4 november 2007

A reader sends in this (thanks Luke!):

A Hole In The Floor

for Rene Magritte

The carpenter's made a hole
In the parlor floor, and I'm standing
Staring down into it now
At four o'clock in the evening,
As Schliemann stood when his shovel
Knocked on the crowns of Troy.

A clean-cut sawdust sparkles
On the grey, shaggy laths,
And here is a cluster of shavings
From the time when the floor was laid.
They are silvery-gold, the color
Of Hesperian apple-parings.

Kneeling, I look in under
Where the joists go into hiding.
A pure street, faintly littered
With bits and strokes of light,
Enters the long darkness
Where its parallels will meet.

The radiator-pipe
Rises in middle distance
Like a shuttered kiosk, standing
Where the only news is night.
Here it's not painted green,
As it is in the visible world.

For God's sake, what am I after?
Some treasure, or tiny garden?
Or that untrodden place,
The house's very soul,
Where time has stored our footbeats
And the long skein of our voices?

Not these, but the buried strangeness
Which nourishes the known:
That spring from which the floor-lamp
Drinks now a wilder bloom,
Inflaming the damask love-seat
And the whole dangerous room.

- Richard Wilbur


| comment


19 november 2007

another lisp of lapel


Leon Bakst,  Serge Diaghilev 1906

OK, OK, all very suave, all very  'Étonne-moi, Jean,' but what's Whistler's momma doing by the window?

| comment


20 november 2007


Still, Marcel Carné, Le Jour se Lève, (Arletty & Jean Gabin)

| comment


30 november 2007

William Blake is 250 today, and still a lot more alive than most of us. It's Miranda's birthday too.

| comment