Recent Images

Umeå Sunsets

Here in the land of the midnight sun we are getting some amazing sunsets ar around midnight.

Um River Joik

Krister Stoor performs a joik from 1912 about the Um River in the north east of Sweden.

Umeå European Cultural Capital 2014?

The town I live in, Umeå, has been competing to be declared the 2014 Cultural Capital of Europe. While I am no fan of mass spectacles (having witnessed the madness of Expo 88 in Brisbane and the run up to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney) I think it would be cool if a town like Umeå was named European Cultural Capital. Why? Because it is a long way from anywhere. Because it is a small town. Because it has a certain energy about it that is rare.

Tomorrow the decision will be made. Umeå and the southern Swedish city of Lund are competing for the title. There will be a live stream anouncing the winner between 13:30 and 14:00 CET. You can follow it from here.

The Pirate Bay to be Sold

It has just been announced that world in/famous torrent tracker site, The Pirate Bay (TPB) is to be sold to Global Gaming Factory X AB, the owner of Entropia. The community using the site does not seem to be too happy about it if we are to judge by the comments on TPB blog:

"Way to sell out for the money :D
Where is your ideals gone now friends?
Ha, I cannot believe I supported you guys.
Same old same old. Where will it end?" driver779

"I'd say this is the death of PirateBay, they wanna make PirateBay a legit place if I understand the news being spread around.
Thats is done by removing all the illegal files (90%+ of the torrents?)
And this will make most people go away too." Mith0s

I have heard the sum of 60 million Swedish Crowns (30 in cash and 30 in stocks) being accepted for the sale of the site. TPB 'heads' are speaking abut a transfer and new impetus in the operation. I am not sure about this and I tend to agree with many of the comments on the blog site. However, TPB was always a limited thing and the end was in some way inevitable. I am disappointed that it was the private sector which stepped up and took over the machinery of TPB. It should have been made a research object for the people of Sweden to be used to develop new web applications and architetcures.

The collected resources of TPB (those that survived the legal onslaught of the past three years) is now passing into the hands of entrepreneurs. The business community perhaps has a better idea of the worth of such network ventures that TPB represents. The law however restricts what can be done with such a developed network structure. I have seen this recently in my experimentation with Spotify, another Swedish innovation that attempts to deliver unlimited streamed music over the net. While Spotify does deliver music, its network possibilities are extreamly limited. One cannot share play lists within the program (email of links is the only option), link to other users, watch other users for tips and so on. In effect one is alone on Spotify. TPB is/was a community and that was its strength and greatest weakness in the eyes of the law. By allowing for a horizontal spread of network connections users were/are able to share things. How this can be adopted to a legitimate business model by something like Global Gaming Factory X AB will be interesting to see.

Pirate Party Elected to EU Parliament

Christian Engström (left) and leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, Rickard Falkvinge as activists. Christian is now on his way to a seat in the European Parliament

The winning of a seat in the European Parliament by Christian Engström from the Swedish Pirate Party (PP) should be considered an important turn in the ongoing (and far from over) developments around the law and the conceptualization of intellectual property.

Only a dismal 44% of Swedes actually bothered to vote in the 2009 EU elections (compared to around 89% that voted in the last national election in 2007) and the PP received 7.1% of the vote. The primary base for the PP vote is apparently younger people (under 30) and males. The commentators attributed this demographic to the PP preventing an extreme right wing party gaining a Swedish seat in the EU parliament.

While the figure are flying in the Swedish media tonight about how many and who brought this new political party into a representative institution, the broader ramifications are yet to be discussed on television or in the press. On the state broadcast news tonight Rickard Falkvinge was questioned about policies on tax, abortion, employment and health care. The PP does not have policies on these issues in a sense that they are dealt with separably from policies on the development of an information based society. I find this extreamly important as a development in the media ecology of the region.

