Lives of Poets and Other Stuff

The wee hours, a few days before Thanksgiving. Done with sleeping, done with dreaming, I’m standing in my library watching shadows play along the bookshelves. What to do? A famous philosopher once heard a voice out of nowhere say: “Pick up and read.” So he did, and his life was turned around. It’s dead quiet where I’m standing, thus no help coming from that direction.

I need to liven things up. I reach into the shadows and pull out a book: “Lives of the Poets”, or something like it. I open it at random and read: “When Delmore Schwartz died in 1966, he was living in a seedy hotel near Times Square, believed that he was being pursued by the Rockefellers, who were damaging his brain with rays sent out from the Empire State Building, and had alienated himself from practically all of his former friends and admirers.” Enough of that. I flip to another page and read about a poet who jumped to his death from a boat. Another page and another poet jumps from a bridge. Another and another. What’s going on? One gasses herself in an oven, another in a garage. One kills himself with a gun, another with drink, another simply disappears into the California bush never to be seen again. What kind of book is this? I don’t need a voice out of nowhere to tell me: “Stop reading this stuff and put it away.” I put it away. It’s time to take the collie for a walk.

We set out. It’s 5 a.m. and still dark. Our road runs up a hill past empty houses and thick woods. The collie is the color of night with a bright mane. He has his own agenda and likes to run ahead on the unlit road. I often lose sight of him, which is why I make him wear a set of bells. The ear sees better than I. He’s way down the road now, just a distant jingling.

I trudge on through the dark and finally catch up to him. He’s pooping. When he finishes his business, I reach down with my hand sheathed in a black plastic bag and pick it up to carry home.

Better than the lives of poets, a good dump along the side of the road.