Did They Wipe the Blood from Their Mousetraps?

Just gave myself a haircut.

Good news: nothing I did screwed up the blogrolls. It was driving me nuts, I went to the ironically name Blooger Help Forum and discovered many other bloogers are experiencing the same blogroll breakages.

Bad news: Blooger did it. Only Blooger bloogs now update (along with a few others, including Typepad, and sources that are not technically bloogs) but most other blooging platforms, primarily WordPress, have their RSS feeds severed. I assume Blooger did this on purpose with petty dictatorial intent, but I see cynicism in most actions and fine metaphors abounding in all things. Perhaps it's an honest glitch that will be fixed. Perhaps it's an honest glitch that won't.



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• Beyond the dark places.
• Biblioklept (which no longer updates on the blogroll) is TEN!
• If you know someone who's been waiting for Clinton to play the cracker-card..... once that would have been me.
• That broke late last night, six hours after coffee with my Hillaryite Friend, who is confident in Clinton's victory and expressed admiration for Clinton's restraint in not directly attacking Trump's most devout. Nothing, said HF, can be gained by Clinton denouncing the Stormfront wing of Trump's support, and I agreed. Once, I said, it would have thrilled me for a Democratic POTUS candidate at the height of the campaign to publicly denounce Stormfronters and once I would have accused that candidate of cowardice for not denouncing Stormfronters. Now, it's one of the few smart things Clinton's campaign has done, letting Stormfronters advertise themselves.
• Oops.
• Democrats worried! Maybe ▲ is the new tactic Democrats want.
• UPDATE! While I do think attacking Stormfronters is bad, stupid, and desperate politics, I am still small enough to enjoy the whines of Stormfronters' hurt feelings.
• Bill Clinton says “It’s so much easier just to discredit people and call them names.”
• Repeater ▼ below the poem. Song comes into my head whenever I potus lately. Was there, had more hair.

CONCERNING MY NEIGHBORS, THE HITTITES

Charles Simic

Great are the Hittites.

Their ears have mice and mice have holes.

Their dogs bury themselves and leave the bones

To guard the house. A single weed holds all their storms

Until the spiderwebs spread over the heavens.

There are bits of straw in their lakes and rivers

Looking for drowned men. When a camel won’t pass

Through the eye of one of their needles,

They tie a house to its tail. Great are the Hittites.

Their fathers are in cradles, their newborn make war.

To them lead floats, a leaf sinks. Their god is the size

Of a mustard seed so that he can be quickly eaten.

They also piss against the wind,

Pour water in a leaky bucket.

Strike two tears to make fire,

And have tongues with bones in them,

Bones of a wolf gnawed by lambs.

    *

They are also called mound builders,

They are called Asiatic horses

That will drink on the Rhine, they are called

My grandmother’s fortune-telling, they are called

You can’t take it to the grave with you.

It’s that hum in your left ear,

A sigh coming from deep within you,

A dream in which you keep falling forever,

The hour in which you sit up in bed

As though someone has shouted your name.

No one knows why the Hittites exist,

Still, when two are whispering

One of them is listening.

Did they catch the falling knife?

They caught it like a fly with closed mouths.

Did they balance the last egg?

They struck the egg with a bone so it won’t howl.

Did they wait for dead man’s shoes?

The shoes went in at one ear and out the other.

Did they wipe the blood from their mousetraps?

They burnt the blood to warm themselves.

Are they cold with no pockets in their shrouds?

If the sky falls, they shall have clouds for supper.

What do they have for us

To put in our pipes and smoke?

They have the braid of a beautiful girl

That drew a team of cattle

And the engraving of him who slept

With dogs and rose with fleas

Searching for its trace in the sky.

    *

And so there are fewer and fewer of them now.

Who wrote their name on paper

And burnt the paper? Who put snake bones

In their pillows? Who threw nail parings

In their soup? Who made them walk

Under the ladder? Who stuck pins

In their snapshots?

The wart of warts and his brother evil eye.

Bone-lazy and her sister rabbit’s-foot.

Cross-your-fingers and their father dog star.

Knock-on-wood and his mother hellfire.

Because the tail can’t wag the cow.

Because the woods can’t fly to the dove.

Because the stones haven’t said their last word.

Because dunghills rise and empires fall.

    *

They are leaving behind

All the silver spoons

Found inside their throats at birth,

A hand they bit because it fed them,

Two rats from a ship that is still sinking,

A collection of various split hairs,

The leaf they turned over too late.

    *

All that salt cast over the shoulder,

All that bloody meat traveling under the saddles of nomads ...

Here comes a forest in wolf’s clothing,

The wise hen bows to the umbrella.

When the bloodshot evening meets the bloodshot night,

They tell each other bloodshot tales.

That bare branch over them speaks louder than words.

The moon is worn threadbare.

I repeat: lean days don’t come singly,

It takes all kinds to make the sun rise.

The night is each man’s castle.

Don’t let the castle out of the bag.

Wind in the valley, wind in the high hills,

Practice will make this body fit this bed.

    *

May all roads lead

Out of a sow’s ear

To what’s worth

Two in the bush.