Saturday, April 7, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
a true story
Trotsky in the Bushes
It was on Newbury Street that I saw him. Trotsky, that is. He was a little worse for the wear and the years. His skin still retained its bronzed patina from the South American sun, though by now it was more than a little dry. Impossible to miss him. Sure, he had changed, but the pointed bear and shock of hair atop his head – had to give it to him, only a few flecks of gray showing through – could have been those of no other. He looked tired and he wore a black Ecko Unlimited sweatshirt that appeared as though it had been picked carefully from the dollar bin at a thrift store – quite a find, really, and it fit him surprisingly well. No pipe, though, just an unfiltered Camel sticking out the side of his mouth, burning dangerously close to his lips. He spat at my feet as he passed: perhaps he had noticed that flash of recognition.
I can’t figure for sure why he’d show up in such a place. It didn’t seem, to say the least, to be his style, strolling down the sidewalk of this clusterfuck of rampant capitalism. But one can’t so easily judge a man of such a mind, especially one who would now be dead of old age had he not had his life cut short by assassination – one who appears before you as though aged only a few years from their last known photograph, a grainy black and white of the man dying in the hospital from his fatal axe wound, and it looks as though he is grimacing and turning his face up and away from the lens of the camera. Impossible. No longer conscious at that point. Still.
I wanted to speak to him, to say something, anything, but it was too late: all that was left was the back of his head bobbing through the crowd. I suppose I could have run after him, but what was the point? What did I have to say to such a man, after all? Certainly nothing he’d want to hear.
It was a few days later, at my apartment in Allston, when I woke to find a small tin cup filled a quarter of the way with what could only have been either rancid oatmeal or lard set carefully upon the railing of my back porch. It reeked horribly and when I picked it up some of the substance on the outside of the tin came off on my hand, oily and slick – so perhaps it was lard, but who would leave such a thing? Who would eat it? And indeed there were the marks of a fork being scraped through the thick substance, frozen into it by the night chill. Had a bum slept there the night before? Where did he get the tin? What, indeed, was it?
I left it out there, I don’t know why. It was disgusting, it should have gone immediately into the trash, but it fascinated me, some human co-existing unbeknownst to me, separated only by a door that was beginning to split down the middle, that could have been pushed over with ease.
I suppose that it was a stupid thing, to keep it, to go so far as to place it back exactly where it was found. It would tell whoever had left it that the resident of this apartment did not often venture onto his back porch, whether such was true or not, would tell him that it would be safe to come back. Perhaps it had been left as a test for exactly this. I knew that then, too, but I left it anyways. That night I pulled my Buck knife out of the trunk of my car where I usually keep it and placed it, unsheathed, next to the headboard of my bed. In any case, I’d be at least somewhat protected should whoever it was suddenly realize how flimsy the door was.
For the next several days I left it there, that old tin, allowing the substance within to rot and blacken, home to countless bacteria, sitting out there during the day and looking at it over my book. Wondering if whosever it had been would come back or if it had been a one night deal after all, moving on to a new place each night. In any case, I kept that Buck knife near at hand each night. I lived on the third story of a house and my porch was small – I can see why he wanted to stop there, it was the most inconspicuous in the area and easily accessed, fire stairs leading down to my neighbor’s much larger porch and finally to the back yard that lay empty, given over to the rats and the wild, unkempt plants that had somehow managed to sprout there and survive many years ago.
I’d sit alone drinking bourbon, usually in my bedroom, waiting to hear shuffling coming from outside, maybe a few tentative slaps at the door before knocking it down. But sometimes on dark, clear, cool nights I’d sit out there in a folding chair in the dark smoking and waiting to hear those first steps on the fire stairs, no matter how hard you try to mask it, there’s always that ringing noise as the shoe hits iron. What would I do then? I can’t say for sure. I never brought my knife out there with me and always shut the door behind me. It would be just him and me, squinting at each other through the dark, trying to figure out if the other really was there or just a shadow from a tree playing a trick, until finally one of us broke the stasis and moved – maybe for the door, maybe turning tail down the stairs, maybe for that other shadow figure – and the shadows would coalesce and begin to make some sort of sense, if only for a short moment.
