PRIMAVERA

A poem is perishable and, like it, so much of life is spent in intervals -- the jarring second regaining consciousness, a post-mortem flick of the lank equestrian eyelid that signals, morning's first crepuscular move. . . . a little salad consciousness about the tumescent room with the sentient purr of a Cat, her musky oils a green verdure lapping primordial scent to engross a little readiness as the day progresses to its oedipal stage and arrested development. 10 Back to the Contents Page 

 

SANGUINE

"The clock indicates the hour but what does enternity indicate?"   Whitman Imagine, being told cubism isn't painting. That Beardsley didn't die at 26, unheralded as a boy genius or Corot didn't come to Paris after all. Imagine, The Louvre without a rooftop, the intelligentsia sitting down to a ragged table surrounded by sawdust intellects, Proust not being able to write his name. Now that's splendour -- that's in-depth "feeling". That's emotion to pull your socks or catch the bus on a brittle day. It's easy. Try to "feel" the event. It's 1896. People are perturbed (or so we are told) because the century's getting old. Time's rushing by. There's an alarm clock set to buzz at eternity's gate, Midnight 1900. In probing the malaise that hit Europe circa 1881, psychologists would have us believe the world grew despondent. Despondent because a whole hundred year cycle was about to elapse; despondent because life itself was running out. Those poor Edwardians! Poor lovers of the elegant, the late Victorians, belle epoquers. A penny for their thoughts when confronting a Picasso without the vantage of hindsight. If Europe and its child bride, America, grew uneasy in the declining years of the past century. How then our era? (These same psychologists pinpoint people's spirits rise in the opening years of a new century.) Now we're poised for the "really big one": the cataclysm. What a boon for the absurdists. Peaches and cream -- not just one century dangling but the culmination of ten. There's even a word for it. Millenium, I'll say it again. Better yet, a mere two millenia since Christ's departure, we are poised again on the threshold. Half & half. Like a party twelve pack -- six of one, half dozen of the other. Remember. when contemplating your ennui or malaise (whichever word is currently most fashionable), you can hardly figure for less. Eternity's given to you, my peers, a singular opportunity. And from what we know of the 20th century. it should be a grand slam homer. Already the clean-up batter is staged for action. The bat looms over the plate. There's so 

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