Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Education and Edification

Education

I remember one splendid morning,

all blue and silver.
We two were sitting together
on the wintry Campagna grass–
unvexed and unencumbered
with paper patterns,
the ceiling and walls of a simple house
visited by shadows.

Thank heaven!

Let us talk about – well, anything you will.
Goldfish, for example. Among the sadder
and smaller pleasures of this world,
I count this pleasure.

Things are depressing enough.

Edification

It is a piece of chalk

under the rolling cloud bales
and the song of invisible larks
of the Campagna. But now
it is the flight of the very earth
that carriers her clasped shadow
from the sun.

The night is full of stars,
the landscape glistens with a late frost–
which is all I want to say about goldfish.

At any moment: without remorse, without anxiety
without dishonor, you are free
to do this dignified and final thing…
make my life work running that car
with the magic mirror.

~taken from the first and last lines (or two) from "Essays on Education and Edification"

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