Good Night

Good Morning

Friday Frolics

Another sunny autumnal day. Very pleasant too. I walked down to the local store to get some bottled beers. Things like Old Empire IPA, St.Austell's Prprerp Job, and of course Punk IPA!

Most of the morning was spent reading and occasionally listening to the radio. I was going to do soe covert telephone calls but I will try to get them moved to next week, as I was not in the mood for doing them.

I think that doing these monthly truck and van calls jobs are just getting boring. I have much more interesting jobs ahead including a footfall count on Monday. Six hours work for £78 quid!

I have been watching episodes of Endeavour, which prefigures the Morse episodes that came earlier in the fictional detective TV history.


So I am going to watch more episodes now. Ta ta for now.

Poem of The Month

To follow on from poetry day here is something that is so powerful.

"Babi Yar" by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a Russian poet born in 1933, wrote this poem in 1961 in part
to protest the Soviet Union's refusal to identify Babi Yar, a ravine in the suburbs of
Kiev, as a site of the mass murder of 33,000 Jews on September 29–30, 1941. Dmitri
Shostakovich's “Thirteenth Symphony” is based, in part, on this poem.
Source: The Collected Poems 1952–1990 by Yevgeny Yectushenko. Edited by Albert
C. Todd with the author and James Ragan (Henry Holt and Company, 1991), pp.
102-104. Used with permission of the author.

Babi Yar

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem to be
Dreyfus.
The Philistine
is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars.
Beset on every side.
Hounded,
spat on,
slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The barroom rabble-rousers
give off a stench of vodka and onion.
A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
'Beat the Yids. Save Russia!'
Some grain-marketer beats up my mother.


. O my Russian people!
I know
you
are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these antisemites—
without a qualm
they pompously called themselves
the Union of the Russian People!
I seem to be
Anne Frank
transparent
as a branch in April.
And I love.
And have no need of phrases.
My need
is that we gaze into each other.
How little we can see
or smell!
We are denied the leaves,
we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much—
tenderly
embrace each other in a darkened room.
They're coming here?
Be not afraid. Those are the booming
sounds of spring:
spring is coming here.
Come then to me.
Quick, give me your lips.
Are they smashing down the door?
No, it's the ice breaking . . .
The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous,
like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning grey.
And I myself
am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am ach old man
here shot dead.
I am
every child
here shot dead.
Nothing in me
shall ever forget!
The 'Internationale,' let it
thunder
when the last antisemite on earth
is buried for ever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all antisemites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
I am a true Russian!

The Friday Five

1) What is the oldest thing you own?

2) What is the oldest home you've lived in?

3) What is the oldest book you've read?

4) What is the oldest electronic device that you still use?

5) What is the oldest work of art/architecture that you've seen?

It's A Wrap