Week 4

So, today was the day an ipad nearly went through a glass case.... I've been experimenting with Frame Artist with a view to using it for workshops. I've spent a morning chasing text boxes that disappeared and saved templates that were never to be found. I almost never lose patience with people but sometimes I wish apps were sentient so I could hurt them!

But I've also been drafting a couple of poems - one about the parade of souls at the breakfast table and another about Hermes. He's the god of travellers and traders, the god who crosses borders and boundaries. In my mind's eye I imagine him hanging out at Calais and among the refugees of Iraq and Syria. I don't know how much help he'll be - he's not a straightforward god. He's inventive but he's also a trickster. He's mercurial - literally, he later became the Roman god Pan. Perhaps he's Loki too. I've even come across a suggestion in my research that his modern incarnation is Wily Coyote.

I like him. He makes more sense to me than most of the gods I come across. I guess I'm ok with a god that plays dice!

While researching I also discovered a poem written about him by H.D., and it's wonderful (damn!).

Hermes of the Ways

By H. D.

I THE HARD sand breaks, And the grains of it Are clear as wine. Far off over the leagues of it, The wind, Playing on the wide shore, Piles little ridges, And the great waves Break over it. But more than the many-foamed ways Of the sea, I know him Of the triple path-ways, Hermes, Who awaiteth. Dubious, Facing three ways, Welcoming wayfarers, He whom the sea-orchard Shelters from the west, From the east Weathers sea-wind; Fronts the great dunes. Wind rushes Over the dunes, And the coarse, salt-crusted grass Answers. Heu, It whips round my ankles! II Small is This white stream, Flowing below ground From the poplar-shaded hill, But the water is sweet. Apples on the small trees Are hard, Too small, Too late ripened By a desperate sun That struggles through sea-mist. The boughs of the trees Are twisted By many bafflings; Twisted are The small-leafed boughs. But the shadow of them Is not the shadow of the mast head Nor of the torn sails. Hermes, Hermes, The great sea foamed, Gnashed its teeth about me; But you have waited, Where sea-grass tangles with Shore-grass.