By Clark Ashton Smith
The years are a falling of snow,
Slow, but without cessation,
On hills and mountains and flowers and worlds that were;
But snow and the crawling night in which it fell
May be washed away in one swifter hour of flame.
Thus it was that some slant of sunset
In the chasms of piled cloud--
Transient mountains that made a new horizon,
Uplifting the west to fantastic pinnacles-
Smote warm in a buried realm of the spirit,
Till the snows of forgetfulness were gone.
Clear in the vistas of memory,
The peaks of a world long unremembered,
Soared further than clouds, but fell not,
Based on hills that shook not nor melted
With that burden enormous, hardly to be believed.
Rent with stupendous chasms,
Full of an umber twilight,
I beheld that larger world.
Bright was the twilight, sharp like ethereal wine
Above, but low in the clefts it thickened,
Dull as with duskier tincture.
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The major event of our Friday was the demolition of the deck that has been attached to our house since we moved in. We've been talking about replacing it for years, but now we need to do so to refinance our mortgage because it's in such bad shape and so far below current building code. The good news is that since we're planning on replacing it with a near-exact copy, we didn't have to go through the neighborhood committee to get the design approved. We had some snow and sleet while the builders were here -- they're the same ones who replaced our front porch several years back -- so I got some photos of the rotting wood spattered with ice and our cats alternately horrified and fascinated by the proceedings:
My only other accomplishment for the day was posting a review of Deep Space Nine's "Hippocratic Oath", one of the great Bashir-O'Brien love stories. I did get to take a walk during the one hour when we didn't have more precipitation than drizzle, and we had dinner with my parents, mostly food from Lebanese Taverna which I always love. Then we came home for this week's quite good Nikita and watched The Prestige -- it's been years since I saw it, Jackman and Bale are still electric onscreen together (next I need to rewatch 3:10 to Yuma because Crowe and Bale are too), and we are now watching all the extras which I've never put on before -- not that this is news, but Nolan is a genius and the set design is phenomenal.
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