Written by
C K Williams |
The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain,
mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof
off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I've been wandering out to
watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble
the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening to the news, wondering how to know a
hundred miles downwind
if and when to make a run for it and where, then a coming bolt awake
at seven
when the roofers we've been waiting for since winter sent their ladders
shrieking up our wall,
we still know less than nothing: the utility company continues making
little of the accident,
the slick federal spokesmen still have their evasions in some semblance
of order.
Surely we suspect now we're being lied to, but in the meantime, there
are the roofers,
setting winch-frames, sledging rounds of tar apart, and there I am, on
the curb across, gawking.
I never realized what brutal work it is, how matter-of-factly and harrow-
ingly dangerous.
The ladders flex and quiver, things skid from the edge, the materials are
bulky and recalcitrant.
When the rusty, antique nails are levered out, their heads pull off; the
underroofing crumbles.
Even the battered little furnace, roaring along as patient as a donkey,
chokes and clogs,
a dense, malignant smoke shoots up, and someone has to fiddle with a
cock, then hammer it,
before the gush and stench will deintensify, the dark, Dantean broth
wearily subside.
In its crucible, the stuff looks bland, like licorice, spill it, though, on
your boots or coveralls,
it sears, and everything is permeated with it, the furnace gunked with
burst and half-burst bubbles,
the men themselves so completely slashed and mucked they seem almost
from another realm, like trolls.
When they take their break, they leave their brooms standing at attention
in the asphalt pails,
work gloves clinging like Br'er Rabbit to the bitten shafts, and they slouch
along the precipitous lip,
the enormous sky behind them, the heavy noontime air alive with shim-
mers and mirages.
Sometime in the afternoon I had to go inside: the advent of our vigil was
upon us.
However much we didn't want to, however little we would do about it,
we'd understood:
we were going to perish of all this, if not now, then soon, if not soon,
then someday.
Someday, some final generation, hysterically aswarm beneath an at-
mosphere as unrelenting as rock,
would rue us all, anathematize our earthly comforts, curse our surfeits
and submissions.
I think I know, though I might rather not, why my roofers stay so clear
to me and why the rest,
the terror of that time, the reflexive disbelief and distancing, all we should
hold on to, dims so.
I remember the president in his absurd protective booties, looking
absolutely unafraid, the fool.
I remember a woman on the front page glaring across the misty Sus-
quehanna at those looming stacks.
But, more vividly, the men, silvered with glitter from the shingles, cling-
ing like starlings beneath the eaves.
Even the leftover carats of tar in the gutter, so black they seemed to suck
the light out of the air.
By nightfall kids had come across them: every sidewalk on the block was
scribbled with obscenities and hearts.
|
Written by
Robert Herrick |
Till I shall come again, let this suffice,
I send my salt, my sacrifice
To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far
As to thy Genius and thy Lar;
To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen,
The fat-fed smoking temple, which in
The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines,
Invites to supper him who dines:
Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef,
Not represent, but give relief
To the lank stranger and the sour swain,
Where both may feed and come again;
For no black-bearded Vigil from thy door
Beats with a button'd-staff the poor;
But from thy warm love-hatching gates, each may
Take friendly morsels, and there stay
To sun his thin-clad members, if he likes;
For thou no porter keep'st who strikes.
No comer to thy roof his guest-rite wants;
Or, staying there, is scourged with taunts
Of some rough groom, who, yirk'd with corns, says, 'Sir,
'You've dipp'd too long i' th' vinegar;
'And with our broth and bread and bits, Sir friend,
'You've fared well; pray make an end;
'Two days you've larded here; a third, ye know,
'Makes guests and fish smell strong; pray go
'You to some other chimney, and there take
'Essay of other giblets; make
'Merry at another's hearth; you're here
'Welcome as thunder to our beer;
'Manners knows distance, and a man unrude
'Would soon recoil, and not intrude
'His stomach to a second meal.'--No, no,
Thy house, well fed and taught, can show
No such crabb'd vizard: Thou hast learnt thy train
With heart and hand to entertain;
And by the arms-full, with a breast unhid,
As the old race of mankind did,
When either's heart, and either's hand did strive
To be the nearer relative;
Thou dost redeem those times: and what was lost
Of ancient honesty, may boast
It keeps a growth in thee, and so will run
A course in thy fame's pledge, thy son.
Thus, like a Roman Tribune, thou thy gate
Early sets ope to feast, and late;
Keeping no currish waiter to affright,
With blasting eye, the appetite,
Which fain would waste upon thy cates, but that
The trencher creature marketh what
Best and more suppling piece he cuts, and by
Some private pinch tells dangers nigh,
A hand too desp'rate, or a knife that bites
Skin-deep into the pork, or lights
Upon some part of kid, as if mistook,
When checked by the butler's look.
No, no, thy bread, thy wine, thy jocund beer
Is not reserved for Trebius here,
But all who at thy table seated are,
Find equal freedom, equal fare;
And thou, like to that hospitable god,
Jove, joy'st when guests make their abode
To eat thy bullocks thighs, thy veals, thy fat
Wethers, and never grudged at.
