Raindrops on Roses & Whiskers on Kittens
Raindrops on Roses & Whiskers on Kittens
Sound and the Fury is an impressive book. The relevance of the title to the story alone is worth praise. It was mind boggling to read at first, but when I finished . . . Faulkner's genius became the mind boggling thing.
If you like poetry and you like to read things that are impressive, here's a little gift. It's by a poet named Robert Haas. It's so good that I would be selfish if I didn't share it.
"Privilege of Being"
Many are making love. Up above, the angels
in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing
are braiding one another's hair, which is strawberry blond
and the texture of cold rivers. They glance
down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy - -
it must look to them like featherless birds --
and then one woman, she is about to come,
peels back the man's shut eyelids and says,
look at me, and he does. Or is it the man
tugging the curtain rope in that dark theater?
Anyway, they do, the look at each other;
two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,
startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweet lubricious glue, stare at each other,
and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically
like lithographs of Victorian beggars
with perfect features and alabaster skin in hawking rags
in the lewd alleys of the novel.
All of creation is offended by this distress.
It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,
rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,
it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that
they close their eyes again and hold each other, each
feeling the mortal singularity of the body
they have enchanted out of death for an hour or so,
and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,
I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized that you could not, as much as I love you dear, cure my loneliness,
wherewith she touched his cheeck to reassure him
that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.
And the man is not hurt exactly,
he understands that life has limits, that people die young, fail at love,
fail of their ambitions. He runs beside her, he thinks
of the sadness they have gasped and crooned their way out of
coming, clutching each other with old, invented forms of grace and clumsy gratitude, ready,
to be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merely
companiounable like couples on the summer beach
reading magazine articles about intimacy between the sexes
to themselves, to each other,
and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.
I hope you enjoyed it. I do. Hope I didn't break any copyright laws. Oh well, the internet police know where they can find me.
Sarah
If you like poetry and you like to read things that are impressive, here's a little gift. It's by a poet named Robert Haas. It's so good that I would be selfish if I didn't share it.
"Privilege of Being"
Many are making love. Up above, the angels
in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing
are braiding one another's hair, which is strawberry blond
and the texture of cold rivers. They glance
down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy - -
it must look to them like featherless birds --
and then one woman, she is about to come,
peels back the man's shut eyelids and says,
look at me, and he does. Or is it the man
tugging the curtain rope in that dark theater?
Anyway, they do, the look at each other;
two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,
startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweet lubricious glue, stare at each other,
and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically
like lithographs of Victorian beggars
with perfect features and alabaster skin in hawking rags
in the lewd alleys of the novel.
All of creation is offended by this distress.
It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,
rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,
it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that
they close their eyes again and hold each other, each
feeling the mortal singularity of the body
they have enchanted out of death for an hour or so,
and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,
I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized that you could not, as much as I love you dear, cure my loneliness,
wherewith she touched his cheeck to reassure him
that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.
And the man is not hurt exactly,
he understands that life has limits, that people die young, fail at love,
fail of their ambitions. He runs beside her, he thinks
of the sadness they have gasped and crooned their way out of
coming, clutching each other with old, invented forms of grace and clumsy gratitude, ready,
to be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merely
companiounable like couples on the summer beach
reading magazine articles about intimacy between the sexes
to themselves, to each other,
and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.
I hope you enjoyed it. I do. Hope I didn't break any copyright laws. Oh well, the internet police know where they can find me.
Sarah