all discovered it all by myself. Imagine my despair when I find that over here in the US, they have a "Red Hat Society" for women of a certain age, complete with merchandise such as mugs, cards, toilet roll holders, bookends, picture frames, fully posable action figures (kidding but only just) etc., and official gatherings in full costume. Oh no. Why does everything have to be taken over and turned into a free market economy, I ask you. I feel so cheated.

(PS To add insult to injury, I have just noticed there is a SPELLING ERROR in the online version of the poem...ohhh)

© 2006 Anna MR

Bird brains (thinking deep)

Next door keeps poultry, and currently, they also have young ones. At least eight of them. I know, because more often than not they can be found scratching around the compost I spread under the banana trees. They kick the stuff all around the garden, which I am not that terribly pleased about a) because I don't want the lawn covered in compost and b)my banana trees aren't getting the nutrition they need. However, the chickens might kill and eat That Centipede. On the other hand, given the size of the creature, I wouldn't be surprised if I glanced out into the garden one day and saw it munching on a chicken instead.

I read today that an Austrian playwright - I think the name was Peter Handke, I fear I don't know him – has had his play cancelled in a Parisian theatre, because he attended the funeral of Slobodan Milosevic, and that a number of other Austrian authors have petitioned against this move. One of the petitioners was Elfriede Jelinek, whom I have just been reading (perhaps this is why it caught my eye). The petitioners say it is irrelevant whether Handke's actions are right or wrong, calling his show off in retaliation is tantamount to censorship. This feels like a really tricky issue. While I do agree with the petitioners to some extent, how far would that go? If, instead of a funeral, he had taken part in a racist riot, for instance, would it still be a case of right or wrong, there should be no cancelling his work? I don't know.

Wiszlava Szymborska has a wounding, wonderful poem about a baby, a bonny baby Adolf, viewed askew through the eyes of his parents, Herr und Frau Hitler. I have no sympathy for Hitler of course - I am not saying that. But the poem is fantastic. Whose are those little feet, that bonny nose? Little Adolf's. Ooh, where will those little feet patter one day? The future waits outside, knocking on the door. It is so terrifyingly good just thinking about it, paraphrasing it as I am in my own words, makes my skin creep. Maybe I am particularly sensitive to this as a mother of two sons. We bring them to the world, we love them, we do for them what is in our personal reservoir of strength and ability. And inevitably, some mothers' sons grow into monsters. In the afterlife, Frau Hitler and Freddie West's mummy sit looking at their empty laps, remembering the baby boy who bounced there once. Who could comfort them?

© 2006 Anna MR