Sometimes the memory of a poem
Sometimes the memory of a poem sticks in your head. You think, that poem would be appropriate for my blog, but you can't figure out why. You don't have the poem memorized, but the memory of it hanuts you, for lack of a better word.
I remembered the poem was about eggs, but thought it was also about infinity.
It appears I was right. Here it is:
Ab Ovo by Joseph Brodsky
Ultimately, there should be a language
in which the word "egg" is reduced to O
entirely. The Italian comes the closest,
naturally, with its uova. That's why Alighieri thought
it the healthiest food, sharing the predilection
with sopranos and tenors whose pear-like torsos
in the final analysis embody "opera."
The same pertains to the truly Romantic, that is,
German poets, with practically every line
starting the way they'd begin a breakfast,
or to the equally cocky mathematicians
brooding over their regularly laid infinity,
whose immaculate zeros won't ever hatch.
I remembered the poem was about eggs, but thought it was also about infinity.
It appears I was right. Here it is:
Ab Ovo by Joseph Brodsky
Ultimately, there should be a language
in which the word "egg" is reduced to O
entirely. The Italian comes the closest,
naturally, with its uova. That's why Alighieri thought
it the healthiest food, sharing the predilection
with sopranos and tenors whose pear-like torsos
in the final analysis embody "opera."
The same pertains to the truly Romantic, that is,
German poets, with practically every line
starting the way they'd begin a breakfast,
or to the equally cocky mathematicians
brooding over their regularly laid infinity,
whose immaculate zeros won't ever hatch.
1 Comments:
Josef Pieper once said, "In leisure - not only there, but certainly there, if anywhere - the truly human is rescued and preserved."
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