Martin is very good at capturing and expressing the ambiguity of this inexplicable world we find ourselves in. I particularly like "Erato" which reminds me of a passage from Gilgamesh that I translated/interpreted:
Thank you, Mike, for your comments on my poems, and for including a fragment of your Gilgamesh translation which is absolutely terrific! I particularly appreciate lines such as, 'Find the cedar box with it's hinges of bronze; / Lift the lid of its secrets' in the context of a post titled 'Egypt and Other Poetry' - not to mention the line about ascending the 'steep stairway to escape modern error' which, of course, echoes my own line in 'Erato' - 'we climb stone stairs together, to gently clasp the stars.'
Real poetry, I guess, is always echoed in the great poems of antiquity - whereas most of the 'prosy' poetry of the present has no authentic frame of reference. Give me Gilgamesh and Egypt any day! Let our works be rooted in what is enduring and truly meaningful. Thank you again for including Gilgamesh. Having it there is greatly appreciated.
I’m obsessed with “Erato”. It has to be one of the best poems in the English language. The final stanza puts me in mind of a Babylonian ziggurat. It is sublimity itself, as is your Gilgamesh translation. Thank you so much for posting it here! It is one of my favorites of your translations, so it was a real pleasure to read it again. I’d actually be interested in publishing it at some point.
Yes, I get the same "ziggurat vibe" from "Erato." If you publish my poem, I suggest considering "After the Persian" by Louise Bogan, which is one of the best poems in the English language, in my opinion. She quotes a line directly from Gilgamesh: "tonight we have the waxing and the waning moon" if I remember things correctly. A stunning poem.
It's scary how much we think alike. I think Louise Bogan wrote two of the finest poems in the English language -- "After the Persian" and "Song for the Last Act" -- and a number of other good ones.
It really is, isn’t it? I couldn’t agree more regarding Louise Bogan. She was one of the greats, yet is so underrated. But you are working to change that at The HyperTexts, of course.
Yes, I published Louise Bogan many moons ago and made her a featured poet along with Conrad Aiken, another undervalued poet. Anne Reeve Aldrich is another THT poet to consider. I have called her an American Sappho along with Emily Dickinson. Check out the similarity here:
Well, she won't be so underrated when you're finished with her. You and The New Stylus may have a seminal part to play in the future direction and survival of great poetry.
You will definitely have to decide a perfect point at which to end Issue 1 of The New Stylus, before you begin again with Issue 2. But take a nice break first after all the work for it is completed. You really deserve it! It's already a truly remarkable production!
Thank you so much, Martin! I greatly appreciate it. I have already been planning on taking breaks in between issues, probably for a couple of months or so. I’ve also already been trying to think of the perfect way to complete the first issue. I don’t know what that is yet to be honest with you.
Taking a break sounds like a very good plan indeed. The important thing is to end the issue on a high, or when all the parts feel just right together. It doesn't matter how short the issue is, as long as it leaves you with a good feeling about yourself and what you've achieved. Because there's always Issue 2!!!
'After the Persian' is indeed a stunning poem - and I do remember 'the waxing and waning moon', which reminds me so much of the moon waning for Sappho, which we talked so much about quite recently. It seems almost as if the poems are coming to Shannon from the Muses themselves because they approve of what she is doing, and her pure heart.
Either would I. Everything is coming seamlessly together so quickly. I believe exactly what Sappho believed: 'Loyally serve the Muse and she will favour you.' Sappho wasn't a Muse then, but she certainly is now, and I think I've gained her favour recently.
That's a fantastic page, Mike! I'll have to come back to it later and spend a few happy hours there. By the way, that picture of Sappho by William Adolphe Bouguereau is truly marvellous, and depicts her as somebody erotic and beautiful, rather than somebody timid and lifeless - which your translations in particular show to be truly false.
Yes, do publish Mike's 'Gilgamesh' translation! I had read it previously, and I was blown away by it. Then I read some of the verses again this morning, and I experience the very same feeling of awe, because - you're right - it is sublimity itself, and the sublime New Stylus would be a truly fitting home for it!
Thank you so much for your kind comments regarding 'Erato'. I actually think that this poem came straight from the Muse herself, and it felt right from the beginning. I think poets live for moments like that.
