This side of Eve* in the CD player, and all is (as well as it can be) well with the world...

I smell the toast, hold that thought. Yes, we're still eating toast. (And drinking Gatorade.) But so far, the main symptoms are gone.

It would take too long to explain how I got to this poem today. But it fits. It's in Yeat's "Words for music perhaps," which are 25 poems focusing on Crazy Jane. (I gleaned this from the link.) A scrap of the poem was in a book I was reading yesterday that had taken the scrap and a bit more from Madeleine L'Engle's book, Two-Part Invention.

Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.’

‘Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart’s pride.

‘A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.

I love that bit. Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. Love, not flowers or candy on Valentine's, but Love that holds the bucket while you wretch.

*This Side of Eve: John and Alyssa's band. I think I'm actually playing their first album. The link talks about their second album.

Off to find more Gatorade...