(- Garret Keizer, "World Enough and Time", Harper's Magazine, October 2003)
Shinny was good this morning,
Three men on the bench for both sides
Fast-paced and hard-fought
in a manner of speaking,
we don't much care if
we win or we lose
The beer was tart this morning,
A beer and the paper on the side
Notes jotted in my sprial workbook
no essay on politics completed
no fiction started or ended
the moment lives
If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
- Johnson to Boswell, September 19, 1777 (as reported by the aforementioned Mr. Keizer)
I know, I'm no poet - I can't explain why you, my Gentle LiveJournal Reader, have been exposed to my doggerel - perhaps because you are such rare and noble creatures. Or, maybe, it's just one of those things.
Regardless, I feel at once pompous and self-denigrating, closing this entry with a quote from Dr. Johnson and opening it with a quote from what is perhaps the most sublime essay I have read.
But I am nothing if not (occasionally) audacious. And I don't expect - or even hope - to get paid for this, so what the hell.
