"1967" by Thomas Hardy
In five-score summers! All new eyes,
New minds, new modes, new fools, new wise;
New woes to weep, new joys to prize;
With nothing left of me and you
In that live century's vivid view
Beyond a pinch of dust or two;
A century which, if not sublime,
Will show, I doubt not, at its prime,
A scope above this blinkered time.-
Yet what to me how far above?
For I would only ask thereof
That thy worm should be my worm, Love!
16 WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1867.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Swaths of Ham, Harms of Swats
1.
The early results are in.
I'm loving your manuscript.
For reasons I'll try.
To articulate gladly.
At some later date.
But it does.
The trick.
Of walking for you.
2.
Everywhere they are talking.
The gray talk of industry and.
What passes for friendship.
To put this manuscript.
In the middle of all of that.
Ordering more salami.
Less artichokes.
When oh when.
Will my niece get married.
What about the rain.
They are poor predictors.
All of them.
It's brightening theses.
Also.
Like attending a good barbecue.
Where real things happen.
With you.
I guess the articulation is already.
Kind of happening.
Too.
4.
or
thank you for breaking
the lines
where you have
for remaking
wilderness
only
kinder
and with more
eyes
5.
he heads toward the George Washington Bridge
with not only
knowledge of new caves
(dug inward)
but
lights for spelunking
6.
because the poet
is free
all the dancers
are free
7.
light-shifting
is
upon us
and all the heavy lifting
exposed
as heaven
lifting
The early results are in.
I'm loving your manuscript.
For reasons I'll try.
To articulate gladly.
At some later date.
But it does.
The trick.
Of walking for you.
2.
Everywhere they are talking.
The gray talk of industry and.
What passes for friendship.
To put this manuscript.
In the middle of all of that.
Ordering more salami.
Less artichokes.
When oh when.
Will my niece get married.
What about the rain.
They are poor predictors.
All of them.
It's brightening theses.
Also.
Like attending a good barbecue.
Where real things happen.
With you.
I guess the articulation is already.
Kind of happening.
Too.
4.
or
thank you for breaking
the lines
where you have
for remaking
wilderness
only
kinder
and with more
eyes
5.
he heads toward the George Washington Bridge
with not only
knowledge of new caves
(dug inward)
but
lights for spelunking
6.
because the poet
is free
all the dancers
are free
7.
light-shifting
is
upon us
and all the heavy lifting
exposed
as heaven
lifting
New Manuscript
title: "Women From Men & Women"
written: Jan - Feb 2009
assessment: flashes of clarity, some leaps, some stretches of rough uncharismatic stuff
all in all: getting better
written: Jan - Feb 2009
assessment: flashes of clarity, some leaps, some stretches of rough uncharismatic stuff
all in all: getting better
TOC
1/
Proof of Less / 2
Women and Men and Women / 3
Changed By The Eyes That Mix Him / 7
Exempt Are The Truly Careful / 8
By The Red Mile / 10
A Beautiful History / 13
Encounter With A Woman Not Alice / 14
Girl Stories / 15
Innocent of Lawyer / 18
Man on the Quick / 20
Villainesque / 21
Possession / 22
Ten Thousandth Eclogue on the East / 24
The Enthusiast / 25
Terminals / 27
Four Generations and Ten People and Two Floors, One / 32
Working Bathroom
2/
These Kinds / 36
Regardless of Rank Age or Sex, Pope Innocent the Third / 39
A Mythologically Fit Economic Thunder / 41
The Man From Pessimonia / 42
These Lacustrine Feelings / 44
Portrait That Bears No Modesty to Semblance / 46
Italian Comedy / 49
Of A Moral / 51
The Boring Rose / 53
Golden Living / 55
What the Parse-Master Admires Most In Himself Is the Mirror / 57
Like Dostoyevskian Lemmings / 59
The Enlightenment / 60
The Prophet / 63
In Helsinki, The Novelist / 66
Proof of Less / 2
Women and Men and Women / 3
Changed By The Eyes That Mix Him / 7
Exempt Are The Truly Careful / 8
By The Red Mile / 10
A Beautiful History / 13
Encounter With A Woman Not Alice / 14
Girl Stories / 15
Innocent of Lawyer / 18
Man on the Quick / 20
Villainesque / 21
Possession / 22
Ten Thousandth Eclogue on the East / 24
The Enthusiast / 25
Terminals / 27
Four Generations and Ten People and Two Floors, One / 32
Working Bathroom
2/
These Kinds / 36
Regardless of Rank Age or Sex, Pope Innocent the Third / 39
A Mythologically Fit Economic Thunder / 41
The Man From Pessimonia / 42
These Lacustrine Feelings / 44
Portrait That Bears No Modesty to Semblance / 46
Italian Comedy / 49
Of A Moral / 51
The Boring Rose / 53
Golden Living / 55
What the Parse-Master Admires Most In Himself Is the Mirror / 57
Like Dostoyevskian Lemmings / 59
The Enlightenment / 60
The Prophet / 63
In Helsinki, The Novelist / 66
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
The Art of the Snowday
It wasn’t hard to master.
Before children it was one way.
So many things seemed filled
and content. The hum
of so many: i.e.,
the refrigerator,
how it opened
and closed, startling the air, the washing machine,
all its hands
through clothes; a good blanket
extending bedhead permission —
and the cigarette
silk of the talk radio voices.
This is Craig
Shankman. This is Radio Lab. This
is what happened
to the Knicks. This is
what happens
to mole rats when they forget their young.
Since then in gaining
I have lost something everyday.
Not door keys or a mother’s watch.
I lost all of the Pittsburgh
I once owned
and a song
that belonged to everyone. I had
the last copy and sometimes
when you kind of glare at me
for no reason
I know a reason.
