Saturday, January 5, 2013

Saturday commute lxxv: What to read, what to read today?





   of embodying possibilities drawn
   from a shelf, more than a rack of
   ideas, reserved in our experience
   to the repulsive or well-to-do -
   less commonly the same thing, back
   then - we would occasionally specu-
   late in merry, almost doting wonder.
   But then another round would be pro-
   posed and we'd move on to who had
   lately turned up missing from our
   gatherings. They didn't care if we 
   remembered, and by such attritions
   we all felt prettier to forget. Pos- 
   sibly Gérard demurred at this im-
   modesty, but no one could suspect
   him of wearing us, rhetorically.















Thursday, January 3, 2013

On watching Jeanne in the rain in "L'ascenseur .."


remembered ones
and correspondents





..
One night late

he came to the house looking for the husband.
The wife was in her study in the attic
with all the lights on down below.
Got your house lit up like a Roman nougat!
[He] calls out from the stairs.
She looks up from her work, deep
in the pleasure of it as he can see, something about her
blinds him.
He's out she says.
Together

Some call it love
but those whose souls knit at that moment
as the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David
did not love one another.
How much simpler that would have been.



















Anne Carson
The Beauty of the Husband
  A fictional essay in 29 tangos
  XVI. Detail as a reticent event
  [final stanzas]
Random House, 2001©


Louis Malle, director
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud
Roger Nimier & Louis Malle,
  screenplay
Henri Decaë, cinematography
Miles Davis, score & performance
Jeanne Moreau
Maurice Ronet
Rialto Pictures, 1958©




Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Spare us, O Lord, the taint of any improvement


So why not, indeed, try something new?
Actually, I can think of a number of reasons. 
Wait - suddenly I can't think of any!
The present is here, its birds and bees,
fons et origo of life, folie de toucher
that infects even the civilised classes -
none of these are a reason to 'start with' life,
though some are undeniably a veiled warning
back from the precipice where love dwells
along with fetishism and nympholepsy.


      No need for these not to cohabit as long as the horses
      can stand it.




       Downtown was mesmerised
       another year. Just who are these strangers
       who come on so strong?





Yet it is good to remember
one's humble origins, and reflect
on how we came to look this way.
What were we thinking all along? Who charted
this anxious mappemonde, barren of side roads
and identity crises?

There comes a time when the fleece
fills your mouth, but there was so much left to say.






















John Ashbery
A Worldly Country
  Imperfect Sympathies
op. cit.



Monday, December 31, 2012

Who'll not dance on Janus' parapet tonight?



  Mother, be natural for   a minute.

  I don't know what you     mean. I'm trying to       realise a very bitter     truth ..

  There's nothing so very   bitter about it.

  My poor child!

  Very well, then! I love   Sandy, and he loves me!



                    That would be the only 
                    possible excuse for your 
                    behaviour.

                    Why shouldn't we love 
                    each other?

                    Sandy was in love with me 
                    this afternoon.
















  One cannot possibly love
  this world, the same way,       every hour. A gladdening
  thing, is to've been giv-
  en such inconstancy as an
  ironclad excuse. 
  


  

  
  

























Noel Coward
Hay Fever
1925
Three Plays by
  Noel Coward
Edward Albee, editor
Dell Publishing, 1965©


iii   Eugen Timofaev



Clean shirt flowing fount





  The loveliest prose
  allows its vitality
  to bathe in zealous
  flow the vision one
  would mold, keeping
  faith with the vul-
  nerable and fine.