Tuesday, November 15, 2011

For Authorities Whose Hopes Are Shaped by Mercenaries? Writers Entrapped by Teatime Fame and by Commuter's Comforts? Not for These the Paper Nautilus Constructs Her Thin Glass Shell




Two years ago I would have calculated all the implications I could of the below, good and bad - and I think good here is attempted, all hypocrisy and complicity implicit by all assumed - and then anguished over each one, but fuck it.






My black and white with red crest Swiss Army watch is suddenly losing minutes but only minutes between minute hand ten and twelve the past eight hours. If I reset the minute hand to one it keeps time until ten then loses three minutes between ten and eleven and two minutes between eleven and twelve. This can't be the battery, right?
















THE PAPER NAUTILUS

Marianne Moore

For authorities whose hopes
are shaped by mercenaries?
Writers entrapped by
teatime fame and by
commuters' comforts? Not for these
the paper nautilus
constructs her thin glass shell.

Giving her perishable
souvenir of hope, a dull
white outside and smooth-
edged inner surface
glossy as the sea, the watchful
maker of it guards it
day and night; she scarcely

eats until the eggs are hatched.
Buried eight-fold in her eight
arms, for she is in
a sense a devil-
fish, her glass ram'shorn-cradled freight
is hid but is not crushed;
as Hercules, bitten

by a crab loyal to the hydra,
was hindered to succeed,
the intensively
watched eggs coming from
the shell free it when they are freed,--
leaving its wasp-nest flaws
of white on white, and close-

laid Ionic chiton-folds
like the lines in the mane of
a Parthenon horse,
round which the arms had
wound themselves as if they knew love
is the only fortress
strong enough to trust to.


4 comments:

  1. Chopin and Liszt...great selections!

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  2. Bloomberg - just another fascist, when all is said and done.
    ~

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  3. Thanks for sharing EG's art. Nice stuff. Good luck with the show.

    Yea Pylon (used as the soundtrack of my review of Tom McCarthy's C.—which he privately approved!).

    Let's see: Yes, battery.

    Saw the Eno/Stipe/Colbert trio. The interview w/ Eno—whom I've been a fan of since the 1st Roxy—was the first I'd ever seen. Worthwhile. The piece: cute. Hero worship for our host.

    Have you read "House of Leave"? I've been dipping my toe in. So far, so good. I'm captive. Might help your slump. Might not.

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  4. I read and loved *House of Leaves* when it came out ten years ago, the tunnels through the pages especially, I thought it was brilliant. Tried Danielewski's *Only Revolutions* when it came out but could never engage, though it's an absolutely beautiful book to hold in your hands.

    Yeah, I try another battery before buying another watch, though, assuming that works, only fills in one side of the metaphor.

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