William Snow

@willsnow8.bsky.social

238 Followers 69 Following

Cryptic crossword setter - Bluebird (Independent), Solomon (FT) and Conto (elsewhere). Currently benefitting from limiting my social media use.

The distracted boyfriend meme. The object of attention on the left is labelled 'starting the clue-writing process with wordplay', the boyfriend in the middle is labelled 'cryptic crossword setter' and the girlfriend on the right is labelled 'starting the clue-writing process with a definition'.

From Hadji Murat:
Of hatred for the Russians no one even spoke. The feeling that was experienced by all the Chechens, big and small, was stronger than hatred. It was not hatred, but a refusal to recognise these Russian dogs as human beings, and such loathing, disgust, and bewilderment before the absurd cruelty of these beings, that the wish to exterminate them, like the wish to exterminate rats, venomous spiders, and wolves, was as natural as the sense of self-preservation.

Family Home
(for Alice)

Demolished without warning
you live within the remnants
of the roof that once protected you
the floors on which you stood
the reinforced foundations
turned to dust
to scattered ash

It’s possible that a stitch in time
might save as many as twelve or as few as three,
and I have no trouble remembering
that September has thirty days.
So do June, November, and April.

I like a cat wearing a chapeau or a trilby,
Little Jack Horner sitting on a sofa,
old men who are not from Nantucket,
and how life can seem almost unreal
when you are gently rowing a boat down a stream.

That’s why instead of recalling today
that it mostly pours in Spain,
I am going to picture the rain in Portugal,
how it falls on the hillside vineyards,
on the surface of the deep harbors
where fishing boats are swaying,

and in the narrow alleys of the cities
where three boys in tee shirts
are kicking a soccer ball in the rain,
ignoring the window-cries of their mothers.