Poem for Thursday

I keep forgetting to link to this weekend's Poet's Choice column from The Washington Post, by Edward Hirsch, this week on Joseph Brodsky. Here's the poem but I recommend the article as well.


May 24, 1980
By Joseph Brodsky

I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly
width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country that bore and nursed me.
Those who forgot me would make a city.
I have waded the steppes that saw yelling Huns in saddles,
worn the clothes nowadays back in fashion in every quarter,
planted rye, tarred the roofs of pigsties and stables,
guzzled everything save dry water.
I've admitted the sentries' third eye into my wet and foul
dreams. Munched the bread of exile: it's stale and warty.
Granted my lungs all sounds except the howl;
switched to a whisper. Now I am forty.
What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.
Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelette, though, makes me vomit.
Yet until brown clay has been crammed down my larynx,
only gratitude will be gushing from it.

--------


My kids woke me up early so I read the New York Times op-ed page: Bob Herbert on who's less patriotic, the Dixie Chicks or Dick Cheney's long-term meal ticket, the Halliburton Company, and William Safire on The Great Media Gulp in which the FCC may quietly allow Disney, Viacom and Rupert Murdoch to own every TV and radio station in the US. We live in terrifying times.

I am very glad that...


You are Trinity, from "The Matrix."
Strong, beautiful- you epitomize the ultimate
heroine.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
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Am having lunch with and again and we are watching naked Sean Bean movies!