note that I am sketching your face as of now
Nostos
There was an apple tree in the yard
this would have been
forty years ago--behind,
only meadows. Drifts
of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in that neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for the relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsal, voices
rising from the tennis courts--
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
-Louise Glück
I can't write.
This is an issue.
I'm distracted by poetry and memory,
by a hurt tummy and
throbbing burns
This paper will fail to reach fruition. Oops.
I've been thinking of the new generation
of academics. Of the women specifically,
sexualized and sexual. Making love to Goethe
like it's their job. Finishing volume 5 of
Proust at 21; knowing life through Greek. Hip.
I can't put any more concrete thoughts onto it,
but it's pretty cool.
Too bad that image doesn't include me.
Ok, gotta work, gotta work...