I apologize for the interruption in service, I got back from the States completely relaxed, straight into term-time madness. Then, to top things off, the cruel mistress who toys with my heart ended up overnight on a drip in A&E with blood loss because of a nose-bleed. I had gotten home that evening from Cambridge to find, Marie Celeste-like, all the house doors open, the lights on, the car sitting in the drive, the dog wandering in the yard, and the phone, ringing, ringing.....But what I was going to go on about, and will have to wait, was Seamus Heaney, in The Redress of Poetry, writing about John Clare. He speaks about how in composing a poem , the fact that as he had already thought twice about a particular usage as to whether or not it was authentic, it was already too late. The idea that the first thought is as swift and inexorable as a descending katana is an interesting one. As Mushashi stated in the Book of Five Rings, to have a thought means that the moment has already passed.
