In heaven there is no more sea, and houses no longer need a widow’s walk. And no more widows, there being neither marriage nor giving in marriage. How the air hangs lower and lower on this—I hope —hottest day of summer. A faintly rotten scent the ground gives off brings to mind lilacs that have budded and blossomed. There are no more blossoms, perfume and purple gone for a year, as if forever. In heaven there are no tears, salt water wiped away entirely. One moment
1 Thank goodness we were able to wipe the Neanderthals out, beastly things, from our mountains, our tundra—that way we had all the meat we might need.
Thus the butcher can display under our very eyes his hands on the block, and never refer to the rooms hidden behind where dissections are effected,
where flesh is reduced to its shivering atoms and remade for our delectation as cubes, cylinders, barely material puddles of admixtured horror and blood.
Rembrandt knew of all this—isn’t his flayed beef carcass really a caveman? It’s Christ also, of course, but much more a troglodyte such as we no longer are.
Mildest of all the powers of earth: no lightnings For her—maniacal in the clouds. No need for Signs with their skull and crossbones, chain-link gates: Danger! Keep Out! High Gravity! she’s friendlier. Won’t nurse—unlike the magnetic powers—repugnance; Would reconcile, draw close: her passion’s love.
No terrors lurking in her depths, like those Bound in that buzzing strongbox of the atom,
To My Noble Friend, Mr. Charles Cotton O thou that swing’st upon the waving hair Of some well-fillèd oaten beard, Drunk every night with a delicious tear Dropped thee from heaven, where now th’ art reared;
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king, Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit, In every street these tunes our ears do greet: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo! Spring, the sweet spring!
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''
Not that, amassing flowers, Youth sighed "Which rose make ours, Which lily leave and then as best recall?" Not that, admiring stars, It yearned "Nor Jove, nor Mars; Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"
(Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, once bragged that if one German city were bombed, they could call him “Meier.” At his Karinhall estate, he questions himself and his disgrace.) And why, Herr Reichsmarschall, is Italy Just like schnitzel? If they’re beaten
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