Quote:
Originally Posted by katsy
OH, this **** is good.
The Quiet World
By Jeffrey McDaniel
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
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The poem is darling and funny, katsy!
I especially like the humorous situation in which the man's lover has wastefully used up all her words, while he has saved so many of his words just for her. Even though she didn't save any for him, he still uses the rest of his to tell her the most important thing again and again: "I love you, I love you (etc.), I."
I also like the part where they just sit and listen to each other breathe because they've used up their allotment of words. I guess when one gets prank calls where someone is breathing heavily, that must be what is going on.
For you math buffs out there, I checked if the poem's word math adds up, and, satisfyingly, it does!
The man used...
59 words during the day,
11 words when telling her, "I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you," (apparently, "fifty-nine" counts as one word rather than two), and
97 words by saying, "I love you" 32 and 1/3 times.
Total words used = 167!
* * *
Today I reread a vivid and realistic poem by Mary Oliver that I first read in 2010 at the memorial service of a family friend, whose relatives printed it on the back of the service program.
I remember my dad was with me that day, and so the poem is bitter-sweet to me, since he has now, like our family friend, also had his mind that was "as lightning" come to nothing.
"Morning Walk" by Mary Oliver
Little by little
the ocean
empties its pockets -
foam and fluff;
and the long, tangled ornateness
of seaweed;
and the whelks,
ribbed or with ivory knobs,
but so knocked about
in the sea's blue hands
that their story is at length only
about the wholeness of destruction -
they come one by one
to the shore,
to the shallows,
to the mussel-dappled rocks,
to the rise to dryness,
to the edge of the town,
to offer, to the measure that we will accept it,
this wisdom:
though the hour be whole,
though the minute be deep and rich,
though the heart be a singer of hot red songs
and the mind be as lightning,
what all the music will come to is nothing,
only the sheets of fog and the fog's blue bell -
you do not believe it now, you are not supposed to.
You do not believe it yet - but you will -
morning by singular morning,
and shell by broken shell.