Why is life
Clinging together
On a leaky raft
For a brief eyeblink
Under a boundless radiant sky
In the midst of such vast wonders?
22nd November 2023
- Home
- About Jo Walton
- Books
- Podcast
- Poetry
- Love, Pain, and Death
- A happy morning filled with pears
- And love
- Because you need your sleep (a very short love poem)
- Belated Valentine
- Bittersweet Harvest
- Black Figs at the Villa d’Este, 28th August 2014
- Blood and Bone
- Comfort In the Knowledge
- Conquering Sleep
- Death Sucks: A Sonnet Cycle
- Death Continues to Suck
- Death Sucks #5750
- More Sting
- Journey
- On the Death of Danny Lieberman
- Grief
- Jay Lake 1964-2014
- Death Just Sucks
- On the Death of Marilyn Bremmer
- Negatio Mori
- Words of Comfort and Cheer (On the Deathbed of Greer Gilman’s Mother)
- On the Death of Beth Meacham’s Father
- Statistical Death Sucks
- The world does not stay saved
- Secular Humanist Comfort
- Epicurean Death Sucks
- On the Death of Louise Mallory’s Mother
- David G. Hartwell, 1941-2016
- On the death of Spider
- On the Death of Velma de Selby Bowen
- On the impending death of Morris Keesan
- Yarnell Fire
- On the Impending Death of Iain Banks
- On the Death of Dr Michael Matthew Fiveash
- Viking Ship Museum, Oslo
- Doing Laundry on the Last Day of the World
- E. Jane Jones 1923-2015
- Evensong
- Fabio Picchi 1954-2022
- Friends
- Galatia
- Gill Goodridge 1926-2022
- Henry Ellis “Harry” Hoad, 1897-1917
- Hope Eyes
- I want…
- If the living do not remember the dead, who will?
- Jenna Felice 1976-2001
- John M. Ford Memorial: 27th October 2006
- John M. Ford Sestina
- Joy of Libraries
- July 1911
- Just a moment
- K Poem
- Keeping Going
- Lies About Pain
- Litany for Being Centered Through Pain
- Married Love
- Michelangelo, 1475-1564
- Next Time I Fall in Love
- Next Time I Fall in Love 2: For Laurie Penny
- Night Thoughts
- Non Serviam
- Obsessed with Petrarch
- Pain lacks plot: Haikus
- Pegasus
- Petrarch and Laura
- Samian bowl
- Secular Humanist Hymn
- Shafts of Sunlight
- Sleepless in New Orleans
- Sometimes the sky is empty
- Sophoniba
- Spiral Sestina
- The Death of Petrarch
- The Grief of Apollo
- The Hoard
- The Muse Comes Back
- The Purpose of Sonnets
- The Soft Arguments of Time
- Time Machine
- To a young girl crying on the bus
- Unbound
- Unheard Sonnets
- Ursula Le Guin
- Ursula le Guin 1929-2018
- Vast, Fleeting
- Veiled Language
- Verre/Vair
- Vicious Nexus
- Vivi per Sempre
- What Persephone Knew
- What to do with a crush?
- When Everything Spirals Down
- When You Dance
- New Myths for Old Gold
- A Fine Italian Hand
- A Glimpse of the Muse on Papineau
- Advice to Loki
- An Oracle from Dionysos
- Anchises
- Andromache
- Another Oracle from Dionysos
- Ask to Embla
- Ayfa’s Song
- Bookstores of Heaven
- Candlemass
- Carnival Dragons
- Cassandra
- Electra to Orestes
- Eucatastrophe Poem
- Fisher King
- Footfall (translation of Cavafy)
- Grendel, Again
- Hades and Persephone
- I just changed one letter!
- In Death’s Dark Halls, a Dog Howls
- Is This the Face?
- Jane Austen Among the Women
- Keeping an eye out
- Le Morte de MacArthur
- Leap Saints
- Lion Mother
- Mary Madgalen
- Medusa
- Milton in Heaven
- Nemi
- New Hope Woman
- Nine Things About Oracles
- Not in this town
- Odin on the Tree
- Owl Mother
- Sappho beyond Hades
- Sibyl
- Sky Woman
- Still Odin
- Still Odin
- Susan
- The Assumption of St Jerome
- The Chocolate Tarot
- The Conception of Cuchulain
- The Death of Llacheu ap Arthur
- The Devil’s Party
- The Ghosts of Time to Come
- The Grief of Orpheus
- The Love and the Oath
- The Magic Animals of Heaven
- The Ragnarok Song
- The Weatherkeeper’s Diary
- Twelve Missing Scenes From the Life of the Virgin
- Yo, Bacchus!
