More treasures

I have unearthed a stash of transparencies and begun to copy and download them onto computer. There is no end to this process: copy, download, save, print, copy, save, in an endless dance with technology. One day, soon maybe, it will become someone else's problem - or not.

Images of Gideon tear at my heart. I love the spring but his birthday is in early March, and times have changed. Here are some words from a poem of passing, by Wislawa Szymborska:-

"I don't reproach the spring for starting up again
I can't blame it for doing what it must year after year
I know that my grief will not stop the green.
The grass blade may bend
but only in the wind.

It doesn't pain me to see that clumps of alder above the water have something to rustle with again.
I take note of the fact that the shore of a certain lake is still - as if you were living - as lovely as before.
I don't resent the view for its vista of a sun-dazzled bay.
I am even able to imagine some non-us sitting at this moment on a fallen birch trunk.

I don't require changes from the surf, now diligent, now sluggish, obeying not me.
I expect nothing from the depths near the woods, first emerald, then sapphire, then black.

I survived you by enough, and only enough,
to contemplate from afar."

Wislawa Szymborska  (1923-2012) Poems New and Collected Poems 1957-1997