i hate this time of year when i have to return my library books before i go home. hence all the macneice, though mostly from last year.

(i do so love macneice. i'd just read penelope fitzgerald's review of his biography in the afterlife)

also on a wet day like this i remember this lovely bit from borges:

"I remember that I have forgotten quite a good example of the dream-and-life equation. But I think I can recall it now: it is by the American poet Cummings. There are four lines. I must apologise for the first. Evidently it was written by a young man, writing for young men, and I can no longer claim the privilege - I am far too old for that kind of game. But the stanza should be quoted in full. The first line is: "god's terrible face, brighter than a spoon." I am rather sorry about the spoon, because of course one feels that he thought at first of a sword, or of a candle, or of the sun, or of a shield, or of something traditionally shining; and then he said, "No - after all, I'm modern, so I'll work in a spoon." And so he got his spoon. But we may forgive him that for what comes afterwards: "god's terrible face, brighter than a spoon, / collects the image of one fatal word." This second line is better, I think. And as my friend Murchison said to me, in a spoon we often have many images collected. I had never thought of that, because I had been taken aback by the spoon and did not want to think much about it."

From Borges' Norton lectures, This Craft of Verse (which i think i lent to choonping and would like back - this hadn't better turn into another of those six-year cp-give-me-back-my-saki-now sagas !)