« Abril 2006 | Main | Julio 2006 »
Junio 7, 2006
Hot Nights in Florida
The woman is asleep in the bedrom. the fan is making
its sound and the television is on behind him
with the sound off. The chuck-will's -widow is calling
in the scrub across the asphalt road. Farther on,
the people are asleep in their one-story houses
with the lawn outside and the boat in the driveway.
He is thinking of the British Museum. These children
drive fast when they are awake. Twenty years ago
this was a swamp with alligators and no shape.
He is thinking of the Danish cold that foced him
into the gypsy girl's bed. Like walking through
a door and finding Venezia when he thought he was
in Yugoslavia. The people here seem hardly here
at all: blond desire always in the middle of
air conditioning. He remembers love as it could be.
Outside, the moon is shining on nothing in particular.
Jack Gilbert
Posted by sarita at 1:51 PM
The Abnormal is Not Courage
The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.
Jack Gilbert
Posted by sarita at 1:48 PM
Junio 2, 2006
Keep two truths...
Keep two truths in your pocket and take them out according to the need of the moment. Let one be “For my sake the world was created.” And the other: “I am dust and ashes.”
Rabbi Simcha Bunam
Posted by sarita at 10:51 AM