Not now, but soon
One of the sweetest sounds of spring is a blossom-bursting tree humming with a hundred bees. And after the blossoms fall and the bees move to the next awakening, you just wait for the fruit to grow and fall. Not now, but soon, with that ‘somehow, some...
Lolling on a lawn
The English poet John Keats is my next candidate for a nuannaarpoq award. I am building a dossier of his nuannaarpoqian behaviour and inclinations to parade before you, before creating a nuannaarpoq award-winners page where I can bring these life-loving exemplars...
Of dates and roses
What an unusual depiction of a city, here praised by the disciple Andrew in the desert-bright novel about the last days of Jesus, by the author of Zorba the Greek, Kazantzakis. I wonder if anyone now would think of Jericho in such terms these days? And those...
A date with dates
Pliny the Younger is a favourite correspondent, warm, cantankerous, impatient of news. He gets mad as hell with friends who claim to have no time to write, and tells them roundly not to bother him with excuses about being busy in the Senate or other such nonsense....Yes, sign me up!
