A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

"Once upon a time and a very good time it was

there was a moocow coming down along the road

and this moocow that was coming down the road 

met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo..."

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

by James Joyce

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

Arachne by Ovid

"Arachne herself, in indignant pride, denied such a debt.

'let's hold a contest,' she said. 'If I'm beaten, I'll pay any forfeit.'"

Extract taken from Metamorphoses by Ovid

Photo by Sandra Saldanha

Yeats on Seeking God

To seek God to soon it is not less sinful than to seek God  too

 late; we must love, man, woman  or child, we must exhaust

ambition, intellect, desire, dedicating all things as they pass,

or we come to god with empty hands.

-Yeats-

Photo by Sandra Saldanha

Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood

" (...) A charred shadow crouches inside.

 In pictures like these there are always empty shoes.

It's the shoes that get to me.

 Sad, that innocent daily task 

- putting your shoes on your feet, 

in the firm belief that you'll be going somewhere. (...)"

Extract from Moral Disorder ( The Bad News)

 by Margaret Atwood

Photo by Sandra Saldanha

Mithologies by Roland Barthes

"One can easily see in a object at once a perfection and an absence of origin, a closure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter (matter is much more magical than life), and in a word a silence which belongs to realm of fairy-tales."

Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957)

Photo by Sandra Saldanha (Louise Bourgeois' sculpture)

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

" When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

 when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like a iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field of daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When its over, I want to say:all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms,

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."

When Death Comes  by Mary Oliver

(from New and Selected Poems)

Photo above by Sandra Saldanha

( Satre and Simone Beauvoir's resting place)

Happy International Women's day!

To a Tree by Elizabeth Bishop

"Oh,  tree outside my window, we are kin,

For you ask nothing of a friend but this:

To lean against the window and peer in

And watch me move about! Sufficient bliss

For me, who stand behind its framework stout,

Full of my tiny tragedies and grotesque grieves,

To lean agains the window and peer out, 

Admiring infinites'mal leaves."

To a Tree ( Extract from 'Writen in Youth') 

 a poem by Elizabeth Bishop

From Elizabeth Bishop Collected Poems

Photos by Sandra Saldanha