Thursday, June 14, 2007

binder clip cards

binder clip cards
binder clip cards,
originally uploaded by robin kibby.

The day after the Live Oak Fair, someone sent my this poem in the email. Melancholic and perfect. Brought the bone memory of my first days' filing sifting and sorting back in full.

Dolor
by Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutuions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

1948


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting visual frames this poem contains. My pencils are happiest when strewn across the table waiting to be used.
Love the power lines - I like staring up at them too especially when thunderheads are building up.
I enjoy your blog.

Robin said...

hehe. thanks anonymous person. i love it when you are lucky enough to be outside when the storms are approaching - easy to get caught up in the suspense.