By Jack Gilbert
Imagine if suffering were real.
Imagine if those old people were afraid of death.
What if the midget or the girl with one arm
really felt pain? Imagine how impossible it would be
to live if some people were
alone and afraid all their lives.
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From The New York Times, whose reviewer, Dwight Garner, called the poem above "a bonsai-size heartbreaker...this is a poem that, watching cable news, you long to staple to certain pundits’ foreheads." It's from the 1982 book Monolithos.
Spring has arrived in full in the DC area -- we are surrounded by forsythia and daffodils, the tulips and magnolia trees are starting up, and the cherry blossoms are expected to peak downtown this weekend before the festival officially starts. I bought myself an $8 cherry blossom bracelet to celebrate and spent as much time outside as possible -- photos below, including the first azaleas of the season. I had to fold laundry and I watched In the Mood For Love, the Wong Kar-Wai film that people have been recommending to me for a decade; it was excellent, very sad but magnificently filmed and beautifully acted, with an affecting soundtrack and striking shots that often use mirrors and doorways to frame subjects in unexpected ways.
Adam again brought his girlfriend home to do homework (that's their story anyway) and Paul got us Happy Feet Two on DVD -- I think I am the biggest fan of it in this household, the music as well as the penguins and the krill. We watched it after Pi Day dinner, which included veggie steak and kidney pie and toll house pie (again Paul's fault, I need chocolate chip pie like I need the new kiosk in the mall with three chocolate fountains, heh). You can't possibly expect me to say anything about yesterday's primaries except that I'm looking for someone to move in with in Canada if the economy collapses and Obama somehow loses to That Man Whose Name I Can't Bear To Say And Not Because Of What Dan Savage Made It Mean.
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