It had been weeks since I found that tin on my porch but I still hadn’t even gotten rid of it, or ever touched it again. I had begun to forget about it though, like all those unused items around the apartment that had lost coherent meaning and had become just another knick knack cluttering shelves. Too useless to keep, but too familiar for it to register that it should be discarded. I’d look into it now and again – it was completely overtaken with mold that seemed to have grown larger since last I looked – but it never occurred to me to handle it again, to physically pick it up and toss it into the dumpster. I had put the Buck knife back into the trunk of my car – no need to tempt the fates, as it were.
I had gotten up early – for some reason I had taken to that habit more often of late, usually incoherent til later in the day but now driven out of bed by seven o’clock – an unheard of time to me before then. I had stopped drinking coffee on a daily basis, perhaps that was why, no caffeine hangover crippling me each morning. I usually did not venture out to the porch until evening, since it faced the west, but this morning I pulled open the door – still not repaired though the call had gone into the landlord over a month before – and stepped outside in my boxer shorts, lighting a cigarette and looking out over the parking lot beyond my fence. Grass grew up through the cracks in the asphalt.
I stood smoking in silence for awhile, barefoot, feeling the grain of the wood with my toes. I finished my cigarette and, noticing the tin, stamped the butt out in the bacterial overgrowth, burning untold parasites in the process. No sooner had I taken my hand away I heard a scuffling below me, on my neighbor’s porch. I paused for a moment, startled – maybe it was a raccoon, the neighbors often left their garbage there overnight and it was not unheard of the creatures to inhabit the city. I had once seen three raccoons climb over a friend’s fence into his back yard out on Mission Hill. I threw a chicken bone at them and watched them fight over it before disappearing into the bushes.
I heard someone curse under their breath.
I stepped out onto the fire stairs and peered over the railing. It was him. I suppose I should have expected it, that pointed beard, that curled hair, that same sweatshirt now caked with dirt. His pants were around his ankles and he was in the process of taking a rather considerable shit upon my neighbor’s patio – his face was clenched and I could see it oozing out of him, plopping with an audible noise onto the hard wood. I can’t say why he would choose such a place to do such a thing, with the bushes just feet away, but there you have it, Leon Trotsky himself obscenely emptying his bowls directly below me, unabashed, perhaps even proud for his daring.
So this is what it has come to.
I remember that he was smoking one of those unfiltered Camels at the same time – I hear that nicotine improves intestinal activity, and it certainly seemed to be working for him. He must have heard me, then, because he looked up and, seeing me, fell back into his waste in surprise.
We remained motionless, stunned, he with his pants around his ankles and me in my boxers unbuttoned, I realized then, at the front.
It was he who reacted first, leaping up and pulling his pants up around his shit-stained thighs, buttoning up lickety split. Thinking back on it, I’m sure that not a hair on my head moved during the entire encounter, surreal – I recall that it was like an elegant painting in motion, perhaps a Munch or a more conservative van der Goes, I can’t say for sure now.
But these are just embellishments to the action and the action was this: he moved, not I – I watched only in awe, noting that he wore worn blue jeans with holes at the knees. He impudently gave me the middle finger, a universal language. He conveyed nothing else - no meaning, no excuses, no explanations – until he was almost over the wooden fence in the back yard.
“Every tenth man!” he shouted, defiantly and in clear English, and then he was over, landing on his feet, running across the parking lot, disappearing behind the buildings beyond.
That night I tossed the old tin into the dumpster. I haven’t seen him since, but I’m not convinced that I never will.
It was on Newbury Street that I saw him. Trotsky, that is. He was a little worse for the wear and the years. His skin still retained its bronzed patina from the South American sun, though by now it was more than a little dry. Impossible to miss him. Sure, he had changed, but the pointed bear and shock of hair atop his head – had to give it to him, only a few flecks of gray showing through – could have been those of no other. He looked tired and he wore a black Ecko Unlimited sweatshirt that appeared as though it had been picked carefully from the dollar bin at a thrift store – quite a find, really, and it fit him surprisingly well. No pipe, though, just an unfiltered Camel sticking out the side of his mouth, burning dangerously close to his lips. He spat at my feet as he passed: perhaps he had noticed that flash of recognition.
I can’t figure for sure why he’d show up in such a place. It didn’t seem, to say the least, to be his style, strolling down the sidewalk of this clusterfuck of rampant capitalism. But one can’t so easily judge a man of such a mind, especially one who would now be dead of old age had he not had his life cut short by assassination – one who appears before you as though aged only a few years from their last known photograph, a grainy black and white of the man dying in the hospital from his fatal axe wound, and it looks as though he is grimacing and turning his face up and away from the lens of the camera. Impossible. No longer conscious at that point. Still.
