NPM continues...
And you thought that National Poetry Month was over. Well, technically, it is. But not around here. And not just because May is National Bike, Military Appreciation, Electrical Safety, Mental Health, and Asian-Pacific Heritage Month. Sorry, but none of those make for terribly fun blogging. Maybe Mental Health Month, but there're plenty of days left for that.Today, though, I offer an homage to the institution...whether it be educational or otherwise. So maybe I'm talking about mental health after all. That, or two weeks of grading papers is too much, and now everything looks like a run-on sentence. Either way, enjoy!
Theodore Roethke (1948)
Dolor
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
posted by Elizabeth @ 6:48 PM
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