Lee Sandlin
Reification - Belles Lettres
Reification - Belles Lettres
our motto.

There is no antidote against the opium of Time. — sir thomas browne, urn burial

realia: Night scene - 'Dream Highway'

L’Envoi

♦♦♦

... And last, perhaps, as darkness
Begins to infuse the lawns and silent streets
And the remote estuary, and thickens here, you mention
The slamming of a door I wasn’t supposed to know      about,
That took years. Each of us circles
Around some simple but vital missing piece of      information,
And, at the end, as now, finding no substitute,
Writes his own mark grotesquely with a stick in snow,
The signature of many connected seconds of indecision.
What I am writing to say is, the timing, not
The contents, is what matters. All this could have      happened
Long ago, or at least on some other day,
And not meant much except insofar as the eye
Extracts a progress from almost anything. But then
It wouldn’t have become a toy.
And all the myths,
Legends and misinterpretations, would have scattered
At a single pistol shot. And it would no longer know      what I know.

-- John Ashbery
from “Fantasia on The Nut-Brown Maid

 

 

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American Poetry

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