Before the job
got serious, and the marriage . . .
but wait—
I once used a snowday
to write this line: Buried world,
pray for me . . . that I never leave my life
in a place where I can’t find it.
Okay. I admit. And there’s no easy way
to say this:
I did leave it somewhere. My life.
I can’t find it.
I’m sorry. This was supposed to be a snowday,
not a poorly written
SAT prompt
crying out from the wilderness
like the abominable snowman:
What on earth are we for?
it asks, impolitely,
answer this question
on the lines provided. You have
twenty minutes:
We are here for Time, its flights and fancies. As its sketchpad and scuttlebutt. Its placeholder. We are not here to ask questions. Bookends and ashtrays. Its unwashed grapes. And since, dear reader, you have to read this and calibrate the score with someone else, I’ll ask: Time, why must you drink so much cheap whiskey? We were your children. You passed out and forgot us into adulthood. Stop shaking me like some Polaroid you snapped so you wouldn’t forget me. Time, you harlot, you slept with all my friends and not me. Why?
Before children it was one way.
So many things seemed filled
and content. The hum
of so many: i.e.,
the refrigerator,
how it opened
and closed, startling the air, the washing machine,
all its hands
through clothes; a good blanket
extending bedhead permission —
and the cigarette
silk of the talk radio voices.
This is Craig
Shankman. This is Radio Lab. This
is what happened
to the Knicks. This is
what happens
to mole rats when they forget their young.
Since then in gaining
I have lost something everyday.
Not door keys or a mother’s watch.
I lost all of the Pittsburgh
I once owned
and a song
that belonged to everyone. I had
the last copy and sometimes
when you kind of glare at me
for no reason
I know a reason.
Before the job
got serious, and the marriage . . .
but wait—
I once used a snowday
to write this line: Buried world,
pray for me . . . that I never leave my life
in a place where I can’t find it.
Okay. I admit. And there’s no easy way
to say this:
I did leave it somewhere. My life.
I can’t find it.
I’m sorry. This was supposed to be a snowday,
not a poorly written
SAT prompt
crying out from the wilderness
like the abominable snowman:
What on earth are we for?
it asks, impolitely,
answer this question
on the lines provided. You have
twenty minutes:
We are here for Time, its flights and fancies. As its sketchpad and scuttlebutt. Its placeholder. We are not here to ask questions. Bookends and ashtrays. Its unwashed grapes. And since, dear reader, you have to read this and calibrate the score with someone else, I’ll ask: Time, why must you drink so much cheap whiskey? We were your children. You passed out and forgot us into adulthood. Stop shaking me like some Polaroid you snapped so you wouldn’t forget me. Time, you harlot, you slept with all my friends and not me. Why?
Monday, March 2, 2009
2/24/09 on 2/25/09
It needed great scientific imagination to realize that it is not the charges nor the particles but the field in space between the charges and the particles that is essential for the description of physical phenomena.
~Albert Einstein in a textbook he wrote with a colleague.
In any case,
I can't remember much. Each day turns
into a memo, each memo
a found sound, a sounding.
What was 2/24/09?
Brushfire and fiddle,
maybe not the usual twaddle,
maybe not the usual pattern
we get so good at resounding.
Other things I don't remember:
. . . the lunch table
and its usual six-layer sandwich
of talking. J. to B. to
D. about C. The pure
algebra of it
where, masterfully, they insert X
when they don’t want to
say it, or better yet,
don’t know it. Time playing like
an old, slightly warped record
in the corner, or
a Blues singer
who holds up a harmonica,
then a guitar, then
an old time saw,
and finally says, the hell with it,
I'll just use the goddamn
voice
god gave me.
. . . teaching anyone
anything, I think
they taught me
again:
restraint, restraint,
how to guide them
in their fumbling,
how to look away
before the blush bruises
or the thing that cannot be taken back
is given too freely,
how to hardly forget
that the classroom
is a field
in the field mice sense
and the Einstein sense
and the one the children
play well in
and it gives permission
for any day
to be seen and not seized,
not blinded into memo.
To: All Faculty
Re: Time
let the days be misrememberd appropriately
like the day the Internet went down
and the lost arts of whistling
and pinochle
and the found arts of timekeeping
by analogy
rose, rose, rose
~Albert Einstein in a textbook he wrote with a colleague.
In any case,
I can't remember much. Each day turns
into a memo, each memo
a found sound, a sounding.
What was 2/24/09?
Brushfire and fiddle,
maybe not the usual twaddle,
maybe not the usual pattern
we get so good at resounding.
Other things I don't remember:
. . . the lunch table
and its usual six-layer sandwich
of talking. J. to B. to
D. about C. The pure
algebra of it
where, masterfully, they insert X
when they don’t want to
say it, or better yet,
don’t know it. Time playing like
an old, slightly warped record
in the corner, or
a Blues singer
who holds up a harmonica,
then a guitar, then
an old time saw,
and finally says, the hell with it,
I'll just use the goddamn
voice
god gave me.
. . . teaching anyone
anything, I think
they taught me
again:
restraint, restraint,
how to guide them
in their fumbling,
how to look away
before the blush bruises
or the thing that cannot be taken back
is given too freely,
how to hardly forget
that the classroom
is a field
in the field mice sense
and the Einstein sense
and the one the children
play well in
and it gives permission
for any day
to be seen and not seized,
not blinded into memo.
To: All Faculty
Re: Time
let the days be misrememberd appropriately
like the day the Internet went down
and the lost arts of whistling
and pinochle
and the found arts of timekeeping
by analogy
rose, rose, rose
Haiku for a Disappearing Window
Clearly I am not fast enough.
I was slowly chewing that one.
I liked the second proposed title.
I was slowly chewing that one.
I liked the second proposed title.
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