Graffiti

Love sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind.

-—Byron, Childe Harold 4.123

In Westwood here, an Aurignacian train

thunders through, a love-sick rhino herd

painted by numb fingers, stiff with stain,

though not a flintstone's yet struck word.

"Said the Lion to the Lioness— 'When you are amber dust,— "

Who sows the wind?

The whirlwind's troubled brain.

" . . . bless with a benison /

Alfred Lord Tennyson"

graffitiing old What-name

on Shakespeare's daunting fame

in Poseidon's temple, at Sounion in Greece:

Listen! A sigh—maybe some peace?

Tip 'o the topknot to the memory of Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), whose poems "Heart and Mind" and "Sir Beelzebub" are quoted here. I recall her as an old lady exotically got up at a Sviatoslav Richter concert—or was it Rostropovich?—in the Royal Festival Hall, London, ca. 1962/3.

Saturday, August 22, 2026