- Today's abridged bleggalgaze: see post title.
- Though I do want to say thanks for recent links & Kind. It makes me happy on two levels, one decent and impure, one indecent and pure.
- The deaf vocation of a troll.
- In a reversal of usual sillyass gag protocols, the poem came before the gag.
- Unearthly beauty.
- Religious me-dom.
- License to kill.
- Jim's road trip's photolog.
- Airport's latest playlist.
- RIP Tomas Transtromer.
- Oops. Not the article I want to read about Stephin Merritt who I am seeing in concert twice in May.
- Reminder: Six Organs of Admittance playing DC9 on Sunday April 26, Mr Alarum and me already have tickets, if you want one - on me - let me know.
PONDERABLE
Lyn Hejinian
The pine branches reach—the rain! the sun!
the edge of the moving air!
three goats!
Girls on razor scooters turn the corner and scoot
Autonomy actually shows, it shines amidst the stars of decision
I sacrifice hearing to writing, I return to the back of the train
Surrounded by nothing but tattered island nasturtia, the shoveler is
prepared to exclaim, “Grief exterior, grief prison”
Beastly pine cones are falling from the sky
Down in the middle, and a soft wall, the midnight breeze billows
Check the role, the rock, the rule!
From cardboard pressed to ginger, water spilled on a list, salt sprinkled
over…
Why so many references to dogs, purple, and bananas?
Then the carnival—it came up afterwards like a vermillion buttress to
say of itself “it appears”
Wren in a ragged bee line, flora sleeping live
Yuki, Felicia, and Maxwell have between them $13.75, and they are
hungry as they enter the small café, where they see a display of
pies and decide to spend all their money on pie there and then—
how much pie will each get to eat if each pie costs $5.25?
Invincible is my myopia, great is my waist, choral are my ideas, wingéd
three goats!
Girls on razor scooters turn the corner and scoot
Autonomy actually shows, it shines amidst the stars of decision
I sacrifice hearing to writing, I return to the back of the train
Surrounded by nothing but tattered island nasturtia, the shoveler is
prepared to exclaim, “Grief exterior, grief prison”
Beastly pine cones are falling from the sky
Down in the middle, and a soft wall, the midnight breeze billows
Check the role, the rock, the rule!
From cardboard pressed to ginger, water spilled on a list, salt sprinkled
over…
Why so many references to dogs, purple, and bananas?
Then the carnival—it came up afterwards like a vermillion buttress to
say of itself “it appears”
Wren in a ragged bee line, flora sleeping live
Yuki, Felicia, and Maxwell have between them $13.75, and they are
hungry as they enter the small café, where they see a display of
pies and decide to spend all their money on pie there and then—
how much pie will each get to eat if each pie costs $5.25?
Invincible is my myopia, great is my waist, choral are my ideas, wingéd
Yes the title! And trolling is my dark heart.
ReplyDeleteThanks, too, for the link.
some say april is poetry month
ReplyDeleteTwo Tramps in Mud Time Poem by Robert Frost
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.
The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.
The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.