You’re most welcome for the comments on “Erato”. They are well-deserved. I do agree that poets live for moments like what you describe. I know I do.
I am glad you think The New Stylus is a fitting home Gilgamesh. It really is an honor to be providing a “home” for so many unbelievable poems, and I’m so overjoyed by how well everything is going so far.
I'm overjoyed, too. And I must now mention the other three poems that you've included here. First of all, 'There's More To You'. This is one of my lesser known poems, and it has only been published once before, many years ago.
At the time when I wrote it, I was simply thinking of a woman who was trapped in a miserable life and wished desperately to escape from it. Then, about a week later, I saw the Julia Robert's film, 'Sleeping With the Enemy', and it all came together. I got all the imagery from that film. But the poem wasn't about any specific person I knew. Yet, poetry can be a very mysterious craft indeed, because years later I was talking to a person I care deeply about and I soon realised that the poem was actually about her - that I just needed to tweak a word or two and she was right there in my poem, and still is.
Can a poem write itself before something actually happens? That really is a question worth pondering! But, before answering it, one has to bear in mind what Eliot wrote in his stunning meditation upon the nature of time itself (The Four Quartets): 'All time is eternally present.'
Okay, that took a bit longer than I expected. I'll come back to the other two poems later on, after I check my emails and have a nice cup of tea - or two, to keep me going. I'm just flooded with stuff this morning.
Thank you for sharing that fascinating story about “There’s More to You”! I always love hearing the story behind a great work of work, whether it be a poem, a song, a painting, etc. Poetry is indeed a very mysterious craft—perhaps almost prophetic in this case. Your story puts me in mind of what Mike has written about “Will There Be Starlight”. Both of your stories indicate that sometimes a poem can be written about someone you are meant to cross paths with at some point in your life, even if it’s many years later. Absolutely incredible!
I wish to thank Shannon Winestone and The New Stylus for publishing four of my poems. I feel very honoured to be included here among the most outstanding poets of this present era, and I'm certain that Issue 1 will, in due course, be a hallmark poetry publication.
Shannon, in my opinion, is not only a gifted editor, but she is also a gifted poet in her own right, and I'm reliably informed that one of her own poems will be posted next. I can hardly wait to read it! In the meantime, I've dedicated 'Egypt' to her. Shannon, you're a real marvel in this age of falling poetry standards.
Thank you so very much, Martin! I was very touched by what you wrote. Personally, I’m so honored to publish your work. Another honor is to have such a marvelous poem written for and dedicated to me. It couldn’t be anymore appropriate, given that I am a lover of all things Egyptian. I’m delighted that others now get to enjoy this fantabulous poem as well.
You are correct, Shannon, in thinking that I wrote 'Egypt' specifically for you. It arose out of conversations we were having back at the time when the Chained Muse had just published my poem 'Ebb Tide'. In one of the comment boxes, you said something strikingly profound and wise. I replied and said, 'You're very wise for somebody so young.' I think you were only twenty at the time.
Others in the same publication had been talking incessantly about various varieties of wisdom, such as 'timeless wisdom', 'accumulated wisdom' and 'meaningful wisdom', as if wisdom was a gift given only to the elderly after years of arduous and frantic searching for it. So I started thinking: 'If this is true, how come Shannon is already wise?' That thought took me down the path of past lives - especially when I remembered you telling me about your innate love of all things Egyptian.
True poets are not the same as most poets - they feel and sense things that others don't. I'm not saying that you were Nefertiti's advisor in some past incarnation, but I wouldn't rule it out either, and you are certainly wise enough to put a really top-notch poetry journal together, just at the very moment when the poetry world could badly use one.
Finally, I must add that I really love the picture of the bust of Nefertiti that you included with this post. I looked at it this morning when I got up and I thought: 'Isn't Nefertiti very beautiful!
You have great taste, Shannon, and I'm so glad I dedicated 'Egypt' to you, and that everything is going so well with The New Stylus. You deserve great success, my wise friend.
Thank you so much for everything, my friend! I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know. You are correct; I was indeed twenty when David published “Ebb Tide”. I was very touched to read what led you to write such a special poem for me. Thank you for sharing all of that! I’m glad you love the bust of Nefertiti by the way. She really is stunning, isn’t she?
