THE DOOR IN THE WALL

   The cruelty of death lies in the fact that it brings the real sorrow of the end, but not the end.

  
  The greatest cruelty of death:  an apparent end causes a real sorrow.

   The lamentation around the deathbed is actually a lamentation over the fact that here no dying in the true sense has taken place.  We must still content ourselves with this sort of dying, we are still playing the game.

Franz Kafka:  The Blue Octavo Notebooks (The Fourth Notebook).

Photographs:  Alvin Langdon Coburn.  1. Kensington Gardens, 1909;  2.  On The Embankment, 1909;  3.  The Door In The Wall, 1911;  4.  The White Cloud, 1911.

Joe South: Games People Play (Link)

FOR JOE SOUTH

The great city of Athens is the loveliest

Invocation, to cast down as foundation stone for the song

to magnify the wide-flung strength of the sons of Alkmaion,

      and their victory with horses.

What country could you live in?  what habitation?  and name

one more conspicuous

for all Hellas to attend.

In every city the tale is an intimate thing

of the citizens of Erechtheus.  At holy Pytho, Apollo,

they made magnificent the front of your templed house.

I am guided by five wins at Isthmos, one pre-eminent

At Olympia, Zeus’ own

two victories gained at Kirrha –

yours, Megakles, and your fathers’ before you.

In your late success I find some pleasure, but am troubled

at rancor changing beautiful things done.  Even so, men say,

blessedness that remains

by a man to blossom over him brings,

with good, some things that are otherwise.

      -- Pindar, Pythia 7 (Richmond Lattimore translation)  

Joe South -- Hush (Link)

Joe South -- Games People Play (Link)