Some politicians are at it again. I'm baffled.
The video below is a partial antidote for me, even better than poetry. Maybe it will be for some of you too. If you're short on time, be sure to skip ahead to the two-minute mark to hear the kid take off in a kind of pleasure (rapture?) that's rare. Watch her face. Even her old man on piano has an oddly winning way about him.
I was going to say you should not play this at a funeral or a library, but it might be just the thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnnbYagLaXM
If, in the privacy of your rooms, that father and daughter are no help, I wonder if something big is wrong at your place.
Or maybe I'm just your poetry-shoeshine boy, in which case here's an e.e. cummings that might be relevant.
e. e. cummings
"when serpents bargain for the right to squirm"
when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage--
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age
when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
--and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close
when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn-valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude-and march
denounces april as a saboteur
then we'll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind(and not until)
1944
If you'd like some commentary, I wrote about the poem in April of 2011. My post is a little cantakerous, but its point of view is worth keeping in mind as we tend to romanticize about the romanticizing e.e. He has a way with words and feelings, but his thinking can be a little . . . loosey-goosey?
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2883979841111173610#editor/target=post;postID=4864430106143452219
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