‘FROM quotidian to quixotic’ is exactly how people like a holiday break to be. It’s been an Irish sort of summer since a sunny burst in June and today’s newspapers carry reports of Visa spending as not seen in years: breaks overseas, cinema and new cars being driving factors. That tells us something about priority stakes now with indifferent skies overhead but the air still heavy with expectancy.
From City of Culture’s anthology, ‘Dream of a City’, Knute Skinner has penned an ode to the fanciful. The structure of phrasing is strong, giving emphasis to the gentle poke at our human way of living in another country in our mind, probably with another not our usual.
Some Say
There are, some say, lives that we could have led,/ choices we could have made, a castle in Spain/ we could have occupied; we could have lain/ beside each other in Dylan’s big brass bed.
We could have savoured viands unlimited,/ depleted cellars stocked with rare champagne,/ breathed lungful after lungful of frangipane,/ and courted renown on steeds high-spirited.
There’d have been, of course, options other than these,/ with stations less extreme, fare less exotic,/ routines designed for a normal narrative.
And if people are free to pick the lives they please,/ with a range of choice from quotidian to quixotic,/ we well might have chosen, exactly, the lives we live.
Astrolabe Press 2014
