Dublin

I got into Trinity College, Dublin, for the whole year. I know, this isn't the expressed purpose of this blog. But seeing as how only two other people check it and those two have asked me repeatedly, I thought I'd share.

Snedding and all that it entails

This poem should have been here a long time ago. One of my favorite from the summer.

The Turnip-Snedder by Seamus Heaney

For Hughie O'Donoghue

In an age of bare hands
and cast iron,

the clamp-on meat-mincer,
the double flywheeled water-pump,

it dug its heels in among wooden tubs
and troughs of slops,

hotter than body heat
in summertime, cold in winter

as winter's body armour,
a barrel-chested breast-plate

standing guard
on four braced greaves.

"This is the way that God sees life,"
it said, "from seedling-braird to snedder,"

as the handle turned
and turnip-heads were let fall and fed

to the juiced-up inner blades,
"This is the turnip-cycle,"

as it dropped its raw sliced mess,
bucketful by glistering bucketful.


The first poem from Seamus Heaney's new (2006) collection "District and Circle." Read it aloud. With an Irish accent, preferably. Especially "from seedling-braird to snedder."

not a poem, but one of the shortest short stories in the world:

"El Dinosaurio" por Augusto Monterroso (1921-2003)
Cuando despertó el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.


the translation
"El Dinosaurio" by Augusto Monterroso
When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.



Um, I'm a little irked by the fact that people can get away with writing one-sentence stories. Am I allowed to do that? That aside, I suppose the point of this story is to get the reader to imagine. That's what my Spanish prof says, anyway. What immediately comes to my mind: A purple (a majestic purple, not a Barney purple) dinosaur resembling a dragon, which sleeps protectively next to the narrator.... I guess I'm not in one of my cynical moods right now.