No rain, no rainbow

Not my inspiring free form poetry, my people, but none other than Sarah Palin's, as read by William Shatner.

I never realized how much 140 characters resembles the cadences of TS Eliot. Off to count the characters in his verse.

I leave you with this, oh! Denali, The Great One, to soar and magnificently crown my scrapbook of Memorable Palin Moments,



I wish I were half so god when I get to my pen, at last.

Still can't believe I only just heard about this. And, when did Jay Leno leave the show?


BUIRNT NORTON
(No. 1 of 'Four Quartets')

T.S. Eliot

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

III

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.

IV

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

V

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

....

O CAT!

Baccarat found it. Leave to her. It was not really very difficult, though. Not much of a hunt, nothing at all of a chase.

I returned from the gym and a stop at the grocery store -- eh, oui, il faut bien --, took the dogs out to pee and let Baccarat and Rapide free in the garden in the full sunshine. Spring is coming. Then, I went inside, opened the windows and the French door and set to getting my pot au feu simmering. I was just begining to peel the carrots, when I heard Baccarat start in with her deepest "woof!"

"Baccarat, tu te tais." I placed myself directly in front of her, still woof-woofing intensely, "TAIS TOI." She shifted around on her paws like an anxious three-year-old who needs to pee, her eyes darting from the mound of junk at the base of the linden tree to somewhere just to the side of me.

"Bacs, regarde-moi. Tu te tais. Sh!" She tried. She really did, but she looked about beside herself with worry. It occurred to me that there might be something; she wasn't looking fixedly out over the field below like she usually is when she gets to barking. An animal. I turned to look where she was, and I saw the big, beautiful marmalade cat with long hair, resting under the partial shelter of the fake leaded stained-glass window the workers had leaned up against the linden tree, alongside their stock of lumber. It looked back at me placidly. It didn't get up to run. It didn't tense. It gazed back at me, while Baccarat went crazy, hopping from paw to paw, trying to butt her head past me to get to the cat. Rapide wandered over to see what was up and went into maternal-mode with Baccarat.

My brain slowed way down. Why was this animal just lying there? It looked fine.

I walked back into the house, and continued to peel carrots, which was absurd, I thought, picking up another anyway, peeling it and dropping it into the pot au feu. "You can't do nothing. Go get the camera."

That made more sense.

I grabbed a bowl of cat food on the way back out, and returned to the cat, fighting for space near it, pushing dog heads out of the way.

"Va t'en, Baccarat!" I commanded the excited one at my elbow. She turned her head to gaze like a cow at me. Rapide. "Va t'en, Rapide. Allez." I snapped a picture as the animal looked calmly at me. I backed up and took two more, the black bodies of my two Labs wiggling all over the place. "Allez vous en! Allez!"

I knelt again to look at it more carefully. There was a small pool of blood on the bit of plastic sheeting next to her. Blood. Fresh. It had to have come from the cat, but it looked fine. What I could see, at least. But it wasn't moving. If it were fine, it would have amscrayed long since. We looked at each other, as I fought to elbow my dogs back.

"Allez! Allez vous en!"

That's when I noticed the smell. It smelled like something rotten. And pee. I felt the queasiness start in my stomach. I couldn't just leave the cat there. Go back into the house and finish my carrots. I'd have to get it out of there. I reached in and stroked its head. It let me. Baccarat wanted to pet it, too, with her muzzle and big old tongue.

I took the cat by the shoulders and began to lift it, gingerly. It howled. It didn't claw or bite. The hind end didn't move right. It seemed limp. It was a huge and heavy cat, which wasn't going to help if lifting it hurt it. I went for a towel someone had left at the pool last summer, left out since then by the petite maison, and worked it under the cat's body. Every time I got anywhere near its rear legs, it howled in pain. I tried to look. There were traces of blood on a bit of lumber against which it had rested its haunches lying there. I peered in the leaf-matted long fur of the rear legs, and there appeared to be black sac-like things in the fur. Injuries? Pooled blood under some kind of bites? Had it been mauled? I couldn't see. The back didn't seem to be broken; it could move its legs, weakly.

I needed something to support it. The travel cage was out of the question. I'd never get so large an injured cat into it without really causing it pain. I spotted one of the shallow pans for mixing the chaux, emptied the tools from it, tucked the towel as best as I could under the cat, like a sling, while it hissed at the frantically concerned dogs, and lifted it into the pan. All I needed now was to get the dogs into the house, grab the keys, close up and head to the vet.

