Waiting for Sun

It's gray and rainy in New York City. Looking at photos like this one of Inis Mor is getting me through...

Blue Water, Blue Skies, Kilronan

Sunday Synge Snippet

Prelude

Still south I went and west and south again,
Through Wicklow from the morning till the night,
And far from cities, and the sites of men,
Lived with the sunshine and the moon's delight.

I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,
The grey and wintry sides of many glens,
And did but half remember human words,
In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.



Written 189-? Revised 1907. Published 1909.
(from Synge Collected Works Volume 1)

Synge Snippet

"Once men sought in art to make natural things beautiful. Now we seek to make beautiful things natural."

- Aran 3/11/99 (from Notebook 17, Synge Collected Works v2)

New homes, old homes, and rainbow on Inis Mor, 2007

Synge Snippet

Synge isn't known for his poetry, and most of it wasn't published during his lifetime. Though some of his poetry is sort of brooding and dark in an "okay I get it already you're an angsty artist" sort of way, some of it is really lovely. Here's a poem that makes me smile and think of Synge and Molly Allgood on one of their escapes to the countryside. They had to meet secretly at the beginning of their courtship since she was an actress in his theatre company, and it wasn't kosher for them to be seeing each other. (Scandalous!)

In May

In a nook
That opened south,
You and I
Lay mouth to mouth.

A snowy gull
And sooty daw
Came and looked
With many a caw;

'Such,' I said,
'Are I and you,
When you've kissed me
Black and blue!'

-Written in 1907, published 1909