The House-Top - Literature at MIT · PDF fileThe House-Top A Night Piece (JULY 1863) by Herman Melville ... In code corroborating Calvin's creed And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;

January 9, 2017Wyn Kelley

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The House-Top A Night Piece (JULY 1863)

by Herman Melville

No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such As tawny tigers feel in matted shades, Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there. The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve, And man rebounds whole eons back in nature. Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead, And ponderous drag that shakes the wall. Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll Of black artillery; he comes, though late; In code corroborating Calvin's creed And cynic tyrannies of honest kings; He comes, nor parleys; and the Town, redeemed, Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds The grimy slur on the Republic's faith implied, Which holds that Man is naturally good, And—more—is Nature's Roman, never to be

scourged.

January 10, 2017Daniel Pritchard

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Respublica

The strident high civic trumpeting of misrule. It is what we stand for.

Wild insolence, aggregates without distinction. Courage of common men:

spent in the ruck their remnant witness after centuries is granted them

like a pardon. And other fealties other fortitudes broken as named—

Respublica brokenly recalled, its archaic laws and hymnody;

and destroyed hope that so many times is brought with triumph back from the dead.

Ovid in the Third Reich

non peccat, quaecumque potest peccasse negare, solaque famosam culpa professa facit.

Amores, III, xiv

I love my work and my children. God Is distant, difficult. Things happen. Too near the ancient troughs of blood Innocence is no earthly weapon.

I have learned one thing: not to look down So much upon the damned. They, in their sphere, Harmonize strangely with the divine Love. I, in mine, celebrate the love-choir.

On Seeing the Wind at Hope Mansell

Whether or not shadows are of the substance such is the expectation I can wait to surprise my vision as a wind enters the valley: sudden and silent in its arrival, drawing to full cry the whorled invisibilities, glassen towers freighted with sky-chaff; that, as barnstorming powers, rammack the small orchard; that well-steaded oaks ride stolidly, that rake the light-leafed ash, that glowing yew trees, cumbrous, heave aside. Amidst and abroad tumultuous lumina, regents, reagents, cloud-fêted, sun-ordained, fly tally over hedgerows, across fields.

Poems by Geoffrey Hill (1932 - 2016)

January 11, 2017Rosemary Booth

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by Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012)

They say I looked back out of curiosity. But I could have had other reasons. I looked back mourning my silver bowl. Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap. So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape of my husband Lot’s neck. From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead he wouldn’t so much as hesitate. From the disobedience of the meek. Checking for pursuers. Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed His mind. Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop. I felt age within me. Distance. The futility of wandering. Torpor. I looked back setting my bundle down. I looked back not knowing where to set my foot. Serpents appeared on my path, spiders, field mice, baby vultures. They were neither good nor evil now -- every living thing was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic. I looked back in desolation. In shame because we had stolen away. Wanting to cry out, to go home. Or only when a sudden gust of wind unbound my hair and lifted up my robe. It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again. I looked back in anger. To savor their terrible fate. I looked back for all the reasons given above. I looked back involuntarily. It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me. It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks. A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge. It was then we both glanced back. No, no. I ran on, I crept, I flew upward until darkness fell from the heavens and with it scorching gravel and dead birds. I couldn’t breathe and spun around and around. Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing. It’s not inconceivable that my eyes were open. It’s possible I fell facing the city.

Lot's Wife


They say I looked back out of curiosity. But I could have had other reasons. I looked back mourning my silver bowl. Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap. So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape of my husband Lot’s neck. From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead he wouldn’t so much as hesitate. From the disobedience of the meek. Checking for pursuers. Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed His mind. Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop. I felt age within me. Distance. The futility of wandering. Torpor. I looked back setting my bundle down. I looked back not knowing where to set my foot. Serpents appeared on my path, spiders, field mice, baby vultures. They were neither good nor evil now -- every living thing was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic. I looked back in desolation. In shame because we had stolen away. Wanting to cry out, to go home. Or only when a sudden gust of wind unbound my hair and lifted up my robe. It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again. I looked back in anger. To savor their terrible fate. I looked back for all the reasons given above. I looked back involuntarily. It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me. It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks. A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge. It was then we both glanced back. No, no. I ran on, I crept, I flew upward until darkness fell from the heavens and with it scorching gravel and dead birds. I couldn’t breathe and spun around and around. Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing. It’s not inconceivable that my eyes were open. It’s possible I fell facing the city.

Lot's Wife

Poems by Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012)

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January 11, 2017Rosemary Booth

doubting every step -- nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand if it doesn't take too long -- as high as forty-nine,

always good because they can't be otherwise -- four, well, maybe five,

able to admire without envy -- eighteen,

living in constant fear of someone or something -- seventy-seven,

capable of happiness -- twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds -- half at least,

cruel when forced by circumstances -- better not to know even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact -- just a couple more than wise before it,

taking only things from life -- forty (I wish I were wrong),

A Contribution to Statistics


Out of a hundred people those who always know better -- fifty-two,

hunched in pain, no flashlight in the dark -- eighty-three sooner or later,

worthy of compassion -- ninety-nine,

mortal -- a hundred out of a hundred. Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.




