Choose life instead of those prisms with no depth even if
their colors
are purer
Instead of this hour always hidden instead of these
terrible vehicles
of cold flame
Instead of these overripe stones
Choose this heart with its safety catch
Instead of that murmuring pool
And that white fabric singing in the air and the earth at
the same time
Instead of that marriage blessing joining my
forehead to total vanity’s
Choose life
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They speak about ringing changes, especially
at the New Year, and I like that.
No one should or will be subjected to and bored by My New Year’s
Resolutions. Ever again. It’s high time, past
time, to execute against plan.
This recalls last week’s life changing event. We were at the
Tuxedo Club trying to use up our unexpended quarterly minimum at the
Friday evening Shore Dinner. The new assistant manager, so
ashen-faced I thought a personal tragedy must have befallen him, told us that the
kitchen was unexpectedly a lobster short because one of the captive living creatures had died
of natural causes just before they could kill him for us to
eat. That was finally and fully IT. As
the great poet said:
Choose life.
Poem excerpt: André Breton, Choose Life, 1923, from Clair de Terre (tr. Bill
Zavatsky and Zack Rogow).
Eric Gill: Three Martlets, wood
engraving, 1914, showing St. Thomas à Becket's coat of arms and the inscription
"Do not cease, Thomas, to protect us."
Pilgrim badge (bell) associated with St. Thomas à
Becket and Canterbury, British Museum, London.
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