I wanted to speak to him, to say something, anything, but it was too late: all that was left was the back of his head bobbing through the crowd. I suppose I could have run after him, but what was the point? What did I have to say to such a man, after all? Certainly nothing he’d want to hear.
It was a few days later, at my apartment in Allston, when I woke to find a small tin cup filled a quarter of the way with what could only have been either rancid oatmeal or lard set carefully upon the railing of my back porch. It reeked horribly and when I picked it up some of the substance on the outside of the tin came off on my hand, oily and slick – so perhaps it was lard, but who would leave such a thing? Who would eat it? And indeed there were the marks of a fork being scraped through the thick substance, frozen into it by the night chill. Had a bum slept there the night before? Where did he get the tin? What, indeed, was it?
I left it out there, I don’t know why. It was disgusting, it should have gone immediately into the trash, but it fascinated me, some human co-existing unbeknownst to me, separated only by a door that was beginning to split down the middle, that could have been pushed over with ease.
I suppose that it was a stupid thing, to keep it, to go so far as to place it back exactly where it was found. It would tell whoever had left it that the resident of this apartment did not often venture onto his back porch, whether such was true or not, would tell him that it would be safe to come back. Perhaps it had been left as a test for exactly this. I knew that then, too, but I left it anyways. That night I pulled my Buck knife out of the trunk of my car where I usually keep it and placed it, unsheathed, next to the headboard of my bed. In any case, I’d be at least somewhat protected should whoever it was suddenly realize how flimsy the door was.
For the next several days I left it there, that old tin, allowing the substance within to rot and blacken, home to countless bacteria, sitting out there during the day and looking at it over my book. Wondering if whosever it had been would come back or if it had been a one night deal after all, moving on to a new place each night. In any case, I kept that Buck knife near at hand each night. I lived on the third story of a house and my porch was small – I can see why he wanted to stop there, it was the most inconspicuous in the area and easily accessed, fire stairs leading down to my neighbor’s much larger porch and finally to the back yard that lay empty, given over to the rats and the wild, unkempt plants that had somehow managed to sprout there and survive many years ago.
I’d sit alone drinking bourbon, usually in my bedroom, waiting to hear shuffling coming from outside, maybe a few tentative slaps at the door before knocking it down. But sometimes on dark, clear, cool nights I’d sit out there in a folding chair in the dark smoking and waiting to hear those first steps on the fire stairs, no matter how hard you try to mask it, there’s always that ringing noise as the shoe hits iron. What would I do then? I can’t say for sure. I never brought my knife out there with me and always shut the door behind me. It would be just him and me, squinting at each other through the dark, trying to figure out if the other really was there or just a shadow from a tree playing a trick, until finally one of us broke the stasis and moved – maybe for the door, maybe turning tail down the stairs, maybe for that other shadow figure – and the shadows would coalesce and begin to make some sort of sense, if only for a short moment.
It had been weeks since I found that tin on my porch but I still hadn’t even gotten rid of it, or ever touched it again. I had begun to forget about it though, like all those unused items around the apartment that had lost coherent meaning and had become just another knick knack cluttering shelves. Too useless to keep, but too familiar for it to register that it should be discarded. I’d look into it now and again – it was completely overtaken with mold that seemed to have grown larger since last I looked – but it never occurred to me to handle it again, to physically pick it up and toss it into the dumpster. I had put the Buck knife back into the trunk of my car – no need to tempt the fates, as it were.
I had gotten up early – for some reason I had taken to that habit more often of late, usually incoherent til later in the day but now driven out of bed by seven o’clock – an unheard of time to me before then. I had stopped drinking coffee on a daily basis, perhaps that was why, no caffeine hangover crippling me each morning. I usually did not venture out to the porch until evening, since it faced the west, but this morning I pulled open the door – still not repaired though the call had gone into the landlord over a month before – and stepped outside in my boxer shorts, lighting a cigarette and looking out over the parking lot beyond my fence. Grass grew up through the cracks in the asphalt.
