"
DISTRESSED HAIKU
In a week or ten days
the snow and ice
will melt from Cemetery Road.
I’m coming! Don’t move!
*
Once again it is April.
Today is the day
we would have been married
twenty-six years.
I finished with April
halfway through March.
*
You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.
Then they stay dead.
*
Will Hall ever write
lines that do anything
but whine and complain?
In April the blue
mountain revises
from white to green.
*
The Boston Red Sox win
a hundred straight games.
The mouse rips
the throat of the lion
and the dead return.
"-
Donald Hall (interview here), in his 2003 book The Painted Bed. His wife, the poet Jane Kenyon died in 1995.
April is National Poetry Month, so take a moment to appreciate the poetic among us sometime in the next four weeks.
(via nprfreshair)Krowiarki Palace: Here is a rare glimpse inside what was once one of Poland’s grandest palaces. Unfortunately, very little is known about this extraordinary building. Spared destruction in World War II and shuttered for more than 40 years, it is supposedly being restored to its former glory.
(via nprfreshair)
A Trip to Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya)
Originally a church, then a mosque and now a museum, the Hagia Sophia is Istanbul’s most famous monument and one of the most important religious structures on the planet.
For a millennium after its construction in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia was the world’s largest cathedral. Its famed dome rests on an arcade of 40 arched windows and remains one of the largest in the world, standing 55 meters (182 feet) from floor level at its maximum. From Byzantine mosaics to calligraphic roundels and even scaffolding from ongoing restoration, layers of the building’s history can be viewed all at once. To get a first-person look inside the Hagia Sophia, be sure to visit the Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia) location page.
Good morning! Here is Willie as Vincent and Marge as the Girl with the Pearl Earring.