__________ Both poems from MAP; Collected and Last Poems by Wisława Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Barańczak (Mariner, 2015)

doubting every step -- nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand if it doesn't take too long -- as high as forty-nine,

always good because they can't be otherwise -- four, well, maybe five,

able to admire without envy -- eighteen,

living in constant fear of someone or something -- seventy-seven,

capable of happiness -- twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds -- half at least,

cruel when forced by circumstances -- better not to know even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact -- just a couple more than wise before it,

taking only things from life -- forty (I wish I were wrong),

A Contribution to Statistics


Out of a hundred people those who always know better -- fifty-two,




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January 12, 2017Zachary Bos

Open Letter by Rafael Alberti

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January 13, 2017James Buzard

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Preludesby T. S. Eliot

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January 17, 2017Anne Hudson

POWER by Adrienne Rich Living in the earth-deposits of our history Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old cure for fever or melancholy a tonic for living on the earth in the winters of this climate Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness her body bombarded for years by the element she had purified It seems she denied to the end the source of the cataracts on her eyes the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil She died a famous woman denying her wounds denying her wounds came from the same source as her power 1974

Poems by Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

POWER by Adrienne Rich Living in the earth-deposits of our history Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old cure for fever or melancholy a tonic for living on the earth in the winters of this climate Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness her body bombarded for years by the element she had purified It seems she denied to the end the source of the cataracts on her eyes the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil She died a famous woman denying her wounds denying her wounds came from the same source as her power 1974

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ORGINS AND HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Adrienne Rich I Night-life. Letters, journals, bourbon sloshed in the glass. Poems crucified on the wall, dissected, their bird-wings severed like trophies. No one lives in this room without living through some kind of crisis. No one lives in this room without confronting the whiteness of the wall behind the poems, planks of books, photographs of dead heroines. Without contemplating last and late the true nature of poetry. The drive to connect. The dream of a common language. Thinking of lovers, their blind faith, their experienced crucifixions, my envy is not simple. I have dreamed of going to bed as walking into clear water ringed by a snowy wood white as cold sheets, thinking, I’ll freeze in there. My bare feet are number already by the snow but the water is mild, I sink and float like a warm amphibious animal that has broken the net, has run through fields of snow leaving no print; this water washes off the scent— You are clear now of the hunter, the trapper the wardens of the mind— yet the warm animal dreams on of another animal swimming under the snow-flecked surface of the pool, and wakes, and sleeps again. No one sleeps in this room without the dream of a common language. II



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It was simple to meet you, simple to take your eyes into mine, saying: these are eyes I have known from the first. . . . It was simple to touch you against the hacked background, the grain of what we had been, the choices, years. . . . It was even simple to take each other’s lives in our hands, as bodies. What is not simple: to wake from drowning from where the ocean beat inside us like an afterbirth into this common, acute particularity these two selves who walked half a lifetime untouching— to wake to something deceptively simple: a glass sweated with dew, a ring of the telephone, a scream of someone beaten up far down in the street causing each of us to listen to her own inward scream knowing the mind of the mugger and the mugged as any woman must who stands to survive this city, this century, this life . . . each of us having loved the flesh in its clenched or loosened beauty better than trees or music (yet loving those too as if they were flesh—and they are—but the flesh of beings unfathomed as yet in our roughly literal life.) III It’s simple to wake from sleep with a stranger, dress, go out, drink coffee, enter a life again. It isn’t simple to wake from sleep into the neighborhood of one neither strange nor familiar whom we have chosen to trust. Trusting, untrusting, we lowered ourselves into this, let ourselves downward hand over hand as on a rope that quivered over the unsearched. . . . We did this. Conceived of each other, conceived each other in a darkness which I remember as drenched in light. I want to call this, life.

But I can’t call it life until we start to move beyond this secret circle of fire where our bodies are giant shadows flung on a wall where the night becomes our inner darkness, and sleeps like a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner. 1972-1974


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January 18, 2017Howard EilandPoems by W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

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January 18, 2017Howard Eiland

January 19, 2017Noel Jackson

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The Nightingale

A Conversation Poem, April, 1798

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,But hear no murmuring: it flows silently.O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still.A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,Yet let us think upon the vernal showersThat gladden the green earth, and we shall findA pleasure in the dimness of the stars.And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,'Most musical, most melancholy' bird!A melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought!In Nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the taleOf his own sorrow) he, and such as he,First named these notes a melancholy strain.And many a poet echoes the conceit;Poet who hath been building up the rhymeWhen he had better far have stretched his limbs Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell, By sun or moon-light, to the influxes Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements Surrendering his whole spirit, of his songAnd of his fame forgetful! so his fame Should share in Nature's immortality, A venerable thing! and so his songShould make all Nature lovelier, and itself Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so; And youths and maidens most poetical,Who lose the deepening twilights of the springIn ball-rooms and hot theatres, they stillFull of meek sympathy must heave their sighs O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

