Echo

Last week we had to prepare a presentation about a given text for WE III. Noelia, Carla and I (and many others) chose this beautiful poem by Christina Rossetti, which I would like to share now. Enjoy...See you all! Flor

Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;

Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright

As sunlight on a stream;

Come back in tears,

O memory, hope and love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,

Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,

Where souls brim-full of love abide and meet;

Where thirsting longing eyes

Watch the slow door

That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

My very life again though cold in death;

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

Speak low, lean low,

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

The Curse

Not often as a reader I come across a story like this one by Arthur Clarke. His excellent choice of words has allowed him to elaborate an incredibly powerful image of desolation and destruction in only a few paragraphs. Truly, no one can finish reading those two pages without feeling a heavy heart.
Still, among the darkness and nothingness of the tale, there is a small ray of hope. Despite the fact that the world seems to have come to an end, its death may not last forever. The final element appearing here is water, which is not completely efficacious for total annihilation. Moreover, it is a source of life. The town is reduced to ruins by the blast, but as it slowly floods, its remains are somewhat sheltered by the swirling waters of the Avon.
Perhaps one day when the time comes they will see daylight again. Cleansed and renewed after being washed by purifying water, maybe millennia later, the earth will hold life again; and the ones who will have such new life will not aim so eagerly towards its destruction.
And deep beneath, intact, the words of the Bard, the symbol of everlasting literature, of what is good and beautiful, will be there to witness it.