masses

There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.

                      
Raymond Williams

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wood, "Daily Life"

A parrot of irritation sits on my shoulder, pecks at my head, ruffling his feathers in my ear. He repeats everything I say, like a child trying to irritate the parent. Too much to do today: the dracena that's outgrown its pot, a mountain of bills to pay and nothing in the house to eat. Too many clothes need washing and the dog needs his shots. It just goes on and on, I say to myself, no one around, and catch myself saying it, a ball hit so straight to your glove you'd have to be blind not to catch it. And of course I hope it does go on and on forever, the little pain, the little pleasure, the sun a blood orange in the sky, the sky parrot blue and the day unfolding like a bird slowly spreading its wings, though I know, saying it, that it won't. Susan Wood
Read more

Sharon Olds, "The Race"

When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk, bought a ticket, ten minutes later they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors had said my father would not live through the night and the flight was cancelled. A young man with a dark brown moustache told me another airline had a nonstop leaving in seven minutes. See that elevator over there, well go down to the first floor, make a right, you'll see a yellow bus, get off at the second Pan Am terminal, I ran, I who have no sense of direction raced exactly where he'd told me, a fish slipping upstream deftly against the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those bags I had thrown everything into in five minutes, and ran, the bags wagged me from side to side as if to prove I was under the claims of the material, I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast, I who always go to the end of the line, I said Help me . He looked at my ticket, he said Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then run. I ...
Read more

UA Fanthorpe, "Atlas"

There is a kind of love called maintenance, Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;  Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;  Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists  And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds  The permanently ricketty elaborate Structures of living; which is Atlas.  And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows what time and weather are doing To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps My suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky. UA Fanthorpe
Read more