This week I have been unwell with random symptoms such as headache, temperature, lethargy, muscle pain, swollen glands etc, after a day or two in bed I went to the doctors. He said I had a virus,with no serious effects and to take pain killers and return to bed.   It has been a horrible few days,  I have longed to get back to normal,  at work to draw and paint the self-pity has worked overtime!

Last night I was able to watch a DVD for and hour or so … a favourite and bound to cheer or at least remind me of real struggle !

Il Postino  … a perfect film.

this poem also puts it all right …

Ode to clothes

Every morning you wait,

clothes, over the chair,

for my vanity,

my love,

my hope, my body

to fill you,

I have scarcely

left sleep,

I say goodbye to the water

and enter your sleeves, my legs look for

the hollow of your legs,

and thus embraced

by your unwearying infidelity

I go out to tread the fodder,

I move into poetry,

I look through windows,

at things,

men, women,

actions and struggles

keep making me what I am,

opposing me,

employing my hands,

opening my eyes,

puting taste in my moth,

and thus,

clothes,

I make you what you are,

pushing out your elbows,

bursting at the seams,

and so your live swells

the image of my life,

You billow

and resound in the wind.

as though you were my soul,

at the bad moments

you cling

to my bones

empty, at night

the dark, sleep,

people with their phantoms

your wings and mine.

I ask

whether one day

a bullet

from the enemy

will stain you with my blood

and then

you will die with me

or perhaps

it will not be so dramatic

but simple,

and you will sicken gradually,

clothes,

with me, with my body

and together we will enter

the earth.

At the thought of this

every day I greet you

with reverence, and then

you embrace and I forget you

because we are one

and will go on facing the wind together, at night

the street or the struggle, one body,

maybe, maybe, one day motionless.

Pablo Neruda 1954.