52/317-318: Oh Drear
Jan. 11th, 2026 10:33 pmSaturday and Sunday were both days of sleep, of not wanting to get out from under the cozy covers, and when I did get out not getting anything done. The days are seeming drear and the nights full of an unserene quiet. Maybe this will change, maybe it won't. Lying abed awake or asleep it doesn't matter. There is just the indeterminate hour passing imperceptibly. Maybe I go back to sleep, maybe I don't. Once it's done I can't tell the difference. At some point I get hungry, and at some point the hunger becomes more unpleasant than eating, then I get up and eat. With luck, the eating makes me sleepy again, and the cycles repeat. How much longer, who knows? I care less every day.
Late Sunday Verse
by Bruce Dawe
Happiness is the art of being broken
With least sound. The old, whom circumstance
Has ground smooth as green bottle-glass
On the sea’s furious grindstone, very often
Practise it to perfection. (For them, death
Is the one definitive shrug
In an infinite series, all prior gestures
Take relevance from this, as much express
Sorrow for stiff canary or cold son.
Always the first fragmentation
Stirs us to fear... Beyond that point
We learn where we belong, in what uncaring
Complex depths we roll, lashed by light,
Tumbling in anemone-dazzled fathoms
Seek innocence in surrender,
Senility an ironic act of charity
Easing the agony of disparateness until
That day when, all identity lost, we serve
As curios for children roaming beaches,
Makeshift monocles through which they view
The same green transitory world we also knew.
Late Sunday Verse
Happiness is the art of being broken
by Bruce Dawe
Happiness is the art of being broken
With least sound. The old, whom circumstance
Has ground smooth as green bottle-glass
On the sea’s furious grindstone, very often
Practise it to perfection. (For them, death
Is the one definitive shrug
In an infinite series, all prior gestures
Take relevance from this, as much express
Sorrow for stiff canary or cold son.
Always the first fragmentation
Stirs us to fear... Beyond that point
We learn where we belong, in what uncaring
Complex depths we roll, lashed by light,
Tumbling in anemone-dazzled fathoms
Seek innocence in surrender,
Senility an ironic act of charity
Easing the agony of disparateness until
That day when, all identity lost, we serve
As curios for children roaming beaches,
Makeshift monocles through which they view
The same green transitory world we also knew.