Hell's Half Acre

I wish I had something to post here this week. I haven't been writing much. I haven't had many good ideas. I want to write "The Search" again for the first time. It's by far my favorite piece of my own writing. If I could make it into a book I would, but it tells a complete story without the ability to really elaborate. If I elaborated I'd lose the anonymity - I'd have to give people names and genders; I'd have to give them personalities.

The problem with writing is that it's personal. Even if you are writing fiction, you are giving information about yourself away. I've never been really good at being honest when it comes to personality or desires. I started this journal in the hopes of getting past that, but it's easier said than done.

So, while we wait for me to once again get over my eccentric insecurities. Here is a picture and a poem. The poem isn't by me, quite obviously. It's by an actual poet. I just like it a lot, and thought it deserved a picture.



Atlantis — A Lost Sonnet
Eavan Boland
 
How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city — arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals — had all
one fine day gone under?
 
I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —
 
white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is
 
this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of
 
where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

Because Gabriel left today, I present to you a short poem about a silent language: