This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, don't imagine you'll have it forever. Use it while you've got it because it'll go, it's sliding away like water down a plughole.
Doris Lessing calls her Nobel win a "disaster."
Some other classic Lessing moments:
The Kiss Precise
For pairs of lips to kiss maybe
Involves no trigonometry.
'Tis not so when four circles kiss
Each one the other three.
To bring this off the four must be
As three in one or one in three.
If one in three, beyond a doubt
Each gets three kisses from without.
If three in one, then is that one
Thrice kissed internally.
Four circles to the kissing come.
The smaller are the benter.
The bend is just the inverse of
The distance from the center.
Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There's now no need for rule of thumb.
Since zero bend's a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,
The sum of the squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.
To spy out spherical affairs
An oscular surveyor
Might find the task laborious,
The sphere is much the gayer,
And now besides the pair of pairs
A fifth sphere in the kissing shares.
Yet, signs and zero as before,
For each to kiss the other four
The square of the sum of all five bends
Is thrice the sum of their squares.
::Frederick Soddy (Pray to Empson if you want this poem to be about more than what it's actually about.)
Strugnell's Bargain
My true love hath my heart and I have hers:
We swapped last Tuesday and felt quite elated
But now, whenever one of us refers
To 'my heart', things get rather complicated.
Just now, when she complained 'My heart is racing',
'You mean my heart is racing,' I replied.
'That's what I said.' 'You mean the heart replacing
Your heart, my love.' 'Oh piss off, Jake!' she cried.
I ask you, do you think Sir Philip Sidney
Got spoken to like that? And I suspect
If I threw in my liver and a kidney,
She'd still address me with as scant respect.
Therefore do I revoke my opening line:
My love can keep her heart and I'll have mine.
::Wendy Cope (again!)
Spiderwoman
Arachne starts with Ovid and finishes with me.
Her hair falls out and the ears and nostrils disappear
From her contracting face, her body minuscule, thin
Fingers clinging to her sides by way of legs, the rest
All stomach, from which she manufactures gossamer
And so keeps up her former trade, weaver, spider
Enticing the eight eyes of my imagination
To make love on her lethal doily, to dangle sperm
Like teardrops from an eyelash, massage it into her
While I avoid the spinerets -- navel, vulva, bum --
And the widening smile behind her embroidery.
She wears our babies like brooches on her abdomen.
::Michael Longley
Armed and Dangerous
WANTED: CUPID, SON OF VENUS
If anybody sees Cupid loitering around,
he's my slave, a runaway.
There's a reward for information leading to his arrest.
Payment will be a kiss from Venus or, if you bring him in yourself,
you'll get more than just a kiss.
The boy's well-known. You can pick him out of any lineup.
Complexion: not white but ruddy. Eyes: piercing and fiery hot.
Voice: sweet as honey. Doesn't say what he means.
Intentions: bitter as bile. A con man,
a complete liar, a sneaky kid. Plays rough.
Lots of curly hair and a look that's asking for trouble.
Hands like a baby, but they can throw things.
Can shoot an arrow to hell and back.
Naked body but hidden thoughts.
Winged. Flies like a bird from here to there.
Lands on men's and women's hearts.
Armed with a small bow and arrow.
Arrow's short but it can reach the sky.
On his back, a golden quiver. Inside,
those little arrows have nicked even me.
All his weapons are dangerous, but the worst is the torch.
Not much light, but it can set the sun on fire.
If you catch him, tie him up, bring him here, and show no mercy.
If you spot him crying, watch out for tricks.
If he's laughing, drag him by the feet. And if he wants to give you a kiss,
look out! The kiss is bad news and the lips are poison.
If he says, "Here. Take my weapons,"
don't touch them whatever you do.
Those gifts are dipped in fire.
::Moschus (translated by Stephen Bertman)
Men Explain Things to Me
Rebecca Solnit's latest must-read essay, Men Explain Things to Me gets at an annoyance I've harbored for years but couldn't articulate, other than to cut off the pencil-necked grad-school know-it-all boys by dropping my new catch-phrase, "quit didacticizin', bro" (and I'm a man, albeit half-lesbian on my mom's side):
Yes, guys like this pick on other men's books too, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men.
Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.
[snip]
Don't forget that I've had a lot more confirmation of my right to think and speak than most women, and I've learned that a certain amount of self-doubt is a good tool for correcting, understanding, listening, and progressing -- though too much is paralyzing and total self-confidence produces arrogant idiots, like the ones who have governed us since 2001. There's a happy medium between these poles to which the genders have been pushed, a warm equatorial belt of give and take where we should all meet.
[thanks for the link, Jenna!]
Three Riddled Riddles
(i)
I have nine legs.
I carry an umbrella.
I live in a box
at the bottom of a ship.
At night
I play the trombone.
What am I?
Answer: I've forgotten.
(ii)
You see me at dawn
with the clouds in my hair.
I run like a horse
and sing like a nightingale.
I collect stamps
and coconuts.
What am I?
Answer: I'm not sure.
(iii)
I taste like a grapefruit.
I swim like a chair.
I hang on the trees
and people tap my face.
rake my soil
and tell me jokes.
What am I?
Answer: I've really no idea.
:: Martyn Wiley and Ian McMillan
Nocturne
Round and round the shutter'd Square
I strolled with the Devil's arm in mine.
No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there
And the ring of his laughter and mine.
We had drunk black wine.
I scream'd, "I will race you, Master!"
"What matter," he shriek'd, "to-night
Which of us runs the faster?
There is nothing to fear to-night
In the foul moon's light!"
Then I look'd him in the eyes
And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told
And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise.
It was true, what I'd time and again been told:
He was old--old.
:: Max Beerbohm
[This is one of a small fistful of decent poems I found in this horrid collection]
Faith, wench, I cannot court
Faith, wench, I cannot court thy sprightly eyes
With the bass viol placed between my thighs.
I cannot lisp nor to some fiddle sing
Nor run upon a high-stretched minikin.
I cannot whine in puling elegies,
Entombing Cupid with sad obsequies.
I am not fashioned for these amorous times,
To court thy beauty with lascivious rhymes.
I cannot dally, caper, dance, and sing,
Oiling my saint with supple sonneting.
I cannot cross my arms and sigh, 'Ay me,
Ay me, forlorn!' Egregious foppery!
I cannot buss thy hand, play with thy hair,
Swearing by Jove thou art most debonair.
Not I, by cock! But shall I tell thee roundly?
Hark in thine ear: zounds! I can f—-k thee soundly.
::[Author unknown.]
First published in Epigrammes and Elegies by "J.D. and C.M.", circa 1590. My guess is this was a common bawdy sonnet, but here finessed and reshaped by "C.M." -- the exclamation "by cock!" kinda gives it away. Apparently the Epigrammes and Elegies were ordered confiscated and burned by the Crown in 1599. "C.M." had already been murdered by this point, and "J.D." had yet to become an early imperialist legal theoretician, stationed in Ulster.
Did I mention that it's National Poetry Month?
Mood
I got the 'noid
more'n old
Staggerlee -- me,
I shaken
hands with the void--
Please to meet you.
Betrayal'll
make you shoot
soon as see.
A shadow boxing
me in, this killing
feeling --
season of pigeon
extinct. It is late
enough perhaps to want
my old life back
or none at all --
Times like this should
outlaw what's unsaid.
And up
in the mind there
a burner
half-cocked, triggers
over, again, its dry fire --
Mercy, baby,
take hold a me!
:: Kevin Young
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