T.J. > Recent Status Updates

Osip Mandelstam suggested that if a poem can be paraphrased, then the sheets haven’t been rumpled, poetry hasn’t spent the night.

The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stol’n From gen’ral excrement; each thing’s a thief.

MNESILOCHUS [burying his face in it] Ah, what a delicate scent of… cheesy pudendum!