I stood smoking in silence for awhile, barefoot, feeling the grain of the wood with my toes. I finished my cigarette and, noticing the tin, stamped the butt out in the bacterial overgrowth, burning untold parasites in the process. No sooner had I taken my hand away I heard a scuffling below me, on my neighbor’s porch. I paused for a moment, startled – maybe it was a raccoon, the neighbors often left their garbage there overnight and it was not unheard of the creatures to inhabit the city. I had once seen three raccoons climb over a friend’s fence into his back yard out on Mission Hill. I threw a chicken bone at them and watched them fight over it before disappearing into the bushes.
I heard someone curse under their breath.
I stepped out onto the fire stairs and peered over the railing. It was him. I suppose I should have expected it, that pointed beard, that curled hair, that same sweatshirt now caked with dirt. His pants were around his ankles and he was in the process of taking a rather considerable shit upon my neighbor’s patio – his face was clenched and I could see it oozing out of him, plopping with an audible noise onto the hard wood. I can’t say why he would choose such a place to do such a thing, with the bushes just feet away, but there you have it, Leon Trotsky himself obscenely emptying his bowls directly below me, unabashed, perhaps even proud for his daring.
So this is what it has come to.
I remember that he was smoking one of those unfiltered Camels at the same time – I hear that nicotine improves intestinal activity, and it certainly seemed to be working for him. He must have heard me, then, because he looked up and, seeing me, fell back into his waste in surprise.
We remained motionless, stunned, he with his pants around his ankles and me in my boxers unbuttoned, I realized then, at the front.
It was he who reacted first, leaping up and pulling his pants up around his shit-stained thighs, buttoning up lickety split. Thinking back on it, I’m sure that not a hair on my head moved during the entire encounter, surreal – I recall that it was like an elegant painting in motion, perhaps a Munch or a more conservative van der Goes, I can’t say for sure now.
But these are just embellishments to the action and the action was this: he moved, not I – I watched only in awe, noting that he wore worn blue jeans with holes at the knees. He impudently gave me the middle finger, a universal language. He conveyed nothing else - no meaning, no excuses, no explanations – until he was almost over the wooden fence in the back yard.
“Every tenth man!” he shouted, defiantly and in clear English, and then he was over, landing on his feet, running across the parking lot, disappearing behind the buildings beyond.
That night I tossed the old tin into the dumpster. I haven’t seen him since, but I’m not convinced that I never will.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
and so the Gravity Wars begin
A video of the vice speaker of the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, speaking on Bush, Condoleeza Rice, the war, and gravity warfare. Thanks to englishrussia.com for the video / image. If you listen near the end you notice him reference a device that will set the center of Earth's gravity off kilter, effectively drowning North America and removing it from the map. This was recorded in 2002.
The very real threat of America being plunged beneath the ocean by a simple augmentation of the center of Earth's gravitational field must not be ignored. Must we wait for The Wave to be upon us before we finally listen? This, this is what politics is missing, the true horror of ecological warfare. During the Gravity Wars millions if not billions will be killed, the world will be covered in water and empty desert plains, and we may never live to see another civilization come to fruition. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Russia might be down but they aren't out. The powerful KGB is far from eradicated and the conjoined powers of the Russian elite with the Indian and Chinese governments the world will be forever changed, even should they opt not to use the gravity device.
Here, finally, is the image (also from englishrussia.com) of the recently declassified KGB document from 1973 speaking of the gravity device. Its language is simple but its message is clear, and it is signed by the then-KGB head Yuri Andropov. They've had about three and a half decades now to perfect the device.
Comment from englishrussia.com:
"According to this top secret Russian document, which was unclassified recently Soviet military engineers were planning complete removal of North American continent.
The very real threat of America being plunged beneath the ocean by a simple augmentation of the center of Earth's gravitational field must not be ignored. Must we wait for The Wave to be upon us before we finally listen? This, this is what politics is missing, the true horror of ecological warfare. During the Gravity Wars millions if not billions will be killed, the world will be covered in water and empty desert plains, and we may never live to see another civilization come to fruition. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Russia might be down but they aren't out. The powerful KGB is far from eradicated and the conjoined powers of the Russian elite with the Indian and Chinese governments the world will be forever changed, even should they opt not to use the gravity device.
Here, finally, is the image (also from englishrussia.com) of the recently declassified KGB document from 1973 speaking of the gravity device. Its language is simple but its message is clear, and it is signed by the then-KGB head Yuri Andropov. They've had about three and a half decades now to perfect the device.
Comment from englishrussia.com:
"According to this top secret Russian document, which was unclassified recently Soviet military engineers were planning complete removal of North American continent.