Eros and his Mother can be difficult gods for the poet to serve. But Martin McCarthy's reflective lyrics are a contemporary Trionfo di Afrodite. His tender and insightful poems seem to stand firmly in the long tradition of erotic elegy.
Martin's poems, with directness and dignity, celebrate love and its nakedness. He recognizes that love is naked and and seeks out nakedness to complete the circle of reciprocal desire.
I have learned to admire poetry which is grounded in tradition, and Martin's poems are grounded in a tradition as old as the Roman elegists who celebrated beauty and lnowledge in the nakedness of self and other.
that we forget who we were in order to become who we are, in order to choose a new path forward...
Here and throughout this group of lyrics Martin stands with St. Augustine of The Confessions and his phenomenology of memory and forgetfulness, the acknowledgement that we are able to create and renew through remembrance made possible in the crucible of forgetting.
That's very profound and beautiful, Bob, especially that final paragraph that only you could could have written. Thank you so much! It feels quite special when the truly good poets and editors of this era acknowledge each other in a world where they are so often banished to the margins of existence simply because they set a high standard for literature, based on what those before them have achieved.
Of the four poems published here in Issue 1, only 'Erato' is well known and the rest are nearly all first timers. Well, 'Egypt' definitely is - and I've written about it and 'There's More to You' elsewhere in the comments. Now, I wish to say a few words about the final poem (or prose poem, to be accurate) because it was written in the form of a eulogy, and is called 'Eulogy for Eva'.
I wrote this a long time ago for a girl I loved. We used to meet up most evenings and we'd walk along the beach, or just hang out somewhere drinking coffee and talking ... talking ... talking ... about everything. Then, one night we hugged each other and said: 'Goodnight! See you tomorrow.' But that never happened. My mother woke me the next morning and told me she had died from a brain haemorrhage. I never saw her again, and she was so full of life. When I think of her now, I think of her reading The Lord of the Rings, or dancing to 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'. She was a very good dancer!
Thank you so much, Shannon, for publishing this. I had kept it, more or less, hidden away till now, but I think it needed to be published here - and probably deserves to be - even though I can't really think of it as a poem. It's more like a treasured fragment of my life.
There’s no need to thank me! Thank you for letting me publish such a deeply personal piece! It most certainly does deserve to be here, and I hope it will get the attention it deserves. It is a masterpiece that only you could write, and words cannot convey just how profoundly beautiful it is in its pathos.
Lastly, thank you for sharing what you did here. You didn’t have to do that. I remember weeping after you told me about it in an email several months ago. It’s just so unbelievably sad and devastating, and once again, all I can say is that I’m so very sorry. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of such loss.
Thank you, Shannon. What I can say from this distance is, that time heals nothing. (That's a fallacy) You just have to accept the situation and keep going - guided in the darkness by the light of your own poems.
So good of you to quote the very poet I read ever day! And thanks for the hug. We'd just never get by in this world without them. Well, not when it leaves us all a bit bruised and battered sometimes.
Martin is very good at capturing and expressing the ambiguity of this inexplicable world we find ourselves in. I particularly like "Erato" which reminds me of a passage from Gilgamesh that I translated/interpreted:
---------------------------------------------------------------
He Lived: Excerpts from “The Epic of Gilgamesh”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
---------------------------------------------------------------
I.
He who visited hell, his country’s foundation,
Was well-versed in mysteries’ unseemly dark places.
He deeply explored many underworld realms
Where he learned of the Deluge and why Death erases.
II.
He built the great ramparts of Uruk-the-Sheepfold
And of holy Eanna. Then weary, alone,
He recorded his thoughts in frail scratchings called “words”:
Frail words made immortal, once chiseled in stone.
III.
These walls he erected are ever-enduring:
Vast walls where the widows of dead warriors weep.
Stand by them. O, feel their immovable presence!
For no other walls are as strong as this keep’s.
IV.
Come, climb Uruk’s tower on a starless night—
Ascend its steep stairway to escape modern error.
Cross its ancient threshold. You are close to Ishtar,
the Goddess of Ecstasy and of Terror!
V.
Find the cedar box with its hinges of bronze;
Lift the lid of its secrets; remove its dark slate;
Read of the travails of our friend Gilgamesh—
Of his descent into hell and man’s terrible fate!
VI.
