Three poems

Little Golf Pencil

At headquarters they asked me for something dry and understated. Mary, they said, it’s called a statement. They took me out back to a courtyard where they always ate lunch and showed me a little tree that was, sadly, dying. Something with four legs had eaten it rather badly. Don’t over-emote, they said. I promised I wouldn’t but I was thinking to myself that the something-with-four-legs had certainly over-emoted and that the tree, in response, was over-emoting now, being in the strange little position of dying. All the cops were sitting around eating sandwich halves and offered me one. This one’s delicious, said a lieutenant, my wife made it. Seeing as it was peanut butter and jelly I thought he was over-emoting, but I didn’t say anything. I just sat looking at the tree and eating my sandwich half. When I was ready I asked for a pencil and they gave me one of those little golf pencils. I didn’t say anything about that, either. I just wrote my statement and handed it over—it was a description of the tree which they intended to give to their captain as a Christmas present—I mean my description—because the captain, well, he loved that tree and he loved my writing and every one of the cops hoped to be promoted in the captain’s heart and, who knows, maybe get a raise. Still, after all that sitting around in the courtyard eating sandwich halves, I had a nice feeling of sharing, so when they asked me if I had anything else to say I told them that in the beginning you understand the world but not yourself, and when you finally understand yourself you no longer understand the world. They seemed satisfied with that. Cops, they’re all so young.

Toward a Carefree World

Many of the most astonishing writers in the world had servants. It is doubtful they ever really washed the dishes. Which is too bad; I think they would have enjoyed washing the dishes, especially after dinner. Repetitive motion can take your mind off of things. By things I mean the cares of this world. Repeated dish washing can leave the hands chafed, but writers work also with their hands and often have, as a result of their work, a raised callus below the nail of the middle finger, formed by long contact and constant pressure between the flesh and the pen. It is doubtful Gustave Flaubert ever shoveled the snow in front of his home. It is interesting to imagine what his snow shoveling style would have been like, given the varying styles in which he wrote. Yet given the long hours of his working habits, we should not be surprised if his entire yard were emptied of snow. Shoveling takes your mind off of things. Unless you are very troubled; in the case of the very troubled, no amount of shoveling snow or washing dishes will remove one’s cares from the mind. Servants who did not own the land where the snow fell upon the house where the dishes were kept might have been very troubled. Money, illness, death, relations with others, including relations; these are chief among our human woes; writers choose their subjects from among them. Long hours spent working on a novel, a story, a play or a poem might also take one’s mind off of things. It seems strange, but possible, to use troubles to take your mind off of them. Perhaps the writer is a servant in his own way. I do not know who hires such servants, but the world seems full of them, ready for hire. If each household hired a writer-servant to sit and concentrate on the human troubles we each must bear, every household might be free from care. Yet it is hardly practical to hire a writer to sit in one’s house all day, an extra room would be needed, and an extra servant hired to keep the children and animals quiet, so as not to disturb...