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Monday, July 19, 2010

Monday Musings

My reading picked up again this weekend, and I spent a great deal of Saturday and Sunday going through my recent acquisitions.

Saturday morning, my Kindle arrived!  I've got 4 books loaded and ready for our trip to St. John's for Little Kris' wedding.  We will leave on Friday and return on Wednesday, and there will be plenty of time for reading on the plane and on the beach.  No books to haul!  Just the Kindle.  I'm smiling at the prospect.

Because I don't want to read anything on my Kindle yet (saving that experience to savor on the trip), I've been going through my library haul at a good clip.  

I've finished The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge by Patricia Duncker, Sacrifice by S.J. Bolton, and Burning Lamp by Amanda Quick.  Have almost finished Citizens of London and am still reading Teaching Yoga (and probably will be for quite a while) by Stephens.

And a poem to share:


the gate
by Tadeusz Różewicz
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

Lasciate ogni speranza
Voi ch'entrate

abandon all hope
ye who enter here

the inscription at the entrance to the inferno
of Dante's Divine Comedy

courage!

behind that gate
there is no hell

hell has been dismantled
by theologians
and deep psychologists

converted into allegory
for humanitarian and educational
reasons

courage!
behind that gate
the same thing begins again

two drunken grave-diggers
sit at the edge of a hole

they're drinking non-alcoholic beer
and munching on sausage
winking at us
under the cross
they play soccer
with Adam's skull

the hole awaits
tomorrow's corpse
the "stiff" is on its way

courage!

here we will await
the final judgment

water gathers in the hole
cigarette butts are floating in it

courage!

behind that gate
there will neither be history
nor goodness nor poetry

and what will there be
dear stranger?

there will be stones

stone
upon stone
stone upon stone
and on that stone
one more
stone

3 comments:

  1. Congrats on the new Kindle. I'll look forward to hearing what you think of it...sure makes travel easier for readers like us, that's for sure.

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  2. Thanks, Sam. I think I'm going to love the Kindle. Being able to have access to books so easily while traveling is exciting.

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  3. Yay, you got your Kindle! I just heard the other day that sales of eBooks have surpassed the hardcover sales on Amazon. I feel so left out :)

    And, I need to find out how you managed to read so much on the weekend!

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