The painted curtain, with its great swags, is not the greatest of illusions on offer here, the first being: that this is an opera house. Once it was. Now it only brags of brief ballet seasons. Behind glass, the headgear of Aïda, Isolde’s robe, a mask from Die Fledermaus. Take this plaster horse’s…
Speech evaporates on contact. Proud, meet shy, shy meet proud. Oh, you know each other already? A cast-off refrigerator spends whole days on the pavement, though it comes replete with a plug and wire. Or should that be plug and a lead. Probably it only needs a blub. Or a bulb. Who…
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Drinking Song To the Abbé de la Roche, at Auteuil Singer Fair Venus calls, her voice obey, In beauty’s arms spend night and day. The joys of love, all joys excel, And loving’ s certainly doing well. Chorus Oh! no! Not so! For honest souls know, Friends and a bottle still…
Forty years have passed since Mahmoud Darwish released his extraordinary micro-allegory, Anā Yūsufun Yā Abī, “I am Joseph, Father.” This was based, of course, on the biblical story of Joseph, widely appreciated for its psychological depth, acclaimed by Robert Alter as “the preeminent instance of biblical narrative as a fictional experiment in knowledge.” It is…
Locked in the vault of the cathedral the rubies, emeralds and sapphires of stained glass in their upright coffers. Locked in my throat the shards of tears. I was one among the audience who rose for the Hallelujah chorus and sang our hearts out when we came to And He shall reign forever and ever…
Draft of a Letter: Elizabeth Hardwick to Simone de Beauvoir Dare I say it? He was the best thing that ever happened to me. My man, the poet, mine then not mine, then briefly and nearly mine again. Why and how these things happen you would have said better than I—don’t you think?—free…
Divination I God god god I heard the word rattling and buzzing in the cubicle of the elevator car, thwacking the walls and rebounding as it rode relentlessly up and down in the School of Theology every day, every evening, season after season; it escaped, too, down the fluorescently dazzled linoleum halls when the door…
If they show me stone and I say stone they will say stone. If they show me wood and I say wood they will say wood. But if they show me blood and I say blood they will say paint. If they show me blood and I say blood they will say paint. Translated from…
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) To my son I still remember Hedley Bull his slow, regular footfall in front of the podium; the sudden way he would look up and turn his handsome head to us before asking in that droll Australian accent: “Gentlemen, it all hinges on the meaning of the word virtù. Bacon, Hobbes, Adams,…
When, later, our adventure has bogged down, or umbrella’s to an end, and mountains & lakes if any are the friends — and that reminds me of a story — and so does ‘if’ — Einstein — who personal’ never caught my fancy — he took my umbrella once, — or I took his —…
Yes. That is so. I found she hated then (or even didn’t) her father who left when she was a toddle of three. She hated her mother (I couldn’t like her either) and felt only a fully justified contempt for her one brother. Which into waded: me. Ran on her a morning en route to…
Waiting. Just waiting, in wet heat. A little more whiskey please. Turn the fan up. The amenities. No food yet, thank you. I’ll feel better later. It’s too hot to read. I think: do I have everything I need, stomach & mouth? A little more whiskey, please. In this terrible state I hope I’m paying…
