a shandean commonplace book

O hefty hardcover on the built-in shelf in my parents’ living room, O authority stamped on linen paper, molted from your dust jacket, Questing Beast of blue and gold, you were my companion   on beige afternoons that came slanting through the curtains behind the rough upholstered chair. You knew how to trim a sail and how the hornet builds a hive. You had a topographical map   of the mountain ranges on the far side of the moon and could name the man who shot down the man who murdered Jesse James. At forty, I tell myself   that boyhood was all enchantment: hanging around the railway, getting plastered on cartoons; I see my best friend’s father marinating in a lawn chair, smiling benignly at his son and me   from above a gin and tonic, or sitting astride his roof with carpentry nails and hammer, going at some problem that kept resisting all his mending. O my tome, my paper brother,   my narrative without an ending, you had a diagram of a cow broken down into the ma...

Yes, I remember Adlestrop— The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop—only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Edward Thomas

Whatever the Sunday, the sorrows kept the women in the kitchen, My cousins and their mothers, my grandmother, her sister, all of them Foraging through the nerves for pain. They sighed and rustled and one would Name her sorrows to cue sympathy's murmurs, the first offerings Of possible cures: three eggs for chills and fever, the benefits Of mint and pepper, boneset, sage, and crocus tea. Nothing they Needed came over-the-counter or through prescriptions not bearing A promise from God, who blessed the home remedies handed down From the lost villages of Germany for the aunt with dizzy spells, For the uncle with the steady pain of private swelling; for passed blood, For discharge and the sweet streak from the shoulder. In the pantry, Among pickled beets and stewed tomatoes, were dark, honeyed liquids, The vinegar and molasses sipped from tablespoons for sorrows So regular they spoke of them as laundry to be smoothed by the great iron Of faith which sets creases worthy of paradise. And ...

After death nothing is, and nothing, death: The utmost limit of a gasp of breath. Let the ambitious zealot lay aside His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride; Let slavish souls lay by their fear, Nor be concerned which way nor where After this life they shall be hurled. Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept. Devouring time swallows us whole; Impartial death confounds body and soul. For Hell and the foul fiend that rules God’s everlasting fiery jails (Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools), With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door, Are senseless stories, idle tales, Dreams, whimseys, and no more.    John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.                         Adrienne Rich

Like last August, after they’d finished my bone scan, this combed-over midsixties guy starts chatting about the novel he’s written in his head, he only needs someone like me to work it up, he never liked punctuation, parts of speech, all that junk from junior high, and I couldn’t get my printout fast enough to take to my GP, who likes to quote from his inspirational speeches to local luncheon clubs. He’s determined to collect them in a book, though he’d need a good editor, do I know any, and meanwhile I’ve been waiting fifty-seven minutes for help with recharging my sluggish thyroid, and I haven’t met any doctors who like giving free advice about your daughter’s milk allergy or your friend’s migraines or the thumb you slammed in the stairwell door, splitting it open so badly your students interrupted your lecture on pronoun agreement to note you were dripping blood from your hand and wow, what happened? But it’s mostly at parties I hate admitting I teach English. I’ve never been quick ...

Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now. Fred Rogers