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rejectomorphIn an example of the bemusing power of dotage, I managed to sleep away Saturday afternoon almost in its entirety. Rising after four o'clock, the ground still damp from earlier but the gray sky no longer weeping, I barely had the energy to make my way to the mailbox and fetch a thick business envelope which I have yet to open. Why would I feel like doing anything? I fixed diner, but didn't do the dishes, and lost track of time as evening passed, until nearing eleven o'clock I once again found myself sleepy. I can neither sleep nor stay awake very long anymore.
And so before midnight I returned to sleep, and had troubling dreams I partly remember but can't currently describe as they require more thought. The sleep lasted a bit over two hours, and since then I've managed to accomplish a single thing in the real world, which was to successfully inaugurate my new waffle iron, a pleasant distraction from my ongoing general disintegration. The waffles were very good, and their chewy texture a nice change from the doughy pancakes to which I've lately been accustomed. Alas, the waffles still provoke some indigestion, but a pre-corpse such as myself can't expect to have everything.
Maybe I won't dream when I go back to sleep this morning. If I do I'll have more to think about. That's something to think about.
Sunday Verse
by Richard Wilbur
Even as children they were late sleepers,
Preferring their dreams, even when quick with monsters,
To the world with all its breakable toys,
Its compacts with the dying;
From the stretched arms of withered trees
They turned, fearing contagion of the mortal,
And even under the plums of summer
Drifted like winter moons.
Secret, unfriendly, pale, possessed
Of the one wish, the thirst for mere survival,
They came, as all extremists do
In time, to a sort of grandeur:
Now, to their Balkan battlements
Above the vulgar town of their first lives,
They rise at the moon's rising. Strange
That their utter self-concern
Should, in the end, have left them selfless:
Mirrors fail to perceive them as they float
Through the great hall and up the staircase;
Nor are the cobwebs broken.
Into the pallid night emerging,
Wrapped in their flapping capes, routinely maddened
By a wolf's cry, they stand for a moment
Stoking the mind's eye
With lewd thoughts of the pressed flowers
And bric-a-brac of rooms with something to lose, -
Of love-dismembered dolls, and children
Buried in quilted sleep.
Then they are off in a negative frenzy,
Their black shapes cropped into sudden bats
That swarm, burst, and are gone. Thinking
Of a thrush cold in the leaves
Who has sung his few summers truly,
Or an old scholar resting his eyes at last,
We cannot be much impressed with vampires,
Colorful though they are;
Nevertheless, their pain is real,
And requires our pity. Think how sad it must be
To thirst always for a scorned elixir,
The salt quotidian blood
Which, if mistrusted, has no savor;
To prey on life forever and not possess it,
As rock-hollows, tide after tide,
Glassily strand the sea.
And so before midnight I returned to sleep, and had troubling dreams I partly remember but can't currently describe as they require more thought. The sleep lasted a bit over two hours, and since then I've managed to accomplish a single thing in the real world, which was to successfully inaugurate my new waffle iron, a pleasant distraction from my ongoing general disintegration. The waffles were very good, and their chewy texture a nice change from the doughy pancakes to which I've lately been accustomed. Alas, the waffles still provoke some indigestion, but a pre-corpse such as myself can't expect to have everything.
Maybe I won't dream when I go back to sleep this morning. If I do I'll have more to think about. That's something to think about.
Sunday Verse
The Undead
by Richard Wilbur
Even as children they were late sleepers,
Preferring their dreams, even when quick with monsters,
To the world with all its breakable toys,
Its compacts with the dying;
From the stretched arms of withered trees
They turned, fearing contagion of the mortal,
And even under the plums of summer
Drifted like winter moons.
Secret, unfriendly, pale, possessed
Of the one wish, the thirst for mere survival,
They came, as all extremists do
In time, to a sort of grandeur:
Now, to their Balkan battlements
Above the vulgar town of their first lives,
They rise at the moon's rising. Strange
That their utter self-concern
Should, in the end, have left them selfless:
Mirrors fail to perceive them as they float
Through the great hall and up the staircase;
Nor are the cobwebs broken.
Into the pallid night emerging,
Wrapped in their flapping capes, routinely maddened
By a wolf's cry, they stand for a moment
Stoking the mind's eye
With lewd thoughts of the pressed flowers
And bric-a-brac of rooms with something to lose, -
Of love-dismembered dolls, and children
Buried in quilted sleep.
Then they are off in a negative frenzy,
Their black shapes cropped into sudden bats
That swarm, burst, and are gone. Thinking
Of a thrush cold in the leaves
Who has sung his few summers truly,
Or an old scholar resting his eyes at last,
We cannot be much impressed with vampires,
Colorful though they are;
Nevertheless, their pain is real,
And requires our pity. Think how sad it must be
To thirst always for a scorned elixir,
The salt quotidian blood
Which, if mistrusted, has no savor;
To prey on life forever and not possess it,
As rock-hollows, tide after tide,
Glassily strand the sea.
