Saturday

Mar. 24, 2001

The Cat

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

SATURDAY, 24 March 2001
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Poem: "The Cat," by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from These Are My Rivers (New Directions).

The Cat

         The cat
                   licks its paws and
    lies down in
              the bookshelf nook
                        She
              can lie in a
                   sphinx position
         without moving for so
                   many hours and then turn her head
              to me and
                   rise and stretch
     and turn
         her back to me and
    lick her paw again as if
              no real time had passed
         It hasn't
              and she is the sphinx with
              all the time in the world
                   in the desert of her time
    The cat
         knows where flies die
              sees ghosts in motes of air
                   and shadows of sunbeams
She hears
         the music of the spheres and
the hum in the wires of houses
              and the hum of the universe
              in interstellar spaces
                   but
              prefers domestic places
                   and the hum of the heater

On this day in Memphis, in 1958, at about 6:30 in the morning, Elvis Presley arrived at the draft board on South Main Street in to be inducted into the army. He arrived wearing dark blue trousers, a gray and white checked sports jacket, a striped shirt, and pink and black socks. He said, "Millions of other guys have been drafted, and I don't want to be different from anyone else."

It was on this day in 1955 Tennessee Williams' play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened at the Morosco Theater in New York. It starred Barbara Bel Geddes as Margaret, Ben Gazzara as Brick, and Burl Ives as Big Daddy.

It's the birthday of playwright and actor Dario Fo, born in San Giano, Lombardy, Italy (1926). He's the author of irreverent, anarchic, satiric plays—more than 70 of them—including Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970), We Can't Pay? We Won't Pay! (1974), and One Was Nude and One Wore Tails (1985). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997.

It's the birthday of poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti born in Yonkers, New York (1919). In World War Two he was the commanding officer of a submarine chaser at the D-Day invasion. He moved to San Francisco in 1951, and, along with Peter Martin, founded the City Lights Pocket Book Shop, the first paperback bookstore in the country. The store became a center for the Beat movement, and published Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl," for which Ferlinghetti was sued for indecency. His book A Coney Island of the Mind is the largest-selling book by a living American poet.

It's the birthday of the English playwright Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, born in London (1855). He's best known for his comic look at Victorian theater, Trelawney of the Wells (1898).

It's the birthday of poet and craftsman William Morris, born in Walthamstow, north of London (1834). Along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other artists, he helped to form the Pre-Raphaelite movement, based on a love of all things gothic. His poems were often written in a medieval style. His turned his interest to crafts, and co-founded a design firm that produced wallpaper and stained glass and furniture—particularly the Morris chair, with its removable cushions and adjustable back.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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