Poem for Sunday

Earth, I Get Everything From You
By Edvard Kocbek
Translated By Michael Scammell

Earth, I get everything from you, earth
to you I return, my flesh smells of holy
sacrifice and mortal sorrow, long will I
look upward by day and by night.

Earth, our grave, how lovely you are, earth,
I am a sweet dark grain among grains, bewildered
by your depths, birds chirrup over our heads,
one of them will peck us up.

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From Poet's Choice by Edward Hirsch in this morning's Washington Post Book World. Kocbek, a major Slovenian poet who died in 1981, "combined a keen, almost pantheistic feeling for nature with a powerful historical consciousness...and deep faith in poetry." Early pastoral poems like the one above, says Hirsch, "were always infused with a painful sense of time, an agonized feeling of cosmic sorrow." After a complicated involvement in regional politics and decades under house arrest in Yugoslavia, his second book was much more overtly political: "Freedom was his watchword."

Boxer Ferret, my source of all good things Russell, linked from Russell Daily to this RealMedia video interview from a Chicago ABC station when TOFOG was in the city. 30 minutes!

This has never happened to me before, because I believe that nearly all people have the potential to be bisexual or at least to experiment, so it is rare for me to react negatively to seeing a primarily straight character in slash or a primarily gay character in het fic, though there are pairings I won't read because of OTP issues (Aragorn/Eowyn, Aubrey/Pullings). However, I have concluded that I urgently need Remus Lupin het warnings. Seeing him with a woman feels inexplicably to me like trying to force heterosexuality upon someone who isn't, even though that's quite silly as canon is terribly subtle upon the issue of his sexuality. I wonder how angry I will be at Rowling if she actually has Lupin marry Hestia Jones or something. What's odd is that if she announced that Sirius and Bellatrix were once lovers, it wouldn't bug me the same way, despite Sirius' apparent lack of interest in girls as an adolescent in GOF.

From Rohandove: oh, please do this one! Part of being on Livejournal.com is inevitably gaining a number of LJ buddies. Unfortunately, as time wears on, it's easy to forget where all of them came from. Post this in your journal and have your friends respond with how they recall first meeting you.

A joyous Lammas, Lughnasadh and August 1st to all. I believe we are going to the Harry Potter "magic" science exhibit in Harrisburg.