51/66: Ticket to Rid
Nov. 17th, 2024 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rejectomorphLong abed last night yet longing to return, I let the morning pass in daydreamed excess, not caring that the bed's unmade and my mind undone. Saturday I got to bed about six o'clock in the evening, and slept off and on until four this morning. There may have been dreams, or maybe waking fantasies, but inattentive as always, I don't remember much of it, yet don't regret the loss. I doubt I'll be making much use of anything my brain produces henceforth, so why cling to it? For that matter, why cling to the brain itself? At this point it's not much good for more than entertainment. It's not like a have a career ahead, or any great tasks to accomplish. As long as I can order groceries and remember to pay the bills and wipe my bum, I'm probably golden. Or at least brass. At this late date what more could I reasonably ask for? So I miss the world's trip in the handbasket, so what? I can get there on my own. I might as well be there already.
Sunday Verse
by Conrad Aiken
As evening falls,
And the yellow lights leap one by one
Along high walls
And along black streets that glisten as if with rain,
The muted city seems
Like one in a restless sleep who lies and dreams
Of vague desires, vague memories, and half-forgotten pain…..
Along dark veins like lights the quick dreams run,
Flash, are extinguished, flash again,
To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain
And die away.....
As evening falls,
A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls,
A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare.
The lover rises, the harlot combs her hair,
The dead man’s face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight,
The watchman climbs the stair.....
The bank-defaulter leers at a chaos of figures
And runs among them and is beaten down;
The sick man coughs, and hears the chisels ringing;
The tired clown
Sees the enormous crowd—a million faces
Motionless in their places,
Ready to laugh, and seize, and crush, and tear….
The dancer smooths her hair,
Laces her golden slippers and runs through the door
To dance once more,
Hearing swift music like an enchantment rise,
Feeling the praise of a thousand eyes.
As darkness falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live tonight, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamp-lit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit halls which reach no end.
Sunday Verse
Prelude
by Conrad Aiken
As evening falls,
And the yellow lights leap one by one
Along high walls
And along black streets that glisten as if with rain,
The muted city seems
Like one in a restless sleep who lies and dreams
Of vague desires, vague memories, and half-forgotten pain…..
Along dark veins like lights the quick dreams run,
Flash, are extinguished, flash again,
To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain
And die away.....
As evening falls,
A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls,
A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare.
The lover rises, the harlot combs her hair,
The dead man’s face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight,
The watchman climbs the stair.....
The bank-defaulter leers at a chaos of figures
And runs among them and is beaten down;
The sick man coughs, and hears the chisels ringing;
The tired clown
Sees the enormous crowd—a million faces
Motionless in their places,
Ready to laugh, and seize, and crush, and tear….
The dancer smooths her hair,
Laces her golden slippers and runs through the door
To dance once more,
Hearing swift music like an enchantment rise,
Feeling the praise of a thousand eyes.
As darkness falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live tonight, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamp-lit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit halls which reach no end.
