For the first time in a week it is actually possible to see the horizon.    A dreich haar has enveloped the Kingdom of late, and frankly it has been depressing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turns out to be jolly difficult to photograph in low light, through a window, without a tripod.  Who knew? So the one below makes me laugh, the green light is Asda and the blue is the car wash.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In other news, the chaffinches have found the Nyger seed feeder after about a year, and I have just half blinded myself taking more pictures, so the typing may be a bit iffy from here on  in.   The room was suddenly bathed in rich, rosy beams of light, as below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I only know one poem about dawn, two verses from which follow below.   I am currently re-reading the Everyman Poems of New York so I may remember more.   Viscerally evocative, it brings back the feeling of pounding those streets.

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald.

Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician, astronomer and writer, and he penned those words in 1120.  I guess his algebra is famous too, in certain circles.

Well, that’s birds, photos, Fife, poetry and now a song.  It’s not very cheery but it’s pretty obvious why I was reminded of it.  When I  was at Stirling Uni I used to listen to Tom Ferrie on Radio Scotland in the late evening and he would often play this, a counterpoint to a younger me,  cudgelling my brain to come up with something – anything – to say on Piaget.

Time for a big pot of tea.