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Abril 20, 2004
My Favorite Chords
They're tearing up streets again.
They're building a new hotel.
The Mayor's out killing kids to keep taxes down,
and me and my anger sit folding a paper bird,
letting the curtains turn to beating wings.
Wish I had a socket-set to dismantle this morning.
And just one pair of clean socks.
And a photo of you.
When you get off work tonight,
meet me at the construction site,
and we'll write some notes to tape to the heavy machines,
like "We hope they treat you well. Hope you don't work too hard.
We hope you get to be happy sometimes."
Bring your swiss-army knife, and a bottle of something,
and I'll bring some spraypaint and a new deck of cards.
Hey I found the safest place
to keep all our tenderness.
Keep all our bad ideas.
Keep all our hope.
It's here in the smallest bones,
the feet and the inner-ear.
It's such an enormous thing to walk and to listen.
I'd like to fall asleep to the beat of you breathing
in a room near a truckstop on a highway somewhere.
You are a radio.
You are an open door.
I am a faulty string of blue christmas lights.
You swim through frequencies.
You let that stranger in,
as I'm blinking off and on and off again.
We've got a lot of time.
Or maybe we don't,
but I'd like to think so,
so let me pretend.
These are my favourite chords.
I know you like them too.
When I get a new guitar, you can have this one and sing me a lullaby.
Sing me the alphabet.
Sing me a story I haven't heard yet.
The Weakerthans (lyrics)
Posted by sarita at 11:36 AM
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School
Detroit, 1942
He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for Gertrude Bimmler, who raised
her hand before she spoke. "M. Degas,
you have created the hypotenuse
of an isosceles trinagle." Degas mused.
Everyone knew that Gertrude could not
be incorrect. "It is possible,"
Louis Warshowsky added precisely,
"that you have begun to represent
the roof of a barn." I remember
that it was exactly twenty minutes
past eleven, and I thought at worst
this would go on another forty
minutes. It was early April,
the snow had all but melted on
the playgrounds, the elms and maples
bordering the cracked walks shivered
in the new winds, and I believed
that before I knew it I'd be
swaggering to the candy store
for a Milky Way. M. Degas
pursed his lips, and the room
stilled until the long hand
of the clock moved to twenty one
as though in complicity with Gertrude,
who added confidently, "You've begun
to separate the dark from the dark."
I looked back for help, but now
the trees bucked and quaked, and I
knew this could go on forever.
Philip Levine
Posted by sarita at 10:24 AM
Abril 18, 2004
A Psalm of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
'Life is but an empty dream!'
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, -- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'er head!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footsteps on the sands of time: --
Footsteps, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Posted by sarita at 6:50 PM
Abril 15, 2004
You I See
You I see everywhere, you I see nowhere,
the less I seek to err, the less I'm right,
I see a shadow when there's no one there.
Bereft at dusk, I move from chair to chair.
Bleak heart, I try, but I can't put you right.
I see you everywhere, I see you nowhere.
Stumbling, stammering, I swallow air,
loudly disputing what is wrong or right,
I speak to shadows when nobody's there,
speeches that can do nothing to repair,
those hours, that being over, can't come right
when nowhere is a place called everywhere,
of winding spiral stairs, a double pair
that never meet though I turn left and right.
I hear your shadow step, but you're not there.
I gave you my heart. Life isn't fair.
It's true, I knew: to you I had no right.
Heedless, I divined signs from anywhere
--a sword, a one-eyed cat, a happy pair--
that one day I would sleep, and think, and write.
Amused, you'd answer from the shadows there.
Cynthia Zarin
Posted by sarita at 10:11 AM
Abril 12, 2004
A Hardware Store As Proof of the Existence of God
I praise the brightness of hammers pointing east
like the steel woodpeckers of the future,
and dozens of hinges opening brass wings,
and six new rakes shyly fanning their toes,
and bins of hooks glittering into bees,
and a rack of wrenches like the long bones of horses,
and mailboxes sowing rows of silver chapels,
and a company of plungers waiting for God
to claim their thin legs in their big shoes
and put them on and walk away laughing.
In a world not perfect but not bad either
let there be glue, glaze, gum, and grabs,
caulk also, and hooks, shackles, cables, and slips,
and signs so spare a child may read them,
Men, Women, In, Out, No Parking, Beware the Dog.
In the right hands, they can work wonders.
Nancy Willard
Posted by sarita at 11:06 PM
Abril 9, 2004
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
Wallace Stevens
Posted by sarita at 12:49 PM
Abril 7, 2004
less willing to risk...
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
John W. Gardner
Posted by sarita at 11:21 AM
Abril 5, 2004
My elbows are grass-stained...
Calvin: My elbows are grass-stained, I've got sticks in my
hair, I'm covered with bug bites and cuts and
scratches... I've got sand in my socks and leaves in
my shirt, my hands are sticky with sap, and my shoes
are soaked! I'm hot, dirty, sweaty, itchy and tired.
Hobbes: I say consider this day seized!
Posted by sarita at 9:02 PM
Abril 4, 2004
Early
From behind the hill
flowing through somber
palm, eucalyptus, web
of oakboughs, rises
ligh so pale a gold
it bathes in silver
the cool and still
air a single bird
stiirs with tentative song.
Denise Levertov
Posted by sarita at 5:02 PM