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Approval
- University of Iowa Press
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38 Approval Applause, then pats on the back, then personal notes, and the referent event journeys on, less large and less close. Tiny and comic, it waddles to the top of the road. Finite and bright, it has marked me and changed me, an ember held in my palm a counted-out minute, then blown. Mention, I think, reddens it. Let’s not encourage it. Remember instead the acrobat who could not remedy his cough. It was his far awkwardness that engaged us. Really, his loops were too close to the bar and unrelaxed so that we had to watch his every move and all the while a rival impulse plunged us to the pavement where we thought he might drop. He thought he might drop right in that star, we thought, and it must have been all he could do to carry through, he couldn’t have given our approval a thought. Only at the very last, when he stepped onto the disk and turned, could he afford and could we risk applause. Then, from that brief balcony, he could request it: torso of accomplishment in beams of crossing color, O marvelman , standing but a few slow footfalls from the man he was: transitional, forgetful, for the moment, that he needed us. ...