Surpassing all kings, heroic in stature,
Wild Bull of the mountains, the Goddess his Dam
—Bedding no other man; he was her sole rapture—
Who else can claim fame, as he thundered, “I AM!”
Thank you, Mike, for your comments on my poems, and for including a fragment of your Gilgamesh translation which is absolutely terrific! I particularly appreciate lines such as, 'Find the cedar box with it's hinges of bronze; / Lift the lid of its secrets' in the context of a post titled 'Egypt and Other Poetry' - not to mention the line about ascending the 'steep stairway to escape modern error' which, of course, echoes my own line in 'Erato' - 'we climb stone stairs together, to gently clasp the stars.'
Real poetry, I guess, is always echoed in the great poems of antiquity - whereas most of the 'prosy' poetry of the present has no authentic frame of reference. Give me Gilgamesh and Egypt any day! Let our works be rooted in what is enduring and truly meaningful. Thank you again for including Gilgamesh. Having it there is greatly appreciated.
Your poem does remind me of Gilgamesh and the towers of Uruk, and that's not common in contemporary poetry, so congratulations.
I’m obsessed with “Erato”. It has to be one of the best poems in the English language. The final stanza puts me in mind of a Babylonian ziggurat. It is sublimity itself, as is your Gilgamesh translation. Thank you so much for posting it here! It is one of my favorites of your translations, so it was a real pleasure to read it again. I’d actually be interested in publishing it at some point.
Yes, I get the same "ziggurat vibe" from "Erato." If you publish my poem, I suggest considering "After the Persian" by Louise Bogan, which is one of the best poems in the English language, in my opinion. She quotes a line directly from Gilgamesh: "tonight we have the waxing and the waning moon" if I remember things correctly. A stunning poem.
You seem to be reading my mind, because I was just thinking today about publishing Louise Boganvat one point or another. I absolutely love her work.
It's scary how much we think alike. I think Louise Bogan wrote two of the finest poems in the English language -- "After the Persian" and "Song for the Last Act" -- and a number of other good ones.
It really is, isn’t it? I couldn’t agree more regarding Louise Bogan. She was one of the greats, yet is so underrated. But you are working to change that at The HyperTexts, of course.
Yes, I published Louise Bogan many moons ago and made her a featured poet along with Conrad Aiken, another undervalued poet. Anne Reeve Aldrich is another THT poet to consider. I have called her an American Sappho along with Emily Dickinson. Check out the similarity here:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/American%20Sapphos.htm
Well, she won't be so underrated when you're finished with her. You and The New Stylus may have a seminal part to play in the future direction and survival of great poetry.
I agree. Those are very fine poems indeed.
You will definitely have to decide a perfect point at which to end Issue 1 of The New Stylus, before you begin again with Issue 2. But take a nice break first after all the work for it is completed. You really deserve it! It's already a truly remarkable production!
Thank you so much, Martin! I greatly appreciate it. I have already been planning on taking breaks in between issues, probably for a couple of months or so. I’ve also already been trying to think of the perfect way to complete the first issue. I don’t know what that is yet to be honest with you.
Taking a break sounds like a very good plan indeed. The important thing is to end the issue on a high, or when all the parts feel just right together. It doesn't matter how short the issue is, as long as it leaves you with a good feeling about yourself and what you've achieved. Because there's always Issue 2!!!
'After the Persian' is indeed a stunning poem - and I do remember 'the waxing and waning moon', which reminds me so much of the moon waning for Sappho, which we talked so much about quite recently. It seems almost as if the poems are coming to Shannon from the Muses themselves because they approve of what she is doing, and her pure heart.
Thank you, Martin! You’re too kind!
I wouldn't be surprised if the Tenth Muse has her hand in all this.
Either would I. Everything is coming seamlessly together so quickly. I believe exactly what Sappho believed: 'Loyally serve the Muse and she will favour you.' Sappho wasn't a Muse then, but she certainly is now, and I think I've gained her favour recently.
Yes, I would say so.
Oh, I would like to think so.
To see another synchronicity, check out this page:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/American%20Sapphos.htm
That's a fantastic page, Mike! I'll have to come back to it later and spend a few happy hours there. By the way, that picture of Sappho by William Adolphe Bouguereau is truly marvellous, and depicts her as somebody erotic and beautiful, rather than somebody timid and lifeless - which your translations in particular show to be truly false.
