Sunday nibbled sleeve

   Why, of course, Martin, I believe

   you, I suppose. But, what strikes

   one as uncanny, even for him, is

   how he could have known that some

   speak Russian in Ukraine. My dear,

   this would explain so many things.

Jaguar E-Type

  Eagle Speedster

Saturday commute clxii: 7 when right-handed

     We don't have to crop a Vivian Maier

     photograph, to pare it to essentials.

     We just have to look at it. How fam-

     iliar she finds the subject's own an-

     nouncement, I am 7 when right-handed,

     8 when I'm left. For all the many in-

     formative features of a Vivian Maier

     photograph, there's no cluttering its

     unforgettability. We take in every-

     thing we see, as utter verification. 

Vivian Maier

Rolleiflex photograph

  full field

1956

Suppose it were Friday clxvii: And the lights came up

   and we were here to see

   the end of unanswerable

   government in this land

Carolyn Haster, AP, photograph

United States House of Representatives

Washington, DC

The Washington Post

January, 2019©

Weaving spiders, mind the Steppes

      How tiresomely, it never fails.

      The moment we launch an entry

      tending to challenge the regime

      in power, our "readership" from

      Russia suddenly matches or ex-

      ceeds the native marketplace.

      You'd think our new Speaker

      were of investigative interest.

      It's enough to call to mind the

      plea of Bohemia, Weaving spiders,

      come not here, to be updated only

      as Naughty bots, buzz off. It's

      enough to make one think the Re-

      publican Party's own security

      apparatus can't manage a simple

      opinion sample of their own -

      not, I admit, that they're much

      in favor of any science. Well,

      let's hope we're paying for it

      in bawdy nights at Mar-a-Lago,

      and not the Secret Service fund

      for the despot's exile there. 

Where have you been?

    Been waitin', 
    Ma'am.



















Stephen Crowley, photograph
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC
The New York Times
January, 2007©

Why quarrel with this lake?

     I looked along the bar
     And saw my fellow creature
     Bravely standing there.
     "By word, sign, or touch,"
     I cried, in my mute heart,
     "Tell me, be my teacher,
     Be learnèd in that art,
     What is my name and nature?"
















David Ferry
Bewilderment
  New Poems and
  Translations
  At a Bar
    [fragment]
University of Chicago, 2012©

Graham Greene, "The Lost Childhood"

I remember distinctly the suddenness
with which a key turned in a lock
and I found I could read .. All a
long summer holiday I kept my secret,
as I believed: I did not want anybody
to know that I could read. I suppose
I half consciously realized even then
that this was the dangerous moment.



      

    I expunge the stain of

    remembering the Little

    Father and his Czarina

    beneath the White House

    Christmas trees, toying

    with children's dreams -

    as I recall a fragment

    from an essay in plain

    sight of every visitor

    to my home, every day  -

    who lets one trust the

    lessons we must learn.

Graham Greene
The Lost Childhood
  and Other Essays
Viking, 1951©

Origins of Wednesday lxxxvi: Socratic cynic on the line

   He called to ask me if I still
   believed in the existence of
   Cetera, because at my age the
   promises of Et must have worn
   a little thin, right? I didn't
   know how to cope with this co-
   nundrum, to think of "and" as
   stripped of all connection, a
   constant tease without a term, 
   as if he'd always be with us.