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(3.8) | 1 | An excerpt from the poem, "Wild Gratitude: " "Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey, And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth, And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens, And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air, And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight, I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart, Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing In everyone of the splintered London streets, And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude, And his grave prayers for the other lunatics, And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry. All day today--August 13, 1983--I remembered how Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759, For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience."… (more) |
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| Epigraph |
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
—W.H. AUDEN  | |
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| Dedication |
For my parents, Irma and Kurt Hirsch,
and my sisters, Arlene and Nancy Hirsch—
and for Janet Landay | |
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| First words |
I NEED HELP
For all the insomniacs in the world
I want to build a new kind of machine
For flying out of the body at night. | |
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But all I could hear was the voicelessness
Of the wind blowing its emptiness across the sad
Rooftops, leafing through the empty pages of trees.
from 'The Secret' And suddenly I am afraid only that the garden is
Changing even as we are changing, even as the sun
Goes back to being a sun toiling behind purple bars
On the horizon, and our bodies start to wear out
Like our favorite suits and hats.
from 'The Secret' | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English
None ▾Book descriptions An excerpt from the poem, "Wild Gratitude: " "Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey, And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth, And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens, And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air, And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight, I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart, Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing In everyone of the splintered London streets, And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude, And his grave prayers for the other lunatics, And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry. All day today--August 13, 1983--I remembered how Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759, For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience." ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description |
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