easy to read this and imagine Ken in front of an engaged audience enjoying every knitted sentence.
Max
On 19/12/2013, at 5:09 AM, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> Ah, it took awhile to get there, Ken, but then paid off...tough love for that sweater long gone...
>
> Doug
> On Dec 18, 2013, at 9:46 AM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> The Sweater
>>
>>
>>
>> So I bought a six buck acrylic sweater
>>
>> from a guy in his family's shop
>>
>> on lower Broadway, one of the old
>>
>> Civil War buildings where the ghosts walk.
>>
>> And I created my own ghost in the sweater.
>>
>> A schmata that I loved, that I inhabited
>>
>> because it bowed to my shape
>>
>> because it helped warm me on awful nights
>>
>> when the New York cold blew through me
>>
>> with what I saw as personal anger,
>>
>> a revolt against the wearer
>>
>> a cry of You are nothing without me.
>>
>> And I learned then to despise summer
>>
>> because I could not wear the sweater
>>
>> which grew rips in the underarms
>>
>> shreds in the seams.
>>
>> But as winters returned I did not care.
>>
>> I loved the tatty sweater and
>>
>> let it envelop me, a lover long missed
>>
>> and now returned, its anger spent,
>>
>> wanting only to embrace me in its fibers.
>>
>>
>>
>> When I married, my wife went through my clothes
>>
>> and seemed to gag at some of my choices.
>>
>> She hated the sweater and said
>>
>> it was baggy and made me look like hell,
>>
>> but I said I liked it and would
>>
>> just as soon darn and sew to hold it.
>>
>> But one day I came home and found
>>
>> she'd tossed it, put it out with the trash:
>>
>> and the sweater, unable to protest, assented.
>>
>> And after a shrug of feeble dismay, so did I.
>>
>>
>>
>> This was long ago, 1971, but maybe
>>
>> our fates and futures are descried
>>
>> by meaningless incidents, by behaviors
>>
>> that "set a tone" for what comes after.
>>
>> Maybe my wife, long cast off,
>>
>> has met the sweater again. Maybe
>>
>> inanimacy has the power of forgiveness.
>>
>> Or maybe not. Or maybe
>>
>> she has proved to be acrylic,
>>
>> a fibre set untrue as her husband,
>>
>> both of us woven from whole false cloth.
>>
>>
>>
>> December 2013
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
> Recording Dates
> (Rubicon Press)
>
> Swept snow, Li Po,
> by dawn’s 40-watt moon
> to the road that hies to office
> away from home.
>
> Lorine Niedecker
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
|