The Paper Nautilus
By Marianne Moore
For authorities whose hopes
are shaped by mercenaries?
Writers entrapped by
teatime fame and by
commuters' comforts? Not for these
the paper nautilus
constructs her thin glass shell.
Giving her perishable
souvenir of hope, a dull
white outside and smooth-
edged inner surface
glossy as the sea, the watchful
maker of it guards it
day and night; she scarcely
eats until the eggs are hatched.
Buried eight-fold in her eight
arms, for she is in
a sense a devil-
fish, her glass ram'shorn-cradled freight
is hid but is not crushed;
as Hercules, bitten
by a crab loyal to the hydra,
was hindered to succeed,
the intensively
watched eggs coming from
the shell free it when they are freed,--
leaving its wasp-nest flaws
of white on white, and close-
laid Ionic chiton-folds
like the lines in the mane of
a Parthenon horse,
round which the arms had
wound themselves as if they knew love
is the only fortress
strong enough to trust to.
--------
I slept late with a time-of-month and excessive-heat headache and ended up having one of those days where I couldn't quite catch up on things, since I knew I had to leave the house in the late afternoon for a Nationals/Dodgers game in nearly intolerable heat. So I have no real news to report besides the game itself, which probably would have been quite enjoyable had we not been melting in the 90+ degree heat (there's a heat advisory for Thursday so it's not likely to improve much overnight either). The Nationals won, 3-1, only their fifth win in 19 games since the All-Star break after starting the season very strongly so they really needed this one, and we need some new local heroes in the wake of the growing Palmeiro scandal. Warning: most of the photos below are not of the baseball game, but of eclectic things that caught my interest about the stadium.
The Nationals play the Dodgers in the August heat. Both team's pitchers started weakly and there were lots of walks along with a reasonable number of hits, but both teams also left lots of batters stranded. The highlight was Patrick Wilson hitting a loooooong home run right up the middle of the field, and Nationals relief pitcher Ayala did some respectable hitting when he came in for Armas.
Half of the appeal of baseball to me is nostalgia. My parents are from Brooklyn and my father grew up going to Ebbetts Field to see the Brooklyn Dodgers; he was devastated when they moved to L.A. Here is the shirt the woman in the row in front of us was wearing, which made us both smile -- Dodgers memories from across two cities.
The Times of Greatness Mobile Museum was visiting in front of RFK with a display from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum on African-American baseball teams and the players' stories.
Because RFK Stadium's seating is designed for football and the Nationals are moving as soon as their new stadium is built, they haven't bothered to put up bleachers in the uniformly curved outfield. There were a couple of long fly balls to the corners that would have been home runs in Yankee Stadium.
Another good reason for DC to spend a fortune and build a new stadium: RFK is right near a city incinerator of some sort, and lovely *cough* clouds like this one come wafting out of its smokestacks.
The nice thing about the stadium is that it's right on the shores of the Anacostia River, so people plan lovely waterside tailgate parties...
...the not-so-nice thing is that the Anacostia is absolutely choked with garbage, and urgently needs environmentalist intervention ASAP. That ain't gonna happen under the current administration, and to be fair the last administration didn't do much about it either.
About that Guardian article on HP fans that has lots of people upset: yeah, the reporter is a jerk and apparently sloppy and irresponsible as well. But hey, I'm a Trekkie and a second-generation slasher; I've had far worse said about me by far better. *g*
Today is my father's brother's 60th birthday -- the one who was just here visiting with his ten-year-old from his second marriage. His younger daughter from his first marriage, who is nine years younger than I am, had a baby last week, and her older sister had a baby a month ago. This feels strange to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment