tree no longer burdened.
Space cleared:
The beauty of its trunk revealed:
The biggest anaconda of them all.
A tree with space
Grows ten years in two,
Breathing sky unhindered,
Vibrations
Running through both hands to say:
People need freedom like a tree.
NOAHâS ARK
(On 12 January 1987, at 2230GMT, I took down an Italian news agency message in morse sent out specially to ships. The text said that Noahâs Ark was no longer to be found on Mount Ararat, and gave details. The report originated in Tokyo, and the following lines are based on it.)
Earphones fed a message to the hand,
Hurried writing came through pat:
NOAH â S ARK IS NO LONGER FOUND ON MOUNT ARARAT .
Words in Italian, sparks of Aaronâs Rod
Rained across the page in morse
Like intelligence from God:
NOAH â S ARK IS NOT FOUND ON MOUNT ARARAT .
Morse flowed like splintered glass
The text unfinished, rattling on:
BUT IN ALL PROBABILITY YOU WILL FIND NOAH â S ARK
ON A HILL FIVE HUNDRED METRES HIGH
ON THE BANKS OF THE TIGRIS BETWEEN SYRIA AND TURKEY .
Rome International Radio informed all ships
Swaying the emerald Atlantic waves
Urgent news of Ararat,
And Marconi operators wrote the gen
And typed it with the morning news,
Sailors with shocked eyes and lips atremble said:
L â ARCA DI NOÃ NON SI TROVA SUL MONTE ARARAT !
Perhaps Noahâs Ark had been not lost
But one dark night dissected
And put on donkeys for a secret destination.
Hot-footed morse did not originate from God:
A Japanese expedition from an Electronics Firm
Led by YOSHIO KOU had combed
The scrub of Chaldees with a Bible and a map
Finally concluding that
NOAH â S ARK IS NO LONGER ON MOUNT ARARAT
Kids at school threw down their pens
Church and Synagogue were worried
And the Zurich bourse was flurried.
But fact and inspiration tell
How the Ark came on to Ararat because
The navigation of the Pilot was spot-on.
A dove and olive twig to guide the rudder:
And travelling all night above Lake Van
The snowy light was not one cloud of many
But glinting Araratic glaciers in the dawn.
Anchored by a terminal moraine
Noah ordered animals and humans to disperse.
God camouflaged the Ark from archaeologists
Who scour the land with lamp and map.
What YOSHIO KOU found by the Tigris
Was not an Ark but a canoe,
Though matters Biblical led him to state
NOAH â S ARK IS NO LONGER BEACHED ON ARARAT .
The story in the Bibleâs better:
Of how the Ark on Day Seventeen
After the flood that God begat
Bumped against the banks of Ararat.
The Ark, in spite of YOSHIO KOU, lies under rocks
On tufic Ararat, below a Turkish post
That looks on Persia.
I saw it in a dream, and sent a message back
By telegraphic key
Feet tapping to its rhythm on the mat:
NOAH â S ARKâS STILL HIDDEN ON MOUNT ARARAT .
A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight
Not many of the âAngry Young Menâ (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.
So, like all his schoolmates, he left
Space cleared:
The beauty of its trunk revealed:
The biggest anaconda of them all.
A tree with space
Grows ten years in two,
Breathing sky unhindered,
Vibrations
Running through both hands to say:
People need freedom like a tree.
NOAHâS ARK
(On 12 January 1987, at 2230GMT, I took down an Italian news agency message in morse sent out specially to ships. The text said that Noahâs Ark was no longer to be found on Mount Ararat, and gave details. The report originated in Tokyo, and the following lines are based on it.)
Earphones fed a message to the hand,
Hurried writing came through pat:
NOAH â S ARK IS NO LONGER FOUND ON MOUNT ARARAT .
Words in Italian, sparks of Aaronâs Rod
Rained across the page in morse
Like intelligence from God:
NOAH â S ARK IS NOT FOUND ON MOUNT ARARAT .
Morse flowed like splintered glass
The text unfinished, rattling on:
BUT IN ALL PROBABILITY YOU WILL FIND NOAH â S ARK
ON A HILL FIVE HUNDRED METRES HIGH
ON THE BANKS OF THE TIGRIS BETWEEN SYRIA AND TURKEY .
Rome International Radio informed all ships
Swaying the emerald Atlantic waves
Urgent news of Ararat,
And Marconi operators wrote the gen
And typed it with the morning news,
Sailors with shocked eyes and lips atremble said:
L â ARCA DI NOÃ NON SI TROVA SUL MONTE ARARAT !
Perhaps Noahâs Ark had been not lost
But one dark night dissected
And put on donkeys for a secret destination.
Hot-footed morse did not originate from God:
A Japanese expedition from an Electronics Firm
Led by YOSHIO KOU had combed
The scrub of Chaldees with a Bible and a map
Finally concluding that
NOAH â S ARK IS NO LONGER ON MOUNT ARARAT
Kids at school threw down their pens
Church and Synagogue were worried
And the Zurich bourse was flurried.
But fact and inspiration tell
How the Ark came on to Ararat because
The navigation of the Pilot was spot-on.
A dove and olive twig to guide the rudder:
And travelling all night above Lake Van
The snowy light was not one cloud of many
But glinting Araratic glaciers in the dawn.
Anchored by a terminal moraine
Noah ordered animals and humans to disperse.
God camouflaged the Ark from archaeologists
Who scour the land with lamp and map.
What YOSHIO KOU found by the Tigris
Was not an Ark but a canoe,
Though matters Biblical led him to state
NOAH â S ARK IS NO LONGER BEACHED ON ARARAT .
The story in the Bibleâs better:
Of how the Ark on Day Seventeen
After the flood that God begat
Bumped against the banks of Ararat.
The Ark, in spite of YOSHIO KOU, lies under rocks
On tufic Ararat, below a Turkish post
That looks on Persia.
I saw it in a dream, and sent a message back
By telegraphic key
Feet tapping to its rhythm on the mat:
NOAH â S ARKâS STILL HIDDEN ON MOUNT ARARAT .
A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight
Not many of the âAngry Young Menâ (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.
So, like all his schoolmates, he left
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