If I were to go into describing the revolution we are living in when it comes to media I would be stuck at this keyboard for a longer time that I can afford, but consider this example that I gleaned from my Twitter feed just now:

"There is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn." Edge

At the moment many universities are struggling to keep up with changes in media and information creation, storage and distribution. One of the major epistemological tenets of the struggle to come to terms with what is happening is the concept of 'real life' and the virtual, online, cyberspace or 'whatever it is that people are doing with digital media' (even finding names for some of these practices and realisations is difficult and confusing).

My impression is that the virtual/real discrepancy is prevalent in university leadership throughout much of Europe. The major parties in the Swedish EU elections expressed a 'real life' and 'virtual life' dichotomy when describing such issues as Peer to Peer file sharing prior to the EU election day last weekend. In the recent Pirate Bay trial here in Sweden the now mythic phrase "We don't use IRL. Everything is real life. We use AFK." (IRL- In Real Life, AFK- Away From Keyboard) was uttered in the courtroom by one of the defendants. The concept of AFK summarises many of the problems that have brought a representative of the PP to a seat in the EU parliament. These problems should be considered in light of Sweden being a land that has a very advanced level of digital media connectivity. Fast broadband is standard in Sweden. I believe that the situation in Sweden represents a future scenario for many presently less connected societies.

The narrowness of confining multimedia representation and embodiment to a 'virtual' sphere is fast running out of currency. The list of examples I could summon on the reality of what is happening just in online, so-called 'virtual worlds' is long. The Swedish tax authorities are struggling to find a solution for taxing the income of those who work with such communities as Second Life. How does one organise a working day according to union regulations when one works in a 24 hour world mediated by super-fast high resolution three dimensional internet worlds. Last term I tried to convince students (yes, young people who are supposed to be 'digital natives') that they can work according to the time it is in Second Life. Weekends could be used for socialising inworld rather than in the local pub. They did not like the idea. But this is something many of us are dealing with already. I read that our local hospital here has sent two doctors to live and work in Australia. Their jobs are to review x-rays that are done by Umeå Univesity Hospital in the north of Sweden during the day and are then sent to them in Sydney, where there is a 8 to 9 hour time difference. While the patient sleeps through the night here, the doctors in Australia examine the x-rays, sending a report by morning. The savings from not having to pay a night rate to two doctors makes the project worth while. These are just a few examples of the digital society we are seeing developing around us now.

Mr. Engström alone in Brussels will probably not be able to accomplish much. The desired goal of the PP of

"All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created." Pirate Party

Involves the dissolution of several international treaties to which Sweden and the rest of Europe are party to. Furthermore I am uncertain of the logic involved in the idea that all "culture and knowledge are good things". I think it does seem idealistic and somewhat naive. But is is also brave, and the sentiment behind the idea is to be admired. I think that what we see in the election of Mr Engström to the EU assembly is an important turn. This turn is away from the court rooms and the police raids that have filled the pages of our dying newspapers over the past few years, to the activities in the legislative bodies of the democratic state. I think there will be more stories in the coming year or two about how those that oppose the attempted preservation of the hierarchical media model as it has been for the past hundred years are seeking direct political representation.

European Union Elections and the Fear

"We build the knowledge society" - Election poster from the Swedish Pirate Party, Umeå May 2009.

On June 7th those adults living in the European Union who have not submitted a postal vote already go to the ballot boxes for an election of members to the EU parliament. Sweden is of course taking part in this process and I tell you things could not be more interesting if you are a researcher in digital culture and textuality.

Since January the membership of The Pirate Party in Sweden has risen from 14000 to 55000. If current polls are reflecting how people will vote they are now a serious contender for seats in the EU parliament. The problem for the PP in the 2007 Swedish general election was few of its supporters actually voted. This may change on June 7th but it is not for certain. In a recent poll, the Pirate Party Showed 5.1% of the vote. The second largest party for Sweden in the 18-29 age group and the fourth largest for the 30-44 group.

All this attention has not gone unnoticed by the larger parties. The Vanster (Left) party are the only one of the other serious contenders for EU seats which is adopting a position even sympathetic to that held by the PP. The center left Social Democratic Party is against the digital surveillance and copyright laws passed recently by the government in principle, but have failed to take a strong stand by providing any sort of dramatic alternatives. The Green Party of Sweden (Miljöpartiet de Gröna) are somewhat silent on the issue of file sharing, and their coalition with the Social Democrates probably has something to do with it.

