insatiate

 

"...We flock,

Still acquiescent, down the marble stair

Into the dark where we can't read. And thought

Swoops down insatiate through the starry air."

From Closing Time: Public Library by Lesbia Harford (1891-1927)

I came across this poem recently (I was "tidying my shelves" which somehow devolved into browsing through books) and I was quite taken by its loveliness. An Australian poet, Harford uses words sparingly but places them elegantly, and here she encapsulates a moment so beautifully that it is both relatable and lyrical at the same time. Reading more of her poems, I find they they apply a similar exquisite arrangement of words to describe the most ordinary of moments, and it's astonishing to me that these poems were born a century ago, and still convey the immediacy and freshness of Harford's insight with a voice that seems nearly contemporary. And insatiate? It's a fabulous word, well placed. It's a good reminder that words, used simply but well, can carry a depth and strength of meaning without requiring exaggeration or excess.  

Tired.

The great writer Isabel Allende famously starts each new novel on the 8^th of January. It was the 8^th of January in 1981 when she wrote a letter to her dying grandfather that later became her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then she has committed to many new works, always on the 8th, all of them enticingly chunky reads for the long, languorous days of summer. Especially the long, languorous days of a summer when it seems the pandemic will never end and we desperately need to escape somewhere, anywhere we can that's not here. 

2022

A new year dawns, and with it I break the pause in my writing which I have consciously kept for a year, during 2021.