Monday, December 07, 2009

Composição e Qualidade

He pursed a pocketful of hard bellot corn and high-tailed it westerly, the alms man looking on with saber eyes. ‘well I’ll be damned… and so fleetingly swift’. Thumbtacked over the door to the Brother’s Grimm taverna was ‘composição e qualidade, and then some’, the Grimm brothers laughing bellyfuls. ‘never before have I witnessed such tomfoolery’ said the alms man, his arms seining swimmingly. ‘be that as it may’ offered the grimmest of the brothers, ‘it’s a fool who doesn’t see the grass for the trees’. A tinker from Wolfsburg, know for his ferocious appetite, and a cooper from Modella Birdie, renown the world over for his concentrically perfect barrels, met a carriage builder from Falkirk, the carriage builder known for nothing of import or principle, the three meeting under the broiling noontide sun to discuss there whereabouts of the mislaid whore’s glove. ‘‘tiss a miracle’ said the tinker to the cooper and the carriage builder. ‘a woman running about with only one glove’. ‘and worse’ said the cooper, ‘...with legs all scabby and torn’. 'yes but that’s the nature of her avocation…' said the carriage builder, the tinker interrupting '...you mean trade, not avocation'. ‘yes’ said the cooper, ‘an avocation is nothing more than a passing fancy’, to which the tinker replied ‘and a damn cruel one at that’. Having debated and aroused each other’s slow wit, the three left for whence they came, the tinker riding on the back of an ox, the cooper in a barrel fitted with wheels and a crank and the carriage builder by foot and bravery.

The following morning well before the cock’s crow the man in the hat awoke with a start, his lean-to filled with rainwater, the hammer of his thoughts wildly swinging, the day convened and listing. Next to the hangman’s graveyard, where he went as a boy in search of marbles and carbine shells, some still reeking of creosote and oil, sat an old wooden box frail of life and wormy. For a time Pascual Duarte and his family lived across the street. Mrs. Pascual Duarte liked to play the spinneret on the front porch, the metallic plunk of the strings purring in his ears. Her children stole flowers, trampling the neighbors’ beds and gardens into muddied gravesites. One morning before the cock’s crow he left for the woods behind the house, his da’s bone-handle penknife hidden in his sock. In his head he heard the voice saying, “...I'm not made to philosophize, I don't have the heart for it. My heart is more like a machine for making blood to be spilt in a knife fight....( Camilo José Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte) the sun rising slowly into the sky.

1 comment:

Tasha Klein said...

hey. :-)
just wanted to wish you, haappy holidays. do u have a youtube account?
http://www.youtube.com/user/TashaKlein1

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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