Origins of Wednesday xiv: Short sorties we attempt

 This will have been the first

 entry encountered in this pub-

 lication after its millionth

 reading. If a lot has changed,

 a lot has continued as it all

 began; and this is an occasion

 for recalling a couple of the

 strands one likes the best. I

 like discovering resemblances.

 I like the surprise of mastery,

 the triumph of the fair.

Worn out, the young ones drag themselves home far into

  night,

legs thick with thyme. They feast on arbutes all around,

on grey-green willows, on cassia and red-flecked crocus,

on the sappy linden and dusky hyacinths.

Together their rest from labour, together their labour:

at dawn they rush out their gates, no dilly-dally; and when

  at last

the evening star exhorts them quit their forage

afield, then they head for their hutches, then restore their

  bodies.

A buzzing: they murmur around the doors and on the

  doorsteps.

Later, when they've tucked themselves into their chambers,

  hushed

is the night, well-earned sleep overtakes their tuckered

  limbs

..

but on all sides, safe beneath the city's ramparts, siphon up

  water

and attempt short sorties, and often take up pebbles, with

  which,

as a skiff unsteady on the tossing wave takes on ballast,

they balance themselves through flimsy cloud.

Virgil
70 - 19 BC
Georgics
  Book iv, 176 - 195
  [Bees]
Kimberly Johnson
  translation
Penguin Classics, 2010©


Otto Umbehr
Night in a Small Town
1930
Princeton University Museum of Art
The Life and Death of Buildings
23 July - 16 November, 2011©