Rouse the stupid and damp the pert

Kamila Shamsie: Best Of Friends

Jane Hirshfield : Pebbles

At a time when Australia is about to vote on a referendum for indigenous people (about 950,000 people in a population of 26 million) to have a Voice to Parliament, and when the No campaign has no logical case except political cussedness, these words from Jane Hirshfield, the first composed by her, the second her translation of Issa , seem appropriate.

Global Warming

When his ship first came to Australia,
Cook wrote, the natives
continued fishing, without looking up.
Unable, it seems, to fear what was too large to be comprehended.

 

On a branch / floating downriver / a cricket, singing

Kobayashi Issa (Translated by Jane Hirshfield

Image James Wainscoat Unsplash

Brigitte Reimann: Siblings

Rrrruff!

Hermann Hesse – The Glass Bead Game

Whenever we read a book we bring ourselves to it; our whole lives, experiences, prejudices, views, our place in the world. I cannot avoid the fact that I am a woman born in a country that is relatively free, but where women have had to struggle to earn equal wages to men for the same work, and where they are still struggling to break through the glass ceiling in employment and to combat sexism in many other areas.

Ali Smith – Autumn. Winter

 

Autumn, the first published of Ali Smith’s Seasons series, was being written when the EU referendum was mooted. In December 2015 it was just an idea, by January 2016 it was a done deal.