MaineCourse

Just Desserts

Vice President Dick Cheney told viewers Tuesday night they could verify his claims from the vice-presidential debate at an independent Web site -- factcheck.com -- but visitors to the site found a searing anti-Bush message. Cheney accidentally said ".com" instead of ".org" during the televised debate. Internet surfers who visited factcheck.com were redirected to the home page of billionaire anti-Bush activist George Soros, with the statement "Why we must not re-elect President Bush" at the top of the screen.

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Snowbanks North of the House

Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six
feet from the house ...
Thoughts that go so far.
The boy gets out of high school and reads no more
books;
the son stops calling home.
The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no
more bread.
And the wife looks at her husband one night at a
party, and loves him no more.
The energy leaves the wine, and the minister falls
leaving the church.
It will not come closer
the one inside moves back, and the hands touch
nothing, and are safe.

The father grieves for his son, and will not leave the
room where the coffin stands.
He turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone.

And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on
through the unattached heavens alone.

The toe of the shoe pivots
in the dust ...
And the man in the black coat turns, and goes back
down the hill.
No one knows why he came, or why he turned away,
and did not climb the hill.

Robert Bly

Okay, that's nonsense; pure, willful gloom. I'm as fond as the next man of a good, bleak poetic look around, but this is a veritable cornucopia of awkward allusions. Apples & oranges, mixed metaphors, and a Monty-Python-meets-Johnny-Cash ending. Tugs, somewhat, I'll grant, but he sounds to me like he's pitching something, not telling its shape.

Lovely picture, though.

And if one WERE to sidestep the Soros site, would one find Cheney had his facts straighter than Edwards, or is it all more a matter of which facts you wanna use, as usual?

Posted by not him.

Beautiful picture of a fall pond. I just want to pour myself into it and forget politics for a while.

Posted by rakkity.

Posted by Michael at October 7, 2004 07:43 PM