Bertolt Brecht: Hollywood

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Activists of the Ukrainian feminist nudity group Femen clash with Swiss police during a protest at the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday 28 January 2012: photo by Jean-Christophe Bott/AP

Every day, to earn my daily bread
I go to the market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take up my place among the sellers.

A topless Ukrainian protester is arrested by Swiss police after climbing up a fence at the entrance to the congress center where the World Economic Forum takes place in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday January 28 2012. The activists are from the group Femen, which has have become popular in Ukraine for staging small, half-naked protests against a range of issues including oppression of political opposition: photo by Anja Niedringhaus/AP

Bertolt Brecht: Hollywood, 1942 (written to be set to music for voice and piano by Hanns Eisler), from Poems in Exile, 1944, reissued in Selected Poems, 1947; translated by Michael Hamburger in Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, 1976

A Wild Goose Chase

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Greylag Geese (Anser anser) in flight: photo by Michael Maggs, 3 July 2008

MERCUTIO

Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits faint.

ROMEO

Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match.

MERCUTIO

Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have
done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of
thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five:
was I with you there for the goose?

ROMEO

Thou wast never with me for any thing when thou wast
not there for the goose.

MERCUTIO

I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.

ROMEO

Nay, good goose, bite not.

Startled by the approach of the photographer, the Greylag Goose takes off, near Kromenie, The Netherlands: photo by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen, 17 April 2006

MERCUTIO

Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most
sharp sauce.

ROMEO

And is it not well served in to a sweet goose?

MERCUTIO

O here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an
inch narrow to an ell broad!

ROMEO

I stretch it out for that word 'broad'; which added
to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.

A skein of Greylag Geese in flight, near Krommenie, The Netherlands: photo by Michael Hanselmann, 2007

William Shakespeare: from Romeo and Juliet, II.IV

Edwin Muir: Horses

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Horse Frightened by a Storm: Eugène Delacroix, 1824 (Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest)

Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,

On the bare field -- I wonder why, just now,

They seem terrible, so wild and strange,

Like magic power on the stony grange.

Perhaps some childish hour has come again,

When I watched fearful, through the blackening rain,

Their hooves like pistons in an ancient mill

Move up and down, yet seem as standing still.

Their conquering hooves which trod the stubble down

Were ritual that turned the field to brown,

And their great hulks were seraphim of gold,

Or mute ecstatic monsters on the mould.

And oh the rapture, when, one furrow done,

They marched broad-breasted to the sinking sun!

The light flowed off their bossy sides in flakes;

The furrows rolled behind like struggling snakes.

But when at dusk with streaming nostrils home

They came, they seemed gigantic in the gloam

And warm and glowing with mysterious fire

That lit their smouldering bodies in the mire.

Their eyes as brilliant and as wide as the night

Gleamed with a cruel apocalyptic light.

Their manes the leaping ire of the wind

Lifted with rage invisible and blind.

Ah, now it fades! It fades! And I must pine

Again for that dread country crystalline,

Where the black field and the still-standing tree

Were bright and fearful presences to me.

Rearing Horse: Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-1504 (Royal Library, Windsor)


Jaguar attacking a Horseman Frightened by a Storm: Eugène Delacroix, c. 1855 (Národní Galerie, Prague)

Edwin Muir (1887-1959): Horses, from First Poems, 1925

JJ Harrison: Birds of Tasmania and Queensland

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Scarlet Robin (Petroica boodang), Meehan Range, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 13 February 2009

JJ Harrison is a remarkable nature photographer from Hobart, Tasmania.

"Scarlet Robins are not too difficult to spot if you look in the right places. It is another matter to get within a few meters of a wild bird for a high quality photograph. In this instance I’d spotted this bird previously in the Meehan Range. I knew the species was sedentary and territorial so I was able to return to the same location a few times until I got a photo I was happy with. I waited patiently near a perch where I had seen it before with the sun to my back. When it arrived I took a few photos before it left again. I believe the camera was hand-held. I used fill flash with a home made version of the better beamer to even out the shadows created by the sun."

Red Oystercatchers (Haematopus longirostris), Austin's Ferry, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 21 August 2011



Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus), Lake Dulverton, Oatlands, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 15 December 2011



Radjah Shelduck (Tadorna radjah), Centenary Lakes, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011



Rainbow Bee-eater (Merops ornatus), perching on a drinking fountain at Centenary Lakes, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011



Bush Stone-curlew (Burhinus grallarius), Centenary Lakes, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011



Straw-necked Ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis), Centenary Lakes, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011



Yellow-throated Honeyeater (Lichenostomus flavicollis), stealing a hair from a Tasmanian Pademelon (Thylogale billardierae) for nesting material, Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 12 November 2011



Olive Whistler (Pachycephala olivacea), Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 13 November 2011



Tasmanian Scrubwren (Sericornis humilis), Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 12 November 2011



Beautiful Firetail (Stagonopleura bella), male, Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 13 November 2011



Beautiful Firetail (Stagonopleura bella), female, Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 13 November 2011



