from Ulysses

by James Joyce

What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his companion of various constellations?

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipient lunation, approaching perigree: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Major) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of alloted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.

Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?

Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constallated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached.

Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?

Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers.

Sad and Deep As You

by Dave Mason

Lips that are as warm could be
Lips that speak too soon
Lips that tell a story
Sad and deep as you

Smile that's warm as summer sun
Smile that gets you through
Smile that tells a story
Sad and deep you

Eyes that are the windows
Eyes that are the dew
Eyes that tell a story
Sad and deep as you

Tears that are unspoken words
Tears that are the truth
Tears that tell a story
Sad and deep as you

Shadow of the Sun

by Paul Weller

Do you still feel the same way about it?
Like you always said you would
Or has time rewritten everything?
Like you never dreamt it could

Remember when we wanted to fly forever
On a magic carpet ride
Forever seems a long time
Cutting us down in size
No matter how hard we try

I could see all I had done
Just chasing dreams across the fields
In the shadow of the sun
I plan to have it all while I'm still young
And chase the fields across my dreams
In the shadow of the sun

Once upon a time I might have told you
But now nothing seems that plain
However much we're changing
There are some things the same
And those same things still say

I could see all I had done
Just chasing dreams across the fields
In the shadow of the sun
I plan to have it all while I'm still young
And chase the fields across my dreams
In the shadow of the sun

Peace

by Langston Hughes

We passed their graves:
The dead men there,
Winners or losers,
Did not care.

In the dark
They could not see
Who had gained
The victory.

Isoldes Liebestod

by Richard Wagner
Trans. by Frederick Jameson

How softly and gently
he smiles,
how sweetly
his eyes open —
can you see, my friends,
do you not see it?
How he glows
ever brighter,
raising himself high
amidst the stars?
Do you not see it?
How his heart
swells with courage,
gushing full and majestic
in his breast?
How in tender bliss
sweet breath
gently wafts
from his lips —
Friends! Look!
Do you not feel and see it?
Do I alone hear
this melody
so wondrously
and gently
sounding from within him,
in bliss lamenting,
all-expressing,
gently reconciling,
piercing me,
soaring aloft,
its sweet echoes
resounding about me?
Are they gentle
aerial waves
ringing out clearly,
surging around me?
Are they billows
of blissful fragrance?
As they seethe
and roar about me,
shall I breathe,
shall I give ear?
Shall I drink of them,
plunge beneath them?
Breathe my life away
in sweet scents?
In the heaving swell,
in the resounding echoes,
in the universal stream
of the world-breath —
to drown,
to founder —
unconscious —
utmost rapture!

It's Raining Today

by Scott Walker

It's raining today
And I'm just about to forget
The train window girl
That wonderful day we met
She smiles through the smoke
From my cigarette

It's raining today
But once there was summer and you
And dark little rooms
And sleep in late afternoons
Those moments descend
On my windowpane

I've hung around too long
Listening to the old landlady's hard-luck stories
You out of me, me out of you
We go like lovers
To replace the empty space
Repeat our dreams to someone new

It's raining today
And I watch the cellophane streets
No hang-ups for me
'Cause hang-ups need company
The street corner girl's
A cold trembling leaf
It's raining today
It's raining today

Shiny Happy People

by Michael Stipe

Shiny happy people laughing

Meet me in the crowd
People, people
Throw your love around
Love me, love me
Take it into town
Happy, happy

Put it in the ground
Where the flowers grow
Gold and silver shine

Shiny happy people holding hands
Shiny happy people holding hands
Shiny happy people laughing

Everyone around
Love them, love them
Put it in your hands
Take it, take it
There's no time to cry
Happy, happy

Put it in your heart
Where tomorrow shines
Gold and silver shine

Shiny happy people holding hands
Shiny happy people holding hands
Shiny happy people laughing