In this episode you find me relaxed, smoking my pipe and with a glass of Islay Malt at my side. I talk a little about pipes and smoking and read you a poem from my collection Parable and Paradox (I also blow a few smoke rings!) Here's the poem I was reading, do also check out the book: [ Ссылка ]=
Smoke Rings From My Pipe
All the long day's weariness is done
I'm free at last to do just as I will
Take out my pipe, admire the setting sun
Practice the art of simply sitting still
Thank God I have this briar bowl to fill,
I leave the world with all its hopeless hype,
Its pressures, and its ever-ringing till,
And let it go in smoke rings from my pipe
The hustle and the bustle, these I shun
The tasks that trouble and the cares that kill,
The false idea that there's a race to run,
The pushing of that weary stone uphill,
The wretched i-phone's all-insistent trill,
Whingers and whiners, each with their own gripe,
I pack them in tobacco leaves until
They're blown away in smoke rings from my pipe
And then at last my real work is begun,
My chance to chant, to exercise the skill
Of summoning the muses, one by one,
To meet me in their temple, touch my quill
(I have a pen but quills are better still)
And when the soul is full, the time is ripe
Kindle the fire of poetry that will
Breathe and expand like smoke-rings from my pipe
Prince I have done with grinding at the mill,
These petty-pelting tyrants aren't my type,
So lift me up and set me on a hill,
A free man blowing smoke rings from his pipe.
