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Tuesday
I’m not good for much today, having battled Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike as we journeyed south from Maine to visit dear friends in West Chester, Pennsylvania. As I collapse onto their hide-a-bed, the only passage that comes to mind is one from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched and glazed each eye
A weary time, a weary time,
How glazed each weary eye…
Come to think of it, there’s also a passage from Charles Algernon Swinburne’s “Garden of Proserpine” that fits:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
And then there’s the ending of Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting”:
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .
I’ll strive to bring more energy to the table tomorrow. In the meantime—yes, let us sleep now.
