Saturday
Oct. 20, 2001
Relations: Old Light/New Sun/Postmistress/Earth/04421
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Poem: "Relations: Old Light/New Sun/Postmistress/Earth/04421," by Philip Booth from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999 (Penguin).
Relations: Old Light/New Sun/Postmistress/Earth/04421
From broken dreams,
we wake to every day's
brave history,the gravity
of every moment
we waketo let our lives
inhabit: now, here, again,this very day,
passionate as all
Yeats woke in old ageto hope for, the sun
turns up, under
an offshore cloudbankspun at 700 and
some mph to meet it,
rosy as the cheeksof a Chios woman
Homer may have been
touched by, justas Janet
is touching, climbing
familiar steps, granitelocally quarried,
to work at 04421,
a peninsular villagespun, just as
Janet is spun,
into light, light appearingto resurrect
not simply its own
life but the wholeimprobable
system, tugging
the planet around tolook precisely
as Janet looks,
alight with the gravityof her office,
before turning
the key that opens upits full
radiance:
the familiar arrivals,departures,
and even predictable
orbits in which,with excited
constancy, by how
to each otherwe're held, we keep
from spinning out
by how to each otherwe hold.
It's the birthday of poet Robert Pinsky, born in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1940, named the nation's Poet Laureate in 1997. He's the author of Jersey Rain, The Figured Wheel, New and Collected Poems 1965-1995, The Want Bone, and other books.
It's the birthday of columnist Art Buchwald, born in Mount Vernon, New York, in 1925, whose popular column of political satire appears in more than 550 newspapers.
It's the birthday of mystery writer Frederic Dannay born Daniel Nathan in Brooklyn in 1905. Along with his cousin, Manford Lepofsky, he wrote the Ellery Queen mystery novels.
It's the birthday of American psychologist and philosopher John Dewey, born in Burlington, Vermont in 1859. Regarded as the father of progressive education, his best-known innovation was what he called "learning by directed living," which combined learning with concrete activity.
It's the birthday of Daniel Owen, born in Flintshire, Wales in 1836, the writer whom the Welsh regard as their national novelist. He wrote Rhys Lewis, Minister of Bethel: An Autobiography, The Trials of Enoc Huws, Dreflan, Its People and Its Affairs, and other books.
It's the birthday of English architect, astronomer and mathematician, Sir Christopher Wren, born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England, in 1632. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, he drew designs for rebuilding the whole city, but his scheme was never implemented. In 1669 he designed the new St. Paul's Cathedral, and many other churches and public buildings in London. His epitaph, inscribed over the interior of the north door in St. Paul's Cathedral, reads: "If you would see his monument, look about you."
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