Misfortune comes in sets of threes, but recently I’ve lost count of the omens darkening these skies. Understanding is important, but so is justice, and memory to carry change past the span of sympathetic anger. All power in this world is man-made, the bricks still sticky with greased fingerprints. We were supposed to know better.
Always just sort of truly set these ways wobble wonderfully, or is it woefully? Uncertain if they’re certain about the shape of the course decided upon, waited upon, debated upon. This is what has been done. So far… for now… Not quite as pictured. A very quick poem before I head to bed tonight. It was my first night back on the judo mat, so I’ve only just got home, but I didn’t want to miss the Quadrille night. Can’t wait to read the others tomorrow. (P.S, I almost think this might count as a political poem… huh… not really done one of those before.)
There are too many fractures in the fabric of what we are when talking of the greater. We let people spill through into the emptiness. We mourn and demonise, plant blame in gardens not our own and pretend to learn from mistakes already repeating. I wrote one poem for today’s Quadrille prompt before I started thinking about everything that has happened over the last few days. We always seem to be learning our lessons too late and apologising rather than preventing. I hope one day that will change.
May I introduce you all to the celebrated Mrs Macaulay! For those who you who haven’t read my profile, (not blaming you, I’m not really a profile reader either), and for those of you who have simply forgotten what it says, (I think it is mentioned), I am currently studying for my history degree at Bath Spa University. The core module for second years, the very enticingly named HY5001 module, is basically looking at how and why history was written, with case studies of Historians such as Herodotus (Greek historian; so called ‘Father of History’) and others such as Catherine Macaulay (First female British historian.) Catherine Macaulay is the topic of my joint presentation which is due in on the 9th of December. So this weekend I am working my war through a lever-arch-file, of about one inch in thickness, all of which is either journal articles on Mrs Macaulay or the first segment of her History of England. (I think the printer must have been short of the letter ‘s’ when it was printed …
London did not make itself an easy city to love, Christina knew that better than most. She kept her eyes fixed to the cobbles underfoot and forced herself to ignore the flood of people crowded into the streets, their bodies pressing in on her as she picked her way past. The in-between ran across the bridges of London. It was the area where the nobility ventured out to gawk at the poor, worthless people who fell into the wrong side of London, and those same poor, worthless people lingered, hoping for scraps. Christina pulled the rim of her hat lower and shrugged past the small mobs of well dressed gentry, into the maze of narrow alleyways and filthy terraces beyond. Sidestepping the beggars who huddled in doorways she gripped onto her collar, hiding behind the discoloured leather. Here was where the unsavoury were kept out of sight, laws set out by men like Christina’s father, forbidding those ‘of less than pleasing appearance’ to step out into the main streets of London. Their presence was deemed too …
