Thursday, November 29, 2012

Feeling the Cold, Sinfully Unshriven



 
OK, I admit I'd never heard that song until yesterday on Irwin's show, what, it was wowee, I wasn't going to post it? I swear, blessed serendipity, I woke up this morning with the song below the Jack Gilbert poem in my head and then when link-fishing this morning I saw this, posted while I was asleep. Holyfucking weird. As for the Gilbert poem, I was surprised when I saw this obit/appreciation of Gilbert last night and realized I hadn't posted it during the Gilbert blizzard:


TRANSGRESSIONS

He thinks about how important the sinning was,
how much his equity was in just being alive.
Like the sloth. The days and nights wasted,
doing nothing important adding up to
the favorite years. Long hot afternoons
watching ants while the cicadas railed
in the Chinese elm about the brevity of life.
Indolence so often while no one was watching.
Wasting June mornings with the earth singing
all around. Autumn afternoons doing nothing
but listening to the siren voices of streams
and clouds coaxing him into the sweet happiness
of leaving it all alone. Using up what
little time we have, relishing our mortality,
waltzing slowly without purpose. Neglecting
the future. Content to let the garden fail
and the house continue on in its usual disorder.
Yes, and coveting the neighbors' wives.
Their clean hair and soft voices. The seraphim
he was sure were in one of the upstairs rooms.
Hesitant occasions of pride, feeling himself feeling.
Waking in the night and lying there. Discovering
the past in wonderful stillness. The other,
older pride. Watching the ambulance take away
the man whose throat he had crushed. Above all,
his greed. Greed of time, of being. This world,
the pinewoods stretching all brown or bare
on either side of the railroad tracks in winter
twilight. Him feeling the cold, sinfully unshriven.










5 comments:

  1. I think it's difficult to compare Presidential suckitude across centuries.

    I started on a project comparing Obama to Clinton, but got bogged down just compiling Bill Clinton's endless suckitude.

    (Spoiler: Obama is still going to "win", thanks to things like the USA PATRIOT Act, and the A.G. comparison: Janet Reno vs. Eric Holder.)
    ~

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  2. Lincoln isn't about Obama. Your obsession notwithstanding. He's been working on it for years and used Doris Kearns Goodwin's book as a template. Which is worth reading.

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  3. Oh, I don't dispute my obsessions color my interpretations but hasten to add that within the admittedly limited world of people I read I'm hardly alone in making that jump.

    God, the incidental music sucked. Fuck John Williams.

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  4. No, you aren't alone. Then again some of us actually read the book and follow Kushner. See Angels in America?

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  5. Never seen. Know of, know what, read about, read parts but not end to end, but never seen - movies and theater are gaping holes. Please, if there's a particular version I should see let me know - I'll make a date with Earthgirl, we'll watch.

    I don't like seeing Shakespeare plays. I'd rather read the play as a novel and cast and direct in my head. This is why I shouldn't write about movies.

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