Walking in Wales To the Black Mountains for a weekend walking with Gilgamesh and Lauren Athoraya, staying at the improbable Llantony Priory Hotel, built in the ruins of a 12th-century abbey. Sunday on horseback for Miki’s and our friends’ first experience of pony trekking.
New poem On First Looking Into Keats’ House As we approached the building, my mother was murmuring Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, the opening line of Keats’ “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer”. I was thinking more of Ezra Pound’s Homeric thoughts: His true Penelope was Flaubert/He fished by obstinate isles. Poor Keats: his romance with the sun was consummated only when he took his tuberculotic lungs to Italy.
Bisy Backson Apologies if you keep looking here for signs of life. There is life here, but not as we know it. Work has displaced journalism this quarter; I hope to restore normal service before the end of this month.
All dem fools Gilgamesh Athoraya tells me 1 April is the Assyrian New Year’s Day, and that this has nothing to do with why we call it All Fools’ Day.