Robert Girvan | Essays and Poetry 

A Poem and a story about the poem The peony petals scattered there, were freshly-fallen white and fair, no longer than a day or two before my glance again fell to the floor. They were closed in, dark-stained now, their call of light and grace and how I had to learn from what was shown had dropped a note and changed its tone.   How to, or so they seemed to say, be fresh and light and live this day, and when the time has come to die - quick-now, into the bright blue sky. 2017

Nietzsche, Chamfort, Socrates, Jesus, and Blade Runner     Daily, the slings and arrows of outrageous - or really irritating - fortune arrive. How to respond? What to be - broken, bronzed, or radically open? I had occasion, quite by accident or perhaps serendipity, to reflect again on these questions recently. On Christmas Day, I reread the following quote in  The Gay Science , by Nietzsche, in Part Two, aphorism # 95, purporting to be the last words of the French writer Ch