Poem for Monday

True Night
By Alvin Feinman

So it is midnight, and all
The angels of ordinary day gone,
The abiding absence between day and day
Come like true and only rain
Comes instant, eternal, again:

As though an air had opened without sound
In which all things are sanctified,
In which they are at prayer—
The drunken man in his stupor,
The madman’s lucid shrinking circle;

As though all things shone perfectly,
Perfected in self-discrepancy:
The widow wedded to her grief,
The hangman haloed in remorse—
I should not rearrange a leaf,

No more than wish to lighten stones
Or still the sea where it still roars—
Here every grief requires its grief,
Here every longing thing is lit
Like darkness at an altar.

As long as truest night is long,
Let no discordant wing
Corrupt these sorrows into song.

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Sparowe was in Maryland visiting her brother at the Maryland Renaissance Festival and DementorDelta and RubyRoseRed were both going there with friends, so we let Adam miss Hebrew school and went back to Revel Grove -- one of my very favorite activities on a gorgeous fall afternoon. We arrived at the very end of the first Fight School show, then went to the early joust where I got to sit and catch up with Sparowe, then had lunch and went to see Shakespeare's Skum's version of Henry V ("It's Henry the Fifth, not Henry Vee!"), catching the final act of Romeo and Juliet when we arrived at the Globe Theatre. After a bit of shopping, we went to see Hack & Slash and Fight School: Reloaded, and although my last visit was royalty-free, this time my kids and I got to have a chat with Anne of Cleves in the marketplace and watch Henry VIII and Catherine Howard snitching bites of people's lunches.


Anne of Cleves and the Duke of Norfolk. The former queen admitted to us privately that she loved having lots of money and castles and not having to go back to Cleves.


Henry VIII explains to a peasant that he should feel honored to have had his fried chicken swiped and eaten by his daughter, Princess Mary.


Juliet wakes to find both Romeo and Paris dead in her tomb as the Friar tries to talk her into coming away with him instead of doing something rash.


King Henry the Vee gives a passionate and inspiring speech to his men! That is, man! That is, woman! That is...well, it's passionate and inspiring!


Slash warned Hack not to put that cinder block directly on top of his bladder...


An acrobat performs suspended above the ground.


One of Art of Fire's craftsmen creates a glass vase.


Me, Delta and Lin in our finery.

We came home for dinner because the kids still had homework to finish, and after all the food we ate at the faire (including chocolate mousse in waffle bowls and lemons with peppermint straws), we didn't really need to eat out any more. I spent the evening watching the Emmys, which dragged on so interminably with the show schtick that I almost turned them off at several different points, even though a whole bunch of people I really like ended up winning. My favorite moment by far was Ricky Gervais demanding (and getting) his Emmy back from Steve Carell after they ran the clip from last year of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart giving the Emmy to Carell because Gervais wasn't there -- Carell does the best straight face in the business, Stewart is helplessly giggly by comparison. I was also glad that Colbert's writing team and Stewart also won awards.

My two favorite network TV shows, Pushing Daisies and Boston Legal, were shut out in the major awards category with the exception of Barry Sonnenfeld whom I was so thrilled to see win a directing award for the pilot that created the look and sensibility of Pushing Daisies. Considering that that show has only had a handful of episodes, while BL has won a slew of Emmys over its run -- Shatner got into the agonizingly dull opening but didn't win this time -- I can't really complain. The acting awards I really cared about were Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti for John Adams -- both of whom won, and both of whom took swipes at McCain/Palin (Linney thanked "the community organizers who helped form our country") -- and Glenn Close for Damages, which I didn't stick with because I really loathed the storyline, but Glenn is owed so many Oscars that I'm happy to see her win an Emmy even for a show I don't like.

And the Redskins won, even though we had to put up with traffic from the stadium coming home from the faire!