my favorite phantoms

2003-05-07T19:13:00.000-05:00

From "Death of a Moth"
by Annie Dillard

One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when the shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspread, flapped into the fire, drooped abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, and frazzled in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, like angels' wings, enlarging the circle of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine; at once the light contracted again and the moth's wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. At the same time, her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burnt away and her heaving mouthparts cracked like pistol fire. When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Her head was a hole lost to time. All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax---a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle's round pool.

And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth's body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the shattered hole where her head should have been, and widened into a flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like an immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two winding flames of identical light, side by side. The moth's head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.

She burned for two hours without changing, without swaying or kneeling---only glowing within, like a boiling fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled while Rimbaud in Paris burnt out his brain in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet.

2002-09-13T21:36:00.000-05:00

"Dover Beach"
by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -- on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow,
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

2002-09-13T21:31:00.000-05:00

"Storm Warnings"
by Adrienne Rich

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.

2002-07-24T18:11:00.000-05:00

From Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride:

(And what an great title that was...)

(p.4--Tony):

     Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events. History is a construct, she tells her students. Any point of entry is possible and all choices are arbitrary. Still, there are definitive moments, moments we use as references, because they break our sense of continuity, they change the direction of time. We can look at these events and we can say that after them things were never the same again. They provide beginnings for us, and endings, too. Births and deaths, for instance, and marriages. And wars.
     It's the wars that interest Tony, despite her lace-edged collars. She likes clear outcomes.
     So did Zenia, or so Tony thought once. Now, she can hardly tell.

     An arbitrary choice, then, a definitive moment: October 23, 1990. It's a bright clear day, unseasonably warm. It's a Tuesday. The Soviet bloc is crumbling, the old maps are dissolving, the Eastern tribes are on the move again across the shifting borders. There's trouble in the Gulf, the real estate market is crashing, and a large hole has developed in the ozone layer. The sun moves into Scorpio, Tony has lunch at the Toxique with her two friends Roz and Charis, a slight breeze blows in over Lake Ontario, and Zenia returns from the dead.

(p.39--Tony):

She makes her away along Queen, then turns north on Spadina. She wills her feet to move, she wills the sun to shine. He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who puts it not unto the touch, To win, or lose it all, she repeats in her head. A bracing verse, a general favourite, a favourite of generals. What she needs is some perspective. Some evitcepsrep. A medicinal word.
Gradually, her heart settles. It's soothing to be among strangers, who require from her no efforts, no explanations, no reassurances. She likes the mix on the street here, the mixed skins. Chinatown has taken over mostly, though there are still some Jewish delicatessens, and, further up and off to the side, the Portuguese and West Indian shops of the Kensington Market. Rome in the second century, Constantinople in the tenth, Vienna in the ninteenth. A crossroads. Those from other countries look as if they're trying hard to forget something, those from here as if they're trying hard to remember. Or maybe it's the other way around. In any case there's an inturned, preoccupied cast to the eyes, a sideways glancing. Music from elsewhere.

(p.77-78--Charis):

To make herself less obvious as a watcher, she takes her notebook out of her tote bag, a lovely notebook she traded some of her paytime for. It has a hand-bound cover of marbled paper with a burgundy suede spine, and the pages are a delicate lavender. The pen she bought to go with it is pearl grey, and filled with grey-green ink. She got the pen at Radiance too, and the ink. It makes her sad to think of Radiance vanishing. So many gifts.
The notebook is for her to write her thoughts in, but so far she hasn't written any. She hates to spoil the beauty of the blank pages, their potential; she doesn't want to use them up. But now she uncaps her pearl grey pen and prints: Zenia must go back.

(p.118-119--Roz):

     How long do I have to live before I'm rid of this junk, thinks Roz. The garage sale of the soul. She'll go home early, have a snack, pour herself a small drink, run a bath, put in some of the stuff Charis keeps deluging her with, from that hophead store where she works. Ground-up leaves, dried flowers, exotic roots, musty-hayfield aromas, snake oil, mole bones, age-old recipies brewed by certified crones. Not that Roz has a thing against crones, since at the rate she's going she'll soon be one herself.
     It'll relax you, says Charis, though Roz, you have to help out! Don't fight it! Go with it. Lie back. Float. Picture yourself in a warm ocean.
     But every time Roz tries this, there are sharks.

