Clearing the Sill of the World

I’d be one of the first killed in a nuclear exchange with Russia

I work two miles from the White House

live four miles outside DC

within two miles of Walter Reed and NIH

For 58 years I’ve lived within fifteen miles of DC

grew up during the Cold War

never fretted nuclear annihilation once

Do I think the stub-fingered ickiest shitlord sociopath

(at *this* given moment in time in shitlord narrative)

would destroy the world rather than lose everything while getting Gaddafi-ed

Hillary laughing?

No

but

I

confess

I

spent

a

fret

Expression				Consequences
Whitewashing America's wars
BLUE LIES MATTER
Olive above, c'mere, c'mere, c'mere, go away
Russian Trump				Putin's Bannon
From Russian pipelines with love
The ethical dimension
New: Jonathan Crary's *Scorched Earth*
Everything was beautiful
Great game				Why even try?
Richard Wilbur born 101 years ago today
Explanation for below in link above

 

THE WRITER

Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back, 
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten.  I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.