A reader of “The Dogs Don’t Bark In Brooklyn Any More” sent me this link.

The name of the group is Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs.

Chloe Agnew from Celtic Woman sings “Danny Boy.”

As I have mentioned before, my friend and “poemrade” Stanley Anne Zane Latham is a beautiful writer with an enviable talent for descriptive language. Among other things, I love her ability to employ simple, direct language to master an image, and I love the use of color in her poetry and prose. (Her work is a real treat for any reader who is a visual thinker.)

Below is Chapter 1 of her memoir, “A Feast, A Roadmap and A Tanager.” Read it.

Celebrate National Poetry Month — this is probably my second favorite poem of all time, and the very first poem I ever read by W.H. Auden.  For me, it is a thousand times darker than Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.”  (“Oh stand, stand at the window, as the tears scald and start.”)

I first found this piece during my early high school years, after Whitley Strieber’s “Communion” used its “Plunge your hands in water” stanza to preface a chapter.

Thanks to the Academy of American Poets for this link:

As I Walked Out One Evening

 I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.