Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Clearly no one comments on poetry if they can't say something nice.What a disappointment. I mean, come on--"thrummed my nipple for a clot of fears"? That's about as grotesque a clot of words as you're ever likely to read. It was so awful it made me smile and I had to keep it just so someone would go "!!" It's only a first draft, after all.

Anyway, the lump is quite real, and has been for some time. I saw our local physician yesterday, and Friday I go again for all the imaging. If it turns out to be an actual scary thing, I'll vie for access to Mercy Hospital, a Catholic facility in Redding, 200 miles west of here. I've heard they're flexible about billing.

What a revolting development this is!*

After Thanksgiving week, by which time the dust will have settled, we will acquire a third llama, a woman llama who is tired of having babies (maybe) and will fare better hanging out here with a couple of old geldings. Her interim owner calls her "MamaLlama" but I'll have to think of something better, maybe "AlabamaLlama"...

We move about under a dense gray blanket these days, not cloud cover as such but its high-fog variant, which sometimes burns off enough by late afternoon to admit some yellow light. We'll have to go walk out there today. It's been too long.

Here is a poem by Gerald Stern:

I Pity the Wind

I am taking off my glasses
so I can stare at the little candles
and the glass of water
in pure darkness.

I am letting a broom stand
for my speech on justice
and an old thin handkerchief
for the veil of melodrama I have worn for thirty years.

I am dragging in Euripides
for his strange prayer
and my own true Hosea
for his poem on love and loyalty.

After a minute I fall down dead
from too much thought
and turn to the freezing wall
for an hour of quiet sadness.

I start my practice later,
twenty minutes for breathing,
twenty minutes for song,
twenty minutes for liberation and ritual.

My poem is about the airshaft
and Zoroaster
and the soul caught in its last struggle
with the two-headed cow, father of everything.

My elation has to do with light,
my misery with darkness,
my secrecy and fear and distance
with neither.

I end up with a pillow
and a painted floor, as I always do,
my head on the flowers, a little pocket for air,
my right arm drifted and dangling.

I end up just humming,
true to myself at last,
preparing myself for the bridge
and the hand that will lead me, the hand I adore.

I pity this hero,
so in love with fire,
so warlike,
so bent on teaching.



* Ack. Wm. Bendix, The Life of Riley.


11:07:24 AM    comment []