The center-right coalition which forms the government in Sweden is not silent on the issue of either surveillance or P2P file sharing. This afternoon I listened to Hans Wallmark, a Moderate Party candidate for the EU parliament speak about

"Where is the limit for freedom on the internet? Shall we accept child pornography and drug trafficking on the internet? I believe freedom has its limits on the internet. Just as one warns of integrity but one must also give answers to the questions. Drugs on the net? Child pornography on the net? What is permitted?"

Serious questions but it all sounds very familiar to one who follows the news on the other side of the globe, and the net filter that is currently being debated, often irrationally, in Australia:

"There is no political content banned in the existing Broadcasting Services Act," he said.

"We are not building the Great Wall of China. We are going after the filth - like child pornography. Its been done around the world and it can be done here."

How it is done "will be guided by the outcome of the trials."

Most of the assertions otherwise are "patently a scare campaign [against] a policy objective we think is fair and reasonable," he said.
Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy

Fear is the key to this, as Senator Conroy points out. Fear is also being peddled in Sweden. Fear of lawlessness and the idea that in order to be safe media must be controlled and those who use it monitored. If we go further back we can easily find connections between media, fear and politics:

"Something that stood even deeper than the fear of Protestantism was also at stake in the great refusal of 1496. The decision to stand by the Vulgate, to veil the gospels, and stress lay obedience over lay education was certainly framed as a reaction to the Protestant threat. Fear of the threat of the spread of Lutheran heresy undoubtedly loomed large in the debates. Actions taken by Catholic churchmen, however, were designed to counteract forces which had begun to subvert the medieval church before Luther was born and which continued to menace the Roman Catholicism long after Protestant zeal had ebbed.
It was printing, not Protestantism, which outmoded the medieval Vulgate and introduced a new drive to tap mass markets."
The Printing Press as an Agent of Change By Elizabeth L. Eisenstein p353

The account of the printing press and the revolution it brought about, while often verging on a tale of technodeterminism, is undoubtedly worth considering when listening today to the members of the Pirate, Left, Moderate, Green, Social Dems and so forth on internet controls. Those with an insight into the long term effects of what we, in the economically developed parts of the world, are experiencing in media ecology should not resort to fear in order to express themselves.
And don't forget to vote.

Swedish Internet Service Providers Destroy IP Logs

The so-called 'intellectual property' environment in Sweden makes this a fascinating country to live in. Today the Stockholm based paper Dagens Nyheter published three more letters to the editor in regards to peer to peer file sharing. The lead letter has the heading "The Recording Industry is Dead. The Music Industry Lives!"

In the same edition, and across radio, television and internet (English) the big news today in Sweden is that an increasing number of major internet service providers are destroying the information on customers IP information. Today it was Tele2 that said it would not be keeping customer IP information more than the obligatory (by European Law) three weeks. This is in reaction to the extreme interpretation of the IPRED law which the Swedish government introduced on April 1, which states that if a rights holder of a music or film work can show there is a suspicion that an IP address is sharing copyright material, the records of traffic for the IP address can be obtained with a court order from the IP service provider. The loophole in the IPRED law is that the legislators forgot to add a clause that compelled the IP service provider to keep the IP address information. The focus of the IPRED law it seems was getting the information.

So today one of the main figures in the so-called anti-pirate forces, Henrik Pontén makes the bizarre statement regarding the destruction of IP records:

This question is much bigger than file sharing. Think of a pedophile alarm for example - how could the internet carriers protect a victim of the crime with this situation? This reaction means that all legislation regarding the internet is compromised. Profit goes before the law.

It seems to me like a panic reaction; pedophiles, victims, anarchy and the dissolving of all legal society online. The final sentence regarding the sanctity of the law over profit seems ironic considering the claims of hundreds of millions made against The Pirate Bay (only 30 million crowns was awarded in damages) recently and the losses claimed to sales which seems to drive the whole legal process against file sharing. The IPRED law is only 27 days old. How did we survive March?

