saturday with dad

i really like this guy's face:

helping put together Little's new "bonk bed."

today

"Today i have finished a work outlasting bronze

And the pyramids of ancient royal kings..."

{for the record, Little started it.}





"The North Wind raging cannot scatter it
Nor can the rain obliterate this work,
Nor can the years, nor can the ages passing.
Some part of me will live and not be given..."

{horace, from the third book of Odes}

quatro

Psalm

by Wisława Szymborska

How leaky are the borders of man-made states!

How many clouds float over them scot-free,

how much desert sand sifts from country to country,

how many mountain pebbles roll onto foreign turf
in provocative leaps!

Need I cite each and every bird as it flies,

or alights, as now, on the lowered gate?
Even if it be a sparrow--its tail is abroad,
though its beak is still home. As if that weren't enough--it keeps fitgeting!

Out of countless insects I will single out the ant,

Who, between the guard's left and right boots,
feels obliged to answer questions of origin and destination.

If only this whole mess could be seen at once in detail

on every continent!

Isn't that a privet on the opposite bank

smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?

Who else but the squid, brazenly long-armed,

would violate the sacred territorial waters?

How can we speak of any semblance of order

when we can't rearrange the stars

to know which one shines for whom?

Not to mention the reprehensible spreading of fog!

Or the dusting of the steppe over its entire range

as though it weren't split in two!

Or voices carried over accommodating air waves:

summoning squeals and suggestive gurgles!

Only what's human can be truly alien.

The rest is mixed forest, undermining moles, and wind.