Monday, July 10, 2006

A Lovely Line

I'm off to sleep soon. I need to be up early to drive Dixie, the Jack Russell Terrier who must dream of a career as a miner, to the vet for surgery. Again, I'm not sure what happened to the day. Each action, from mowing the lawn to napping on the sofa, seemed vital. Yet, tomorrow is already closing fast like a semi in your rearview mirror on a mountain pass and my only brush with writing was a few hours spent organizing a series of poems that may one day be a book.

Tonight, after I had my fill of television, I ran across this line by Edith Sitwell:

"See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:"

It's from her poem "Still Falls the Rain." I think it's a lovely line that I wanted to share—even though I'm not entirely sure what draws me to that line. Perhaps it is the seemingly simplistic repetition of the word "see" or the seeming typo in the middle of the line, which could be a tacit acknowledgement of our comparative imperfection. Then again, maybe we can blame the unexpected use of the preposition "in."

What do you think? What makes this line worth reading, 64 years after it was written? Could you do the same?

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