(p.223--Charis):

     "Listen lady, you want a hot dog or not?" says the vendor.
     "What?" says Charis, startled.
     "Crazy broad, shove off," says the vendor. "Get back in the bin. You're bothering the customers."
     If Charis were Roz, she'd say What customers? But if Charis were Roz she'd be in a state of deep shock. Zenia and Larry! But she's twice his age! thinks the vestige of Charis that remains from the time when age, in female-male relationships, was supposed to matter. The present Charis tells herself not the be judgmental. Why shouldn't women do what men have been doing for ages, namely robbing the cradle? Age is not the point. The point is not Zenia's age, but Zenia herself. Larry might as well be drinking liquid drain cleaner.

(p.427--Roz):

     "You didn't find her, did you?" says Roz. She hands him the drink she's poured for him, as in days of yore: a single-malt scotch, no ice. That's what he used to like, long long agi; that's what she's been drinking these days, and more of it than she should. The gesture of handing the glass to him softens her, because it's their old habit. Nostalgia for him seizes her by the throat. She fights against choking. He has a new tie on, an unfamiliar one, with grisly pastel tulips. The fingerprints of Zenia are all over it, like unseen scorch marks.
     "No," says Mitch. He won't look at her.
     "And if you had," says Roz, hardening herself again, lighting her own cigarette---she won't ask him to do it, they are way beyond such whimsical courtship gestures, not that he's leaping forward with arm outstretched---"what would you have done? Beat the shit out of her, or sicked the lawyers onto her, or given her a big sloppy kiss?"
     Mitch looks in her direction. He can't meet her eyes. It's as if she's semi-invisible, a kind of hovering blur. "I don't know," he says.
     "Well, at least that's honest," says Roz. "I'm glad you aren't lying to me." She's trying to keep her voice soft, to avoid the bitter cutting edge. He isn't lying to her, he isn't doing anything to her. There is no her, as far as he's concerned; she might as well not be here. Whatever he's doing is to himself. She has never felt so non-existent in her life. "So, what do you want?" She may as well ask, she may as well find out what's being demanded of her.

2002-06-15T16:07:00.000-05:00

From Beth Gutcheon's Still Missing:

(p.25):

     Sachs took out two layers from the top and set the things in a row. He looked deeper into the box and then straightened, saying, "You have a lot of fondue pots."
     "It was the year of the fondue pot, the year I got married."
     "My wife loves fondue pots," said Sachs. "She enjoys eating things with those little forks."
     Susan smiled. If the world was ending, if her son were gone, would detectives talk of eating with little forks?
     "I bet your wife feels safer having you work in Juvenile than on the Bomb Squad or something," she offered.
     "Oh, I'm not on Juvenile," Sachs said. "I'm on Homicide."

(p.59-60):

     "Did you see Susan on the news? She was incredible."
     "No, I didn't, I heard about it. I was still on the phone, but Chris said she was totally calm."
     "She was incredible. Just very dignified and collected. 'My little boy has been stolen and he's probably been raped and murdered, and I'm not going to fall apart as long as there's a single thing I can do to help him.' It was like that. If it were me, I'd have been on there screaming. 'They've got my kid, you fat fuckers, put down your beer cans and get out there and help me!'"

(p.272):

"Well," she said when there was a lull, "I have something to share with you, but I have no intention of shouting." There was a sudden relative quiet although no pause in the flashing of camera bulbs from the print media. She said, "Two hundred years ago, when a family suffered as this one has, there would be straw put down in front of the house to deaden the sounds of wheels, and horses' hooves would be muffled before they entered the streets. No one expects such a show of civility now, but this family has lost enough. It would be good of you to allow them to mourn in private." There was a brief silence during which Margaret wisely made her way off down the steps before the questions could start again.
"Wish I'd done that," said Susan's father. Susan was obscurely pleased. When she thanked her for it that evening, Margaret smiled her remarkable smile and said, "Yes, sometimes there's comfort in a really fruitless gesture."

