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Saturday, January 10, 2009

The Myth of Perfectability

 
寫作文的時候,真的好適合讀 Linda Pastan 的這首詩噢!(謝謝歐修的分享)。尤其是在明明已經寫不完了,就要火燒眉毛了,還在那裡削蘋果,整理房間,看 Charmed,寫網誌,或是為了一個破折號或一個逗點在那裡想破頭猶豫不決時。囧rz

The Myth of Perfectability

I hang the still life of flowers
by a window so it can receive
the morning light, as flowers must.
But sun will fade the paint,
so I move the picture to the exact center
of a dark wall, over the mantel
where it looks too much like a trophy-
one of those animal heads
but made up of blossoms.
I move it again to a little wall
down a hallway where I can come upon it
almost by chance, the way the Japanese
put a small window in an obscure place,
hoping that the sight of a particular landscape
will startle them with beauty as they pass
and not become familiar.
I do this all day long, moving
the picture or sometimes a chair or a vase
from place to place. Or else
I sit here at the typewriter,
putting in a comma to slow down
a long sentence, then taking it out,
then putting it back again
until I feel like a happy Sisyphus,
or like a good farmer who knows
that the body's work is never done,
for the motions of plowing and planting continue
season after season, even in his sleep.


From To A Daughter Leaving Home and Other Poems

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