No Time, spoke the clocks, no God, rang the bells...

I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't...(Dylan Thomas)

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Where birds ride like leaves and boats like ducks
I heard, this morning, waking,
Crossly out of the town noises
A voice in the erected air,
No prophet-progeny of mine,
Cry my sea town was breaking.
No Time, spoke the clocks, no God, rang the bells...


Yannis Stavrou, Port of Thessaloniki, oil on canvas

Dylan Thomas

When I Woke

When I woke, the town spoke.
Birds and clocks and cross bells
Dinned aside the coiling crowd,
The reptile profligates in a flame,
Spoilers and pokers of sleep,
The next-door sea dispelled
Frogs and satans and woman-luck,
While a man outside with a billhook,
Up to his head in his blood,
Cutting the morning off,
The warm-veined double of Time
And his scarving beard from a book,
Slashed down the last snake as though
It were a wand or subtle bough,
Its tongue peeled in the wrap of a leaf.

Every morning I make,
God in bed, good and bad,
After a water-face walk,
The death-stagged scatter-breath
Mammoth and sparrowfall
Everybody's earth.
Where birds ride like leaves and boats like ducks
I heard, this morning, waking,
Crossly out of the town noises
A voice in the erected air,
No prophet-progeny of mine,
Cry my sea town was breaking.
No Time, spoke the clocks, no God, rang the bells,
I drew the white sheet over the islands
And the coins on my eyelids sang like shells.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: Under the brown fog of a winter noon...

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon...

T.S. Eliot
The Waste Land
to Ezra Pound, "Il miglior fabbro"

(from) III. The Fire Sermon

The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept ...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water

Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc'd.
Tereu


T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.

Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers

Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Comments & contemporary Greek artists: What abou our future...

Contemporary thought & contemprary Greek artists, Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Diagonios, Thessaolniki, oil on canvas

Calm images of Greek cityscapes. Images of Thessaloniki in sixties - when earth population was around 3 billions...

We have just been informed about questions on Darwin's theory...

Competition isn't the driving force of evolution...

Maybe, the living space is a major factor...

And what about our future? The human population increased dramatically during the recent years: we were around 3 billions during sixties...

Well, maybe the end of humans will come soon. Who is next? The mosquitos, the bacteria - something similar...As for other kind of animals (like mammals etc), there is no future too - due to human actions..

Relative article follows: CalgaryHerald.Com (August 25, 2010)

Questioning Darwin's Theory

A cornerstone of evolutionary theory - Darwin's famously coined "survival of the fittest" - is being questioned by researchers at the University of Bristol, who argue competition isn't the driving force of evolution.

In a paper published Monday in Biology Letters, researchers, including Calgarian and University of Bristol PhD student Sarda Sahney, claim that though competition has been observed on a small scale, there's little evidence it has guided evolutionary leaps in biodiversity.

Rather, animals diversified by expanding into empty living space, first moving further from water, then "continuing to invade new habitats," argued Sahney, co-author of the paper, along with University of Bristol colleagues Michael Benton and Paul Ferry. "Basically what we saw is that the land on earth is so big that these animals have just diversified into the empty space given to them.

"We haven't yet reached a point where, on a large scale, they have to compete with each other."

The research differs from Darwin's popular survival of the fittest theory, which envisioned competition among animals striving for supremacy as the force behind evolution.

According to Sahney, the study suggests that while competition has been observed on a small scale between species, the concept hasn't affected major shifts in biodiversity.

"When Darwin was talking about survival of the fittest, he saw individual animals and species competing with each other for resources," she said.

"On a large scale, we haven't hit that point yet on land."

The study looked at the biodiversity of tetrapods - amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds - by using fossil records from around the world. It estimated just one third of livable space has been explored on earth so far.

"Animals are still moving into living space. As long as we can preserve the environment that we have, we will continue to see animals diversify because there's just so much space on earth still to be filled," Sahney said.

Royal Tyrrell Museum paleontologist Don Brinkman said the research seems to explore a conceptual shift in the way evolution is studied.

"It's going to stimulate a lot of discussion," Brinkman said.

"Evolution needs the pull of new resources plus the push of competition for animals to exploit those new resources," he added.

University of Calgary biological sciences associate professor Jeremy Fox suggested the study's findings are consistent with Darwin's own theories.

The opportunities to move into new living spaces are fuelled by the competition animals face in their current environment, he argued.

"It's an interesting study, wonderful description of diversification of life. The interpretation is, at least in my mind, completely consistent with and probably reinforces Darwin's insights, which we're still building on today, more than 150 years later," said Fox.

"What the authors have shown is that the diversification of species has gone hand in hand with the diversification of ecological roles those species fill. That's exactly what Darwin himself would have expected."

The study illustrates some of the challenges scientists face trying to explain the fossil record, Fox added.

"The fossil record has given us a record of what happened, not a record of why it happened."

Sahney said the research presents some challenging ideas, adding, "We're not saying Darwin is wrong; we're just saying he didn't have all the information and we can expand upon his theories."