Thursday, January 14, 2010
Today a Door
Today a door through which
I’ve come and gone
countless times
creaked —
just like the ones
to my own
mind.
(first publication)
Recently Linked: My thanks to Shortz Magazine for signing on as a follower of Recently Banned Literature. You can visit the ShortzMag blog of daily flash fiction here.
Updates:
“Today a Door” added to Poems, Slightly Used.
In the Forum: two dumb crackers.
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14 comments:
Hey, thanks for the link! :)
My pleasure. Thanks for dropping by.
So it's true. You're coming unhinged...!
Ha! — and did you know, I actually considered “Unhinged” as a title!
yep , and they're there all the time ... aren't the doors our best friends ?
Yes, and when they’re shut, my thoughts climb out the windows yelling Fire!
THE PLEASURES OF THE DOOR
Kings never touch doors.
They’re not familiar with this happiness: to push, gently or roughly before you one of these great, friendly panels, to turn towards it to put it back in place – to hold a door in your arms.
The happiness of seizing one of these tall barriers to a room by the porcelain knob of its belly; this quick hand-to-hand, during which your progress slows for a moment, your eye opens up and your whole body adapts to its new apartment.
With a friendly hand you hold on a bit longer, before firmly pushing it back and shutting yourself in – of which you are agreeably assured by the click of the powerful, well-oiled latch.
(Francis Ponge, trans. C. K. Williams)
Ah, we need a dictionary full of such definitions. I really should try to find a copy of Williams’s Ponge translations. Another door poem, this one from Songs and Letters:
Doors
One side in,
the other out.
On the knob,
the warmth
of your hand,
and now, mine.
Where are you now?
Should I wait
for you, or follow?
The room is quiet.
It rocks gently,
anchored by
what it contains.
I decide to stay,
but I do not
close the door.
The way I feel,
I might never
close a door again.
May 19, 2006
Thanks, Joe!
Wonderful door poems here, William. I think now of the fact we have just this week installed a screen door onto the front door of our house. Mostly it's to stop the dog from fleeing out onto the main street, but it will also allow us to leave the front door open to catch the breeze on these hot nights.
The door this new screen door feels to be such a barrier, an additional barrier. For all the good it offers, it also seems to hamper.
I love the notion of the creaking door as a metaphor for all those other things, bits of the mind and body that creak. Thanks for your post and for the discussion that follows.
And thank you for your contribution. Where I grew up, it was extremely hot in the summer, and we relied on those screens on doors and windows alike. I even remember the smell of the screen in my room as I pressed my nose against it to hear the sounds of the night. Often, a breeze never did arrive.
Far,far memories of my early childhood back there in the country which is no more.Pressing my nose against the screen and waiting for some movement in the hot and all swollen evening air listening if I could hear the thunder in the distance,smell the coming summer rain.Those are fine memories!Thank you for bringing up mine.
You’re welcome. Your words make a perfect little painting.
Yes,you are sooo right,the time is right so I'll go now to finish your portrait and make some,little painting of this memory,it is my birthday tomorrow ,I want to share something beautiful with you and few other friends of mine.Bye!:O)
irene is my word verification so that will be the title of the painting
That’s what I love to hear. Happy birthday, Aleksandra. And Good night, Irene.
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