The far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Poem of the day:

Sad Steps
by Philip Larkin

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.

Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There’s something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate—
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

Music for the day:

“Reminder of the strength and pain / Of being young; that it can’t come again…” or as Pink Floyd put it: “For long you live and high you fly / But only if you ride the tide / And balanced on the biggest wave / You race toward an early grave.”

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Art for the day:

“It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly colored than the day….The problem of painting night scenes and effects on the spot and actually by night interests me enormously.” – Vincent van Gogh.

Van Gogh’s famous painting, Starry Night, known to be his “labor of love, struggle, despair and gloom.”  (Source)

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