Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Poem for Tuesday, Papal Palace, Lion, Start the Revolution

An Orchard At Avignon
By Agnes Mary Frances Robinson

The hills are white, but not with snow:
They are as pale in summer time,
For herb or grass may never grow
Upon their slopes of lime.

Within the circle of the hills
A ring, all flowering in a round,
An orchard-ring of almond fills
The plot of stony ground.

More fair than happier trees, I think,
Grown in well-watered pasture land
These parched and stunted branches, pink
Above the stones and sand.

O white, austere, ideal place,
Where very few will care to come,
Where spring hath lost the waving grace
She wears for us at home!

Fain would I sit and watch for hours
The holy whiteness of thy hills,
Their wreath of pale auroral flowers,
Their peace the silence fills.

A place of secret peace thou art,
Such peace as in an hour of pain
One moment fills the amazed heart,
And never comes again.

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Happy Mardi Gras! Jetlag is belatedly kicking my arse. I got to spend a post-Oscars Monday with Cheryl, which included lunch at Zoe's Kitchen (red pepper hummus and baked feta) and a viewing of Lion (even better the second time I think). Before we went to that, since we knew we'd be seeing Nicole Kidman and David Wenham in it and since La La Land doesn't even come close as movie musicals go, we watched Moulin Rouge, which only improves with time and distance from the Cruise-Kidman marriage.

Niece had an interview and audition to transfer from the Berklee College of Music's online program to the campus in Boston, and came home happy with the interview though nervous about the singing. She went out with friends in the late afternoon while the rest of us watched Start the Revolution Without Me, a cracky French Revolution-era parody with Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland that cracked us up a lot. And now I'm caught up on Supergirl and The Flash! From the Papal Palace at Avignon:
















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