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| How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.
--Charles Simic
Charles Simic was named Poet Laurate today. He replaces Donald Hall to become the15th poet laurate of the United States | | |
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I wanna tell you 'bout Texas Radio and the Big Beat:
Comes out of the Virginia swamps
Cool and slow with plenty of precision,
With a back beat narrow and hard to master.
Some call it heavenly in it's brilliance,
Others, mean and rueful of the Western dream.
I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft.
We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping.
This is the land where the Pharaoh died.
The Negroes in the forest brightly feathered.
They are saying, "Forget the night.
Live with us in forests of azure.
Out here on the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we as stone - immaculate."
Listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the heartache,
I'll tell you 'bout the heartache and the loss of God,
I'll tell you 'bout the hopeless night,
The meager food for souls forgot,
I'll tell you 'bout the maiden with wrought iron soul.
I'll tell you this,
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.
I'll tell you 'bout Texas Radio and the Big Beat:
Soft drivin', slow and mad, like some new language.
Now, listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the Texas,
I'll tell you 'bout the Texas Radio,
I'll tell you 'bout the hopeless night,
Wandering the Western dream,
Tell you 'bout the maiden with raw iron soul.
--Jim Morrison
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| I think I know what he would say
about the dream I had last night
in which my nose was lopped off in a sword fight,
leaving me to wander the streets of 18th-century Paris
with a kind of hideous blowhole in the middle of my face.
But what would be his thoughts
about the small brown leather cone
attached to my face with goose grease
which I purchased from a gnome-like sales clerk
at a little shop called House of a Thousand Noses?
And how would he interpret
my stopping before every gilded mirror
to admire the fine grain and the tiny brass studs,
always turning to show my best profile,
my clean-shaven chin slightly raised?
Surely, narcissism fails to capture
my love of posing in those many rooms,
sometimes with an open window behind me
showing the blue sky which would be eclipsed
by the Eiffel Tower in roughly a hundred years.
--Billy Collins | | |
| First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.
Ted Kooser
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| Similiter et omnes revereantur Diaconos, ut mandatum Jesu Christi; et Episcopum, ut Jesum Christum, existentem filium Patris; Presbyteros autem, ut concilium Dei et conjunctionem Apostolorum. Sine his Ecclesia non vocatur; de quibus suadeo vos sic habeo. |
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S. Ignatii Ad Trallianos. |
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And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans. | |
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| THE BROAD-BACKED hippopotamus |
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| Rests on his belly in the mud; |
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| Although he seems so firm to us |
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| He is merely flesh and blood. |
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| Flesh and blood is weak and frail, |
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| Susceptible to nervous shock; |
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| While the True Church can never fail |
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| For it is based upon a rock. |
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| The hippo’s feeble steps may err |
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| In compassing material ends, |
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| While the True Church need never stir |
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| To gather in its dividends. |
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| The ’potamus can never reach |
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| The mango on the mango-tree; |
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| But fruits of pomegranate and peach |
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| Refresh the Church from over sea. |
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| At mating time the hippo’s voice |
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| Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd, |
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| But every week we hear rejoice |
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| The Church, at being one with God. |
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| The hippopotamus’s day |
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| Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; |
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| God works in a mysterious way— |
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| The Church can sleep and feed at once. |
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| I saw the ’potamus take wing |
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| Ascending from the damp savannas, |
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| And quiring angels round him sing |
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| The praise of God, in loud hosannas. |
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| Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean |
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| And him shall heavenly arms enfold, |
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| Among the saints he shall be seen |
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| Performing on a harp of gold. |
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| He shall be washed as white as snow, |
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| By all the martyr’d virgins kist, |
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| While the True Church remains below |
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| Wrapt in the old miasmal mist. | | | | |
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