Poem for Tuesday

A Street
By Leonard Cohen

I used to be your favorite drunk
Good for one more laugh
Then we both ran out of luck
And luck was all we had

You put on a uniform
To fight the Civil War
I tried to join but no one liked
The side I'm fighting for

So let's drink to when it's over
And let's drink to when we meet
I'll be standing on this corner
Where there used to be a street

You left me with the dishes
And a baby in the bath
And you're tight with the militias
You wear their camouflage

I guess that makes us equal
But I want to march with you
An extra in the sequel
To the old red-white-and-blue

So let's drink to when it's over
And let's drink to when we meet
I'll be standing on this corner
Where there used to be a street

I cried for you this morning
And I'll cry for you again
But I'm not in charge of sorrow
So please don't ask me when

I know the burden's heavy
As you bear it through the night
Some people say it's empty
But that doesn't mean it's light

So let's drink to when it's over
And let's drink to when we meet
I'll be standing on this corner
Where there used to be a street

It's going to be September now
For many years to come
Every heart adjusting
To that strict September drum

I see the Ghost of Culture
With numbers on his wrist
Salute some new conclusion
Which all of us have missed

So let's drink to when it's over
And let's drink to when we meet
I'll be standing on this corner
Where there used to be a street

--------

From this week's New Yorker. I keep wondering how they manage to publish so much interesting poetry while at the same time shoveling out so much utter drivel in the fiction section.

I'm still feeling icky. I had good intentions -- I was going to get up and out early and get my new glasses -- but I was a slug all morning and by the time I was organized, it was practically time for Adam to come home for tennis, which we had to get to early to get his racket grip replaced. And after that I was a slug till dinner. So I have nothing to report besides the stock market plummeting, Ritz Camera filing for bankruptcy, and other charming news like that.


Outside the Birds of North America exhibit at the National Geographic Museum...


...was a bird feeder attracting lots of sparrows, chickadees and finches.


Images of the exotic birds in the museum peeked out at the city birds.


There was lots of happy flapping and munching.


And lots of tweeting and chirping.


Maybe we should invest in this type of bird feeder, because we didn't see any squirrels trying to break in.

I know I said I didn't care who won Best Actor so long as Rourke lost, and I've been unimpressed with Sean Penn sometimes -- he's said and filmed some really sexist things, considering how progressive he's supposed to be -- but if his win gets Milk seen by more people, that's reason enough for me to be delighted he got the Oscar. I also appreciated his shout-out to his scriptwriter, who gave the most moving speech of the night. And speaking of gay rights, Nathan on Heroes keeps making me think of J. Edgar Hoover, on a brutal hunt against one group of people because he's afraid and ashamed of belonging to that group...I'm still really not liking the show.

Spoilers: They've really effectively cut out every female character with agency, haven't they? Claire's back to being just a kid, Angela's dropped out, Nikki/Traci/whoever the hell she is is locked up, Daphne's near death...it is very bad news to be female on this series, even worse than being black. On top of that, the show has no creativity, even with Brian Fuller now working on it instead of the brilliant Pushing Daisies...it's bad enough that they did another flashback "let's try to make sense of our own recent history" episode, but they did flat third-person linear memories, nothing that resembled actual memories, nothing that revealed anything intimate or unexpected the way real memories do. Bah, TV has gotten awful.