2002-05-24T18:26:00.000-05:00

"Recuerdo"
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable --
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

2002-05-23T19:50:00.000-05:00

From Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace:

(p.23):

     Sometimes when I am dusting the mirror with the grapes I look at myself in it, although I know it is vanity. In the afternoon light of the parlour my skin is a pale mauve, like a faded bruise, and my teeth are greenish. I think of all the things that have been written about me---that I am an inhuman female demon, that I am an innocent victim of a blackguard forced against my will and in danger of my own life, that I was too ignorant to know how to act and that to hang me would be judicial murder, that I am fond of animals, that I am very handsome with a brilliant complexion, that I have blue eyes, that I have green eyes, that I have auburn and also brown hair, that I am tall and also not above the average height, that I have well and decently dressed, that I robbed a dead woman to appear so, that I am brisk and smart about my work, that I am of a sullen disposition with a quarrelsome temper, that I have the appearance of a person rather above my humble station, that I am a good girl with a pliable nature and no harm is told of me, that I am cunning and devious, that I am soft in the head and little better than an idiot. And I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once?
     It was my own lawyer, Mr. Kenneth MacKenzie, Esq., who told them I was next door to an idiot. I was angry with him over that, but he said it was by far my best chance and I should not appear to be too intelligent. He said he would plead my case to the utmost of his ability, because whatever the truth of the matter I was little more than a child at the time, and he supposed it came down to free will and whether or not one held with it. He was a kind gentlyman although I could not make head nor tail or much of what he said, but it must have been good pleading. The newspapers wrote that he performed heroically against overwhelming odds. Though I don't know why they called it pleading, as he was not pleading but trying to make all of the witnesses appear immoral or malicious, or else mistaken.
     I wonder if he ever believed a word I said.

(p.91):

     "They said at the time that they were making an example of me. That's why it was the death sentence, and then the life sentence."
     But what does an example do, afterwards? thought Simon. Her story is over. The main story, that is; the thing that has defined her. How is she supposed to fill in the rest of the time? "Do you not feel you have been treated unjustly?" he said.
     "I don't know what you mean, Sir."

(p.298):

It is morning, and time to get up; and today I must go on with the story. Or the story must go on with me, carrying me inside it, along the track it must travel, straight to the end, weeping like a train and deaf and single-eyed and locked tight shut; although I hurl myself against the walls of it and scream and cry, and beg to God himself to let me out.
When you are in themiddle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wook; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

(p.317):

Grace covers her eyes with a hand, briefly. "All that time is dark to me, Sir," she says. "And in any case, there were no gold earrings taken. I won't say I didn't think of it later, when we were packing up; but having a thought is not the same as doing it. If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.

2002-04-27T15:34:00.000-05:00

"The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"
by T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky,
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "what is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides long the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions, and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room women come and go,
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "do I dare?', and, 'do I dare?'
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!')
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the
Chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: 'But how his arms and legs are thin!')
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days, and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl,
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . . . . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired .. or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,
and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.'

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
Floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.'

. . . . . . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us and we drown.

2002-04-12T22:32:00.000-05:00

From Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye:

(p.3):

     Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once.
     It was my brother Stephen who told me that, when he wore his raveling maroon sweater to study in and spent a lot of time standing on his head so that the blood would run down into his brain and nourish it. I didn't understand what he meant, but maybe he didn't explain it very well. He was already moving away from the imprecision of words.
     But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.

(p.242-243):

Cordelia will see this piece in the paper, and maybe she will laugh. Even though she's not in the phone book, she must still be around here somewhere. It would be like her to have changed her name. Or maybe she's married; maybe she's married more than once. Women are hard to keep track of, most of them. They slip into other names, and sink without a trace.

(p.285):

"I'm sorry," I say. And immediately I am, I'm indignant, how could she do that to him, the cold unfeeling bitch. I side with him, despite the fact that I did the same thing to him myself, years ago.

(p.385-386):

There are no avocado and sprout sandwiches, the coffee is not espresso, the pie is coconut cream and no worse than it was then. This is what I have, coffee and pie, sitting in one of the purple booths, watching young people exclaim about what they think is the quaintness of the past.
The past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you can see it as décor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.

(p.387):

I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.

(p.397):

Worse: although I'm afraid of this idea and ashamed of it, and although in the daytime I find it melodramatic and ludicrous and refuse to believe in it, I also cherish it. It's like the secret bottle stashed away by alcoholics: I may have no desire to use it, right now, but I feel more secure knowing it's there. It's a fallback, it's a vice, it's an exit. It's a weapon.

