london

i leave for london on the 23rd, so i guess this will become sort of a travel journal. lately i've been reading about four books at once, trying to get a lot done in the days before i leave. i walk very fast, and think fast and accomplish tasks in loud bursts of energy, but still feel like i can't keep up. jittery without coffee and finding things to worry about and do when there aren't many of either. reading:
the subversive copy editor,
oxford's brief intro to british politics (summer assignment),
agnes grey,
early poems of adrienne rich.
everyone is telling me i will love london, and everyone is telling me to be careful. so sick of hearing the latter.

MOVING IN WINTER

Their life, collapsed like unplayed cards,
is carried piecemeal through the snow:
Headboard and footboard now, the bed
where she has lain desiring him
where overhead his sleep will build
its canopy to smother her once more;
their table, by four elbows worn
evening after evening while the wax runs down;
mirrors grey with reflecting them,
bureaus coffining from the cold
things that can shuffle in a drawer,
carpets rolled up around those echoes
which, shaken out, take wing and breed
new altercations, the old silences.

Adrienne Rich, 1957