Saturday, November 19, 2011

Poem for Saturday and Happy Penguins

Atlantis -- A Lost Sonnet
By Eavan Boland

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city -- arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals -- had all
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city --

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

--------

I had a very nice Friday. Paul worked from home since the minivan was at the shop for its seasonal checkup (needed new brake pads and things like that), so we had lunch together. I posted a review of "Q-less", neither Deep Space Nine's nor Q's finest moment, and started work on the dreaded holiday card list -- I shall have to put up a LiveJournal post for addresses from online friends to see what has changed since last year.

In the afternoon, we picked up the van, then picked up Adam and four friends to drive to the restaurants at Washingtonian and Happy Feet 2, which we saw in the same theater though we were forbidden to sit near them. I loved the movie. Like the first one, it has a pretty thin plot about parent-child expectations, and some African penguins have emigrated to Antarctica, but it also has some gorgeous animation of the glories of Earth and the universe, and its theme is about the interconnectedness of life and the dangers of global warming. Plus the music is delightful, and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon play krill in a bromance.

We got home late after dinner at Tara Thai and dropping off Adam's friends, and just watched Iowa State shock Oklahoma State in double overtime, so here is a photo of little blue penguins at the New England Aquarium in 2010:

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