(p.409):

Some of the porches have pumpkins on them, carved with faces, happy or sad or threatening, waiting for tonight. All Souls' Eve, when the spirits of the dead will come back to the living, dressed as ballerinas and Coke bottles and spacemen and Mickey Mice, and the living will give them candy to keep them from turning vicious. I can still taste that festival: the tart air, caramel in the mouth, the hope at the door, the belief in something for nothing all children take for granted. They won't get homemade popcorn balls any more though, or apples: rumors of razor blades abound, and the possibility of poison. Even by the time of my own children, we worried about the apples. There's too much loose malice blowing around.
In Mexico they do this festival the right way, with no disguises. Bright candy skulls, family picnics on the graves, a plate set for each individual guest, a candle for the soul. Everyone goes away happy, including the dead. We've rejected that easy flow between dimensions: we want the dead unmentionable, we refuse to name them, we refuse to feed them. Our dead as a result are thinner, grayer, harder to hear, and hungrier.

(p.420):

     "Well, what do you know. I don't know why I saved that," says my mother, with a little laugh. "Put it on the throw-out pile." It's squished flat; the red plastic is split at the sides, where the sewing is. I pick it up, push at it to make it go back into shape. Something rattles. I open it up and take out my blue cat's eye.
     "A marble!" says my mother, with a child's delight. "Remember all those marbles Stephen used to collect?"
     "Yes," I say. But this one was mine.
     I look into it, and see my life entire.

(p.434-435):

"I loved your early work," she says. "Falling Women, I loved that. I mean, it sort of summed up an era, didn't it?" She doesn't mean to be cruel, she doesn't know she's just relegated me to the dust heap along with crank telephones and whalebone stays. In former days I would have said something annihilating to her, some scabby, scalding remark, but I can't think of anything right off the bat. I'm out of training, I'm losing my nerve. In any case, what purpose would it serve? Her past-tense admiration is sincere. I should be gracious. I stand there, my grin turning to stone, institutionalized. Eminence creeps like gangrene up my legs.
"I'm glad," I manage. When in doubt, lie through you're teeth. I'm lucky I still have teeth to lie through.

(p.445):

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that's gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

2002-03-30T01:22:00.000-06:00

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant"
by Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---

2002-03-30T01:20:00.000-06:00

"First Fig"
by Edna St.Vincent Milay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends---
It gives a lovely light!

2002-03-22T21:02:00.000-06:00

"Birches"
by Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

2002-03-22T20:55:00.000-06:00

"what if a much of a which of a wind"
by e.e.cummings

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
-when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of things
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't: blow death to was)
-all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live.

2002-03-09T16:01:00.000-06:00

"The Explorer"
by Gwendolyn Brooks

Somehow to find a still spot in the noise
Was the frayed inner want, the winding, the frayed hope
Whose tatters he kept hunting through the din.
A satin peace somewhere.
A room of wily hush somewhere within.

So tipping down the scrambled halls he set
Vague hands on throbbing knobs. There were behind
Only spiraling, high human voices,
The scream on nervous affairs,
Wee griefs,
Grand griefs. And choices.

He feared most of all the choices, that cried to be taken.

There were no bourns.
There were no quiet rooms.

2002-03-02T23:11:00.000-06:00

Snippets from "Nesting", by me. :-) (By the way, this is available by e-mail. My only price is feedback.)

     "Tell me a story about Marin. About when you all were in college."
     I find myself hesitating, vacillating between wanting to tell him and wanting to keep those memories secret, private, selfishly my own. As though if I share aloud one memory that I've kept at the back of my mind, tucked somewhere in some nook or cranny deep inside my heart, it will shatter this façade that I've been trying so hard to keep up.
     That we've all been trying to keep up.
     It's tiring, you know. Waiting for your best friend to wake up from a coma.

{snip}

     I make my decision.
     I will share this precious pearl of a memory. I will trust him with this.
     "Okay," I tell him. Such a small word for such a large leap of faith.
     He looks relieved, and he leans forward in the uncomfortable hospital chair that we've all grown accustomed to, waiting once more on me. But this waiting is different. It's still an expectant, longing sort of waiting, but it's also a somewhat excited waiting.
     And I realize something, something integral to this story that I have promised to tell him.
     He doesn't know what she was like then, in college. All he knows is Grown-Up Marin. Doctor Marin. Professional Marin. Not that she's still not Marin, that she's still not the same person, but—
     We were all different then. We were all more free, maybe.
     It was college. We were best friends. We had fun. We were free; we had the whole world ahead of us.
     He wants to hear a memory. What can I tell him?

