Was there a time

Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.

(Was There A Time by Dylan Thomas)

Doing nothing

When conversation begins to flag, as it often does in these too-besotted-with-the-superficial times, they look towards the one unaffected by it all and begin probing.

They often start by asking, ‘What do you do?’ One doesn’t even exhale before replying, "Nothing". They then say, with a mixture of fake concern and affected censure, not sure of which emotion to pursue, “Then how do you pass the time?” And one smiles and answers, “I sit at open windows. For sanity must be preserved.”

And then they all mumble. And fiddle with their handkerchiefs or whatever it is that has replaced handkerchiefs in these times. Ah! The cellphone. They fiddle with their cellphones. And mumble and stumble out of the way. And one can in peace resume the contemplations while sitting beside an open window. And do nothing.

That sanity be kept

by Dylan Thomas
(this poem links here)

That sanity be kept I sit at open windows,
Regard the sky, make unobtrusive comment on the moon,
Sit at open windows in my shirt,
And let the traffic pass, the signals shine,
The engines run, the brass bands keep in tune,
For sanity must be preserved.

Thinking of death, I sit and watch the park
Where children play in all their innocence,
And matrons on the littered grass,
Absorb the daily sun.

The sweet suburban music from a hundred lawns
Comes softly to my ears. The English mowers mow and mow.

I mark the couples waking arm in arm,
Observe their smiles,
Sweet invitations and inventions,
See them lend love illustration
By gesture and grimace.
I watch them curiously, detect beneath the laughs
What stands for grief, a vague bewilderment
At things not turning right.

I sit at open windows in my shirt,
Observe, like some Jehovah of the west,
What passes by, that sanity be kept.