I've learned to try, I'm not very good at, I almost always fail, but I've learned to try to wait 48 hours before writing about political news - in this case Obama's speech - in hopes that I'll not write about it at all (at that I always fail), plus I'm busy, plus a friend sent me a long, thoughtful, and Kind letter regarding my name's unmasking here that I'd rather think about in the few moments I'm not directed elsewhere where I'd rather not be. So this: I am a book hoarder, if I see something I own and love and have two copies already but see a third on sale for $2 in a used book store I buy it, people responded positively to the Milosz I posted (and there's another below, and now that I'm re-addicted expect much more in the near future), I've two extra copies of the above, if you want one let me know, send me your address in an email.
UPDATE! One copy claimed, one remains, I've added a second poem to encourage everyone (and by everyone I mean the three of you) to move fast.
UPDATE! Second copy claimed, but fuck, if you're someone with a history of Kind toward me and this blog (or wish to start a history of Kind toward me and this blog, go ahead, I'm a rube), I'll buy you a copy if you send me your address and say please.
SECRETARIES
Czeslaw Milosz
I am no more than a secretary of the invisible thing
That is dictated to me and a few others.
Secretaries, mutually unknown, we walk the earth
Without much comprehension. Beginning a phrase in the middle
Or ending it without a comma. And how it all looks when completed
Is not up to us to inquire, we won't read it anyway.
PREPARATION
Czeslaw Milosz
Still one more year of preparation.
Tomorrow at the latest I'll start working on a great book
In which my century will appear as it really was.
The sun will rise over the righteous and the wicked.
Springs and autumns will unerringly return,
In a wet thicket a thrush will build his nest lined with clay
And foxes will learn their foxy natures.
And they will be the subject, with addenda. Thus: armies
Running across frozen plains, shouting a curse
In a many-voiced chorus; the cannon of a tank
Growing immense at the corner of street; the ride at dusk
Into a camp with watchtowers and barbed wire.
No, it won't happen tomorrow. In five or ten years.
I still think too much about the mothers
And ask what is man born of woman.
He curls himself up and protects his head
While he is kicked with heavy boots; on fire and running
He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.
Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.
I haven't learned yet to speak as I should, calmly.
