My Apologies to Chance for Calling It Necessity

Why are you in such a good mood, L accused me at Thursday Night Pints. It's true, I said, the past month's bad mood's been lanced, at least until it's back. I told them that United just signed a new designated player, an Albanian striker named Salihi (with the potential for lame Salahi jokes!) and suddenly, sullen just two weeks ago at United's offseason lassitude and the doom it suggested, I'm giddy at the idea of a front five of Salihi (if he's as successful at United as he's been everywhere else) and De Rossario and Boskovic and Pontius and Najar, it fills me with rubeful ruby rubyness of Baal-taunting optimism! Then I told them I got my 35th high school reunion summons last week - no, of course I'm not going, I said - then told them that just a couple of hours before meeting them I discovered this new Magnetic Fields video, then I told them an inside joke I won't share here that's had me laughing in awe at Serendipity ever since. OK, said D, you're buying tonight. Happily!

• Grid, not goal - Part One: Parenthood.
• No, please don't.
• A strange absolution.
• ISRAELI LEADERS: TIME IS RUNNING OUT TO STOP IRAN screams the headline across the top of YFWP's webpage as I type this sentence.
• And then runs an ode to American military glory by one of many motherfucking Kagan's.
• Bad faith.
• Obamapropaganda.
• Obamagah.
• 27 of 35.
• Willard Mitt Romney.
• Of course Romney's a fucker, but Krugman's obamapostasy will never come.
• Mitch and Stiffy.
• UPDATE! Dan reminds me today is BLOGROLL AMNESTY DAY! Be Kind.
• Gravity's Rainbow PDF.
• On Szymborksa.

UNDER A CERTAIN LITTLE STAR

Wislawa Szymborksa
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity. 
My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken. 
Don't be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own. 
May the dead forgive me that their memory's but a flicker. 
My apologies to time for the quantity of world overlooked per second. 
My apologies to an old love for treating a new one as the first. 
Forgive me, far-off wars, for carrying my flowers home. 
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger. 
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss. 
My apologies to those in train stations for sleeping soundly at five in the morning. 
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing sometimes. 
Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing in with a spoonful of water. 
And you, O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage, 
staring, motionless, always at the same spot, 
absolve me even if you happen to be stuffed. 
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs. 
My apologies to large questions for small answers. 
Truth, do not pay me too much attention. 
Solemnity, be magnanimous toward me. 
Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil. 
Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom. 
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere. 
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman. 
I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me, 
since I am my own obstacle. 
Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, 
and then labor to make them light.