The turn among major (and minor) service providers is the latest in a week of disasters for the anti-pirate organisations inSweden with a retrial demanded and 45 submissions made to the The Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) or the Parliamentary Ombudsmen on the possible presence of bias in The Pirate Bay Trial.

It's only Tuesday. What will happen next?

IPRED Arrives Tomorrow......Innovation Withers

From the youth wing of the Swedish Green Party: Ipred Unintelligence 400mg Stops technological development and cultural exchange. Reduces integrity. For politicians out of touch with reality

I mentioned to some non-Swedes today at work that the IPRED Law (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive) will come into effect tomorrow. They were all surprised that such a law had been passed in Sweden. It was also discussed in worried tones around the table at our regular Tuesday lunch for doctoral students in my home department. The IPRED law is

"a file sharing law, which is based on the European Union's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), will allow courts to order internet operators to hand over details that identify suspected illegal file-sharers.

Copyright holders would then be free to contact the file sharer in question and demand that they suspend their activities or risk prosecution."

As the English language Swedish news site The Local goes on to report, "Almost half of Swedes, 48 percent of the 1,000 interviewed, consider the law to be wrong while only 32 percent are in favour, a new poll from Sifo shows."

I am convinced that the IPRED law will have little effect on those who share files and have a reasonable degree of knowledge about the technology.

In Finland, where IPRED 1 has already been implemented a recent study has shown that it has not effected P2P file sharing practices:

The National Research Institute of Legal Policy of Finland (Optula) has just come out with the results of its large survey charting various illegal or forbidden activities among the Finnish 9th grade (15 year old) schoolchildren. This is already the sixth survey of its kind but interestingly the researchers included this year also unauthorized downloading among the 'forbidden' activities charted. The results show that net piracy is highly popular in this age group, topping the chart of illegal or forbidden activities. 29% of the study target group practiced unauthorized downloading daily, 69% had done it at least once during the previous year, and 74% had done it at least once in their lifetime. Two out of three persons reported having at least 100 illegally downloaded files on their computers. Two thirds of the downloaded content was music while movies was the next most popular content type.

These objectively credible results contrast sharply the propaganda material previously distributed by the Finnish copyright lobby organization Lyhty. Citing cherry picked details from its annual Tekijänoikeusbarometri (Copyright Barometer) study - the details and result data of which have never been published for scientific scrutiny - Lyhty has claimed that the new Finnish copyright law - which is an implementation of the IPRED1 sanction dircetive - has been effective in reducing net piracy in Finland. This claim has been further distributed internationally by IFPI lobbyists. However, Optula's fresh study shows that this claim is not true at all, at least among the younger generation. Net piracy is highly popular among the young Finns, and there are no signs of the new stricter copyright law managing to reduce it.

The Pirate Bay (several organizers of which are awaiting a judgment on April 17th regarding "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws") have released IPREDator:

IPREDator is a network service that makes people online more anonymous using a VPN. It costs about 5 EUR a month and we store no traffic data. Our service is right now in a beta stage. we hope it will be released for the public before 1st of April. Sign up now to start using it as soon as we're stable. The network is under our control. not theirs. The pirate bay likes and knows real kopimism. and waffles. kopimi!

The Local (once again) explains the service further; "This type of service hinders outsiders from finding the identity of an individual behind an IP address, while helping Internet users effectively side-step laws which may prove inconvenient or unpalatable in their home country." Those users of P2P technology who do not deepen their involvement with the file sharing community, by adopting such cloaking technology as IPREDator will perhaps come to the attention to those enforcing the IPRED law.

The main issue with the effects of the IPRED law is the effect, as the Green Party image suggests (Ipren is a brand of aspirin in Sweden), it will have on the digital economy and culture of Sweden. In June 2008 the Swedish parliament passed the so-called FRA Law, "legislative package that authorizes the state to warrantlessly wiretap all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses Sweden's borders." The FRA Law combined with the IPRED Law does not contribute to the image of Sweden as a place were communication is private and secure. Any company or government doing business in Sweden will have the Swedish government as a third party in communication over digital (including mobile) networks. This seems like a nightmare scenario to me.

