Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Postponement

A brief email from Jerry (Imago Theatre) arrived on Monday, explaining that he was extending the casting process for Cinder and wouldn't be making any decisions until the middle of June. This was not unexpected. I sent him part of a poem by Tennessee Williams that I had come across the day before. It is called "The Dangerous Painters." Tennessee's image of cinders made me take note as "Cinder" was on my mind. This is from the end of the poem:

Black bread of pity the old nurse gave as supper.
She passed it among the quiet and stupefied people,
as evening fell with cinders drifting, drifting,
everywhere cinders drifting.

The spent and purified people crouched on the pavements,
hunched along broken walls and were grateful for stillness,
grateful for effortless breathing now that the wind
had begun to freshen the city.

The city slept.

3 comments:

Lisa said...

Wow, that's an intense section of a poem. Makes me think of the aftermath of a holocaust.

Where are you living now? In Portland? I am getting extra homesick. I think it's due to the seasonal smog that's creeping in.

Robert said...

I'm living in Hazel Dell, WA. I'm halfway between downtown Portland and where my parents live, north of Battle Ground. It was a beautiful Sunday here. I was driving around Portland yesterday, around the Mt. Tabor area. And I have to say it is beautiful.

Lisa said...

Craig and I lived on 55th near Mt. Tabor. We would walk up there or ride our bikes around it. What a cool park. We did have our cars broken into periodically, and a cop chase through our backyard once, but the neighborhood was generally pretty nice. Also loved that Hawthorne stretch... Ack, I'm getting homesick again.

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