You are a friend then, as I make it out, Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us Will put an ass's head in Fairyland As he would add a shilling to more shillings, All most harmonious, — and out of his Miraculous inviolable increase Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like Of olden time with timeless Englishmen; And I must wonder what you think of him — All you down there where your small Avon flows By Stratford, and where you're an Alderman. Some, for a guess, would have him riding back To be a farrier there, or say a dyer; Or maybe one of your adept surveyors; Or like enough the wizard of all tanners.
Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere (Horace, Epistles II.i.267) While you, great patron of mankind, sustain The balanc'd world, and open all the main; Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend, At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
What shall I do with this absurdity — O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye
Do not allow me to sink, I said To a top floating ribbon of kelp. As I was lifted on each wave And made to slide into the vale I wanted not to drown. I wanted To make it all right with my dear, To tell my cat I’ll be away, To have them all destroyed, the poems
I dunno yer highfalutin' words, but here's th' way it seems When I'm peekin' out th' winder o' my little House o Dreams; I've been lookin' 'roun' this big ol' world, as bizzy as a hive, An' I want t' tell ye, neighbor mine, it's good t' be alive. I've ben settin' here, a-thinkin' hard, an' say, it seems t' me That this big ol' world is jest about as good as it kin be, With its starvin' little babies, an' its battles, an' its strikes, An' its profiteers, an' hold-up men—th' dawggone little tykes!
Wee Willie Winkie Rins through the toun, Up stairs and doun stairs In his nicht-gown, Tirling at the window, Crying at the lock, “Are the weans in their bed, For it’s now ten o’clock?
O Prince, O chief of many throned pow'rs! That led th' embattled seraphim to war! (Milton, Paradise Lost) O thou! whatever title suit thee,— Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie! Wha in yon cavern, grim an' sootie, Clos'd under hatches,
My heart is a-breaking, dear Tittie, Some counsel unto me come len'; To anger them a' is a pity, But what will I do wi' Tam Glen?
I'm thinking, wi' sic a braw fellow, In poortith I might mak a fen': What care I in riches to wallow, If I mauna marry Tam Glen?
There's Lowrie, the laird o' Dumeller, "Guid-day to you,"—brute! he comes ben: He brags and he blaws o' his siller, But when will he dance like Tam Glen?
'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due; It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true Thy comic muse, from the exalted line Touch'd by thy Alchemist, doth since decline From that her zenith, and foretells a red And blushing evening, when she goes to bed;
The spring has darkened with activity. The future gathers in vine, bush, and tree: Persimmon, walnut, loquat, fig, and grape, Degrees and kinds of color, taste, and shape. These will advance in their due series, space The season like a tranquil dwelling-place. And yet excitement swells me, vein by vein: I long to crowd the little garden, gain
From Book V The morwen com, and gostly for to speke, This Diomede is come un-to Criseyde; And shortly, lest that ye my tale breke, So wel he for hym-selven spak and seyde,
Between pond and sheepbarn, by maples and watery birches, Rebecca paces a double line of rust in a sandy trench, striding on black creosoted eight-by-eights. In nineteen-forty-three, wartrains skidded tanks, airframes, dynamos, searchlights, and troops to Montreal. She counted cars
O this political air so heavy with the bells and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest but rain to walk—How it rings the Washington streets! The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists caught under canopies and in doorways, and it rains, it will not let up, and meanwhile lame futurists weep into Spengler’s
Master Hirano came from Japan together with a priest from the Kegon sect and the two of them drank beer all night at the Avia Hotel next to Ben Gurion airport. The following day, when we came to take them to the Galilee, they had trouble getting up and barely checked out of their rooms on time. It was a wintry January morning, and near the village of Shefaram the priest from the Kegon sect asked us to stop and stood by the side of the road and urinated.
On Friday the two of them (Master Hirano and the priest from the Kegon sect) went to the Bratslav Hasids’ synagogue in Safed. The worshippers swayed like trees in the wind. Master Hirano and the priest from the Kegon sect stood there, bald and wrapped in robes, behind the congregation, and the beadle whispered into our ears: Are they Jews? Are they Jews? When we left the synagogue Master Hirano said to the priest from the Kegon sect: There is no doubt that they understand what devotion (he said shujaku) is. The priest from the Kegon sect said: There is no doubt. They know what devotion is. On Jerusalem Street, by the monument of the mortar, commemorating the ’48 war, Master Hirano said: Prayer is a good thing. The priest from the Kegon sect said: There is no doubt. Prayer is a good thing. Master Hirano stood on one side of the mortar and the priest from the Kegon sect stood on the other and the moon rose, big and full, yellow like the fields painted by Van Gogh.
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It’s possible to write only by means of non-writing. When things come from the opposite direction. My aunt Edith rises out of the ground and returns to her bed in the nursing home. Ursula, my stepmother, is walking backward. All sorts of wilted flowers bring their petals toward themselves. All we need is yogurt and a spoon. We’ll know what to do with the spoon. We’ll lead it toward the right place (which is to say, the yogurt) and from there toward the mouth. But the mouth can’t be fathomed. Likewise the word that stands for it (mouth) is strange in the extreme. Or take, for example, the hand that’s holding the spoon with its five tragic fingers. There’s no logic whatsoever in there being five. Like five widows who’ve gathered because their husbands have died, and they allow themselves this movement through the air in order to keep from losing their minds.
Cervantes was asleep when he wrote Don Quixote. Joyce slept during the Wandering Rocks section of Ulysses. Homer nodded and occasionally slept during the greater part of the Iliad; he was awake however when he wrote the Odyssey. Proust snored his way through The Captive, as have legions of his readers after him. Melville was asleep at the wheel for much of Moby-Dick. Fitzgerald slept through Tender Is the Night, which is perhaps not so surprising, but the fact that Mann slumbered on the very slopes of The Magic Mountain is quite extraordinary—that he wrote it, even more so. Kafka, of course, never slept, even while not writing or on bank holidays.
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