Poetic Hours Online Autumn 2008 |
Hugo De Sarro |
The Stolid Man In the soul of the stolid man a small and private god resides who never looks beyond his reach. A deity who seeks no praise, content in his domain to make insensible the heart. A tyrant without conscience, yielding to no higher truth, single-minded in his will to throttle all compassion in his host and make him walk aloof among his kind, with cold indifference for their grief and pain. Lord and vassal, living lifeless in strange harmony in their private hell and heaven, never standing in the other's way through life's dull episodes, in a sterile world uncluttered with the trivia of passion. Lovesick We walked the brook behind the trees behind the house that was the property line, not three feet wide where widest, trilling with a languid lisp. . Stooping under whipping branches, stepping over stumps, stumbling to stay a step ahead, pointing to splintered limbs, debris, mown grass in elephant dung-piles on the shore; wincing, whimpering, "Look!" he said. --the scar of a severed limb. "Look!"the trickle dammed with cinder blocks and broken tile. Sniveling old noddy, bundled in his heavy coat, crying over broken trees and a dribble! I withheld contempt till at the line he turned, shrunken, vulnerable, and, ready then, but then a glimmer in the angle of his eye. "You get attached to things," he said, cheeks quivering. Lovesick old fool! There was nothing of any use to say. Courtesy At The Feeder Tufted titmice at the feeder take a turn in order, waiting on the clothesline and floating in and out like puffs of smoke. One seed and then another, patiently waiting and moving in and out with courtesy. In our world of haste, would that we had their patience and politeness. Unwilling to wait in line, we seek ever to be first, to hasten, to be noticed, to be singled out and praised. In our world of urgency, would that we had the modesty and restraint of titmice. |
