A TIME OF MOURNING

“Fascism is Capitalism in decay.”

 

~ Vladimir Lenin ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in Orléans, France in April 2017.

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© 2017 nightpoet all rights reserved

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IDUS MARTIAE

 

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time

with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

 

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo of the Colosseum in Rome taken in 1996.

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© 2017 nightpoet all rights reserved

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RUINS

 

“It is grand to contemplate the ruins of cities;

but it is grander still to contemplate the ruins of human beings!”

 

~ Comte de Lautréamont ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in April 1981.

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© 2017 nightpoet all rights reserved

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COMBARELLES

 

“To me, it seems that mankind can never achieve its highest potentialities

till it has thrown off the incubus of historic and prehistoric religion.”

 

~ William Archer ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac, France in June 2006 of 13,000 to 11,000 year old engravings of female figures found in la Grotte de Combarelles.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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ALL THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN

 

“Night does not show things, it suggests them.

It disturbs and surprises us with its strangeness.

It liberates forces within us which are dominated

by our reason during the daytime.”

 

~ Brassaï ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken at Stonehenge in June 2007.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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LORELEI

 

“Every man needs his Siren
To check his courage and strength
When he hears her song
In his travels through the unknown.”

 

~ Dejan Stojanovic ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo of the Lorelei taken in Germany in July 1982.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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FADE AWAY

 

“Imperialism or globalization –

I don’t have to care what it’s called to hate it.”

 

~ Bill Ayers ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in Crete in October 1992.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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NO TOMORROW

 

“Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.”

 

~ Eric Hoffer ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original  photo taken of grave goods in a Roman burial mound taken in October 1986.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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PASS IT ON

 

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”

 

~ William Shakespeare ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in the stone circle during the Albion People’s Naming Ceremony at the Stonehenge Free Festival, England on June 21st 1982.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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BOUSTROPHEDON

 

~ Greek: βουστροφηδόν; from βοῦς, bous, “ox”

and στροφή, strophē, “turn,”,

connoting the way an ox ploughs a field.~

 

 

 

Photo of the Gortyn Code Of Law (ca. 500 BCE) written in the boustrophedon form on the Wall Of Inscriptions in Knossos taken in Crete in October 1992.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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BLACK CLOUDS

 

“The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale

and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.”

 

~ Bartolome de las Casas ~

(1474 – 1566)

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken on the Canary Island of La Palma in May 1994.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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A FACE OUT OF TIME

 

“All places are alike, and every earth is fit for burial.”

 

~ Christopher Marlowe ~

 

Photo of a small container for liquids decorated with a face as it was being excavated in the Roman cemetery in Weisenau, Germany in July 1987.

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Once exposed the container looked like this:

 

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DES MURS

 

“Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.”

 

~ Eugene O’Neill ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo of a reconstructed 2650 year old Celtic Oppidum “Ring” Wall taken at Donnersberg, Germany in April 1986.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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COITUS MORE FERARUM

 

“Skill makes love unending.”

 

~ Ovid ~

 

Photo of a Roman lamp depicting coitus more ferarum, just after it had been excavated and not yet fully cleaned, taken in Weisenau, Germany in July 1987.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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A FEW SMALL DROPS OF AWARENESS

 

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”

 

~ John Keats ~

 

Photo of a replica of Diplocynodon darwini, an extinct genus of alligatoroid that lived during the Paleocene to middle Miocene 49 million years ago in Europe. It looked very similar to the modern caiman. This particular type lived only in the Eocene epoch, in a swampy freshwater lake near Messel, Germany. Photo taken in May 2016. From the author’s private collection.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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FORGOTTEN LIVES

 

As Peggy Lee would say, “Is that all there is…?”

 

Photo taken at a flea market in Place Monge in Paris in May 2016.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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MAMMOTH

 

“As we grow older,

we no longer know whom to awaken,

the living or the dead.”

 

~ Louis-Ferdinand Céline ~

 

Photo of 10,000 to 30,000 year old Mammoth hair found in Siberia taken in Paris in May 2016.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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LA BELLE ÉPOQUE

 

“Fashion fades, only style remains the same.”

 

~ Coco Chanel ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photograph taken in Le Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris in May 2010.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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THE WEIGHT

 

“The Sinti – Roma memorial consists

of a large three-section block of sandstone.

It shows a group of men, women and children who,

crushed under a heavy burden,

are on their way to their destruction.

It was created in 1992 by

Josef Reinhar und Eugen Reinhardt.”

 

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo of the Sinti – Roma Holocaust Memorial in Wiesbaden, Germany in April 2016.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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OPUS SIGNINUM

 

Once again I hold a piece of the past that has survived and contemplate what might have been, this time a hand-sized fragment of opus signinum, a Roman flooring material consisting of broken roofing tile fragments and small pieces of river gravel mixed with lime and mortar…

 

 

Photo of a ca. 1800 year old fragment of a Roman opus signinum floor taken in March 2016.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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