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My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt A different lore: we may not thus profane Nature's sweet voices, always full of love And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale That crowds and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its music! And I know a grove Of large extent, hard by a castle huge, Which the great lord inhabits not; and so This grove is wild with tangling underwood, And the trim walks are broken up, and grass, Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew So many nightingales; and far and near, In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, They answer and provoke each other's song, With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug, And one low piping sound more sweet than all Stirring the air with such a harmony, That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes, Whose dewy leaflets are but half-disclosed, You may perchance behold them on the twigs, Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full, Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade Lights up her love-torch. A most gentle Maid, Who dwelleth in her hospitable home Hard by the castle, and at latest eve (Even like a Lady vowed and dedicate To something more than Nature in the grove) Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes, That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment's space, What time the moon was lost behind a cloud, Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon Emerging, a hath awakened earth and sky With one sensation, and those wakeful birds Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy, As if some sudden gale had swept at once A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched Many a nightingale perch giddily On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze, And to that motion tune his wanton song Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head.


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Farewell! O Warbler! till tomorrow eve, And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell! We have been loitering long and pleasantly, And now for our dear homes.That strain again! Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe, Who, capable of no articulate sound, Mars all things with his imitative lisp, How he would place his hand beside his ear, His little hand, the small forefinger up, And bid us listen! And I deem it wise To make him Nature's play-mate. He knows well The evening-star; and once, when he awoke In most distressful mood (some inward pain Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream) I hurried with him to our orchard-plot, And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once, Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently, While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears, Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well! It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up Familiar with these songs, that with the night He may associate joy. Once more, farewell, Sweet Nightingale! once more, my friends! farewell.

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January 20, 2017Stephen Pepper

Poems by Rosemary Tonks (1932-2014)


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January 23, 2017Martin Marks

ANGEL

by James Merrill

Above my desk, whirring and self-important (Though not much larger than a hummingbird) In finely woven robes, school of Van Eyck, Hovers an evidently angelic visitor. He points one index finger out the window At winter snatching to its heart, To crystal vacancy, the misty Exhalations of houses and of people running home From the cold sun pounding on the sea; While with the other hand He indicates the piano Where the Sarabande No. 1 lies open At a passage I shall never master But which has already, and effortlessly, mastered me. He drops his jaw as if to say, or sing, ‘Between the world God made And this music of Satie, Each glimpsed through veils, but whole, Radiant and willed, Demanding praise, demanding surrender, How can you sit there with your notebook? What do you think you are doing?’ However he says nothing—wisely: I could mention Flaws in God’s world, or Satie’s; and for that matter How did he come by his taste for Satie? Half to tease him, I turn back to my page, Its phrases thus far clotted, unconnected. The tiny angel shakes his head. There is no smile on his round, hairless face. He does not want even these few lines written.

Water Music

by Robert Creeley

The words are a beautiful music. The words bounce like in water.

Water music, loud in the clearing off the boats, birds, leaves.

They look for a place to sit and eat—

no meaning, no point.

January 23, 2017Martin Marks

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City Elegies, IV: Street Music

by Robert Pinksy

Sweet Babylon, headphones. Song bones. At a slate stairway’s base, alone and unready, Not far from the taxis and bars Around the old stone station, In the bronze, ordinary afternoon light— To find yourself back behind that real City and inside this other city Where you slept in the street. Your bare feet, gray tunic of a child, Coarse sugar of memory.

Salt Nineveh of barrows and stalls, The barber with his copper bowl, Beggars and grain-sellers, The alley of writers of letters In different dialects, stands Of the ear-cleaner, tailor, Spicer. Reign of Asur-Banipal. Hemp woman, whore merchant, Hand porter, errand boy, Child sold from a doorway.

Candy Memphis of exile and hungers. Honey kalends and drays, Syrup-sellers and sicknesses, Runes, donkeys, yams, tunes On the mouth-harp, shuffles And rags. Healer, dealer, drunkard. Fresh water, sewage—wherever You died in the market sometimes Your soul flows a-hunting buried Cakes here in the city.

∗ For a recitation of the poem by Pinsky with musical accompaniment, seehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcr-Q6ufEfc

City Elegies, IV: Street Music

by Robert Pinksy

Sweet Babylon, headphones. Song bones. At a slate stairway’s base, alone and unready, Not far from the taxis and bars Around the old stone station, In the bronze, ordinary afternoon light— To find yourself back behind that real City and inside this other city Where you slept in the street. Your bare feet, gray tunic of a child, Coarse sugar of memory.

