I notice from my almanac that today is littered with anniversaries some important and some not so.
Elizabeth is crowned Queen of England in 1559, and two hundred years later the British Museum opens.
No the two are not directly linked!
Molière, Proudhon, Nasser, and Ivor Cutler (!) all born today I got into the latter upon hearing the LP Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, Vol. 2 whilst at Uni.
However, it is two poets whom I want to celebrate Osip Mandelstam and Nâzım Hikmet, one Russian the other Turkish.
Both incredibly deep and powerful voices, both shut out and exiled, both much unappreciated outside their homelands.
Here's a couplet from Hikmet's Davet, which I think beautifully sums up current feelings about the banking sector and their ridiculously stratospheric bonuses.
Kapansın el kapıları, bir daha açılmasın,
yok edin insanın insana kulluğunu,
Shut the gates of plutocracy, don't let them open again,
annihilate man's servitude to man,
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