Two Poems

He said:


Pregnant you sit, and pale,
How you have changed, poor girl.

Plucking at your dress, you sit
And you want to go on weeping, weeping. . .

What makes you women spoil us
And, falling, give us your lips,

Then run beyond the platforms,
Outstripped by speeding trains? . .

How hard you tried to keep up
With the blurring carriage windows. . .

Trains rattle by, express and mail,
Trains to Khabarovsk and elsewhere. . .

From Moscow all the way
To Ashkabad, like numb idols,

Women stand as if turned to stone,
Their bellies proffered to the moon.

And swinging into the light,
In the unpeopled life of the night—

How well the moon, with her
Big belly, understands them.

Andrey Voznesensky





She said:



Permissive Society

Wake, for the dawn has put the stars to flight,
And in my bed a stranger, so once more,
What seemed to be a good idea last night,
Appears, this morning, sober, rather poor.

Connie Bensley

He Said - She Said

I'm not sure if I posted these before. They seemed appropriate, contemplating another work week starting tomorrow.

He said—

Necessity

Work?
I don’t have to work.
I don’t have to do nothing
but eat, drink, stay black, and die.
This little old furnished room’s
so small I can’t whip a cat
without getting fur in my mouth
and my landlady’s so old
her features is all run together
and God knows she sure can overcharge—
Which is why I reckon I does
Have to work after all.

Langston Hughes



She said—

Rent

If you want my apartment, sleep in it
but let’s have a clear understanding:
the books are still free agents.

If the rocking chair’s arms surround you
they can also let you go,
they can shape the air like a body.

I don’t want your rent, I want
a radiance of attention
like the candle’s flame when we eat.

I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us—
Not a roof but a field of stars.

Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife

I just finished "Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife" by Linda Berdoll. It is one of those continuation stories that takes off where "Pride and Prejudice" ends. I'm sure everyone whoever read Jane Austin likes to imagine what happened next. This book should really have been called "Mr. Darcy F***s a Wife", since that is exactly what he does on nearly every other page. He takes her on every bed in the house, the floor, the bathtub, the carriage, and the woods. Just imagine Colin Firth in the role, and it's not too bad. Linda Berdoll is no Jane Austin, that's for sure. She's barely passable as a writer, actually, but I stayed home from work today to finish the book, so it couldn't have been too bad. She manages to work in several illegitimate children, a fire in the horse barn, a kidnapping and attempted rape, three murders (revenge for the kidnapping), a miscarriage, a still birth, the French Revolution, and the battle of Waterloo.

The one thing Berdoll gets totally wrong is the names of Darcy's parents. His mother's name was Anne, per "Pride and Prejudice", and I think his father's name must have been George. For one thing Darcy's sister's name is Georgiana. (George + Anne?) For another Wickham's name was George, and Darcy's father was his godfather. It's quite logical that George Wickham was named George after the elder Darcy. The younger Darcy was named Fitzwilliam after his mother's maiden name - hence his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. Anyhow - Berdoll claims Darcy's parents were Elinor and Gerard - and that is so wrong.

I may have to watch the Colin Firth version of "Pride and Prejudice" tonight.

Hotel Rwanda

I saw Hotel Rwanda yesterday. It was an incredible movie. I started crying half way through it. Elizabeth says she started crying half way through the trailer for it, and refuses to see the movie.

President Clinton said the thing he regretted most about his presidency was ignoring the situation in Rwanda. He, and the rest of the Western world, should be ashamed.

The movie is like an African Shindler's List, only hotter and more colorful. The Germans killed the Jews cold-bloodedly and methodically. The Hutu's killed the Tutsi's passionately and messily. But the Tutsi's were just as dead as the Jews.

I loved Don Cheadle in this role. I hope he gets some attention for it.

I had to struggle to find poetry to express this movie. Here's one that is close:

The End and the Beginning

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.

But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.

Wislawa Szymborska