The effect of making the entire communication network of Sweden a surveilled network is of course large organizations taking their business elsewhere. The Russian telecommunication organization Rostelekom has said it will be now redirecting from Sweden.

Sharing all communication with government monitors is a strange outcome of anti-file sharing laws.

The Way to Work

Pirate Bay Trial Nears

"Jag KRÄVER en sal för MINST 150 personer, varav iaf 20 är reserverade för familj och närstående till oss åtalade, 80-100 till pressen och övrigt till allmänheten." email from Fredrik Neij
(I demand a chamber for at least 150 people, where around 20 are reserved for family and friends of we the accused, 80-100 for the press and the general public")

What promises to be the most important legal case so far in regards to peer to peer file sharing in Sweden is set to run from the 16th February to the 4th March 2009 in Stockholm. Four young men; Fredrik Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, are charged with "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws" through the popular torrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. If convicted, the defendants face up to two years in prison and SEK 1.2 million in restitution (147,896.18 USD). The trial is going to be a strongly contested one. Many witnesses are promised by both sides. The Pirate Bay recently released an interactive map of the tracker activity on their servers:



The fact that there is relatively little overall activity in Sweden, with a small population, detracts somewhat from the severity of the crime claimed by the prosecution I would reason. However the relatively high percentage base of the population of Sweden that uses the torrent tracker is probably an embarrassment for the Swedish government.

Sweden - the home of the Pirate Bay - is responsible for little over 1% (250,000 peers) of the tracker connections. Since Sweden has a population of approximately 9 million people, this is actually quite an accomplishment. These statistics are of course just a snapshot. They are updated frequently and vary depending on the time of the day. Torrent Freak

When considering that 2.8 percent of the total population of Sweden uses the Pirate Bay tracker it is a fairly high rate of penetration when compared to the 33% of all Pirate Bay peers that come from China. Around 7 million users, but only 0.5% of the population of China. The Pirate Bay is actually a blocked site in China.

Of course there is going to be a lot of legal argument about this sort of thing and the charge is one of "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws" not how many other people where involved. But by this logic Google is equally guilty as it provides search facilities for countless numbers of torrents (well, actually 218,000,000 for the word 'torrent') and direct downloads. This is going to be a very interesting trial.

If you are in Stockholm from the 16th February why not head over to the Tingsrätt, Flemminggatan 14 as there seems there is going to be a carnival atmosphere outside. There is a plan to have the S23K-bus owned by the Pirate Bureau parked outside the court (it is not too late to donate) as an information center. There are sure to be other interested parties present.



More information on the trial from here (in Swedish).

The Ritual of the Small Fish

Today I witnessed a ritual feast of the natives. In fact I participated in the “surströmming” as they seem to call it (their language, although there is a written form, seems to feature so many rounded and rolled sounds it is very difficult to master). I shall recount the details of this strange celebration. This morning I worked in the room allotted to me by the leaders of the tribe I have been watching and living with for 8 years now. One of the younger members of the group approached me and asked if I would like to join in the feast they were planning later that day, after those who did not eat the fish called ‘surströmming’ had left the common eating area. I was immediately interested in the secret and jovial tone that those who were to attend the feast adopted when they discussed it. I had heard talk of the ‘surströmming’ in my time among these northern peoples, its powerful aroma was feared by even the strongest in the tribe, but I had never seen it, that is before today.

I had spent the morning writing up my notes on the worship of the little bits of paper that so many of the natives here spend their time with, when it was suddenly the hour for the feast. The surströmming is only eaten under the sky outside buildings and even consumption in tents and other small or temporary shelters is strictly forbidden (suggesting it brings peels of laughter such is the distance they take from even the idea). I believe this has something to do with the spirits of the fish, which are released with their eating to float up upon the vapours of the meal. This leads me to my first encounter with the surstomming. I entered the courtyard that had be chosen for the feast, a table had been laid with brightly coloured metal pots holding the fish, the dry bread so popular here, the weak beer and the sacred vegetable the ‘potatis’ (yes its true, they eat the ground apple) This last feature of the ritual feast has reached such a high level in their culture that they have developed a huge variety of terms for the different variations one find in the ‘potatis’. I understand that they have over 3000 words for the ‘potatis’ depending on its colour, flavour, time of season, texture, home range and so on.

