Wednesday, October 22, 2008

68 percent fun!

I went to the unutterably perfect mansion-turned-into-a-public-library public library today. Wandered for three hours, reading, sitting, listening.

Shoved into the back of a bookcase-ala-fireplace I found a compilation titled simply "1000 Beautiful Things," published in 1947 and full of the (somewhat boring) editor's favorite quotes, plays, poems, and short stories. And right in the middle, the most breathtaking, heartbreaking, faultless Carl Sandburg piece I've ever read. We all knew he had a soft side:

Under the harvest moon
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses,
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories
And asks you
Beautiful unanswerable questions.

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