Translation of the document:
“KGB, Soviet Union. Top Secret. Moscow. February 26, 1973
This is a scheme of a assumed changes in geographical structure of Earth continents which may happen as a result of correction of gravity field of the Earth by the A-241/BIS device
[scheme]
KGB General Chief
Andropov
[signature]
”"
Monday, March 5, 2007
breaking -
John Kerry came clean last night at a gala ball that he had accepted a large sum of money from George W. Bush's campaign manager to throw the 2004 election. Due to his previous relations with the President, Kerry agreed on the condition that once a year he would be allowed to perform oral sex to completion on the President, if at all possible while he was on the telephone with Moscow. It was reported that Kerry had consumed any number of drinks and had disappeared into a bathroom with a bottle of ether and three unknown men previous to the confession, where he remained for over an hour with the door locked. Upon emerging, he gave his confession at the top of the stairs. It was not immediately apparent what it was he was speaking of, but after a four and a half hour speech, during which two people suffered seizures and brain hemorrhaging, Hillary Clinton, also attending the event, threw a glass of her own urine on him out of sheer frustration, to which he responded, "Thank you m'am, may I have another!" The confession came shortly after.
The President remains unavailable for comment as he has been grappling with the horrifying existential concepts posed to him by Albert Camus' The Stranger, which he claims to have read last summer. He is currently hiding beneath the desk of the Oval Office and refusing to come out. Dick Cheney responded to questions by farting loudly into a microphone while chewing on a small Malaysian child's finger bones. Story is developing, and this media outlet will keep you posted with any updates.
Now it's on the Internet, which means it's true.
part the first
embrace the anomie
DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO HIS BOOK
PARAPHRASTIC METRICAL TRANSLATION.
Go forth my book into the open day;
Happy, if made so by its garish eye.
O'er earth's wide surface take thy vagrant way,
To imitate thy master's genius try.
The Graces three, the Muses nine salute,
Should those who love them try to con thy lore.
The country, city seek, grand thrones to boot,
With gentle courtesy humbly bow before.
Should nobles gallant, soldiers frank and brave
Seek thy acquaintance, hail their first advance:
From twitch of care thy pleasant vein may save,
May laughter cause or wisdom give perchance.
Some surly Cato, Senator austere,
Haply may wish to peep into thy book:
Seem very nothing--tremble and revere:
No forceful eagles, butterflies e'er look.
They love not thee: of them then little seek,
And wish for readers triflers like thyself.
Of ludeful matron watchful catch the beck,
Or gorgeous countess full of pride and pelf.
They may say "pish!" and frown, and yet read on:
Cry odd, and silly, coarse, and yet amusing.
Should dainty damsels seek thy page to con,
Spread thy best stores: to them be ne'er refusing:
Say, fair one, master loves thee dear as life;
Would he were here to gaze on thy sweet look.
Should known or unknown student, freed from strife
Of logic and the schools, explore my book:
Cry mercy critic, and thy book withhold:
Be some few errors pardon'd though observ'd:
An humble author to implore makes bold.
Thy kind indulgence, even undeserv'd,
Should melancholy wight or pensive lover,
Courtier, snug cit, or carpet knight so trim
Our blossoms cull, he'll find himself in clover,
Gain sense from precept, laughter from our whim.
Should learned leech with solemn air unfold
Thy leaves, beware, be civil, and be wise:
Thy volume many precepts sage may hold,
His well fraught head may find no trifling prize.
Should crafty lawyer trespass on our ground,
Caitiffs avaunt! disturbing tribe away!
Unless (white crow) an honest one be found;
He'll better, wiser go for what we say.
Should some ripe scholar, gentle and benign,
With candour, care, and judgment thee peruse:
Thy faults to kind oblivion he'll consign;
Nor to thy merit will his praise refuse.
Thou may'st be searched for polish'd words and verse
By flippant spouter, emptiest of praters:
Tell him to seek them in some mawkish verse:
My periods all are rough as nutmeg graters.
The doggerel poet, wishing thee to read,
Reject not; let him glean thy jests and stories.
His brother I, of lowly sembling breed:
Apollo grants to few Parnassian glories.
