pre-birthday dinner with su-lin and julian at symmetry: steak tartare; truffle fries; lamb tagine with apricot, diced eggplant, almond and couscous; cured pork cheek pasta; duck confit on risotto with foie gras, and washed down with large quantities of quite delicious sangria. that was a good meal. (in the way, you know, in beowulf, he said ‘he was god cynning?’)after that because we needed more tipple it was to working title for cheap beers and ice-cream sandwiches.
later, walking to the train station:julian :…hey, do you remember that poem, larkin was it, about the black sail?
me, shrewdly: are you saying the black sails are coming for me?
julian: well birthdays make me think of that poem! …a black-/Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back/A huge and birdless silence.
me: towing birdless silence is good… also a bit la belle dame sans merci: and no bird sing! … sea….sea, what was it, the tennyson one…?
julian: sunset and evening star / and one clear call for me!
me: crossing the bar! and after that the dark! …. wait, why are we doing this to ourselves?
julian: not enough beer.
me: tennyson is the only person who can use “moan” properly in a poem. it’s also in the lotos eaters. they “made perpetual moan.” hey! would you like to be a lotos eater?
julian: that’s a good question. maybe!
me: because we’re getting older?
julian: it would be like being put out to pasture.
me: so on retirement we’ll be packed off to an island to be lotos eaters?
me: but how can you not approve of a poem that says “slumber is more sweet than toil?”
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird