train of thought

The spire ... is just emerging from the morning mist. Looks strangely yellow today.

Hawksmoor, that Peter Ackroyd book about the occult placement of certain London cathedrals.

Actually he got his (psychogeographic) inspiration from Iain Sinclair's Lud Heat, was it?

Lud ... would never say how he got that nickname. Took the knowledge with him to the grave.

The William Golding book of the same name, do I still have it ... yes, a Faber paperback.

& then Alan's poem, also called The Spire, from Messengers in Blackface:

see the light on the flying buttress
surely a visitation from the other
the sailor's beldame you fucked
will see her face on the stone vault
at the crossing of the nave
when she rises from prayers
the boy you loved will hear his voice
in the windlass for a thousand years ...

Golding who in one of his last published pieces said of a bibliography of his works: So now let the book stand on the appointed library shelf in the long, long silence.

Must read The Inheritors one day. About neanderthals, is it? Or ... some extinct branch of us.

Must check on the possibility that the Flores hominin is related not to erectus but to habilis ... journey after journey out of Africa, all dead ends until ours ... which is not to say ...

The main street at Labuanbajo, what was it called? Where every stranger laughed a greeting.

J'ai enfin le droit de saluer des êtres que je ne connais pas ... which Apollinaire poem is that?

The Musician of Saint-Merry.

How brilliant his opening lines are:

You are tired at last of this old world ...

From red to green all the yellows fade ...

Always
we are going further without advancing
and from planet to planet ...

hmmm, this copy is broken backed at Les Fenêtres ... & I've misquoted the first line, it's

The yellow fades from red to green ...

but what does the French say?

Du rouge au vert tout le jaune se muert

I must have quoted another translation than Shattuck's? but whose? my own? The one in Calligrammes says all the yellow dies .... That's literal. I think I prefer fades. But I'm not sure.

The spire ... now buttery brown before the blue & haunted by sulphur-crested cockatoos. Guess I should ... do something ...