PROSE

Captain Boyd Alexander

[1]  There is only one rule for good prose, the rule which Newman and Huxley in their different ways enunciated and followed—to set down your exact, full and precise meaning so lucidly and simply that no man can mistake it . . . . I am ready to assert that almost the best prose has been written by men who are not professional men of letters, and who therefore escape the faded and weary mannerisms of the self-conscious litterateur.  As an example I would point to the prose of Cromwell, Abraham Lincoln, and of a dozen explorers like Captain Scott and Captain Boyd Alexander, and of soldiers . . . . like the Canadian general Arthur Currie.

John Buchan:  from Homilies and Recreations: The Judicial Temperament (1926)

General Arthur Currie

[2]  Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations which go further than names however shared can ever go. Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone . .

Henry Green:  Pack My Bag (1940)

Thomas Huxley:  Sketch of then hypothetical five-toed Eohippus being ridden by "Eohomo"

Peter Blegvad and John Greaves: The Only Song  (Link)

SOLITARY

The human ass comes under fire
Asses resemble closely other asses
In curves & masses
Firing the same at the right time
Best if one is like oneself, solitary
Best when men mix to be the one unmixed,
neat, undiluted, solitary

What gladness to flee the world
Into a new world made largely with the intellect
Amid the ravishing lucidity there,
things that can be & cannot be
get well churned together
There big & little must be the same
in that the difference doesn't make any
"Little" is transformed,
from being small "a paltry thing
becomes the janitor of the wide world"

Like you
Is this "you" not yourself?
Not you? Why not? Not long enough?
You & your long enough
Who do you think I am?
I am you
Yes, you - that whole great
majestically startling
mentally epic burning
model of heaven

 

John Greaves: Solitary (wr. Blegvad/Greaves) (link)

Pictures:

I.  Paul Nash:  We are making a new world, 1918

II.  Paul Nash:  The Ypres Salient at Night, 1917-18

III.  Paul Nash:  The Menin Road, 1919

IV.  Paul Nash:  We are making a new world, 1918

V.  For more Paul Nash, see The Bay (link).

In Hell's Despite

This rocket's Going Nowhere

It's travelling so fast.

In one end goes the future,

Out the other comes the past.

And we are on a mission 

As we hurtle through the Night,

To build a Heaven in Hell's despite.

This rocket's Going Nowhere,
The hull is full of holes.
No one navigating,
No one at the controls.
No one said it would be easy
On our maiden flight,
To build a Heaven in Hell's despite.

Link: "In Hell's Despite" (wr. Peter Blegvad/Andy Partridge), performed by The Schramms

Photography:  Strange Phase Studios

Bee Dream (Blegvad -- Greaves)

Each of us has in our soul

A portion of Eagle,

A portion of Mole.

One soars in the sunlight,

One snores in a hole.

The mountain, which looks like a prop

Is black at the bottom and white at the top.

Soldiers surround it with twine;

I have to cut through it

To claim what is Mine.

The summit is marked by a tree;

My double in uniform challenges me.

He says “is the tree mine?”,

I say "tap it and see."

So he drives in a platinum spout,

He turns the tap on and all this jelly comes out.

Royal Jelly, which I have stored in this tree,

In an earlier lifetime, when I was a Bee.

Yeah, I’m a King Bee, though my wings be furled,

And my kingdom is not of this World.

Bee Dream from Peter Blegvad, Just Woke Up (1995) 
(click on link to play)
For more Peter Blegvad, see here  and  here.