Yes, a great portrait and stunningly similar to Anne Reeve Aldrich, I think.
I love this page. I recall it was one of the earliest ones I happened upon when I first discovered The HyperTexts.
Yes, do publish Mike's 'Gilgamesh' translation! I had read it previously, and I was blown away by it. Then I read some of the verses again this morning, and I experience the very same feeling of awe, because - you're right - it is sublimity itself, and the sublime New Stylus would be a truly fitting home for it!
Thank you so much for your kind comments regarding 'Erato'. I actually think that this poem came straight from the Muse herself, and it felt right from the beginning. I think poets live for moments like that.
You’re most welcome for the comments on “Erato”. They are well-deserved. I do agree that poets live for moments like what you describe. I know I do.
I am glad you think The New Stylus is a fitting home Gilgamesh. It really is an honor to be providing a “home” for so many unbelievable poems, and I’m so overjoyed by how well everything is going so far.
I'm overjoyed, too. And I must now mention the other three poems that you've included here. First of all, 'There's More To You'. This is one of my lesser known poems, and it has only been published once before, many years ago.
At the time when I wrote it, I was simply thinking of a woman who was trapped in a miserable life and wished desperately to escape from it. Then, about a week later, I saw the Julia Robert's film, 'Sleeping With the Enemy', and it all came together. I got all the imagery from that film. But the poem wasn't about any specific person I knew. Yet, poetry can be a very mysterious craft indeed, because years later I was talking to a person I care deeply about and I soon realised that the poem was actually about her - that I just needed to tweak a word or two and she was right there in my poem, and still is.
Can a poem write itself before something actually happens? That really is a question worth pondering! But, before answering it, one has to bear in mind what Eliot wrote in his stunning meditation upon the nature of time itself (The Four Quartets): 'All time is eternally present.'
Okay, that took a bit longer than I expected. I'll come back to the other two poems later on, after I check my emails and have a nice cup of tea - or two, to keep me going. I'm just flooded with stuff this morning.
Thank you for sharing that fascinating story about “There’s More to You”! I always love hearing the story behind a great work of work, whether it be a poem, a song, a painting, etc. Poetry is indeed a very mysterious craft—perhaps almost prophetic in this case. Your story puts me in mind of what Mike has written about “Will There Be Starlight”. Both of your stories indicate that sometimes a poem can be written about someone you are meant to cross paths with at some point in your life, even if it’s many years later. Absolutely incredible!
'We are creatures moving around in worlds not realised.'
- William Wordsworth
I wish to thank Shannon Winestone and The New Stylus for publishing four of my poems. I feel very honoured to be included here among the most outstanding poets of this present era, and I'm certain that Issue 1 will, in due course, be a hallmark poetry publication.
Shannon, in my opinion, is not only a gifted editor, but she is also a gifted poet in her own right, and I'm reliably informed that one of her own poems will be posted next. I can hardly wait to read it! In the meantime, I've dedicated 'Egypt' to her. Shannon, you're a real marvel in this age of falling poetry standards.
Thank you so very much, Martin! I was very touched by what you wrote. Personally, I’m so honored to publish your work. Another honor is to have such a marvelous poem written for and dedicated to me. It couldn’t be anymore appropriate, given that I am a lover of all things Egyptian. I’m delighted that others now get to enjoy this fantabulous poem as well.
You are correct, Shannon, in thinking that I wrote 'Egypt' specifically for you. It arose out of conversations we were having back at the time when the Chained Muse had just published my poem 'Ebb Tide'. In one of the comment boxes, you said something strikingly profound and wise. I replied and said, 'You're very wise for somebody so young.' I think you were only twenty at the time.
Others in the same publication had been talking incessantly about various varieties of wisdom, such as 'timeless wisdom', 'accumulated wisdom' and 'meaningful wisdom', as if wisdom was a gift given only to the elderly after years of arduous and frantic searching for it. So I started thinking: 'If this is true, how come Shannon is already wise?' That thought took me down the path of past lives - especially when I remembered you telling me about your innate love of all things Egyptian.
True poets are not the same as most poets - they feel and sense things that others don't. I'm not saying that you were Nefertiti's advisor in some past incarnation, but I wouldn't rule it out either, and you are certainly wise enough to put a really top-notch poetry journal together, just at the very moment when the poetry world could badly use one.
