On Sunday morning there was an item on RTÉ Radio LW Of Motes and Mendelssohn by Bert Wright which was right up my street.
Bert Wright confessed to a mild obsession with metaphors about sunlight & motes. If you went to his bookshelves you would find post it notes, marginalia & bits of paper marking all those he has found over the years.
The icing on the cake was the Leonard Cohen song, (which is new to me) Love itself from his 2001 album Ten New Songs.
The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.
…
In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.
…
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.
My bookshelves are similarly festooned; although I do not share exactly that same obsession with motes, I was immediately reminded of a favourite quote from Henry James English Hours: My room in London was on the ground floor & the daylight reached it in sadly damaged condition.