{snip}

I smile indulgently, remembering that particular trip back home from the airport. Another story for another time. He wants to hear about Marin, and I am more than happy to oblige. I like this remembering. It makes me feel warm inside. It makes me feel like I can live in the past for a few moments in time, to escape from this grim reality of a hospital room and the sounds of a mechanical heartbeat for a few all-too-brief moments in time.
And maybe I can take him with me, relieve some of his own pain and worry and insecurity for a little while.

2002-02-08T17:01:00.000-06:00

"Thanatposis"
  by William Cullen Bryant

  To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agone, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings while from all around---
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air---
Comes a still voice.---
                                         Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where they pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
They growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother with the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

  Yet not to thine eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world---with kings,
The powerful of the earth---the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one might sepulcher. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,---the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods---rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,---
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that treat
The glove are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.---Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings---yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep---the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechloess babe, and the gray-headed man---
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.

     So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged ot his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering tryst, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

2002-01-11T16:23:00.000-06:00

From Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale:

(p.7):

There's a rug on the floor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that have no further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

(p.13):

     Sometimes I think these scarves aren't sent to the Angels at all, but unraveled and turned back into balls of yarn, to be knitted again in their turn. Maybe it's just something to keep the Wives busy, to give them a sense of purpose. But I envy the Commander's Wife her knitting. It's good to have small goals that can be easily attained.
     What does she envy me?
     She doesn't speak to me, unless she can't avoid it. I am a reproach to her; and a necessity.

(p.23):

The street is almost like a museum, or a street in a model town constructed to show the way people used to live. As in those pictures, those museums, those model towns, there are no children.
This is the heart of Gilead, where the war cannot intrude except on television. Where the edges are we aren't sure, they vary, according to the attacks and counterattacks; but this is the center, where nothing moves. The Republic of Gilead, said Aunt Lydia, knows no bounds. Gilead is within you.

(p.25):

Lilies ysed to be a movie theater, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katharine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

(p.39-40):

     I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance.
     If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
     It isn't a story I'm telling.
     It's also a story I'm telling, in my head, as I go along.
     Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else.
     Even when there is no one.
     A story is like a letter. Dear You, I'll say. Just you, without a name. Attaching a name attaches you to the world of fact, which is riskier, more hazardous: who knows what the chances are out there, of survival, yours? I will say, you, you, like an old love song. You can mean more than one.
     You can mean thousands.
     I'm not in any immediate danger, I'll say to you.
     I'll pretend you can hear me.
     But it's no good, because I know you can't.

(p.56):

     Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now.
     We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
     Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.

(p.134):

But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

(p.137):

     "Hello," he says.
     It's the old form of greeting. I haven't head it for a long time, for years. Under the circumstances it seems out of place, comical even, a flip backward in time, a stunt. I can think of nothing appropriate to say in return.
     I think I will cry.

(p.225):

Falling in love, we said; I feel for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely.

(p.250):

Here is what I'd like to tell. I'd like to tell a story about how Moira escaped, for good this time. Or if I couldn't tell that, I'd like to say she blew up Jezebel's, with fifty Commanders inside it. I'd like her to end with something daring and spectacular, some outrage, something that would befit her. But as far as I know that didn't happen. I don't know how she ended, or even if she did, because I never saw her again.

(p.262):

I'm sad now, the way we're talking is infinitely sad: faded music, faded paper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longer possible. Without warning I begin to cry.
At last he moves forward, puts his arms around me, strokes my back, holds me that way, for comfort.

(p.267):

I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish it were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow.

(p.292):

I look out at the dusk and think about its being winter. The snow falling, gently, effortlessly, covering everything in soft crystal, the mist of moonlight before a rain, blurring the outlines, obliterating color.

(p.295):

Whether this is my end or my beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can't be helped.
And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.

