Archive | Poetry and writing

You can tell how high the wind is by how still the birds hang. (Rt Rev Rowan Williams)

‘..for a moment it was as if we were travelling across the middle of a page, with whiteness and black markings all around us, and geese lifting off the snow like letters coming unstuck.’ (William Fiennes, The Snow Geese)

‘It was as if I existed between two poles, the known and the new, and found myself drawn alternately from one to the other.’ (William Fiennes, ‘The Snow Geese’)

‘A study of the Great Malady; horror of home.’ Baudelaire, Journaux Intimes

‘I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul. Baudelaire, ‘Any Where Out Of This World’

‘In ‘The Descent of Man’ Darwin notes that in certain birds the migratory impulse is stronger than the maternal. A mother will abandon her fledglings in the nest rather than miss her appointment for the long journey south.’ Bruce Chatwin, ‘Songlines’

Swans fly along the road ahead, but still I stand no nearer home. (Anon)