[audio http://dysonology.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/02-octet-in-f-d803-ii-andante-un-poco-mosso.mp3]

"Lines for Winter"

Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself -- inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars. And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are.

by Mark Strand.

Strand wrote this for his friend Rosalind Krauss when she got the blues. I like it.

(photo copyright me though - it's on the river Thames near Hammersmith bridge on a cold day)