Finally, I must add that I really love the picture of the bust of Nefertiti that you included with this post. I looked at it this morning when I got up and I thought: 'Isn't Nefertiti very beautiful!
You have great taste, Shannon, and I'm so glad I dedicated 'Egypt' to you, and that everything is going so well with The New Stylus. You deserve great success, my wise friend.
Thank you so much for everything, my friend! I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know. You are correct; I was indeed twenty when David published “Ebb Tide”. I was very touched to read what led you to write such a special poem for me. Thank you for sharing all of that! I’m glad you love the bust of Nefertiti by the way. She really is stunning, isn’t she?
Yes, I'd love to have Nefertiti in my room, somewhere near the new print of Sappho!
I would love to have her in my home as well. Just think how lovely that would be!
Yes, and some timeless Egyptian artifacts also.
Eros and his Mother can be difficult gods for the poet to serve. But Martin McCarthy's reflective lyrics are a contemporary Trionfo di Afrodite. His tender and insightful poems seem to stand firmly in the long tradition of erotic elegy.
Martin's poems, with directness and dignity, celebrate love and its nakedness. He recognizes that love is naked and and seeks out nakedness to complete the circle of reciprocal desire.
I have learned to admire poetry which is grounded in tradition, and Martin's poems are grounded in a tradition as old as the Roman elegists who celebrated beauty and lnowledge in the nakedness of self and other.
that we forget who we were in order to become who we are, in order to choose a new path forward...
Here and throughout this group of lyrics Martin stands with St. Augustine of The Confessions and his phenomenology of memory and forgetfulness, the acknowledgement that we are able to create and renew through remembrance made possible in the crucible of forgetting.
That's very profound and beautiful, Bob, especially that final paragraph that only you could could have written. Thank you so much! It feels quite special when the truly good poets and editors of this era acknowledge each other in a world where they are so often banished to the margins of existence simply because they set a high standard for literature, based on what those before them have achieved.
Thank you, Bob, for contributing such a deeply profound comment to this page. This is a fine tribute in and of itself to Martin’s immense talent.
Of the four poems published here in Issue 1, only 'Erato' is well known and the rest are nearly all first timers. Well, 'Egypt' definitely is - and I've written about it and 'There's More to You' elsewhere in the comments. Now, I wish to say a few words about the final poem (or prose poem, to be accurate) because it was written in the form of a eulogy, and is called 'Eulogy for Eva'.
I wrote this a long time ago for a girl I loved. We used to meet up most evenings and we'd walk along the beach, or just hang out somewhere drinking coffee and talking ... talking ... talking ... about everything. Then, one night we hugged each other and said: 'Goodnight! See you tomorrow.' But that never happened. My mother woke me the next morning and told me she had died from a brain haemorrhage. I never saw her again, and she was so full of life. When I think of her now, I think of her reading The Lord of the Rings, or dancing to 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'. She was a very good dancer!
Thank you so much, Shannon, for publishing this. I had kept it, more or less, hidden away till now, but I think it needed to be published here - and probably deserves to be - even though I can't really think of it as a poem. It's more like a treasured fragment of my life.
There’s no need to thank me! Thank you for letting me publish such a deeply personal piece! It most certainly does deserve to be here, and I hope it will get the attention it deserves. It is a masterpiece that only you could write, and words cannot convey just how profoundly beautiful it is in its pathos.
Lastly, thank you for sharing what you did here. You didn’t have to do that. I remember weeping after you told me about it in an email several months ago. It’s just so unbelievably sad and devastating, and once again, all I can say is that I’m so very sorry. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of such loss.
Thank you, Shannon. What I can say from this distance is, that time heals nothing. (That's a fallacy) You just have to accept the situation and keep going - guided in the darkness by the light of your own poems.
What you wrote has put me in mind of the following lines by Emily Dickinson:
They say that "Time assuages"—
Time never did assuage.
————
I send you a big hug from across the pond, my friend!
So good of you to quote the very poet I read ever day! And thanks for the hug. We'd just never get by in this world without them. Well, not when it leaves us all a bit bruised and battered sometimes.
You’re most welcome, Martin!
A glorious love that lasts forever, like the first kiss that does not evaporate. Written with holy grace.
Geraldine, I have only seen this now. Thank you for commenting.