The Pickup

Notes

Too long a sacrifice W. B. Yeats, ‘Easter 1916’, Michael Robartes and the Dancer (Churchtown: The Cuala Press, 1920).

Whoever embraces a woman Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Happiness’, Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Poems (New York: Viking).

I decided to postpone our future Feodor Dostoievsky, ‘The Meek One’, The Diary of a Writer — Feodor Dostoievsky, trans. Boris Brasol (New York: George Braziller, 1954).

Rose thou art sick William Blake, ‘The Sick Rose’:

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

‘Songs of Experience’, Songs of Innocence and Experience with Other Poems (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1866).

Let us go to another country William Plomer, ‘Another Country’, Visiting the Caves (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936). In his Collected Poems (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), Plomer published a slightly different version of this poem.

And remember Job ‘The Prophets’, Sura XXI, The Koran, trans. Rev. J. M. Rodwell, with an introduction by Rev. G. Margoliouth (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1948), p. 156.

And make mention in the Book of Mary ‘Mary’, Sura XIX, The Koran, p. 118.

The God of Mercy hath taught ‘The Merciful’, Sura LV, The Koran, p. 74.

And she conceived ‘Mary’, Sura XIX, The Koran, p. 118.

al Kitab wa-l-Qur’an: Qira’a mu’asira The views expressed by the young men are based on quotations from this book by Shahrur Muhammad Shahrur, as cited by Nilüfer Göle in her article ‘Snapshots of Islamic Modernities’, Daedalus (Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences) (Winter 2000).

I was occupied in picturing him Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. John Linton (London: The Hogarth Press).

Grateful thanks to my generous mentor, Philip J. Stewart of the University of Oxford.