Friday, December 13, 2013

Poem for Friday and Montgomery Potters

Winter: My Secret
By Christina Rossetti

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I;
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.

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Right, I don't have the energy tonight to pretend I want to be cheerfully blogging or having a happy birthday or anything else. I spent nearly the entire day fighting with my birthday present anyway -- now I know why so many people despise Windows 8 so much -- I am trying to decide which will be more trouble, trying to make an Android tablet do everything I want it to do without a built-in keyboard or any version of Windows at all, or trying to make this ASUS function without being able to boot into safe mode when ASUS's own software updates cause critical failures requiring a reset to factory specs.

I miss my cat and I have to decide by tomorrow whether we want to bury her remains or put her in an urn or what. I owe at least 40 replies to various blog comments and a pile of e-mail and thank you notes and it probably won't happen tomorrow because I have to write a review I haven't even started yet. I don't have it in me to congratulate Congress for, um, doing their jobs (and I haven't seen how much is getting slashed even if the conservatives are ranting). And asshat judges in Australia and India have overturned gay marriage and made gay sex a crime again. A few pics from the Montgomery Potters' show:












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