- Zedekiah in the Inner Chamber
- Red as Blood
- A Plausible Guess
- After the Spindle
- Blood Poem IV
- Cendrillion Sunrise
- Dragon’s Song
- Lake Wife
- Mari Llwyd
- Night on Cadair Idris
- North Wind
- Off With the Fairies
- Postcolonial Literature of the Elves
- Raven Prince
- Scorpio
- The Cloud Mouth
- The Head
- The Lessons of Fairytales
- The Old Queen
- Three Bears Norse
- Two Trolls and a Princess
- What do Elves Smell Like?
- What Dragons Learn From Fairytales
- What Story Would You, Sir?
- Wyrms
- Shakespeare
- Alternate Hamlet Sonnet
- Arthur’s Bosom
- Cardenio
- Henry V Part II
- Machiavelli and Prospero
- Oregon Shakespeare Festival to rewrite Shakespeare
- Stage Vs Screen
- The Baseless Fabric of This Vision
- The Poly Winter’s Tale
- Thirteenth Night
- This Spring, in Elsinore
- To Shakespeare on his four hundredth anniversary
- Wittenburg: A double sonnet
- The News
- “Pax in forma columba”
- 1947
- 9th November 2016
- A tangle of wires
- American Dream
- Ares and Athene
- Asa Loki, Under Glacier (Eyafjallajökull)
- Between the li(n)es
- Britannia
- Calamita d’Italia, two translations
- Car Parks and Kings
- Cold Autumn Gales
- Desmond
- George Fox
- Grim Dystopian Mazurka
- Henry Kissinger 1923-2023
- History is easy
- Home Photos
- How to Hide Treasure (For Khalid al-Asaad, 1932-2015)
- In Time of Plague: Saturnalia
- King George is Dead
- Make Earth Great Again
- Mall Poem
- Moloch
- Neighbours: Traditional Vernacular British Poem About Brexit
- New Orleans Talking Blues
- Not the Christmas Poem You Were Looking For
- One of the victims was a ninety-seven year old woman
- One Simple Thing
- Posterity
- Routine Morning
- Ten Years Ahead: Oracle Poem
- Terrible People
- The Flight Into Egypt
- The news
- The Shell
- The women outside the wall
- To a friend planting bulbs today
- Today you told me that the wolves came back
- Today you told me that the wolves came back
- Truth on Life Support
- Tsunami
- USA 2018
- Villanelle
- Vulcan’s Forge
- Wayside Morning
- F*k* News
- By Their Spaceships Ye Shall Know Them
- Alien Landing
- An Old Poet Sees a New Star
- By Their Spaceships Ye Shall Know Them
- Cave Painters, Starship Dancers
- Earth
- I Reinvent Myself From Time to Time
- My Mother Was a Methodist, My Father Was a Knife
- Newton and Cromwell
- Newton’s Dream
- Nine Things About Heraclitus
- People, Tech. Glory etc.
- Photons
- Pleiades
- Scientific Method
- Submersible Moonphase
- The Winter Road
- Through the Green Fuse
- Translated from the Original
- Under the Frond Trees
- Water on the Moon
- What Gods May Come?
