Poem for Tuesday

Ballad of the Gasfitter 1
By Gerrit Achterberg
Translated by J.M. Coetzee

You must have made your entry from the rear.
To each house in the row I turn my glance
and in each curtained window catch a glimpse
of You, as out of nothing You appear.

As I move past You seem to slip away.
Yet I am not mistaken, vide the next frame.
One Jansen lives there with his family--
as if You could escape under that name.

The ruse won't work. A door remains a door,
each with its steps, its mailbox, and its bell.
The apple hawker lures you with his call.
A master key is easy to procure.
Indeed I can quite freely step inside
as (at your service) gasfitter by trade.

--------

A final sequel to Sunday's post, the first sonnet in Achterberg's "The Gasfitter" sequence, which Robert Pinsky did not quote in Poet's Choice but I managed to track down.

Am starting to be crazed with trip preparations, so will keep this short. Had lunch with , did a bit of shopping, picked up another power converter. Wrote brief articles on Mulgrew's rave reviews in Our Leading Lady and Shatner's fretting about appraching 80, though he is hopeful that if ABC gave Boston Legal a fourth season, they'll give it a fifth as well for the sake of syndication rights, and I am hopeful too. Installed ActiveSync 4.5, then had to fight to make my phone realize it was the same computer as before, and copied files onto my portable drive to bring along.


The bushes in front of our house have flowers...and bees.


Rosie sat all morning on the back of the couch watching them.


They did a lot of buzzing and flying right by the window, as if to taunt her.


Cinnamon, meanwhile, had other problems.


Stephen put in an appearance in a nearby tree, and I wouldn't let the cat out to chase him.

Folded laundry while watching The Mists of Avalon, which despite being 1) a terrible adaptation of the book, 2) heterosexist in comparison to the book, 3) filmed in the Czech Republic rather than Britain, 4) too long at the start, too condensed at the end, and 5) miscast in several key roles, it also has 1) Anjelica Huston, 2) Joan Allen, 3) Julianna Margulies, 4) Freddie Highmore, which I had forgotten all about, and 5) Loreena McKennitt. And, I mean, it's got the Lady of the Lake, Excalibur and all that, even if it's not any version of mine (or much of Marion Zimmer Bradley's) and the real Glastonbury is more beautiful than the fake one in the film. Speaking of Glastonbury, gacked from a whole bunch of people, the drawing analysis meme. Obviously I can't draw to save my life. This was supposed to be the Tor and the ruins of the abbey...



What does your drawing say about YOU?

Kids have no school tomorrow so must go get rest. Happy Feet comes out on DVD, after all!