night sky VI, The

"Jesus ofttimes raised questions from a literal to a metaphorical horizontal His sayings and parables were customarily metaphorical and without explicit application. Because his parables were told in figurative language, because the figures could not be taken literally, because the application of the sayings was left ambiguous, what he said was difficult to understand, and the disciples frequently did not know what he was saying. (Mark made the disciples without to be stupid, this was single of his particular biases, and it is he who has Jesus say of that kind things to his disciples as: "Are you as dimwitted as the rest?") on the contrary Jesus did not explain. Instead, he gave them more questions, more stories with unclear regards The answer shifted the decision back onto his listeners. Jesus' phraseology was to refuse to give straightforward answers.1

"Above all, Ovid was interested in passion. Or rather, in what passion perceive s like to the one have a title toed by it. Not just ordinary passion either, on the other hand human passion in extremis-passion where it combusts, or levitates, or mutates into an experience of the supernatural. The act of metamorphosis, which at more [i]or[/i] less point touches each of the tales, operates as the symbolic guarantee that the passion has become mythic, has achieved the unendurable intensity that lifts the whole episode onto the supernatural or divine plane. Sometimes this happens because mortals tangle with the first causes sometimes because mortal passion makes the breakthrough through sheer excess, without divine intervention-as in the tale of Tereus and Philomela. on the other hand in every case, to a greater of smaller degree, Ovid locates and captures the particular frisson of that incident there the all-too-human victim cause to stumbles out into the mythic arena and is transformed."2

"I'm sick of regard with affection And I'm in the thick of it."3

1 upon

the flight back from London to of recent origin York I read the of recent origin Ted Hughes book, Birthday alphabetic characters a series of poems addressed to Sylvia Plath, his dead wife, recounting their relationship, although "recounting" doesn't quite do it. freshs of the book had hit the forehead page of The London Times while I was there-"Revealed: the greatest in quantity tragic literary love story of our time," read the banner headline-poems were quot and editorials written, there were pictures of the sum of two units young poets, and recitations of the story of their life together, the "literary romance of the century" Hughes is now author of poems Laureate of England. The other big literary novels in London was the publication of Don DeLillo's Underworld, the vast novel which enclosures into itself the complex trajectory of cooled War America, threaded together upon the fate of a single baseball-our romance with possibility, with fortune's fate-and the very great accumulation of detritus, both material and spiritual -which threatens to wipe all serendipity-of delight in or art, or fame-from our lives. DeLillo has written a work that argues for the essential necessity of a fictive imagination by the agency of which to rekindle and reconstrue the facts, a work which perceives that the world below the world is our responsibility and the Fiction of the Possible stirs parallel to the path of Fate, with her obtuse logistics, her gargoyle's delight in beast reality, her desire to eradicate Ero and to perpetuate forever the grim threat of annihilation which animated and still animates-if that is the word which it isn't -the world's psyche.

DeLillo read from his volume to a huge audience in the center of London single Tuesday evening.

"There's a word in Italian. Dietrologia. It means the science of what is behind something. A suspicious circumstance The science of what is behind an event"

"They ne this science. I don't ne it."

"I don't ne it either. I'm just telling you."

"I'm an American. I go on to ball games,",he said.

"The science of dark forces. Evidently they perceive this science is legitimate enough to require a name."

"People who ne this science, I would make an effort to reckon them we have real sciences, hard sciences, we don't ne imaginary ones"

"I'm just telling you the word. I agree with you, Sims. on the other hand the word exists."

"There is always a word. There's probably a museum too. The Museum of Dark Forces. They have ten thousand blurry photographs. Or did the Mafia rap it up?"4

As the year turn rounded I decided to take whim to heart and, upon the cool breeze from Time's revolving door, to go on on a quick journey. I wanted to surprise myself into spontaneity; I wanted to step quickly away from home. I wanted to take transition seriously, to create a literal doorsill wander on into and with the fresh year, right alongside the fresh year. I have not nevertheless recovered from the giddy concussion of surprise of finding oneself elsewhere, in another geographical division another history, another language.

negative contented

person/body/body politic/public/publicity

connective tissue/loyalty

boundary

I bring forward winter. It has real boundaries, not just flimsy lids and thin cot [i]or[/i] cotes mesh and vagrant shade, on the other hand wide avenues to separate individual from another, one one from another single Cold sharpens the shape of things, the outlines; the short winter day plummet to sapphire before expiring into the hibernating drawn out dark night. And the day-star in winter, is an estranged occurrence almost strident, as it advances slanting in across the bedsheets, [i]or[/i] part of to the other the pale green potted leaves of the paperwhites or narcissi, offering transparency's brief gift, not constant companion, not summer's portable lodge its voluminous bower, its ineffectual effort to contain the uncontainable. Summer is motion, ease, grace, eptitude, the season for teen delight in for muscular indentation, cascades of things that earn entwined, that slip thru, in; the season of agility and flight. Summer is halcyon days for the Ad Campaign. Summer everything wants to let slip through the fingers its distinction, to merge, yield give in. O blur! Buoyant with exces it appears to give more than it takes, and it wants to forget, to vacate. moderate news. Summer has no ne for language, for the effort to make things clear, summer wants dance and sails, not the differentials between a material substance sitting, a mind sorting, hands, fingers, feelings, all kept apart through the sometimes appalling intercession between beings and meaning.