Monday, October 13, 2008

London interlude (brief)

Though more NYC-related than London. When rumaging in the attic among boxes in search of an India guide book (found, eventually, at the bottom of the eighth box, eureka!) I came across "The Collected Dorothy Parker". I'll lend it to Dad (hardly lending when it's been encased in a box in his own house for several months), because for some reason he was talking about her the other day. On page 215 is this rather melancholy poem of the kind that pops up from time to time among her glitter. It's called Interior:

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines,
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.

I'd say that unlike Dorothy I don't bolt my heart out of an ordered, tidy mind but rather drown it out with a cluttered one. What I like are the occasional times I let the two intermingle, through writing or other things.

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