- When We Were Robots in Egypt
- Places and Travel
- A Foggy Morning in Esperanza Springs
- Allegory of Good and Bad Government
- Another Valley
- Bargello
- Early Morning, Saint Malo: Two sonnets
- Earth (for Greer)
- English Cemetery, Florence
- Flying By Night
- Hymn to Sardinian Apollo
- Iceland (Day 2)
- New Mexico Train Haikus
- Next Talking Fish, Five Hundred Miles
- Not a Selfie
- O City, City
- Paris
- Prayer to Hermes
- Salt and Alabaster
- Sketching the Cloister of Santa Croce
- Sonnets at the Source of the Sorgue
- Spain Train Haikus
- Starlings in Rome, November 2022
- The Pantheon
- The Vendors of Via dei Cerchi
- Three Stops in Italy 2021
- Travel Planning
- Typhon at Ischia
- Unnecessary Journeys in December
- Unnecessary Journeys in December 2
- What the Old Stones Say
- Zephyr Moon
- Eastward Zephyr Haikus
- Jardin Botanique 17th April 2013
- Zephyr Haikus (Things seen from the train 8th-10th March 2016)
- Visiting France
- Come if You Like
- Adirondack Poem
- The Turning Year
- Solstice 2017
- Happy New Year
- A surprisingly long cake making poem
- Moments
- February 15th
- Another Poem About the Weather
- Venial Joys
- Guy Outside Vendome Metro Handing Out Free Papers (trans)
- Suddenly, Spring
- Amroth III (Conversation with the Sea)
- Jardin Botanique October 3rd 2005
- The Real Season
- Seasons Readings
- Plea for Inclusivity in Nativity Scenes
- The Hopes and Fears of All the Years
- In Winter’s Heart
- Whimsy
- A Feminist Perspective on Glaciation
- A Game of Consequences
- Alarm Clock, see Zephyr (an imaginary index)
- Alessandro Farnese
- Allegory
- Antiquity
- Apep, the Snake God
- Begin to Learn to Read the Sea
- Blood Poem V
- Crow on the Orient Express
- Dialogue
- Dinosaurs Rarely Pray to Athena
- Do Not Use N95 in Space!
- Emily Dickinson’s “Howl!”
- For Louise
- From a Found Typo
- Happy Birthday, Sherwood Smith!
- Imaginary Internet Friends
- In the Room the Women Come and Go
- Interviewing the Sky
- Jane Austen and Canute
- JCB
- Joy of Reading
- Lions Vs Martyrs (What? What?)
- Lucy/Selendra
- Nonsense Sonnet
- Nonsense!
- Off With Jack
- On the compositional methods of Ada Palmer
- Overrated
- Ovid in Exile
- Ponty Market
- Proud Sappho
- Rejoice!
- Spam Poetry
- St Francis Preaches to the Animals
- The Destruction of Woking
- The End of the World, in Duxford
- The Godzilla Sonnets
- The Lurkers Support Me In Email
- The Snows of Coney Weston
- Time catches up with art catches up with time…
- Time Travellers
- Tolkien’s Refutation of Plato
- Unusual Chameleons
- Usenet 25th December 2006
- Warre
- Where You Met Me
- Yet Another Story ID
- You said you sat for a bit, you didn’t say you wrote a poem!
- “Perhaps the horse will learn to sing…”
- Love, Pain, and Death
- Recipes
- 1: Sirens
- 2: Ideal Chocolate Cake
- Apricot loaf with cinnamon and saffron
- Autumn Apple cake (Torta di mele)
- Awesome Orange Cookies
- Blood Orange Cake
- Butter Tarts
- Cakelings
- Carcofi pie
- Carrot Soup
- Cassoulet (Very easy)
- Cheese and Bacon scones
- Cheesecake (easy)
- Chicken liver pate with apple, mushrooms, garlic and red wine
- Choc-chip Ricotta Cake
- Chocolate brownies (very easy)
- Clafouti
- Cousin Beryl’s Fruitcake
- Finnish Mushroom Quiche (easy)
- Fleur de Sel Chocolate and Raspberry Bars
- Holy Grail Cookies
- Italian grape cake (Schiavona ala uva)
- Italian Ricotta Meatballs
- Lamb and Barley Casserole
- Maple Walnut Brownies
- Mince Pies
- Mushroom Soup
- Nutroast
- Onion and Tarragon Quiche
- Raspberry Muffins
- Rhubarb Crumble
- Roast Chicken
- Scones
- Shortbread
- Spanakopita (really easy)
- Spiced Peach Tarts
- Summer Roast Chicken (incredibly easy)
- Vegan Berry Cakelings
- Vegan Cassoulet
- Vegan Choc Chip Spiced Stollen (really easy)
- Yo Ho Ho Scintillation Fruitcake
- Yokki
- Short Stories
- Plays
- Privacy Policy
- Blog
- Translations
- Photo of the day
