I've given you my onliness

If I were a carpenter

And you were a lady

Would you marry me anyway

Would you have my baby

If a tinker were my trade

Would you still find me

Carrying the pots I made

Following behind me

Save my love through loneliness

Save my love for sorrow

I've given you my onliness

Come give me your tomorrow

(Tim Hardin, If I Were A Carpenter, 1967)

What might have been

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

(Thomas S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, 1936)

If you know what I mean

There she is again stepping out of her limousine,
Looking like the cover of a twenty dollar magazine.
She's got it where you find it,
If you know what I mean.

She's a…
Natural born woman,
Natural born woman,
Natural born woman.

There she is again, watch her stop the Main Street in its tracks,
Looking like a Creole Queen hair hanging down her back.
I said don't look too long, boy,
She'll make your glasses crack.

(Steve Marriott, Natural Born Bugie, 1968)

The Open Door

«Probably it had been a servants' entrance, a backdoor, or opening into what are called "the offices" in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered, —pantry and kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the door-way open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing, —closed once, perhaps, with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an importance which nothing justified.»
(Margaret Oliphant, The Open Door, 1881)

Le chat et le temps

Good sense, innocence, cripplin' mankind
Dead kings, many things I can't define
Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind
Incense and peppermints, the color of time

Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothing to lose

Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns
Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around
Look at yourself, look at yourself…

(Strawberry Alarm Clock, Incense and Peppermints, 1967)

Audas viator

Et se précipitant sur la feuille de papier, l’œil trouble, la voix émue, il lut le document tout entier, en remontant de la dernière lettre à la première.

Il était conçu en ces termes :

In Sneffels Yoculis craterem kem delibat
umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende,
audas viator, et terrestre centrum attinges.
Kod feci. Arne Saknussem.

Ce qui, de ce mauvais latin, peut être traduit ainsi :

Descends dans le cratère du Yocul
de Sneffels que l’ombre du Scartaris vient
caresser avant les calendes de Juillet,
voyageur audacieux, et tu parviendras
au centre de la Terre. Ce que j’ai fait.
Arne Saknussemm.

(Jules Verne, Voyage au centre de la Terre, 1864)

A.MON.SEUL.DESIR.I

I see a picture
By the lamp's flicker.
Isn't it strange how
Dreams fade and shimmer?

Never going to get to France.
Mary, Queen of Chance, will they find you?
Never going to get to France.
Could a new romance ever bind you?

(Mike Oldfield, To France, 1984)

& & &

O dieses ist das Tier, das es nicht gibt.
Sie wusstens nicht und habens jeden Falls
—sein Wandeln, seine Haltung, seinen Hals,
bis in des stillen Blickes Licht—geliebt.

Zwar war es nicht. Doch weil sie's liebten, ward
ein reines Tier. Sie liessen immer Raum.
Und in dem Raume, klar und ausgespart,
erhob es leicht sein Haupt und brauchte kaum

zu sein. Sie nährten es mit keinem Korn,
nur immer mit der Möglichkeit, es sei.
Und sie gab solche Stärke an das Tier,

dass es aus sich ein Stirnhorn trieb. Ein Horn.
Zu einer Jungfrau kam es weiss herbei—
und war im Silber-Spiegel und in ihr.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonette an Orpheus, II, 4, 1922)

[Oh, éste es el animal inexistente.
No lo conocían y sin embargo lo amaron
en su andar, su porte, su cuello,
y hasta en la luz de su mirada amorosa.

En verdad no existía. Pero porque lo amaron,
llegó a ser un animal puro. Siempre le dieron un lugar.
Y en ese lugar, claro y abierto,
alzaba levemente la cabeza y apenas necesitaba

existir. No lo alimentaron con grano,
sino sólo con la posibilidad de que existiera.
Y ésta dio al animal una tal fuerza,

que un cuerno emergió de su frente. Un solo cuerno.
Se acercó a una doncella de blanco
y habitó en el espejo de plata y en ella.]