By the Numbers. James Richardson
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BBR 1923–2008
JER 1923–2008
Contents
7 Head-On
8 Iron Age
9 Classic Bar Scenes I. Apollo at Happy Hour II. Ovidian Deposition III. Pygmalion among the Young IV. Twilight of a God V. Orpheus at Last Call VI. Apollo in Age
12 Echo
13 Bit Parts
14 The God Who
II. Vectors 3.0: Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays
III. By the Numbers
1 By the Numbers
2 Birds in Rain
3 Are We Alone? or Physics You Can Do at Home
4 Prokaryotes
5 The Stars in Order Of
6 Origin of Language
7 Songs for Senility
8 Room Temperature
IV. Small Hours
1 Shore Town, Winter
2 Tableau
3 Postmortem Georgic
4 Night Lights (1977– ) Blackout The Rich Man Sotto Voce To a Tea Slice of Life Who Has Seen the Wind Red, Green, Blue Star Reading Light
5 Roads Not Taken
6 Roads Taken
7 End of Summer
Notes
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Special Thanks
I. Bit Parts
Northwest Passage
That faint line in the dark
might be the shore
of some heretofore unknown
small hour.
This fir-scent on the wind
must be the forests
of the unheardof month
between July and August.
In Shakespeare
In Shakespeare a lover turns into an ass
as you would expect. Others confuse
their consciences with ghosts and witches.
Old men throw everything away
when they panic and can’t feel their lives.
They pinch themselves, pierce themselves with twigs,
cliffs, lightning, to die—yes, finally—in glad pain.
You marry a woman you’ve never talked to,
a woman you thought was a boy.
Sixteen years go by as a curtain billows
once, twice. Your children are lost,
they come back, you don’t remember how.
A