Saturday, January 12, 2013

Saturday commute lxxvi: the blue pants solution











  

    Is any Saturday ever wholly 
    lost, do you suppose, which 
    will allow a fellow to go a-
    bout in blue pants?











              
















































Friday, January 11, 2013

Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria







               And from then
               on, you know,
               well ..



























Thursday, January 10, 2013

Qu'est-ce qu'un cendrier ii





Process
of a red stripe through much whiplash
of environmental sweepstakes misinterprets
slabs as they come forward. A
footprint





 directs traffic in the  center
 of flat crocus plaza as  the storm
 incurves on this new  situation. Why
 are there developments?
 A transparent shovel  paves, "they" say,
 residual elastic fetters
 pictures of moments
 brought under the sand





















John Ashbery
    Sand Pail
Viking Press, 1975
  Pulitzer Prize
  National Book Award
  National Book Critics
    Circle Award
Penguin, 1976©


John Julius Norwich
op. cit.

Vieux Télégraphe 2008
ashtray 1925, photo Laurent



Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Qu'est-ce qu'un cendrier





  
  On a stack of bedside
  reading, likely to be
  acknowledged sometime
  here, I laid a wish-
  bone I had promised a
  man to keep for him,
  in a vessel now obso-
  lete in this house, a
  shining ashtray from
  dinners drawn from an
  urban cocotte I loved.






























Ian McEwan
Sweet Tooth
Jonathan Cape, 2012©

Peter J. Conradi
A Very English Hero
  The Making of 
  Frank Thompson
Bloomsbury, 2012©

Baccarat photo, Laurent




Monday, January 7, 2013

Who's your deal with, mister ?






        What is history,
        but a fable, 
        agreed upon?























Napoleon Bonaparte
1769-1821
Emmanuel de las Casas
Memorial of St. Helena
1823

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essays
  History
    citing Bonaparte
1841
The Annotated Emerson
David Mikics, editor
Belknap Press
Harvard University Press, 2012©

Liam Hickey




Sunday, January 6, 2013

"Whose single glance .."



   Perhaps causality was a
   way of uniting god with
   laughter?







But supposing I had chosen to march on you
Instead of on such a star - what then?
Instead of this incubus of infinite duration,
I mean to say, whose single glance
Brings loving to its knees?







Yes, wherever the ant-hills empty
Swarm the fecund associations, crossing
And recrossing the sky-pathways of sleep.
We labor only to be relatively
Sincere as ants perhaps are sincere.
Yet always the absolute vision must keep
The healthy lodestar of its stake in love.





You'll see somewhere always the crystal body
Transparent, held high against the light
Blaze like a diamond in the deep.
How can a love of life be ever indiscreet
For even in that far dispersing city today
Ants must turn over in their sleep.



























Lawrence Durrell
Selected Poems
Peter Porter, editor
Solange 
   [extracts]
op. cit.