The Editors, wanking
This is weird - a stupid and angry post from one of the best bloggers in the sphere. Hopefully just a 5-sigma aberration.
The ReaderAt "these days" I'm already wondering "so not next year?" and "is this worth munging the pentameter already?" And at "shaded" and "shadowed" I'm going, "huh? By 'a shaded light' you mean 'a lamp', right?"
She is going back, these days, to the great stories
That charmed her younger mind. A shaded light
Shines on the nape half-shadowed by her curls,
And a page turns now with a scuffing sound.
Daybreak, Benedict Canyon
Thick fog has filled the canyon overnight
And turned it to a sea of milky gray.
The steep-sloped chaparral and streets below
Are drowned from view; hilltops across the way
Form a low-lying archipelago
Upon the fog’s smothering gulfs and shoals.
The scene, in the uncertain pre-dawn light,
Recalls those Chinese landscapes on silk scrolls
In which mists haunt ravines, and clouds surround
Remote peaks fading to remoter skies.
The scene suggests, too, the apocalypse
The earth may suffer if sea levels rise.
This very deck might be a ghostly ship’s
And I a lone survivor, cast by fate
Out on a flood as lifeless and profound
As the one Noah had to navigate.
Labels: learning to read, poetry, richard wilbur