10.24.2012

myriad, salty tears and suddenly it's spring

luculent
Alas, luculent is a delicious-sounding word that would not likely be used to describe me.
septentrional
Those with vast vocabularies are indeed blessed in numerous ineffable ways, but can find ourselves handicapped while writing songs, such as my faintly derivative "Existence in a Septentrional Hamlet." 
rostrum
If I manage to live my life without ever again ascending a rostrum, you can count me a grateful lady.

When I think of where I've come from
or even try to measure as any kind of
distance those places, all the various
people, and all the ways in which I re-
member them, so that even the skin I
touched or was myself fact of, inside,
could see through like a hole in the wall
or listen to, it must have been, to what
was going on in there, even if I was still
too dumb to know anything--When I think
of the miles and miles of roads, or meals,
of telephone wires even, or even of water
poured out in endless streams down streaks
of black sky or the dirt roads washed clean,
or myriad, salty tears and suddenly it's spring
again, or it was--Even when I think again of
all those I treated so poorly, names, places,
their waiting uselessly for me in the rain and
I never came, was never really there at all,
was moving so confusedly, so fast, so driven
like a car along some empty highway passing,
passing other cars--When I try to think of
things, of what's happened, of what a life is
and was, my life, when I wonder what it meant,
the sad days passing, the continuing, echoing deaths,
all the painful, belligerent news, and the dog still
waiting to be fed, the closeness of you sleeping, voices,
presences, of children, of our own grown children,
the shining, bright sun, the smell of the air just now,
each physical moment, passing, passing, it's what
it always is or ever was, just then, just there.

[Robert Creeley, 'When I think', from Selected Poems, 1945-2005]

3 comments:

  1. I, for one, think you are indeed luculent. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE the song!!

    Oh, and really nice poem too. ;-)

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    Replies
    1. I knew that you'd get my life in a northern town reference. :) It's strange, I don't feel very lucid a lot of the time. I wonder what it would be like if I were able to convey all the stuff that comes out of me sounding like mush to myself?

      Creeley's a good one. I hadn't known much about him until a couple of months ago. Fascinating life.

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    2. I got it, or nearly so, before I went and found the definition to be sure. These words lately are massively weird.

      As for lucidity, maybe we're complementarily illucid (unlucid? dislucid?). Spellcheck just threw up in this reply, by the way. :-)

      Off to read about Creeley....

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