Oh, Elusive Star!
Let's just pretend I said something really witty here.
So I was at the Kinokuniya Book World today, in search of some books (obviously), and quite disappointingly, they only had one of the books on my list.
But anyway, I’ve now got Aldous Huxley’s ‘Point Counter Point’ and I’m looking forward to getting started on it!
All their lives in a box! What generations,
“What centuries of masters, not meaning to be cruel
But needing their labour, taught these creatures such patience
That now though sunlight strikes on the eye’s dark jewel
Or moonlight breathes on the wing they do not stir
But like the ghosts of moths crouch silent there.
Look it’s a child’s toy! There is no lid even,
They can climb, they can fly, and the whole world’s their tree;
But hush, they say in themselves, we are in prison.
There is no word to tell them that they are free,
And they are not; ancestral voices bind them
In dream too deep for wind or word to find them.
Even in the young, each like a little dragon
Rampant and green upon his mulberry leaf,
So full of life, it seems, the voice has spoken:
They hide where there is food, where they are safe,
And the voice whispers, ‘Spin the cocoon,
Sleep, sleep, you shall be wrapped in me soon.’
Now is their hour, when they wake from that long swoon;
Their pale curved wings are marked in a pattern of leaves,
Shadowy for trees, white for the dance of the moon;
And when on summer nights the buddleia gives
Its nectar like lilac wine for insects mating
They drink its fragrance and shiver, impatient with waiting,
They stir, they think they will go. Then they remember
It was forbidden, forbidden, ever to go out;
The Hands are on guard outside like claps of thunder,
The ancestral voice says Don’t, and they do not.
Still the night calls them to unimaginable bliss
But there is terror around them, the vast, the abyss,
And here is the tribe that they know, in their known place,
They are gentle and kind together, they are safe for ever,
And all shall be answered at last when they embrace.
White moth moves closer to moth, lover to lover.
There is that pang of joy on the edge of dying —
Their soft wings whirr, they dream that they are flying.
This is the poem we had for our English-A1 HL Paper 1 exam this morning, and I must say, it’s quite beautiful!
And with strange aeons even death may die."
Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude.
But those people do not understand love, or music, or me."
This is what’s up next on my reading list, and I’m definitely looking forward to it!
The Alan Moore fan in me is now content.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
