A Happy Birthday

Photo by Nina Leen (1950). Courtesy of LIFE.com

We are still in our infancy here at Cake and Cordial, so please be patient with us as we ease into a schedule of posting. In the meantime, know that we are brainstorming lots of sunshiny material for your future enjoyment.

In current happy events, it is Alison - the Irish member of this blogging team's - birthday! Please join me in wishing her the happiest of days!

Even though we cannot celebrate this occasion together in person, I want to express how glad I am that she has come into my life. I greatly look forward to the next time we can enjoy a treat together - similar to the lovely young ladies above.

I remember hearing this poem recited in a film some years ago, and although the movie has now escaped me (can anyone help me here?) the poem remains. I find its quiet attitude of wonder, in how the course of things comes together, both comforting and enchanting.    

The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

by Eugenio Montejo
translated by Peter Boyle

The earth turned to bring us closer,
it spun on itself and within us,
and finally joined us together in this dream
as written in the Symposium.
Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;
time passed in minutes and millennia.
An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh
arrived in Nebraska.
A rooster was singing some distance from the world,
in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.
The earth was spinning with its music
carrying us on board;
it didn't stop turning a single moment
as if so much love, so much that's miraculous
was only an adagio written long ago
in the Symposium's score.