Menac'd by critic with sour furrowed brow,
Momus or Troilus or Scotch reviewer:
Ruffle your heckle, grin and growl and vow:
Ill-natured foes you thus will find the fewer,
When foul-mouth'd senseless railers cry thee down,
Reply not: fly, and show the rogues thy stern;
They are not worthy even of a frown:
Good taste or breeding they can never learn;
Or let them clamour, turn a callous ear,
As though in dread of some harsh donkey's bray.
If chid by censor, friendly though severe,
To such explain and turn thee not away.
Thy vein, says he perchance, is all too free;
Thy smutty language suits not learned pen:
Reply, Good Sir, throughout, the context see;
Thought chastens thought; so prithee judge again.
Besides, although my master's pen may wander
Through devious paths, by which it ought not stray,
His life is pure, beyond the breath of slander:
So pardon grant; 'tis merely but his way.
Some rugged ruffian makes a hideous rout--
Brandish thy cudgel, threaten him to baste;
The filthy fungus far from thee cast out;
Such noxious banquets never suit my taste.
Yet, calm and cautious moderate thy ire,
Be ever courteous should the case allow--
Sweet malt is ever made by gentle fire:
Warm to thy friends, give all a civil bow.
Even censure sometimes teaches to improve,
Slight frosts have often cured too rank a crop,
So, candid blame my spleen shall never move,
For skilful gard'ners wayward branches lop.
Go then, my book, and bear my words in mind;
Guides safe at once, and pleasant them you'll find.
THE ARGUMENT OF THE FRONTISPIECE.
Ten distinct Squares here seen apart,
Are joined in one by Cutter's art.
I.
Old Democritus under a tree,
Sits on a stone with book on knee;
About him hang there many features,
Of Cats, Dogs and such like creatures,
Of which he makes anatomy,
The seat of black choler to see.
Over his head appears the sky,
And Saturn Lord of melancholy.
II.
To the left a landscape of Jealousy,
Presents itself unto thine eye.
A Kingfisher, a Swan, an Hern,
Two fighting-cocks you may discern,
Two roaring Bulls each other hie,
To assault concerning venery.
Symbols are these; I say no more,
Conceive the rest by that's afore.
III.
The next of solitariness,
A portraiture doth well express,
By sleeping dog, cat: Buck and Doe,
Hares, Conies in the desert go:
Bats, Owls the shady bowers over,
In melancholy darkness hover.
Mark well: If't be not as't should be,
Blame the bad Cutter, and not me.
IV.
I'th' under column there doth stand
_Inamorato_ with folded hand;
Down hangs his head, terse and polite,
Some ditty sure he doth indite.
His lute and books about him lie,
As symptoms of his vanity.
If this do not enough disclose,
To paint him, take thyself by th' nose.
V.
_Hypocondriacus_ leans on his arm,
Wind in his side doth him much harm,
And troubles him full sore, God knows,
Much pain he hath and many woes.
About him pots and glasses lie,
Newly brought from's Apothecary.
This Saturn's aspects signify,
You see them portray'd in the sky.
VI.
Beneath them kneeling on his knee,
A superstitious man you see:
He fasts, prays, on his Idol fixt,
Tormented hope and fear betwixt:
For Hell perhaps he takes more pain,
Than thou dost Heaven itself to gain.
Alas poor soul, I pity thee,
What stars incline thee so to be?
VII.
But see the madman rage downright
With furious looks, a ghastly sight.
Naked in chains bound doth he lie,
And roars amain he knows not why!
Observe him; for as in a glass,
Thine angry portraiture it was.
His picture keeps still in thy presence;
'Twixt him and thee, there's no difference.
VIII, IX.
_Borage_ and _Hellebor_ fill two scenes,
Sovereign plants to purge the veins
Of melancholy, and cheer the heart,
Of those black fumes which make it smart;
To clear the brain of misty fogs,
Which dull our senses, and Soul clogs.
The best medicine that e'er God made
For this malady, if well assay'd.
X.
Now last of all to fill a place,
Presented is the Author's face;
And in that habit which he wears,
His image to the world appears.
His mind no art can well express,
That by his writings you may guess.
It was not pride, nor yet vainglory,
(Though others do it commonly)
Made him do this: if you must know,
The Printer would needs have it so.
Then do not frown or scoff at it,
Deride not, or detract a whit.
For surely as thou dost by him,
He will do the same again.
Then look upon't, behold and see,
As thou lik'st it, so it likes thee.
And I for it will stand in view,
Thine to command, Reader, adieu.
-Robert Burton
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