Orange-bellied Parrot (Neophema chysogaster), male, Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 11 November 2011



Azure Kingfisher (Alcedo azurea ruficollaris), Julatten, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 3 July 2011



Golden Whistler (Pachycephala pectoralis), Risdon Brook Park, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 28 August 2011



Spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus), male with nesting material, Risdon Brook Park, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 27 August 2011



Spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus), female with nesting material, Risdon Brook Park, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 27 August 2011



Striated Pardalote (Pardalotus striatus), Risdon Brook Park, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 28 August 2011



Pale-yellow Robin (Tregellasia capito), Julatten, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 4 July 2011



Grey-headed Robin (Heteromyias cinereifrons), Julatten, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 5 July 2011



Dusky Honeyeater (Myzomela obscura), Daintree Village, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 June 2011



Yellow-spotted Honeyeater (Meliphaga notata), Daintree Village, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 2 July 2011



Striated Heron (Butorides striatus), Daintree Village, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 2 July 2011



Fairy Tern (Sterna nereis), Little Swanport, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 28 December 2011



Double-banded Plover (Charadrius bicinctus), breeding plumage, Ralph's Bay, Lauderdale, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 30 July 2011



Hooded Plover (Thinornis rubricollis rubricollis), Prosser River Spit, Orford, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 28 December 2011



Mangrove Robin (Peneoenanthe pulverenta), Cairns Esplanade , Cairns, Queensland, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 29 June 2011



Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exultans), East of the Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania, Australia: photo by JJ Harrison, 18 September 2011

Katherine Mansfield: To L. H. B. (1894-1915)

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Red Mistletoe, Hopkins River, New Zealand: photo by William M. Connolley, December 2005

Last night for the first time since you were dead
I walked with you, my brother, in a dream.
We were at home again beside the stream
Fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red.
“Don't touch them: they are poisonous,” I said.
But your hand hovered, and I saw a beam
Of strange, bright laughter flying round your head
And as you stooped I saw the berries gleam.
“Don't you remember? We called them Dead Man's Bread!”
I woke and heard the wind moan and the roar
Of the dark water tumbling on the shore.
Where -- where is the path of my dream for my eager feet?
By the remembered stream my brother stands
Waiting for me with berries in his hands...
“These are my body. Sister, take and eat.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923): photographer unknown, 1912; image by Yohan euan o4, 23 October 2008

Pittosporum crassifolium, Pukerua Bay, New Zealand: photo by Pseudopanax, 1 August 2006

Ngaio or Mousehole Tree (Myoporum laetum): photo by Júlio Reis, 19 June 2004

The man in the moon becomes, in Maori legend, a woman, one Rona by name. This lady, it seems, once had occasion to go by night for water to a stream. In her hand she carried an empty calabash. Stumbling in the dark over stones and the roots of trees she hurt her shoeless feet and began to abuse the moon, then hidden behind clouds, hurling at it some such epithet as "You old tattooed face, there!" But the moon-goddess heard, and reaching down caught up the insulting Rona, calabash and all, into the sky. In vain the frightened woman clutched, as she rose, the tops of a ngaio-tree. The roots gave way, and Rona with her calabash and her tree are placed in the front of the moon for ever, an awful warning to all who are tempted to mock at divinities in their haste. -- William Pember Reeves: The Long White Cloud, 1899

Katherine Mansfield's birthplace, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand: photo by Lanma726, 3 December 2007

Myoporum sandwicense, habitat, sunrise: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 29 October 2004

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923): To L. H. B. (1894-1915), from Poems at the Villa Pauline, 1916, in Poems, 1923

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do.

-- Journal entry for 19 December 1920, in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927), ed. J. Middleton Murry

for A.

Lewis W. Hine: Child Scavengers

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Street kids, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Boys of the Dumps, South Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Patching up a meal, Boston slums, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Tony on his way home from the market bringing chicken heads and feet to sell to the soap man, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Garbage gleaners among ash barrels, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



"Gimme a smoke" -- street boys, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Swiping behind the cop's back, Boston. Massachusetts, October 1909



Picking over ash barrels, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Boy woodpicker loading, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Mister, give me a lift? Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Boy woodpickers under way, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Little girl woodpickers making up a load, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Bringing home the wood, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Boy woodpicker resting, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Carrying home decayed refuse from markets, Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Boys picking over garbage on "the Dumps", Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Boys and girls working on "the Dumps", Boston, Massachusetts, October 1909



Scavenger toting wood, Fall River, Massachusetts, 21 June 1916



Toting wood, Fall River, Massachusetts, 16 June 1916



Scavengers, Fall River, Massachusetts, 16 June 1916



On the Pleasant Street Dump, Fall River, Massachusetts, 21 June 1916



Boy collecting discarded newspapers to sell to store-keepers, Union Square, New York City, July 1910



Pine Street Dump scavengers, Fall River, Massachusetts, 22 June 1916



Scavenger, Chicopee Falls. Massachusetts, 29 June 1916



Junk gatherers, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, April 1917

Photos by Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940) from National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress