The Empress (Victoria): Arbutus, Two Shaggy Dogs, & The Bees

I saw many of these trees (arbutus) in Victoria, but I didn't know their name until I read Emily's description: "tender satin bark, smooth and lovely as naked maidens." The one at the Empress Hotel was exceptional and very popular with photographers.













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Kafka and Rilke

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TÜBINGEN, JANUARY by Paul Celan

T Ü BINGEN, JANUARY Eyes talked in- to blindness. Their  -- "a riddle, what is pure- ly arisen" --, their memory of floating H ö lderlintowers, gull- enswirled. Visits of drowned joiners to these plunging words: Came, if there came a man, came a man to the world, today, with the patriarchs' light-beard: he could, if he spoke of this time, he could only babble and babble, ever- ever- moremore. ("Pallaksch. Pallaksch.")* * Pallaksch A word that H ö lderlin, spending his last years in the home of a T ü bingen carpenter, was given to uttering in his dementia; it could signify Yes or No. [Poem Translated by John Felstiner; the explanation of Pallaksch is also from his "Notes" in Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan ]  
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Edinburgh: St. Cuthbert's: Thomas De Quincey's Grave

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The Parlograph

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