Jack Gilbert - What to Want

The room was like getting married.
A landfall and the setting forth.
A dearness and vessel. A small room
eight by twelve, filled by the narrow iron bed.
Six stories up, under the roof
and no elevator. A maid's room long ago.
In the old quarter, on the other hill
with the famous city stretched out
below. His window like an ocean.
The great bells of the cathedral counting
the hours all night while everyone slept.
After two years, he had come to
the beginning. Past the villa at Como,
past the police moving him from jail
to jail to hide him from the embassy.
His first woman gone back to Manhattan,
the friends gone back to weddings
or graduate school. He was finally alone.
Without money. A wind blowing through
where much of him used to be. No longer
the habit of himself. The blinding intensity
giving way to presence. The budding
amid the random passion. Mortality like
a cello inside him. Like rain in the dark.
Sin a promise. What interested him
most was who he was about to become.

- Jack Gilbert

From Thomas Merton

“When you are by yourself, you soon get tired of your craziness. It is too exhausting. It does not fit in with the eminent sanity of trees, birds, water, sky. You have to shut up and go about the business of living. The silence of the woods forces you to make a decision which the tensions and artificialities of society may help you evade forever. Do you want to be yourself or don’t you?…Are you going to stand on your own feet before God and the world and take full responsibility for your own life?”

- Thomas Merton, from Contemplation in a World of Action

If you've enjoyed the site...

Consider checking out my book of poems, NORTH AMERICAN STADIUMS (paperback version now available).

Published by Milkweed Editions (2018), the book is described by Booklist as “Exquisite…Chambers executes a magic that is perhaps unique to poetry: he conjures a moment from nothing, draws the reader inside, and disperses the spell with something as gentle as a shift in the wind direction, or a quiet revelation…A crackling first act by a promising new poet.” 

Thanks so much, and I hope you continue to enjoy the photos, poems, prose, and music here!

James Schuyler - "A blue towel"

went with us to the beach.
You drove the Green Bomb,
your panel truck. Sand
dunes and signs: “No parking
Between Signs.” “Prohibited
On This Beach…Hard Ball…
Intoxication…Bonfires…”
Mist, filterable sun.
Oh breakers, and leaping
spume! We spread the towel
where we could lie and watch
the fierce and molten wonder
of the water. You wore blue
trunks, and took off a
striped Roman shirt and kicked
off Gucci loafers (and you
think I’m hard on clothes).
We lay and watched and
smoked. I studied sand
and the sand-like freckles
on your back and, smaller
than small, one blackhead
(later removed). And thought
beach thoughts: after sex,
man is sad, some Roman said.
Did he mean, because the
pleasure’s over? It’s the
day after last night and I
am anything but sad. Quiet
content, a little tired: we
do go on so. Then we walked,
you in surf, I on scoured
sand, firm, and running to
escape the waves that almost
got my sneakers. Then we
walked back. Your trunks
were partly wet, as though
you’d pissed your pants. “I
think,” you said, “I’ll go
in after all.” Then there
you were, bobbing in breakers,
leaping high to ride their
great and breaking crested
curl. It scared me (a
lousy swimmer) just a
little. “That’s the way,"
you said when you came
out, “I like it. It’s
almost warm enough.” I saw
your chest and side be-
side me, pearled with
water drops. The mist
moved off. We sat and sunned
—it was late, no tan today—
and watched the repetitions
of the sea, each one
different from the last,
and saw how a log was
almost hurled ashore then
taken back, slipping north
along the shore. The flies
were something else. “These
insects are too much: let’s
go back.” The blue towel
and your trunks I hung out
on the line. You took a
shower. I made drinks. Quiet
ecstasy and sweet content,
why are not all days like
you? Happy with someone,
and that someone you, to-
gether on a blue towel
on sand beside the sea.

- James Schuyler