The pheasant, partridge, gotwit, reeve, ruff, rail,
The cock, the curlew, and the quail,
These, and thy choicest viands, do extend
Their tastes unto the lower end
Of thy glad table; not a dish more known
To thee, than unto any one:
But as thy meat, so thy immortal wine
Makes the smirk face of each to shine,
And spring fresh rose-buds, while the salt, the wit,
Flows from the wine, and graces it;
While Reverence, waiting at the bashful board,
Honours my lady and my lord.
No scurril jest, no open scene is laid
Here, for to make the face afraid;
But temp'rate mirth dealt forth, and so discreet-
Ly, that it makes the meat more sweet,
And adds perfumes unto the wine, which thou
Dost rather pour forth, than allow
By cruse and measure; thus devoting wine,
As the Canary isles were thine;
But with that wisdom and that method, as
No one that's there his guilty glass
Drinks of distemper, or has cause to cry
Repentance to his liberty.
No, thou know'st orders, ethics, and hast read
All oeconomics, know'st to lead
A house-dance neatly, and canst truly show
How far a figure ought to go,
Forward or backward, side-ward, and what pace
Can give, and what retract a grace;
What gesture, courtship, comeliness agrees,
With those thy primitive decrees,
To give subsistence to thy house, and proof
What Genii support thy roof,
Goodness and greatness, not the oaken piles;
For these, and marbles have their whiles
To last, but not their ever; virtue's hand
It is which builds 'gainst fate to stand.
Such is thy house, whose firm foundations trust
Is more in thee than in her dust,
Or depth; these last may yield, and yearly shrink,
When what is strongly built, no chink
Or yawning rupture can the same devour,
But fix'd it stands, by her own power
And well-laid bottom, on the iron and rock,
Which tries, and counter-stands the shock
And ram of time, and by vexation grows
The stronger. Virtue dies when foes
Are wanting to her exercise, but, great
And large she spreads by dust and sweat.
Safe stand thy walls, and thee, and so both will,
Since neither's height was raised by th'ill
Of others; since no stud, no stone, no piece
Was rear'd up by the poor-man's fleece;
No widow's tenement was rack'd to gild
Or fret thy cieling, or to build
A sweating-closet, to anoint the silk-
Soft skin, or bath[e] in asses' milk;
No orphan's pittance, left him, served to set
The pillars up of lasting jet,
For which their cries might beat against thine ears,
Or in the damp jet read their tears.
No plank from hallow'd altar does appeal
To yond' Star-chamber, or does seal
A curse to thee, or thine; but all things even
Make for thy peace, and pace to heaven.
--Go on directly so, as just men may
A thousand times more swear, than say
This is that princely Pemberton, who can
Teach men to keep a God in man;
And when wise poets shall search out to see
Good men, they find them all in thee.
|
Written by
Robert Browning |
I've a Friend, over the sea;
I like him, but he loves me.
It all grew out of the books I write;
They find such favour in his sight
That he slaughters you with savage looks
Because you don't admire my books.
He does himself though,---and if some vein
Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,
To-morrow month, if I lived to try,
Round should I just turn quietly,
Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand
Till I found him, come from his foreign land
To be my nurse in this poor place,
And make my broth and wash my face
And light my fire and, all the while,
Bear with his old good-humoured smile
That I told him ``Better have kept away
``Than come and kill me, night and day,
``With, worse than fever throbs and shoots,
``The creaking of his clumsy boots.''
I am as sure that this he would do
As that Saint Paul's is striking two.
And I think I rather ... woe is me!
---Yes, rather would see him than not see,
If lifting a hand could seat him there
Before me in the empty chair
To-night, when my head aches indeed,
And I can neither think nor read
Nor make these purple fingers hold
The pen; this garret's freezing cold!
And I've a Lady---there he wakes,
The laughing fiend and prince of snakes
Within me, at her name, to pray
Fate send some creature in the way
Of my love for her, to be down-torn,
Upthrust and outward-borne,
So I might prove myself that sea
Of passion which I needs must be!
Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint
And my style infirm and its figures faint,
All the critics say, and more blame yet,
And not one angry word you get.
But, please you, wonder I would put
My cheek beneath that lady's foot
Rather than trample under mine
The laurels of the Florentine,
And you shall see how the devil spends
A fire God gave for other ends!
I tell you, I stride up and down
This garret, crowned with love's best crown,
And feasted with love's perfect feast,
To think I kill for her, at least,
Body and soul and peace and fame,
Alike youth's end and manhood's aim,
---So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,
Filled full, eaten out and in
With the face of her, the eyes of her,
The lips, the little chin, the stir
Of shadow round her month; and she
---I'll tell you,---calmly would decree
That I should roast at a slow fire,
If that would compass her desire
And make her one whom they invite
To the famous ball to-morrow night.
There may be heaven; there must be hell;
Meantime, there is our earth here---well!
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