Comments on entry #58424

On Trivial Pursuits

Saturday the Sixth of February, Twenty Ten

A stolen poem for a snowed-in day:

There are many things in the world and you
Are one of them. Many things keep happening and
You are one of them, and the happening that
Is you keeps falling like snow
On the landscape of not-you, hiding hideousness, until
The streets and the world of wrath are choked with snow.

How many things have become silent? Traffic
Is throttled. The mayor
Has been, clearly, remiss, and the city
Was totally unprepared for such a crisis. Nor
was I — yes, why should this happen to me?
I have always been a law-abiding citizen.

But you, like snow, like love, keep falling.

And it is not certain that the world will not be
Covered in a glitter of crystalline whiteness.

Silence.

—Robert Penn Warren, "Love Recognized"

posted by Martin Marks at 3:49 in the afternoon // four comments

I'm honestly not very good at reading poetry—not in English, anyway. I think I read too fast, or maybe I just read too many pulp SF novels with interesting plots and terrible prose when I was a kid, and I learned the art of scraping text for content to be batch-processed for emotional resonance when I finish reading. But on a day like this, when everything is slowed down so completely, it gives me the rare opportunity to really appreciate a seriously fucking fantastic poem like this one, to let every line hit me one at a time, then all together at once. Thanks, snow.

comment by Martin // Saturday, the 6th of February, 2010, at 3:58 in the afternoon

You're welcome.

comment by Snow // Saturday, the 6th of February, 2010, at 9:01 in the evening

That said, if you could maybe take the rest of the year off, I'd appreciate it.

comment by Martin // Sunday, the 7th of February, 2010, at 12:04 at night

I'll do what I want and you'll like it.

comment by Snow // Sunday, the 7th of February, 2010, at 7:11 in the morning

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