how well for the birds...

also from the book sale: kings, lords, and commons, an anthology from the irish translated by frank o'connor. it was free. they just wanted to get rid of it. the poems are from the seventh to the nineteenth century. i opened directly to this poem and decided to keep the book:

how well for the birds that can rise in their flight
and settle together on the one bough at night,
it is not so with me and the boy of my heart,
each morning the sun finds us rising apart.

how well for the flowers when my sweetheart goes walking,
how well for the house when he sits in it talking,
how well for the woman with whom he'll be sleeping,
her morning star and her star of evening.

as white as the sloebush in spring is my darling,
as bright as the seabirds from wave to wave swarming,
as the sun fills the ocean all day with its gleaming,
rising and setting he fills all my dreaming.


the author is not given. but an editorial note says something about the "version" given. it's in a section of the anthology called "peasants and dreamers" so it probably survives in many versions.

it has birds. i opened to it. that struck me. so now it's here.

also, there was a copy of two short tales in beginner's russian. i don't speak russian. but i think i want to. i've already started learning my letters. soon i'll have the sound of a little russian. and with practice, a bigger russian. and so on and so forth. doug, i'm practicing on you. and you can't stop me! mwahahaha.

oyster mushrooms are growing on the willows. yay! yay! and yay! they look like fleshy ladders. and doesn't that sound dirty. kinda.

i go.