Is there a book you were required to read in school that you loved? one you hated?
61-69, M
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LeopoldBloom · M
originnone · 61-69, M
@LeopoldBloom I never understood poetry at all. I'm not familiar with the book of nightmares but I'll look it up.
LeopoldBloom · M
@originnone You may have to create an account to access it, but a pdf is here:
https://zlibrary-africa.se/book/2189269/99e1a8?signAll=1&ts=0251
https://zlibrary-africa.se/book/2189269/99e1a8?signAll=1&ts=0251
LeopoldBloom · M
@originnone Here is a section where he is talking to his infant daughter.
I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down,
I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die.
Little Maud,
I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light,
I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones,
I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body,
I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood,
I would let nothing of you go, ever,
until washerwomen
feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands,
and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades,
and rats walk away from the cultures of the plague,
and iron twists weapons toward the true north,
and grease refuses to slide in the machinery of progress,
and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men,
and lovers no longer whisper to the presence beside them in the dark, O corpse-to-be . . .
And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.
I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down,
I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die.
Little Maud,
I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light,
I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones,
I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body,
I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood,
I would let nothing of you go, ever,
until washerwomen
feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands,
and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades,
and rats walk away from the cultures of the plague,
and iron twists weapons toward the true north,
and grease refuses to slide in the machinery of progress,
and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men,
and lovers no longer whisper to the presence beside them in the dark, O corpse-to-be . . .
And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.
originnone · 61-69, M
@LeopoldBloom I'm sold. I added it to my amazon list.
LeopoldBloom · M
@originnone
On the path,
by this wet site
of old fires -
black ashes, black stones, where tramps
must have squatted down,
gnawing on stream water,
unhouseling themselves on cursed bread, failing to get warm at a twigfire -
I stop,
gather wet wood,
cut dry shavings, and for her,
whose face
I held in my hands
a few hours, whom I gave back
only to keep holding the space where she was
I light
a small fire in the rain.
The black
wood reddens, the deathwatches inside
begin running out of time, I can see
the dead, crossed limbs
longing again for the universe, I can hear
in the wet wood the snap
and re-snap of the same embrace being torn.
The raindrops trying
to put the fire out
fall into it and are
changed: the oath broken,
the oath sworn between earth and water, flesh and spirit, broken,
to be sworn again,
over and over, in the clouds, and to be broken again,
over and over, on earth.
On the path,
by this wet site
of old fires -
black ashes, black stones, where tramps
must have squatted down,
gnawing on stream water,
unhouseling themselves on cursed bread, failing to get warm at a twigfire -
I stop,
gather wet wood,
cut dry shavings, and for her,
whose face
I held in my hands
a few hours, whom I gave back
only to keep holding the space where she was
I light
a small fire in the rain.
The black
wood reddens, the deathwatches inside
begin running out of time, I can see
the dead, crossed limbs
longing again for the universe, I can hear
in the wet wood the snap
and re-snap of the same embrace being torn.
The raindrops trying
to put the fire out
fall into it and are
changed: the oath broken,
the oath sworn between earth and water, flesh and spirit, broken,
to be sworn again,
over and over, in the clouds, and to be broken again,
over and over, on earth.