EVERY SO OFTEN
THIS MORNING IN THE BOTANICAL GARDEN
What I know that's good.
EVERY SO OFTEN
THIS MORNING IN THE BOTANICAL GARDEN
(by Charles Reznikoff)
The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves,
And the lonely sun clashes like brass cymbals.
In the streets truck-horses, muscles sliding under the
steaming hides,
Pound the sparks flying about their hooves;
And fires, those gorgeous beasts, squirm in the furnaces,
Under the looms weaving us.
At evening by cellars cold with air of rivers at night,
We, whose lives are only a few words,
Watch the young moon leaning over the baby at her breast
And the stars small to our littleness.
The slender trees stand alone in the fields
Between the roofs of the far town
And the wood far away like a low hill.
In the vast open
The birds are faintly overheard.
It’s Spring and Mabel
Mercer singing Cole Porter songs.
I just finished reading Swan Dive, a 2021 memoir (and
some funny behind the scenes observations) by NYCB dancer Georgina Pazcoguin.
Among the topics she covers is an issue I’ve long wondered
about: “The success of The Nutcracker as a revered tradition in the
United States is baffling,” she writes. “The
US is the only country that regularly performs a ballet that everyone else in
the world considers unwatchable.”
Another pithy comment concerns a different ballet and a role
she was apparently dissatisfied with: “The part was so incredibly mindnumbing,”
she writes “that while sitting in the wings I was able to do my taxes.”
And speaking of wings and Spring and birds and things, Dorothy
Parker was having none of it: “Every
year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads
off .”
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