I was offered a place at the table and prepared for the sacred fish, the aroma of which had already overpowered me as I entered the courtyard. Feeling slightly nauseas from the odur I was given a fish and a piece of bread and one of the younger ones in the group (a female this time, the care of the ignorant and uninitiated is often taken on by the females in the group, something I intend to research further in my time here) began to instruct me in the preparation of it. The fish is a mottled slightly brown-grey colour about 8 to 10 centimetres long. It is served with its intestines still inside and without its head. The one I was given, I soon found, was a female and was filled with roe, a fortuitous sign it seemed as the natives seemed to congratulate me on this. I prepared the fish as I was instructed to do so, opened the guts carefully and removed them, after saving the roe, then turn the fish over and pulverize its spine in order to be able to turn it back again and remove said spine. The tail is removed when the spine is drawn from the body. I did this with the precision of a surgeon as around me the natives ate their own fish, joked and drank the beer. I nervously finished dressing the fish and then chose a ground apple from a large pot, peeled it and broke it up on the bread. I was then ready for the fish, breaking it up I put the raw pickled flesh on the ‘potatis’. Finally I was advised that a little onion (called ‘lök’) should be added but not too much as it would ‘spoil the taste’.
Finally I was ready for the eating of the ‘surströmming’ but I was afraid. What if I threw up in front of the group, or spat it out in an automatic reaction? I decided I needed a drink with it just in case I had to get the taste out of my mouth quickly ( I once spat a Chinese salty plum out as soon as I put it in my mouth on a crowded street corner, the worse thing I have ever tasted). I asked for a drink and was cheerfully given a beer. I was now ready for the sacred fish. I bit into the bread, ‘potatis’ and fish and 'savored the flavour' as they say. It is very salty, a warm and not entirely unpleasant taste, but raw and full. I am not sure I will eat it again.

A (Small) Rally Against Swedish Surveillance Laws

“CULTURE IS WORTH A LITTLE RISK.” - NORMAN MAILER

Swedish lawmakers voted late on Wednesday 18th June 2008 in favour of a controversial bill allowing all emails and phone calls to be monitored in the name of national security.

The FRA law (FRA-lagen in Swedish) is the common name for legislation with the stated purposed of fighting terrorism in Sweden, including a new law put forward by the government as well as several modifications to existing laws, formally called proposition 2006/07:63 – En anpassad försvarsunderrättelseverksamhet (proposition 2006/07:63 – An intelligence agency accommodation). The law, taking effect in 2009, gives the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA, Swedish Försvarets radioanstalt) the right to intercept all Internet exchange points that exchange traffic that crosses Swedish borders, though experts argue that it is impossible to differentiate between international traffic, and traffic between Swedes.
The law was passed by the Swedish parliament on June 18, 2008, by a vote of 143 to 138, with one delegate abstaining and 67 delegates not present.

Since then there has been the beginning of opposition to what is soon (January 1st 2009) to become law. In Umeå today there was a small rally, mostly made up of young people opposing the so-called FRA-Law. The rally was addressed by representatives of the youth wings of three major parties and an independant 'cyber person' (see video below with bad audio - soon).










The rally ended with people breaking up into smaller groups for discussions on encryption and VPN-tunnel techniques. Another rally is planned for Saturday in Umeå (as well as Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö and Örebro).

Buds a Budding: The Green Fuse Drives the Flower

Outside my window the trees are shooting out buds that seem to be growing by the minute. The greening of trees for Spring happens over a couple of days here in the sub-arctic north. I thought of a Dylan Thomas poem (see below images)







The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

From Dylan Thomas: The Poems, published by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1971