Salt Nineveh of barrows and stalls, The barber with his copper bowl, Beggars and grain-sellers, The alley of writers of letters In different dialects, stands Of the ear-cleaner, tailor, Spicer. Reign of Asur-Banipal. Hemp woman, whore merchant, Hand porter, errand boy, Child sold from a doorway.

Candy Memphis of exile and hungers. Honey kalends and drays, Syrup-sellers and sicknesses, Runes, donkeys, yams, tunes On the mouth-harp, shuffles And rags. Healer, dealer, drunkard. Fresh water, sewage—wherever You died in the market sometimes Your soul flows a-hunting buried Cakes here in the city.

∗ For a recitation of the poem by Pinsky with musical accompaniment, seehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcr-Q6ufEfc

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January 24, 2017David Thorburn

Gascoigne’s Lullabyby George Gascoigne

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January 26, 2017Alvin Kibel

SONNETS

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait." Methought I saw my late espoused Saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Joves great son to her glad Husband gave, Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint. Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint, Purification in the old Law did save, And such, as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight, Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight. But O as to embrace me she inclin'd, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow's springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for. Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

January 27, 2017Ana Schwartz

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The Gift Outright by Robert Frost The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England’s, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.

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January 30, 2017Stephen Tapscott

Dream Song 1 [1959] by John Berryman

Huffy Henry hid the day, unappeasable Henry sulked. I see his point,—a trying to put things over. It was the thought that they thought they could do it made Henry wicked & away. But he should have come out and talked. All the world like a woolen lover once did seem on Henry’s side. Then came a departure. Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought. I don’t see how Henry, pried open for all the world to see, survived. What he has now to say is a long wonder the world can bear & be. Once in a sycamore I was glad all at the top, and I sang. Hard on the land wears the strong sea and empty grows every bed.

February 1, 2017Sandy Alexandre

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Be Nobody’s Darling by Alice Walker Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm. Watch the people succumb To madness With ample cheer; Let them look askance at you And you askance reply. Be an outcast; Be pleased to walk alone (Uncool) Or line the crowded River beds With other impetuous Fools. Make a merry gathering On the bank Where thousands perished For brave hurt words They said. But be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Qualified to live Among your dead.

We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

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February 2, 2017Joaquín Terrones

I

['he Shampoo

The still explosions on the rocks,the Iiche s, growby sprea ing, gray, concentric shocks.They ha e arrangedto meet t e rings around the moon, althoughwithin 0 r memories they have not changed.

And sine the heavens will attendas long 0 us,you've b en, dear friend,precipit te and pragrnatical;and look what happens. For Time isnothing f not amenable.

The sho ting stars in your black hairin brigh formationare flock ng where,so straig t, so soon?-Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,battered and shiny like the moon.

Poems by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

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,

I

fink DogI (Rio de Janeiro]

I,

The sun is blazing and the sky is blue.Umbrellas cloth~ the beach in every hue.

,

Naked, you trot ~cross the avenue.,I

Oh, never have I seen a dog so barelNaked and pink.' without a single hair ...

IStartled, the passersby draw back and stare.I,

Of course they're mortally afraid of rabies.You are not mad; you have a case of scabiesbut look intellig~nt. Where are your babies

I(A nursing mother, by those hanging teats.)In what slum have you hidden them, poor b tch,while you go begging, living by your wits?

I

Didn't you know! It's been in all the papers,to solve this problem, how they deal with be gars?They take and throw them in the tidal river.,

Y 'd' II, .es, 1 rots, para yncs, paraSitesgo bobbing in thb ebbing sewage, nightsout in the suburbs, where there are no lights

!

If they do this to anyone who begs,,

drugged, drunk, or sober, with or without Ie s,what would they do to sick, four-legged dogs?

In the cafes and In the sidewalk cornersthe joke is going tound that all the beggarswho can afford them now wear life preserve

I

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In your condition you would not be ableeven to float, mu~h less to dog-paddle.Now look, the practical, the sensible

iI

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solution is to wear a fantllJ/a.·Tonight you simply can't afford to be a-n eyesore. But no one will ever see a

dog in mascara this time of year.Ash Wednesday'll come but Carnival is here.What sambas can you dance? What will you wear?

They say that Carnival's degenerating-radios, Americans. or something,have ruined it completely. They're just talking.

Carnival is always wonderful!A depilated dog would not look well.Dress upl Dress up and dance at Carnivall

I979

• Carnival costume.

February 3, 2017Nick Montfort

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February 3, 2017Nick Montfort

The House-Top - Literature at MIT · PDF fileThe House-Top A Night Piece (JULY 1863) by Herman Melville ... In code corroborating Calvin's creed And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;

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