Retort to the Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
I want a LOGIC to my delicate rhapsodies, damnit, and I don't just mean equivocations with logical pretensions. (Rob is a pest. The exterminator kills pests. Therefore, the exterminator will kill Rob.) I want my palaces rooted in the world-weary rock, the solid ugly uncompromising rock, each spire and cupola hewn and blueprinted--ironhearted and weatherbeaten and staring down the sun. After forty days and forty nights of rain, I want to feel minnows swirl around my turret roofs, anemones blossom in the courtyards; I want sharks to lurk in my benighted corridors, and barnacles clinging to my every crenelation. I want to luxuriate in high noon sunshine, be it blued and gilded through a hundred feet of water. And when the flood recedes, when the first sea bird comes to rest on my highest spire, I want to sigh in slow-grown joy.
I aspire to shining endurance.
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
I want a LOGIC to my delicate rhapsodies, damnit, and I don't just mean equivocations with logical pretensions. (Rob is a pest. The exterminator kills pests. Therefore, the exterminator will kill Rob.) I want my palaces rooted in the world-weary rock, the solid ugly uncompromising rock, each spire and cupola hewn and blueprinted--ironhearted and weatherbeaten and staring down the sun. After forty days and forty nights of rain, I want to feel minnows swirl around my turret roofs, anemones blossom in the courtyards; I want sharks to lurk in my benighted corridors, and barnacles clinging to my every crenelation. I want to luxuriate in high noon sunshine, be it blued and gilded through a hundred feet of water. And when the flood recedes, when the first sea bird comes to rest on my highest spire, I want to sigh in slow-grown joy.
I aspire to shining endurance.