in a station of the metro

i was kind of thinking of what book to bring with me to europe (europe! that will never get old) since i likely won't have my ipod with me and total rail travel time is about 78 hours.

realized it was going to have to be poetry. there's probably no other option.

novels are nice, don't get me wrong. some people can read a novel one hundred times and get something new out of it each time.

that, though? that's Eliot. and Auden, and Yeats, and Pound. Siken and Neruda, even the tiny glimpses of half understanding from Eluard and Prevert and Rimbaud.

rubbing each letter's sound between your fingertips, weighing the heavy meanings between each (always) intentional space. those who claim overanalyzation detracts from the feelings gleaned from a cursory read-- never felt the triumph or truly connecting with the poet and his purpose. they felt instead the rush of universal emotions, centralized around themselves. which is fine, too, if that's what you want. that's where most of the beauty lies anyway.

it does in part exist to tell us things we already knew about ourselves, in a manner difficult to understand. but then you're not reading the poet's poem, you're reading his product. anyway, i think too much. here have a poem! it's pretty lovely.


Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,
Which three till now, never kept seat in one
- William Shakespeare