The cat howled and then fell silent again.

I talked to it all the way to the vet's on the far side of Mantes. Right turns seemed to be the worst. I was a mess from the gym, not having had time to change. "They'll think I'm completely crazy," I thought to myself, feeling for a brush in my bag. I spend my life at the vet, between the animals we added intentionally to our menagerie and those we have found and added.

Maybe someone can explain it to me.

They seem to come to us, the lost and the suffering, and we take care of them, from Cunégonde Mouse to the yellow Lab I took to the shelter for adoption, Wisp, who Audouin found dying of hunger on a trail in the woods along the sand pits in the center of the boucle, and our own, in need of care, getting sick, dying.

"Ils sont bien chez vous," said the young woman at the desk.

"Mais comment savent-ils de venir, de se mettre dans notre chemin?" I asked, knowing she would not have an answer.

Do they talk amongst themselves, word spreading through the gardens and fields, from village to village, "Hey, if you are hurt or hungry, abandoned, go to them, and they will help you."

She noticed the cat had a tattoo in the ear. They could find the owners, "Call at the end of the afternoon, if you would like, she told me, and we can give you news of the cat."

I thanked her.

"No, c'est vous qu'on remercie de vous en êtes occupée, et d'avoir fait le déplacement jusqu'à ici."

"Mais, c'est normal. Je ne pouvais le laisser là comme ça."

"Oui, mais il y a plein de gens qui l'aurait mis juste un peu plus loin, pour s'en débarrasser du problème." How, I wondered, could anyone just move an animal, hurt and alone, to let it fend for itself or die -- a little farther along?

"Je vous appellerai. S'il n'avait pas un tattoo, je l'aurais gardé. Mon mari serait furieux, mais je me dis que si un animal vient auprès de moi dans son besoin, il faut que je le garde. C'est le destin."

She smiled like she didn't think I was crazy at all.

Although I am. As mad as a hatter.

When I returned home, Shadow was waiting in the entry court, and Wisp scampered across the garden to come inside with me. That's when I noticed that Wisp hadn't been alone. There was a smallish cat, very like her only darker, bounding toward the stairs to the bottom of the garden. I called to it, and it stopped and turned around, sat. We looked at one another through the open kitchen window.

"Kitty, kitty. Hey, kitty." It continued to look at me. I went and got the camera, amazed at this congress of felines at my house on this fine day, and it was still sitting there, right where it was before I crossed the room and back. I took its picture and came out the door to approach it, but it turned on its heel and headed to the lower garden, by way of the box hedges along the stair. Not afraid. Not perfectly at home.

The Ad-dressing of Cats

T. S. Eliot

You've read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter to understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whome we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse -
But all may be described in verse.
You've seen them both at work and games,
And learnt about their proper names,
Their habits and their habitat:
But
How would you ad-dress a Cat?

So first, your memory I'll jog,
And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG.

Now Dogs pretend they like to fight;
They often bark, more seldom bite;
But yet a Dog is, on the whole,
What you would call a simple soul.
Of course I'm not including Pekes,
And such fantastic canine freaks.
The usual Dog about the Town
Is much inclined to play the clown,
And far from showing too much pride
Is frequently undignified.
He's very easily taken in -
Just chuck him underneath the chin
Or slap his back or shake his paw,
And he will gambol and guffaw.
He's such an easy-going lout,
He'll answer any hail or shout.


Again I must remind you that
A Dog's a Dog - A CAT'S A CAT.


With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don't speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do not hold with that -
I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.
But always keep in mind that he
Resents familiarity.
I bow, and taking off my hat,
Ad-dress him in this form: O CAT!
But if he is the Cat next door,
Whom I have often met before
(He comes to see me in my flat)
I greet him with an OOPSA CAT!
I've heard them call him James Buz-James -
But we've not got so far as names.
Before a Cat will condescend
To treat you as a trusted friend,
Some little token of esteem
Is needed, like a dish of cream;
And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste -
He's sure to have his personal taste.
(I know a Cat, who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit,
And when he's finished, licks his paws
So's not to waste the onion sauce.)
A Cat's entitled to expect
These evidences of respect.
And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.

So this is this, and that is that:
And there's how you AD-DRESS A CAT.


Or, take it to the vet for care,
Have the clumps removed from its hair,
And that hope it comes back to tell
It's adventure and stay a spell.
....