some poems
Jun. 27th, 2002 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
honeymonsterfrom Mornings Like This: Found Poems by Annie Dillard (library book, sadly):
A Letter to Theo
Oh, lad, I should like to have you here
To show you my lodgings. I have, for instance, real
Kitchen chairs, and a real strong kitchen table.
I am going to draw it, and work at it
Until I have fixed it on paper.
What is drawing? How does one learn it?
To better my life--don't you think I eagerly desire it?
Cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good?
Do you think we too shall be at the evening of our life?
There is a yellow sky over everything.
I am seeking for blue all the time.
I am thinking of planting two oleanders in tubs.
Perhaps I shall begin to look about for greens.
Why should not the shining dots of the sky
Be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?
When shall I get back to that other world?
My God, where is my child? Is living alone
Worthwhile? And then I said to myself, You
Are not becoming melancholy again, are you?
So, lad, do come and paint with me
On the heath, in the potato field; come
And walk with me behind the plough and the shepherd.
I think so often of that walk on the Ryswyk road,
Where we drank milk after the rain, at the mill.
From a Letter Home
The scarlet beans are up in crowds.
It has rained sweetly for two hours and a half.
The air is very mild. The heckberry
Blossoms are dropping off fast, almost gone:
Snowballs coming forward; May roses blossoming.
I have nobody now left but you.
I think of innumerable things; steal out
Westward at sunset, take oar, and row
In the dark or moonlight. In the evening I scribble
A little; all this mixed with reading.
I have a piano, but seldom play.
Books are becoming everything to me.
I stroll, I find the glades empty. I look
At every tree. O my dear bairn,
If I had thee here, I feel as if
I should be quite happy for a while.
I propose you come up here to live.
We will buy together five or six
Hundred acres and have a sheep farm.
We shall have pleasant breakfasts, dinners.
Here we would have our books. Shall we not?
But this is too late. The fire is at
Its last click. Would this May weather last.
But June comes; the rabid dogs get muzzles.
It fascinates me, the way she built these wonderful poems out of pieces of something else. Maybe I will try it sometime. It's not unlike the magnetic poetry game I've played.
Hope you don't mind my sharing..
A Letter to Theo
Oh, lad, I should like to have you here
To show you my lodgings. I have, for instance, real
Kitchen chairs, and a real strong kitchen table.
I am going to draw it, and work at it
Until I have fixed it on paper.
What is drawing? How does one learn it?
To better my life--don't you think I eagerly desire it?
Cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good?
Do you think we too shall be at the evening of our life?
There is a yellow sky over everything.
I am seeking for blue all the time.
I am thinking of planting two oleanders in tubs.
Perhaps I shall begin to look about for greens.
Why should not the shining dots of the sky
Be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?
When shall I get back to that other world?
My God, where is my child? Is living alone
Worthwhile? And then I said to myself, You
Are not becoming melancholy again, are you?
So, lad, do come and paint with me
On the heath, in the potato field; come
And walk with me behind the plough and the shepherd.
I think so often of that walk on the Ryswyk road,
Where we drank milk after the rain, at the mill.
From a Letter Home
The scarlet beans are up in crowds.
It has rained sweetly for two hours and a half.
The air is very mild. The heckberry
Blossoms are dropping off fast, almost gone:
Snowballs coming forward; May roses blossoming.
I have nobody now left but you.
I think of innumerable things; steal out
Westward at sunset, take oar, and row
In the dark or moonlight. In the evening I scribble
A little; all this mixed with reading.
I have a piano, but seldom play.
Books are becoming everything to me.
I stroll, I find the glades empty. I look
At every tree. O my dear bairn,
If I had thee here, I feel as if
I should be quite happy for a while.
I propose you come up here to live.
We will buy together five or six
Hundred acres and have a sheep farm.
We shall have pleasant breakfasts, dinners.
Here we would have our books. Shall we not?
But this is too late. The fire is at
Its last click. Would this May weather last.
But June comes; the rabid dogs get muzzles.
It fascinates me, the way she built these wonderful poems out of pieces of something else. Maybe I will try it sometime. It's not unlike the magnetic poetry game I've played.
Hope you don't mind my sharing..
