christophem

And... yes. That's that.


[through translation]
Waiter: What would you like to drink?
Me: I would like apple juice..... apple juice.

This was after my sister and I had a minor tiff regarding "Apfelsaft gespritzt", which is sort of like mineral water mixed with apple juice. It's vile, but she loves it, and I nearly ordered it by mistake.
 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Boys and girls that held her dear,
  Do your weeping now;
All you loved of her lies here.

Brought to earth the arrogant brow,
  And the withering tongue
Chastened; do your weeping now.

Sing whatever songs are sung,
  Wind whatever wreath,
For a playmate perished young,

For a spirit spent in death.
   Boys and girls that held her dear,
All you loved of her lies here.

And still we stood and stared far down
Into that ember-glowing town
Which every shaft and shock of fate
Had shorn into its base.  Too late
Came carelessly Serenity.

Now torn and broken houses gaze
On the rat-infested maze
That once sent up rose-silver haze
To mingle through eternity.

The outlines, once so strongly wrought,
Of city walls, are now a thought
Or jest unto the dead who fought...
Foundation for futurity.

The shimmering sands where once there played
Children with painted pail and spade
Are drearly desolate, - afraid
To meet Night's dark humanity,

Whose silver cool remakes the dead,
And lays no blame on any head
For all the havoc, fire, and lead,
That fell upon us suddenly.

It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home.
Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly
within the panels of the comics, but still,
we know it is
possible, as well as the flash
of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message can be
delivered from within. The heart,
no valentine, decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch, or
a tiny dark ship is
unmoored into the flow
of the body's rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens --
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white,
and all I hear
is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small plants singing
with lifted faces,
and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next.