I’m back to the old dailiness of life. After spending many beautiful days in South Carolina, watching the sunset and eating and drinking way out of the bounds of moderation, its painful to wake up early and go to work. As usual, there’s always a poem to make one feel better about life’s miseries. Here’s one that’s somewhat refreshing:
Well Water
by Randall Jarrell
What a girl called “the dailiness of life”
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
“Since you’re up . . .” Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny
Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.
One response to “Ah, Work”
All I’m tasting is the rust right now. I also have just returned to the old routine, and find occasion to ask: which poems are we discussing this week? Was it the Oliver pair, or the graveyard duo? Are we discussing poems this week?
I received the collected works of Poe as a gift from my sister, and I find myself wanting to post a number of his poems, but I still haven’t even worked through Brian’s posts very well, and I am distracted by my efforts to post a number of photos where my friends back home can view them. I am afraid that the dailiness of my life is getting considerably in the way of a good deal of work I’d like to finish.