Saturday, May 03, 2025

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The only painting Van Gogh sold during his lifetime.

"military parade"

he'll never spend a day in jail
that much at least is clear
jewel by accursèd jewel
he'll never spend day in jail

yet miracles congeal
causality the last stickler
he'll never spend a day in jail
that much, at least, is clear

Sky People.

"An Ancient in First-Year Greek

Well, yes, it’s odd.
Past sixty-five, with more gray hair than a Sistine-ceiling God,
mildly I face the board, among
these shining-faced and slightly nervous young,

bumbling along with them, in kindergarten lisp and stammer
through bafflements of grammar

and strange opacities of alphabet.
Already I think their shoulders slump a bit beneath their debt,

but in this room, we equally ignore
the susurration of the rising sea, the roar

of Syrian bombers, the drowned children on the beaches,
the looming dark-age misery that teaches

despair and skull-numbed fear.
But here, here

we are, poor dreamers, laboring at the lore
of tongues that have seen the world collapse before

and that will know, when all comes crashing down, when dire
becomes most dire,
old stories, good to chant around a fire."

--Maryann Corbett in Weekly Hubris

Sharecropper.

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