(no subject)
To my pleasant surprise I looked outside and discovered that it's raining. The sound is soothing.
Something I picked off april-da-fool's journal, and she picked it off TVMobile...so maybe it's not totally useless after all...
"Desire is a stranger we all think we know, Truth is a game we all play to win"
I'm not sure what it means, but I've a feeling that it'll come in useful eventually.
And here's something from my trawling efforts for Lit S. I'm really glad that I chose Sharon Olds now, even though I forgot for a while about doing her work for S. It's really quite intense poetry. I like the narrative style she takes, so frank and powerful. And her life is fascinating, in its own fulfilling, tragic, solemn way. Especially her familial relations...
Cambridge Elegy
Sharon Olds
(for Henry Averell Gerry, 1941-60)
I scarcely know how to speak to you now,
you are so young now, closer to my daughter’s age
than mine - but I have been there and seen it, and must
tell you, as the seeing and hearing
spell the world into the deaf-mute’s hand.
The dormer windows like the ears of a fox, like the
double row of teats on a pig, still
perk up over the Square, though they’re digging up the
street now, as if digging a grave,
the shovels shrieking on stone like your car
sliding on its roof after the crash.
How I wanted everyone to die if you had to die,
how sealed into my own world I was,
deaf and blind. What can I tell you now,
now that I know so much and you are a
freshman, still, drinking a quart of orange juice and
playing three sets of tennis to cure a hangover, such an
ardent student of the grown-ups! I can tell you
we were right, our bodies were right, life was
really going to be that good, that
pleasurable in every cell.
Suddenly I remember the exact look of your body, but
better than the bright corners of your eyes, or the
light of your face, the rich Long Island
puppy-fat of your thighs, or the shined
chino of your pants bright in the corners of my eyes, I
remember your extraordinary act of courage in
loving me, something no one but the
blind and halt had done before. You were
fearless, you could drive after a sleepless night
just like a grown-up, and not be afraid, you could
fall asleep at the wheel easily and
never know it, each blond hair of your head - and they were
thickly laid - put out like a filament of light,
twenty years ago. The Charles still
slides by with that ease that made me bitter when I
wanted all things hard as your death was hard,
wanted all things broken and rigid as the
bricks in the sidewalk or your love for me
stopped cell by cell in your young body.
Ave - I went ahead and had the children,
the life of ease and faithfulness, the
palm and the breast, every millimeter of delight in the body,
I took the road we stood on at the start together, I
took it all without you as if
in taking it after all I could most
honour you.