Keys to the door by Mohsin Hamid

I loved your age of wonder: your third and fourth 
and fifth years spent astonished, widening your eyes 
at each new trick of the world – and me standing there, 
solemnly explaining how it was done. The moon and stars,
rainbows, photographs, gravity, the birds in the air, 
the difference between blood and water.
In true life? you would say, looking up 
and I would nod, like some broken-hearted sage, 
knowing there would be no answers soon
to all the big questions that were left, to cruelty and fear,
to age and grief and death, and no words either. 
And you, like me, will sit and shake your head.
In true life? Yes, my sweet, strong daughter, I’m afraid 
there is all this as well, and this is it: true life.

(2012)

A BREAK FROM WRITING

I always carry a note-book to catch any thoughts that might decide to visit, usually at the unlikeliest of moments and places, as yesterday proved, whilst on a bus.  The bus was full, so I sat on the back seats, the ones that face in the opposite direction from the one the bus is travelling.  I started to think how strange it is to see where we have been rather than where we are going, so out came the book to jot down some thoughts and impressions. 

Of course many of the people sat on the rear seats facing me thought it strange, especially as I was writing into a book rather than reading one, and more strange that I was not playing with my mobile, or listening to music, or both.  Another issue is of course, that people think you may be writing down your impressions of them, a justifiable suspicion, as I generally am.  A degree of tact and discretion is therefore called upon, with one hand discreetly placed above the pages, in order to deflect prying eyes.  Coffee shops are also good places to think and to people watch, jotting down mannerisms and verbal ticks. I find a short or a long walk is also really good to get the ideas flowing,  

The picture below was taken outside a coffee shop, the note-book within reach but out of sight.

Do you have any strategies that you find help you clear the mind or cultivate thoughts?  I would welcome your own insights into your own creative processes.  

UNFINISHED POEM BY PHILIP LARKIN

Philip Larkin in a library. Photograph by Fay Godwin. © The British Library Board (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A wonderful poem from a poet who had by 1951 pulled off the yoke of Hardy and come out of Auden's shadow.  I particularly enjoy how it confounds our expectations, especially in the final stanza which never fails to bring a lump to my throat.  What do you think, I'd love to hear your comments.

I squeezed up the last stair to the room in the roof
And lay on the bed there with my jacket off.
Seeds of light were sown on the failure of evening.
The dew came down. I lay in the quiet, smoking.

That was a way to live—newspaper for sheets,
A candle and spirit stove, and a trouble of shouts
From below somewhere, a town smudgy with traffic!
That was a place to go, that emaciate attic!

For (as you will guess) it was death I had in mind,
Who covets our breath, who seeks and will always find;
To keep out of his thought was my whole care,
Yet down among the sunlit courts, yes, he was there,

Taking his rents; yes, I had only to look
To see the shape of his head and the shine of his book,
And the creep of the world under his sparrow-trap sky,
To know how little slips his immortal memory.

So it was stale time then, day in, day out,
Blue fug in the room, nothing to do but wait
The start of his feet on the stair, that sad sound
Climbing to cut me from his restless mind

With a sign that the air should stick in my nose like bread,
The light swell up and turn black—so I shammed dead,
Still as a stuck pig, hoping he’d keep concerned
With boys who were making the fig when his back was turned;

And the sun and the stove and the mice and the gnawed paper
Made up the days and nights when I missed supper,
Paring my nails, looking over the farbelow street
Of tramways and bells. But one night I heard the feet.

Step after step they mounted with confidence.
Time shrank. They paused at the top. There was no defence.
I sprawled to my knees. Now they came straight at my door.
This, then, the famous eclipse? The crack in the floor

Widening for one long plunge? In a sharp trice,
The world, lifted and wrung, dipped with remorse.
The fact of breathing tightened into a shroud.
Light cringed. The door swung inwards. Over the threshold

Nothing like death stepped, nothing like death paused,
Nothing like death has such hair, arms so raised.
Why are your feet bare? Was not death to come?
Why is he not here? What summer have you broken from?

Philip Larkin

SHAKE HANDS

Shake Hands Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all's over;      I only vex you the more I try. All's wrong that ever I've done or said, And nought to help it in this dull head:      Shake hands, here's luck, good-bye. But if you come to a road where danger      Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share, Be good to the lad that loves you true And the soul that was born to die for you,      And whistle and I'll be there.   A.E. Housman

GREAT LETTER FROM HOUSMAN