Admirable Peculiarity
Driver, drive faster and make a good run
Down the Springfield Line under the shining sun.
Fly like the aeroplane, don’t pull up short
Till you brake for Grand Central Station, New York.
For there in the middle of that waiting hall
Should be standing the one that I love best of all.
If he’s not there to meet me when I get to town,
I’ll stand on the pavement with tears rolling down.
For he is the one that I love to look on,
The acme of kindness and perfection.
He presses my hand and he says he loves me
Which I find an admirable peculiarity.
The woods are bright green on both sides of the line;
The trees have their loves though they’re different from mine.
But the poor fat old banker in the sun-parlour car
Has no one to love him except his cigar.
If I were the head of the Church or the State
I’d powder my nose and just tell them to wait.
For love’s more important and powerful than
Even a priest or a politician.
–W. H. Auden, Calypso (from W.H. Auden Selected Poems, Edited by Edward Mendelson)
Hi from NY. I barely managed to fit into the doorway of my apartment after having gained 10 pounds in 1 holiday week at Owl Farm. Weird. Above is a random poem that jumped out at me on the plane ride back from Colorado. You may know Hunter loved Auden’s work. Normally, I find Auden’s poems very hard to understand, or to “get.” But one of my professors is the executor of Auden’s estate, and his lectures are so unusually good and engaging (he manages to make us laugh out loud even during lectures about Frankenstein, for example). So, I’m making an extra effort to read and understand more of his work. Anyway, the above is just a sweet poem, with the intriguing title Calypso. The holidays can crush the millions of us who have lost a loved one. But, if we’re smart, we recognize that we did indeed have a loved one to lose, and that is the blessing. Why am I being so sentimental? I have no idea. Maybe it’s Auden, maybe it’s being back in this city where everyone seems to be making out with a lover on the street?
Maybe I’m just procrastinating on a project I’m late on. I don’t know….
Until next time, your friend,
Anita Thompson
p.s. here is a good review from a reviewer, Ray Young, who seemed to acutally read both recent books about Hunter: The one I love and the one I hate: http://home.comcast.net/~flickhead/GonzoBooks.html
