i count up what is worth saving, as if this thought could work. But actually i am saving nothing.


"ENVOY FROM D'AUBIGNÉ

Go book

go
now I will let you
I open the grave
live
I will die for us both

go but come again if you can
and feed me in prison

if they ask you why
you do not boast of me
tell them as they
have forgotten
truth habitually
gives birth in private

Go without ornament
without showy garment
if there is in you any
joy
may the good find it

for the others be
a glass broken in their mouths

Child
how will you
survive with nothing but your virtue
to draw around you
when they shout Die die

who have been frightened before
the many

I think of all I wrote in my time
dew
and I am standing in dry air

Here are what flowers there are
and what hope
from my years

and the fire I carried with me

Book
burn what will not abide your light

When I consider the old ambitions
to be on many lips
meaning little there
it would be enough for me to know
who is writing this
and sleep knowing it

far from glory and its gibbets

and dream of those who drank at the icy fountain
and told the truth"

--W S M*rwin, Th* Carri*r of Ladd*rs (1970)


"And that the book got: it sold an estimated 130,000 copies out of an initial print run of 170,000 on the first day."


"...strengthless as a noon-belated moon..." --Francis Thompson


"We find that a disrupter we find that a disrupter is singularly useful in an emergency but entirely impractical when used too continuously. We have returned to our normal footing. We love the hand. The hand that forbids collisions." --Th* Yal* G*rtrud* St*in


Th* 3gyptologist.