2001-12-23T11:34:00.000-06:00

From Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible:

(p.9--Orleanna):

I'll live or die on the strength of your judgment, but first let me say who I am. Let me claim that Africa and I kept company for a while and then parted ways, as if we were both party to relations with a failed outcome. Or say I was afflicted with Africa like a bout of a rare disease, from which I have not managed a full recovery. Maybe I'll even confess the truth, that I rode in with the horsemen and beheld the apocalypse, but still I'll insist I was only a captive witness. What is the conqueror's wife, if not a conquest herself? For that matter, what is he? When he rides in to vanquish the untouched tribes, don't you think they fall down with desire before those sky-colored eyes? And itch for a turn with those horses, and those guns? That's what we yell back at history, always, always. It wasn't just me; there were crimes strewn six ways to Sunday, and I had my own mouths to feed. I didn't know. I had no life of my own.
And you'll say I did. You'll say I walked across Africa with my wrists unshackled, and now I am one more soul walking free in a white skin, wearing some thread of the stolen goods: cotton or diamonds, freedom at the very least, prosperity. Some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don't, but we wear it all the same. There's only one question worth asking now: How do we aim to live with it?

(p.89--Orleanna):

     Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways: to be one of them, and also my husband's wife. What conceit! I was hus instrument, his animal. Nothing more. How we wives and mothers do perish at the hands of our own righteousness. I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.
     We would all have to escape Africa by a different route. Some of us are in the ground now and some are above it, but we're all women, made of the same scarred earth. I study my grown daughters now, for signs that they are resting in some kind of peace. How did they manage? When I remain hounded by judgment? The eyes in the trees open onto my dreams. In daylight they watch my crooked hands while I scratch the soil in my little damp garden. What do you want from me? When I raise up my craxy old eyes and talk to myself, what do you want me to tell you?
     Oh, little beast, little favorite. Can't you see I died as well?
     Sometimes I pray to remember, other times I pray to forget. It makes no difference.

(p.324--Orleanna):

I walked through the valley of my fate, is all, and learned to live what I could lose.
You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.

(p.385--Orleanna):

If you are the eyes in the trees, watching us as we walk away from Kilanga, how will you make your judgment? Lord knows after thirty years I still crave your forgiveness, but who are you? A small burial mound in the middle of Nathan's garden, where vines and flowers have long since unrolled to feed insects and children. Is that what you are? Are you still my own flesh and blood, my last-born, or are you now the flesh of Africa? How can I tell the difference when the two rivers have run together so? Try to imagine what never happened: our family without Africa, or the Africa that would have been without us. Look at your sisters now. Lock, stock, and barrel, they've got their own three ways to live with our history. Some can find it. Many more never do. But which among us is without sin? I can hardly think where to cast my stones, so I just go on keening for my own losses, trying to wear the marks of the boot on my back as gracefully as the Congo wears hers.
My little beast, my eyes, my favorite stolen egg. Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.

(p.490--Rachel):

     "Thou shalt not kill," I replied. "That's not just our way of thinking. It happens to be in the Bible."
     Leah and Adah smiled at each other.
     "Right. Here's to the Bible," Leah said, clinking her bottle against mine.
     "Tata Jesus is bängala!" Adah said, raising her bottle too. She and Leah looked at each other for a second, then both started laughing like hyenas.
     "Jesus is poisonwood!" Leah said. "Here's to the Minister of Poisonwood. And here's to his five wives!"
     Adah stopped laughing. "That was us."
     "Who?" I said. "What?"
     "Nathan's five legendary wives. They must have meant us."
     Leah stared at her. "You're right."
     Like I said: night, day, and the Fourth of July. I don't even try to understand.

(p.496--Adah):

     "I imagined getting the kerosene and burning him up in his bead. I only didn't because you were in it too."
     She looked up at me from under her hat brim. Her eyes were a wide, hard, granite blue.
     "It's true," I said. I pictured it clearly. I could smell the cold kerosene and feel it soaking the sheets. I still can.
     Then why didn't you? Both of us together. You might as well have.
     Because then you would be free too. And I didn't want that. I wanted you to remember what he did to us.
     Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

2001-12-19T13:49:00.000-06:00

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

2001-12-19T12:40:00.000-06:00

Song of Myself #52
by Walt Whitman

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I am not a bit tamed, I am too untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flash in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

2001-12-19T12:35:00.000-06:00

Because I could not stop for Death
by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death---
He kindly stopped for me---
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove---He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his Civility---

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess---in the Ring---
We passed the Fiends of Gazing Grain---
We passed the Setting Sun---

Or rather---He passed Us---
The Dews drew quivering and chill
For only Gossamer, my Gown---
My Tippet---only Tulle---

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground---
The Roof was scarcely visible---
The Cornice---in the Ground---

Since then---'tis Centuries---and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity---

2001-12-19T12:28:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Alex's Poetry Collection. It'll get a better title later.