2012/07/23

A Dog Racing in Tight Circles




Continuing the Blog Days of Summer airing of blemes: just finished my quadrennial reading of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon and mwah, the Vulcan golem still live-longing and prospering. Serendipitously, a bud who's the first link below also posted about Stephen Dixon who I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when posting a link to Millions' upcoming releases post. I confess Dixon has never sung to me, but perhaps now is the time to try again. I spent an afternoon reading Denis Johnson's Train Dreams and loved it, bought his Tree of Smoke and it's (or rather, I'm) not working. Found my paperback of Vollmann's Fathers & Crows, a new Vollmann, a Seven Dreams, mentioned in said Millions' list; even though they are not related narratively they are related thematically, I'm thinking of rereading at least one or two, Fathers & Crows my favorite. Gass has a new novel coming: The Tunnel is on my shelf Hey Sailoring me. So, no reading slump, yay me! Suggestions for something I've never read, maybe even heard of, solicited. Oh, never mind.









DAMARISCOTTA

D. Nurkse

     1

How we loved to create a world.

Out of gray we made the pin-oak leaves
with their saw teeth and odd waxy sheen,
dry and matte to the touch, out of granite
we made the marriage house, and always
we added a flaw which we called fire
or time or the stranger.

     2

A drop of water on the lip of a jug,
trembling, trying to hold on
for another second to the idea of sphericity—
that was us, our nakedness.

     3

We worked to thwart our happiness
because it was so unexpected;
suffering tasted like our mouths.

     4

We had a flagstone path, a pond, four birches,
a dog racing in tight circles, helpless
against the dream of fresh snow.

Tomorrow that red Schwinn with training wheels
must find a way to pedal itself.

     5

World like a child who learned to walk
beyond our outstretched hands.