This poem arrived in my email today, via Ivan M. Granger’s wonderful Poetry Chaikhana site: http://www.Poetry-Chaikhana.com/:
 |
A nightingale’s songBy Ryokan (1758 – 1831)English version by John Stevens A nightingale’s song
|
<a href=”” title=”Nightingale’s Song”>
<iframe width=”640″ height=”510″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/5wdLPvV7hLg?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>
“Ode to the Nightingale” by john Keats
One thing I will miss very much when I move is my kitchen window. Shaped like a rectangle, having a latch that lets me open it out like a porthole, it’s a source of pleasure. At night, I let down and shut the venetian blinds. In the morning, no matter what season, I feel a touch of excitement at what the day might be like. Because of where I live, snow would not be out of place in warm weather.
There is one thin tree, almost Japanese in its artistry, with a tiny temple bell hung on its branch. The wooden fence is a beautiful mixture of tans and browns, and the space feels like a private oasis. That’s why when I pull up the blinds, it’s as if I’m receiving a gift.
llustration by Maja Misevic-Kokar, from “One Thousand And One Nights” (2 volumes), translated from French into Serbian by Stanislav Vinaver, published by Matica Srpska, Novi Sad, 1989.
But you’ve always had faith in stories?
It is what I do. I mean, if you are a carpenter you have faith in carpentry.
~Salman Rushdie interview by Tim Adams, Observer, 26/06/11
One has to have faith in stories to write stories. How simple an idea, how deep an idea. If one believes in the power of the narrative, that the act of telling a story can have significance, then how easier is the writer’s task. Instead of imagining you’re groping in the dark, foolishly scribbling away instead of getting a real job, you can imagine purpose. Oscar Wilde aside, we don’t value pleasure for itself. And he was no work shirker.
Placing storytelling the context of a craft, viable as building a house, farming the land, healing the sick, is dangerously marvelous. It implies that we have a need for a possibility spun by imagination that fulfills a void in our lives. Can a story save a life? It can shape a life.
Post Script: The Private Patient was very good.
http://www.studiomama.com/bookshelf.html
