"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default." J.K. Rowling đčđčđč #hedwig #jkrowling #failure #golive #bebrave #besmart #becunning #behonest #hogwarts #befree #open #fly #dare #gosee #readersareleaders #bookstagrammers #bookstack #hp #rowling #quotes #sundaymotivation (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/BxXmY_2njsf/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1vgwelglnw7b9
Stunned heat of noon. In shade, tan, silken cows
hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers.
  Â
Stamping their hooves from thirst, small horses drowse
or whinny for water. On parched, ochre headlands, daggers
of agave bristle in primordial defense,
like a cornered monster backed up against the sea.
A mongoose charges dry grass and fades through a fence
faster than an afterthought. Dust rises easily.
Haze of the Harmattan, Sahara dust, memoryâs haze
from the dried well of Africa, the headlandâs desert
or riders in swirling burnooses, mixed with the greys
of hills veiled in Impressionist light. We inherit
Â
two worlds of associations, or references, drought
that we heighten into Delacroixâs North Africa,
veils, daggers, lances, herds the Harmattan brought
with a phantom inheritance, which the desperate seeker
of a well-spring staggers in the heat in search ofâ
heroic ancestors; the other that the dry season brings
is the gust of a European calendar, but it is the one love
that thirsts for confirmations in the circling rings
of the ground doveâs cooing on stones, in the acaciaâs
thorns and the agaveâs daggers, that they are all ours,
the white horsemen of the Sahara, Indiaâs and Asiaâs
plumed mongoose and crested palmtree, Benin and Pontoise.
We are historyâs afterthought, as the mongoose races
ahead of its time; in drought we discover our shadows,
our origins that range from the most disparate places,
from the dugouts of Guinea to the Nileâs canted dhows.
                  II
The incredible blue with its bird-inviting cloud,
in which there are crumbling towers, banners and domes,
and the sliding Carthage of sunsets, the marble shroud
drawn over associations that are Greeceâs and Romeâs
and rarely of Africa. They continue at sixty-seven
to echo in the corridors of the head, perspectives
of a corridor in the Vatican that led, not to heaven,
but to more paintings of heaven, ideas in lifted sieves
drained by satiety because great art can exhaust us,
and even the steadiest faith can be clogged by excess,
the self-assured Christs, the Madonnasâ inflexible postures
without the mess of motherhood. With this blue I bless
emptiness where these hills are barren of tributes
and the repetitions of power, our skyâs naive
ceiling without domes and spires, an earth whose roots
like the thorned acaciaâs deepen my belief.