Shelter from the storm

But it's raining.  Raining in my heart....

Storm Ciara.  Storm Dennis.  Storm Jorge.  Storm Covid..... Storm Boris..... Storm Cummings.... Stormy Mondays.  It's a hell of a time to be alive.  It would have been so much simpler in the Good Old Days, when, for example, the walls of the White Castle, Castell Gwyn (not the novel by Orhan Pamuk), some seven miles from Abergavenny, in Monmouthshire, were gleaming white..... 

I am here to shelter from the storms, though it still rains in my heart.....  The landscape is sodden, the clouds are heavy and grainy.  It's hard to find a ray of light....

There's a nearby cottage.  It seems to welcome me, but....

Everything up to that point had been left unresolved....

[I] Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm....

"Come in," [I would love her to say]

"I'll give ya shelter from the storm...."

There's not a soul around.  The landscape is godforsaken.  The Skirrid (Ysgyryd Fawr) eerily glistens at me from under the purple rain.....

Wild trees shriek at me, like harpies in the gale....

The road stretches out, shining under a  burnished pewter sky.  But, it's the road to nowhere....

I could seek refuge, crying, in a chapel, but  its doors are locked, as are mine....  

So, damp, and cold, and strangely alone, I  turn and cross the bridge over the troubled waters of the Severn while I can.....

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line

Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine

If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born

Come in, she said

I'll give ya shelter from the storm

Bob Dylan

Shelter from the Storm

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

I could have been someone....

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

Through this weary world of woe

Heart burnin', still yearnin'

No one on earth would ever know

If I'd had the time

My garden would shine with roses

My house would freshly sparkle

My books would be read

I might have been content

If I'd had the time

I would be fluent in every tongue

Well almost every (at least some)

I would remember jokes, and history,

You could ask me anything

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song

Yes, so it goes.

If I'd had the time

It would not have been squandered

I would have studied, practised,

I could have been good at things

I might have got beyond Prelude IX

If I'd had the time

I'd have been better

As a friend, a father and a lover

I might even have earned respect

Perhaps people might have listened

Time would have been my friend, my brother,

Entwined in loved embracing

The days passing without regrets

Like migrating fieldfare, 

Ever to return

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song

Yes, so it goes

But, I did have the time

But I used it all up

Well, almost all of it,

Now I just ask for a little more,

Where did it go?

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song.

So, it goes.

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Up the road, around the bend
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
In the last outback at the world's end

Bob Dylan

Ain't Talkin'

With thanks to Jem Finer and Shame MacGowan