Fortress

A Life of Action

A Life of Action Gray this morning, pigeon-gray, governess-gray, not military. Wake hung over from last night's lecture; the couple spoke of war, their faces glowing slightly. Two women sat behind me, holding hands. —I had forgotten what this was like, said one. —How beautiful your hands are, said the other. The child coughs all night. I give her orange syrup that sticks to her hair, then look out at the coins of leaves and lamplight on the stubbled street, and sit within the gray of not deciding how to use the time, the gray between decision and the first step. Think of E. already up, jogging. Summon courage, like a moving van. Better to have lived a life of action like the woman said. Better to have waved from trains at the bourgeoisie instead of thinking thinking thinking with this mottled gull of irony above my head, cawing, garbage-mouthed; better to have cured the fatal contagion or smuggled the letter than to sit like a sparrow among sparrows trying to focus on a shaft of motes . . . . 3 Well! Begin the list for Thanksgiving, begin the errands in the brain, the small temporal negotiations: go down to Young's, start tossing things into the wire basket, tell Jean "Happy Holidays," holding the pear in one hand, the yam in the other—it is gray with a simple point at both ends, like a story— I love the way she lifts the clear sack onto the scales, chatting as she presses the buttons of the register; it rings behind the suit of armor: Good Cheer! Good Cheer! and things slide on the belt like days on the calendar: bags of hard berries, blossoms and herbs, the bird with its ankles clamped— the chilly, plucked skin, the cave to hold the bright, good-for-youparsley, the crumpled bread (and will our guest rage, again, "No more poems about sunlight!") Outside in the drizzle the woman will ease her baby into the carseat, pushing its stomach to hitch the straps over the flesh. Who will reward her infinite weariness? Who will glorify her? I will says the housewife rain. I will says the comrade sparrow. 4 ...