{ you see, I was pretending to be someone else. }

The Lost marathon is slowly continuing; I have this week's New Amsterdam to watch, too, a show which is quietly growing on me.

--

At around half ten, I have to leave for the sub. campus to see my personal tutor. Before then I have to figure out where I put all of my essay cover sheets. That really shouldn't be so difficult because I know they're filed. Where is a completely different matter.

I have a handful of comments to reply to - I'll get on those when I get back. Unless the net cuts out again. Sigh.

--

Got my dissertation draft back yesterday. ( frustratedface. )

--

This time tomorrow morning I'll be 1/3 of the way back to the Fen. \o/

{ Dean Young: Bathed in Dust and Ash. }

Bathed in Dust and Ash
by Dean Young

Maybe Heraclitus was right, maybe
everything is fire. The lovers,
exhausted, unknot like slick ribbons,
the sirens fade to silver ash. Knock
at the door, no one there, voices

coming through the floor, spring
all morning, winter by afternoon,
dense rhymes of foliate argument,
laughter from passing cars. Fire
swallowed and regurgitated from which

all life comes, bees returning
to their hives to dance, hawks feeding
their gaping chicks, variables
in alternate currents you almost
lived, if you had married him,

if you had stayed, a future begun
as marks on a nearly transparent page.
So the shadows vanish and return
carrying their young in their jaws,
and the man who still thinks he’s a man

and not a column of smoke, sits
in his idling car, and the woman
who still thinks she’s a woman and not
climbing a staircase in flames,
bites her lips before she speaks.

--

More to come.

{ Tadeusz Różewicz: Draft of a Modern Love Poem. }

Draft of a Modern Love Poem
by Tadeusz Różewicz

And yet white
is best described by gray
bird by stone
sunflowers
in December

love poems of old
were descriptions of the flesh
described this and that
for instance eyelashes

and yet red
should be described
by gray the sun by rain
poppies in November
lips by night

the most tangible
description of bread
is a description of hunger
in it is
the damp porous core
the warm interior
sunflowers at night
the breasts belly thighs of Cybele

a spring-clear
transparent description
of water
is a description of thirst
ashes
desert
it produces a mirage
clouds and trees move into
the mirror

Lack hunger
absence
of flesh
is a description of love
is a modern love poem

Translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

--

and yet red / should be described / by gray the sun by rain / poppies in November / lips by night - absence/presence, and all that negative space.