R. Frost - The road not taken / Fire and Ice

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Do not go gentle into that good night - D. Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Refugee blues - W.H. Auden

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no placefor us.
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can't do that, my dear,

old passports can't do that.
The consul banged the table and said:
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead";
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear,

but where shall we go today?
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread";
He was talking of you and me, my dear,

he was talking of you and me.
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: "They must die";
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.
Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear,

but they weren't German Jews.
Went down to the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
· From Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 by WH Auden

Alfred Tennyson - Be near me when my light is low

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.

A scanner darkly

In a future not too far from our own, the latest designer drug keeping America's addicts in thrall is Substance D, an instantly addictive drug that induces deep paranoia in its users. "You're either on it, or you haven't tried it," states one its of adherents in Richard Linklater's visually stunning, darkly comic adaptation of Philip K. Dick's cult sci-fi novel, A Scanner Darkly. Linklater's second experiment in rotoscope animation after 2001's Waking Life, a meditation on philosophy, the new film is a perfect match of style and content.
Three guys—Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), and Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson)—share a house where they spend most of their time either doing drugs or talking about doing drugs. Dropping by often are their friends, Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), a stoner so deep into D that hallucinations and accompanying panic attacks are an everyday fact of life, and Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), the woman Bob loves, but who insists on keeping the friendship casual, putting a mysterious distance between them. That's the basic setup, except for one thing: one of them is an undercover cop, Fred, and he has just been assigned to investigate himself with cameras, keeping surveillance 24/7 inside the house.
No one knows who Fred is, not even his boss, although his boss assumes that he is one of the residents of the house. Neither Fred, his boss, nor anyone else in their unit knows what any of the others look like or who they are—at least that's the boss's story, and he's sticking to it. They all wear "scramble suits" while on duty, a special head-to-toe outfit that constantly changes appearance so no one can get a fix on the person inside—or if there's even a person in there. This begins to have a curious effect on Fred, who becomes increasingly paranoid and confused about who he is and what it is he is supposed to be doing.
The story, with its constant paranoia and inferences of government and corporate conspiracy, is a compelling one, and it's well-suited to the rotoscope style, particularly in those moments when psychotic delusions come to life, or when Fred shimmers this way and that in his scramble suit. But the style is only half of it; the rest of the movie belongs to its performers, particularly Reeves and Downey, who are both excellent as men turned around by substance abuse but determined to keep up appearances.
Linklater's casting is also, if nothing else, witty. The major roles refer in some way or another to the actor to playing the part. The most obvious one is Downey, of course, with his personal history of drug use. But one also has to give Ryder credit for taking a role in which her character refers to having been accused of theft, a winking nod to her own troubles with shoplifting. Harrelson plays Ernie as a naïve, hyperactive stoner, a cross between the real-life hemp advocate and innocent Woody Boyd, the character that made him famous on Cheers. Cochrane could be a sadder, tweaked out relative of the good-time stoner he played in Linklater's great Dazed and Confused. And Reeves, well, he continues to confound expectations, following up his role in the mainstream romance The Lake House with this tumble down the rabbit's hole. Like Bob Arctor, the picture he presents of himself depends a lot on the viewpoint of whoever is looking at him.
This is a Linklater film, which means pacing is slack, to the detriment of the film as a whole. Most of his movies suffer from that, with his approach to editing and structure being lackadaisical. In this case, the film slows in some places, nearly to a halt. It's frustrating, but wait it out. The whole is worth it; it's a grand and elegant portrait of paranoia and malfeasance set amongst society's seedy underbelly.
(PAM GRADY)