In case you missed me.
At four AM, all the electricity in the house – in the town – went out.
PEPCO said it’d be back on at eleven this morning. It’s still out.
I spent the day waiting for electricity and reading To the Lighthouse for my independent study group on postmodern fiction tomorrow (we’re starting with a modernist novel for comparison). I’ve read this novel many times – taught it often – and enjoyed it. This time, however, I found it tiresome, mannered, and depressing. Go figure.
When not reading the novel, I played happy Haydn pieces on my just-tuned piano, and went around and around my acre picking up twigs and branches from last night’s windstorm.
A rather frustrating day. I did get a poem out of it.
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At Four a Windstorm Blew the Lights
At four a windstorm blew the lights.
I slid a door and hauled out of night
Florida air that purpled the sky
And made the dark house stand by
For some fireworks. Death flared!
I scanned the ceiling, scared:
Streamers of nothingness!
Infinite means measureless
I said. Measureless to man, like Xanadu.
So take the measure of infinitude
Just as it is, unsparked and uncandescent,
Unelectric charge inside the head, incessant.
The sparklers drifted and arc’d,
Their spectacular bursts unmarked
By carillon, spinet, or choir.
The only holies in that unholy fire
Were human faces.
Firing up the cosmic spaces.
January 25th, 2010 at 9:46PM
I had – but I’d written it down to early semester trauma – not weather-trauma!