Poem for Monday
Apr. 12th, 2021 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Mousecow is on the early shift and I take that as a sign that I should be enthusiastic about morning, too. I'm not, but I'll try. It's snowing the worst half-arse snow you ever saw.
Today's German teacher, on seeing my attempt at a writing task (very convoluted): "Mache deine Sätz kurz und Stupide"
Me, a language teacher who knows this is good advice: Don't wanna.
Meanwhile, househunting is presenting a. few prospects and b. an internal battle between my desire to stay in my current neighbourhood, and my desire not to have to "call the current tenant" to view flats.
Imperfect
David Kirby
When the first half of Hamlet ends,
the schoolkids rise, pull on their jackets,
and gather their trash as their teacher
says wait, the play’s not over, there’s more.
The kids look at each other in disbelief.
More? There’s already been a murder,
a ghost, incest, and worst of all,
the rejection of a devoted girlfriend.
There’s even been a play-within-a-play,
which means they’ve seen not one
but two plays this evening. In life,
the number of beginnings is equal
to the number of endings, but in art
there are so many more endings
that we can’t even imagine it.
Hamlet was sent to England with
the two men who were to kill him,
but he discovered the plot and killed
them instead. And now he’s back.
He’s mad. Isn’t that an ending?
What did you think he’d do,
take up his robe and staff and start
preaching non-violence? Nabokov
says a man once lost a cufflink
in the wide blue sea, and twenty years
later to the day, he was eating a fish,
but there was no cufflink inside.
Today's German teacher, on seeing my attempt at a writing task (very convoluted): "Mache deine Sätz kurz und Stupide"
Me, a language teacher who knows this is good advice: Don't wanna.
Meanwhile, househunting is presenting a. few prospects and b. an internal battle between my desire to stay in my current neighbourhood, and my desire not to have to "call the current tenant" to view flats.
Imperfect
David Kirby
When the first half of Hamlet ends,
the schoolkids rise, pull on their jackets,
and gather their trash as their teacher
says wait, the play’s not over, there’s more.
The kids look at each other in disbelief.
More? There’s already been a murder,
a ghost, incest, and worst of all,
the rejection of a devoted girlfriend.
There’s even been a play-within-a-play,
which means they’ve seen not one
but two plays this evening. In life,
the number of beginnings is equal
to the number of endings, but in art
there are so many more endings
that we can’t even imagine it.
Hamlet was sent to England with
the two men who were to kill him,
but he discovered the plot and killed
them instead. And now he’s back.
He’s mad. Isn’t that an ending?
What did you think he’d do,
take up his robe and staff and start
preaching non-violence? Nabokov
says a man once lost a cufflink
in the wide blue sea, and twenty years
later to the day, he was eating a fish,
but there was no cufflink inside.