life and fate

the ten thousand maniacs play on the speakers, and have kind of a distinctive vocal style. It has been raining every day now for the past few days but I managed to get the lawn mowed, which really needed to be done. There is always the weather, seeing the weather and wondering how things will go, and not knowing, and worrying, and experiencing this and that, and the real pain in this world, not able to separate out, or to get into any more detail that I have gone into already.
There are those who take chances, or maybe they just do what seemed right at a certain time, and perhaps it was the right decision, but at certain times, there can be the distinct feeling that something has gone very wrong.
I guess it could be worse. I could be like Keats and have died eleven years ago. On the other hand...

I heard to old, old men say,
'Everthing alters,
And one by one we drop away.'
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
'All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.'
-yeats

somehow that poem makes me feel better. There is beauty out there apart from any particular thing.

Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, main,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breat of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
-yeats

No, my life is not this precipitous hour
through which you see me passing at a run.
I stand before my background like a tree.
Of all my many mouths I am but one,
and that which soonest chooses to be dumb.

I am the rest between two nots
which, struck together, sound discordantly,
because death's note would claim a higher key.

But in the dark pause, trembling, the notes meet,
harmonious.
And the song continues sweet.
-rilke

I read it in your word, and learn it from
the history of the gestures of your warm
wise hands, rounding themselves to form
and circumscribe the shapes that are to come
Aloud you said: to live, and low: to die,
and you repeated, tirelessly: to be.
And yet there was no death till murder came.
Then through your perfect circles ran a rent
and a cry tore,
scattering the voices that not long before
had gently blent
to utter you,
to carry you,
bridge across the abyss--

And what they since have stammered
are the fragments only
of your old name.
-rilke